her in the act of adultery with the historian Sallustius, who was soundly hided by the husband and not let of till he had paid a sum of money. Sallustius did not forget this.]
[Footnote 304: It was considered a mark of intentional disrespect or of disapprobation, when a Roman made no mention of his nearest kin or friends in his will; and in certain cases, the person who was passed over could by legal process vindicate the imputation thus thrown on him. (See the article "Testamentum," in Smith's _Dictionary of Antiquities_, under the head "Querela Inofficiosi.") Sulla did not like Cn. Pompeius. The only reason for keeping on terms with him was that he saw his talents and so wished to ally him to his family. For the same reason Sulla wished to put C. Julius Cæsar to death (Cæsar.
1): he predicted that he would be the ruin of the aristocratical party. Sulla made his friend Lucius Lucullus the guardian of his children and intrusted him with the final correction of his Memoirs.
(See the Life of Lucullus, c. 1).]
[Footnote 305: The description of the funeral in Appian (_Civil Wars_, i. 105, &c.) is a striking picture. Sulla was buried with more than regal pomp.
Plutarch's Life of Sulla has been spoken of as not one of his best performances. But so far as concerns Plutarch's object in writing these Lives, which was to exhibit character, it is as good as any of his Lives, and it has great merit. Whether his anecdotes are always authentic is a difficult matter to determine. Sulla had many enemies, and it is probable that his character in private life has been made worse than it was. The acts of his public life are well ascertained.
Plutarch has nearly omitted all mention of him as a Reformer of the Roman Constitution and as a Legislator. Sulla's enactments were not like the imperial constitutions of a later day, the mere act of one who held the sovereign power: they were laws (leges) duly passed by the popular assembly. Yet they were Sulla's work, and the legislative body merely gave them the formal sanction. The object of Sulla's constitutional measures was to give an aristocratical character to the Roman constitution, to restore it to something of its pristine state, and to weaken the popular party by curtailing the power of the tribunes. The whole subject has often been treated, but at the greatest length by Zachariæ, _Lucius Cornelius Sulla, &c._, Heidelberg, 1834. Zachariæ has drawn the character of Sulla in an apologetical tone. I think the character of Sulla is drawn better by Plutarch, and that he has represented him as near to the life as a biographer can do. Whatever discrepancies there may he between Plutarch and other authorities, whatever Plutarch may have omitted which other authorities give, still he has shown us enough to justify his delineation of the most prominent man in the Republican Period of Rome, with the exception of the Dictator Cæsar. But to complete the view of his intellectual character, a survey of Sulla's legislation is necessary. Sulla was an educated man: he was not a mere soldier like Marius; he was not only a general; he was a man of letters, a lover of the arts, a keen discriminator of men and times, a legislator, and a statesman. He remodelled and reformed the whole criminal law of the Romans. His constitutional measures were not permanent, but it may truly be said that he prepared the way for the temporary usurpation of Cæsar and the permanent establishment of the Roman State under Augustus. I propose to treat of the Legislation of Sulla in an Appendix to a future volume.]
COMPARISON OF LYSANDER AND SULLA Now that we have completed the second of these men's lives, let us proceed to compare them with one another. Both rose to greatness by their own exertions, though it was the peculiar glory of Lysander that all his commands were bestowed upon him by his countrymen of their own free will and by their deliberate choice, and that he never opposed their wishes or acted in opposition to the laws of his country. Now,-- "In revolutions, villains rise to fame," and at Rome, at the period of which we are treating, the people were utterly corrupt and degraded, and frequently changed their masters. We need not wonder at Sulla's becoming supreme in Rome when such men as Glaucia and Saturninus drove the Metelli into exile, when the sons of consuls were butchered in the senate-house, when silver and gold purchased soldiers and arms, and laws were enacted by men who silenced their opponents by fire and the sword. I cannot blame a man who rises to power at such a time as this, but I cannot regard it as any proof of his being the best man in the state, if the state itself be in such a condition of disorder. Now Lysander was sent out to undertake the most important commands at a time when Sparta was well and orderly governed, and proved himself the greatest of all the foremost men of his age, the best man of the best regulated state. For this reason Lysander, though he often laid down his office, was always re-elected by his countrymen, for the renown of his abilities naturally pointed him out as the fittest man to command: whereas Sulla, after being once elected to lead an army, remained the chief man in Rome for ten years, calling himself sometimes consul and sometimes dictator, but always remaining a mere military despot.
