Cimon

Cimon was the son of Miltiades by Hegesipyle, a woman of Thracian stock, daughter of King Olorus, as it is stated in the poems of Archelaus and Melanthius addressed to Cimon himself. That explains how it was that the father of Thucydides the historian—and Thucydides was connected with the family of Cimon—was also an Olorus, who referred his name back to that of the common ancestor, and also how it was that Thucydides had gold mines in Thrace.[*](Thuc. 4.105)

And it is said that Thucydides died in Skapte Hyle, a place in Thrace, having been murdered there; but his remains were brought to Attica, and his monument is shown among those of Cimon’s family, hard by the tomb of Elpinice, Cimon’s sister. However, Thucydides belonged to the deme of Halimus, the family of Miltiades to that of Laciadae.

Now Miltiades, who had been condemned to pay a fine of fifty talents and confined till payment should be made, died in prison, and Cimon, thus left a mere stripling with his sister who was a young girl and unmarried, was of no account in the city at first. He had the bad name of being dissolute and bibulous, and of taking after his grandfather Cimon, who, they say, because of his simplicity, was dubbed Coalemus, or Booby.

And Stesimbrotus the Thasian, who was of about Cimon’s time, says that he acquired no literary education, nor any other liberal and distinctively Hellenic accomplishment; that he lacked entirely the Attic cleverness and fluency of speech; that in his outward bearing there was much nobility and truthfulness; that the fashion of the man’s spirit was rather Peloponnesian,

1. Plain, unadorned, in a great crisis brave and true,

While he was still a youth he was accused of improper intercourse with his sister. And indeed in other cases too they say that Elpinice was not very decorous, but that she had improper relations also with Polygnotus the painter, and that it was for this reason that, in the Peisianacteum, as it was then called, but now the Painted Colonnade, when he was painting the Trojan women, he made the features of Laodice a portrait of Elpinice.

Now Polygnotus was not a mere artisan, and did not paint the stoa for a contract price, but gratis, out of zeal for the welfare of the city, as the historians relate, and as Melanthius the poet testifies after this fashion:—

1. He at his own lavish outlay the gods’ great fanes, and the market
2. Named Cecropia, adorned; demigods’ valor his theme.