Cimon

Plutarch

Plutarch. Plutarch's Lives, Vol. II. Perrin, Bernadotte, translator. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1914.

For they were defeated at Tanagra in a great battle, and expected that in the following spring-time an armed force of Peloponnesians would come against them, and so they recalled Cimon from his exile. The decree which provided for his return was formally proposed by Pericles. To such a degree in those days were dissensions based on political differences of opinion, while personal feelings were moderate, and easily recalled into conformity with the public weal. Even ambition, that master passion, paid deference to the country’s welfare.

Well then, as soon as Cimon returned from exile he stopped the war and reconciled the rival cities. After peace was made,[*]( 450 B.C.) since he saw that the Athenians were unable to keep quiet, but wished to be on the move and to wax great by means of military expeditions; also because he wished that they should not exasperate the Hellenes generally, nor by hovering around the islands and the Peloponnesus with a large fleet bring down upon the city charges of intestine war, and initial complaints from the allies, he manned two hundred triremes.

His design was to make another expedition with them against Egypt and Cyprus. He wished to keep the Athenians in constant training by their struggles with Barbarians, and to give them the legitimate benefits of importing into Hellas the wealth taken from their natural foes. All things were now ready and the soldiery on the point of embarking, when Cimon had a dream.

He thought an angry bitch was baying at him, and that mingled with its baying it uttered a human voice, saying:—

  1. Go thy way, for a friend shalt thou be both to me
  2. and my puppies.
The vision being hard of interpretation, Astyphilus of Posidonia, an inspired man and an intimate of Cimon’s, told him that it signified his death. He analyzed the vision thus: a dog is a foe of the man at whom it bays; to a foe, one cannot be a friend any better than by dying; the mixture of speech indicates that the enemy is the Mede, for the army of the Medes is a mixture of Hellenes and Barbarians.