II. We have related an attempt of Lysander to subvert the constitution of Sparta; but he proceeded by a much more moderate and law-abiding means than Sulla, for he meant to gain his point by persuasion, not by armed force; and besides this he did not intend to destroy the constitution utterly, but merely to reform the succession to the throne. And it does not seem contrary to justice, that he who is best among his peers should govern a city, which ruled in Greece by virtue, not by nobility of blood.
A huntsman tries to obtain a good hound, and a horseman a good horse, but does not trouble himself with their offspring, for the offspring of his horse might turn out to be a mule. Just so in politics, the important point is, what sort of man a ruler is, not from what family he is descended. Even the Spartans in some cases dethroned their kings, because they were not king-like but worthless men. If then vice be disgraceful even in the nobly born, it follows that virtue does not depend upon birth, but is honoured for itself.
The crimes of Lysander were committed for, those of Sulla against, his friends. Indeed, what Lysander did wrong was done chiefly on behalf of his friends, as, in order to establish them securely in their various despotic governments, he caused many of their political opponents to be put to death. Sulla, on the other hand, reduced the army of Pompeius and the fleet which he himself had given to Dolabella to command, merely to gratify his private spite. When Lucretius Ofella sued for the consulship as the reward of many great exploits, he ordered him to be put to death before his face, and thus made all men fear and hate him by his barbarous treatment of his most intimate friends.
III. Their several esteem for pleasure and for riches prove still more clearly that Lysander was born to command men; Sulla to tyrannize over them. The former, although he rose to such an unparalleled height of power never was betrayed by it into any acts of insolent caprice, and there never was a man to whom the well-known proverb "Lions at home, but foxes in the field," was less applicable, Sulla, on the other hand, did not allow his poverty when young or his years when old to hinder him in the pursuit of pleasure, but he enacted laws to regulate the marriages and morals of his countrymen, and indulged his own amorous propensities in spite of them, as we read in Sallust's history. In consequence of his vices, Rome was so drained of money that he was driven to the expedient of allowing the allied cities to purchase their independence by payment, and that, too, although he was daily proscribing the richest men and selling their property by public auction. Yet he wasted money without limit upon his courtiers. What bounds can we imagine he would set to his generosity when in his cups, seeing that once, when a great estate was being sold by public auction, he ordered the auctioneer to knock it down to a friend of his own for a mere nominal sum, and when some one else made a higher bid, and the auctioneer called out the additional sum offered, Sulla flew into a passion and exclaimed: "My friends, I am very hardly used if I may not dispose of my own plunder as I please." Now Lysander sent home to his countrymen even what he had himself received as presents together with the rest of the spoils.
Yet I do not approve of him for so doing: for he did as much harm to Sparta by bestowing that money upon it as Sulla did harm to Rome by the money which he took from it: but I mention it as proving how little he cared for money. Each acted strangely towards his fellow-countrymen. Sulla regulated and improved the morals of Rome, although he himself was wasteful and licentious. Lysander filled his countrymen with the passions from which he himself was free. Thus the former was worse than the laws which he himself enacted, while the latter rendered his countrymen worse than himself, as he taught the Spartans to covet what he had learned to despise. So much for their political conduct.
IV. In warlike exploits, in brilliancy of generalship, in the number of victories he won, and the greatness of the dangers which he encountered, Sulla is immeasurably the greater. Lysander did indeed twice conquer in a sea-fight, and I will even allow him the credit of having taken Athens; no difficult matter, no doubt, but one which, brought him great glory because of its being so famous a city. In Bœotia and before Haliartus he was perhaps unlucky, yet his conduct in not waiting for the arrival of the great force under Pausanias, which was at Platæa, close by, seems like bad generalship. He would not stay till the main body arrived, but rashly assaulted the city, and fell by an unknown hand in an insignificant skirmish. He did not meet his death facing overwhelming odds, like Kleombrotus at Leuktra, nor yet in the act of rallying his broken forces, or of consummating his victory, as did Cyrus and Epameinondas. All these died as became generals and kings; but Lysander ingloriously flung away his life like any common light infantry soldier, and proved the wisdom of the ancient Spartans, who always avoided the attack of fortified places, where the bravest may fall by the hand of the most worthless man, or even by that of a woman or a child, as Achilles is said to have been slain by Paris at the gates of Troy. Turning now to Sulla, it is not easy to enumerate all the pitched battles he won, the thousands of enemies that he overthrew. He twice took Rome itself by storm, and at Athens he took Peiræus, not by famine like Lysander, but after a gigantic struggle, at the end of which he drove Archelaus into the sea.
It is important also to consider who were the generals to whom they were opposed. It must have been mere child's-play to Lysander to defeat Antiochus, the pilot of Alkibiades, and to outwit Philokles, the Athenian mob-orator, "A knave, whose tongue was sharper than his sword," for they were both of them men whom Mithridates would not have thought a match for one of his grooms, or Marius for one of his lictors. Not to mention the rest of the potentates, consuls, prætors and tribunes with whom Sulla had to contend, what Roman was more to be dreaded than Marius? What king more powerful than Mithridates? Who was there in Italy more warlike than Lamponius and Pontius Telesinus? Yet Sulla drove Marius into exile, crushed the power of Mithridates, and put Lamponius and Pontius to death.
V. What, however, to my mind incontestably proves Sulla to have been the greater man of the two, is that, whereas Lysander was always loyally assisted by his countrymen in all his enterprises, Sulla, during his campaign in Bœotia, was a mere exile. His enemies were all-powerful at Rome. They had driven his wife to seek safety in flight, had pulled down his house, and murdered his friends. Yet he fought in his country's cause against overwhelming numbers, and gained the victory. Afterwards, when Mithridates offered to join him and furnish him with the means of overcoming his private enemies, he showed no sign of weakness, and would not even speak to him or give him his hand until he heard him solemnly renounce all claim to Asia Minor, engage to deliver up his fleet, and to restore Bithynia and Cappadocia to their native sovereigns. Never did Sulla act in a more noble and high-minded manner. He preferred his country's good to his own private advantage, and, like a well-bred hound, never relaxed his hold till his enemy gave in, and then began to turn his attention to redressing his own private wrongs.
Perhaps their treatment of Athens gives us some insight into their respective characters. Although that city sided with Mithridates and fought to maintain his empire, yet when Sulla had taken it he made it free and independent. Lysander, on the other hand, felt no pity for Athens when she fell from her glorious position as the leading state in Greece, but put an end to her free constitution and established the cruel and lawless government of the Thirty.
We may now conclude our review of their respective lives by observing that while Sulla performed greater achievements, Lysander committed fewer crimes: and that while we assign the palm for moderation and self-denial to the latter, that for courage and generalship be bestowed upon the former.
LIFE OF KIMON.
Peripoltas, the soothsayer, after he had brought back King Opheltas and the people under him to Bœotia, left a family which remained in high repute for many generations, and chiefly settled in Chæronea, which was the first city which they conquered when they drove out the barbarians. As the men of this race were all brave and warlike, they were almost reduced to extinction in the wars with the Persians, and in later times with the Gauls during their invasion of Greece, so that there remained but one male of the family, a youth of the name of Damon, who was surnamed Peripoltas, and who far surpassed all the youth of his time in beauty and spirit, although he was uneducated and harsh-tempered. The commander of a detachment of Roman soldiers who were quartered during the winter in Chæronea conceived a criminal passion for Damon, who was then a mere lad, and as he could not effect his purpose by fair means it was evident that he would not hesitate to use force, as our city was then much decayed, and was despised, being so small and poor. Damon, alarmed and irritated at the man's behaviour, formed a conspiracy with a few young men of his own age, not many, for secrecy's sake, but consisting of sixteen in all. These men smeared their faces with soot, excited themselves by strong drink, and assaulted the Roman officer just at daybreak, while he was offering sacrifice in the market-place. They killed him and several of his attendants, and then made their escape out of the city. During the confusion which followed, the senate of the city of Chæronea assembled and condemned the conspirators to death--a decree which was intended to excuse the city to the Romans for what had happened. But that evening, when the chief magistrates, as is their custom, were dining together, Damon and his party broke into the senate-house, murdered them all, and again escaped out of the city. It chanced that at this time Lucius Lucullus was passing near Chæronea with an armed force. He halted his troops, and, after investigating the circumstances, declared that the city was not to blame, but had been the injured party. As for Damon, who was living by brigandage and plunder of the country, and who threatened to attack the city itself, the citizens sent an embassy to him, and passed a decree guaranteeing his safety if he would return. When he returned they appointed him president of the gymnasium, and afterwards, while he was being anointed in the public baths, they murdered him there.
Our ancestors tell us that as ghosts used to appear in that place, and groans were heard there, the doors of the bath-room were built up; and even at the present day those who live near the spot imagine that shadowy forms are to be seen, and confused cries heard. Those of his family who survive (for there are some descendants of Damon) live chiefly in Phokis, near the city of Steiris. They call themselves Asbolomeni, which in the Æolian dialect means "sooty-faced," in memory of Damon having smeared his face with soot when he committed his crimes.
II. Now the city of Orchomenus, which is next to that of Chæronea, was at variance with it, and hired a Roman informer, who indicted the city for the murder of those persons killed by Damon, just as if it were a man. The trial was appointed to take place before the prætor of Macedonia, for at that time the Romans did not appoint prætors of Greece. When in court the representatives of Chæronea appealed to Lucullus to testify to their innocence, and he, when applied to by the prætor, wrote a letter telling the entire truth of the story, which obtained an acquittal for the people of Chæronea. Thus narrowly did the city escape utter destruction. The citizens showed their gratitude to Lucullus by erecting a marble statue to him in the market-place, beside that of Dionysus; and although I live at a much later period, yet I think it my duty to show my gratitude to him also, as I too have benefited by his intercession. I intend therefore to describe his achievements in my Parallel Lives, and thus raise a much more glorious monument to his memory by describing his real disposition and character, than any statue can be, which merely records his face and form. It will be sufficient for me if I show that his memory is held in grateful remembrance, for he himself would be the first to refuse to be rewarded for the true testimony which he bore to us by a fictitious narrative of his exploits. We think it right that portrait painters when engaged in painting a handsome face should neither omit nor exaggerate its defects; for the former method would destroy the likeness and the latter the beauty of the picture. In like manner, as it is hard, or rather impossible, to find a man whose life is entirely free from blame, it becomes our duty to relate their noble actions with minute exactitude, regarding them as illustrative of true character, whilst, whenever either a man's personal feelings or political exigencies may have led him to commit mistakes and crimes, we must regard his conduct more as a temporary lapse from virtue than as disclosing any innate wickedness of disposition, and we must not dwell with needless emphasis on his failings, if only to save our common human nature from the reproach of being unable to produce a man of unalloyed goodness and virtue.
III. It appears to me that the life of Lucullus furnishes a good parallel to that of Kimon. Both were soldiers, and distinguished themselves against the barbarians; both were moderate politicians and afforded their countrymen a brief period of repose from the violence of party strife, and both of them won famous victories. No Greek before Kimon, and no Roman before Lucullus, waged war at such a distance from home, if we except the legends of Herakles and Dionysus, and the vague accounts which we have received by tradition of the travels and exploits of Perseus in Ethiopia, Media, and Armenia, and of the expedition of Jason to recover the Golden Fleece.
Another point in which they agree is the incomplete nature of the success which they obtained, for they both inflicted severe losses on their enemies, but neither completely crushed them. Moreover we find in each of them the same generous hospitality, and the same luxurious splendour of living. Their other points of resemblance the reader may easily discover for himself by a comparison of their respective lives.
IV. Kimon was the son of Miltiades by his wife Hegesipyle, a lady of Thracian descent, being the daughter of King Olorus, as we learn from the poems addressed to Kimon himself by Archelaus and Melanthius.
Thucydides the historian also was connected with Kimon's family, as the name of Olorus had descended to his father,[306] who also inherited gold mines in Thrace from his ancestors there. Thucydides is said to have died at Skapte Hyle, a small town in Thrace, near the gold mines. His remains were conveyed to Athens and deposited in the cemetery belonging to the family of Kimon, where his tomb is now to be seen, next to that of Elpinike, Kimon's sister. However, Thucydides belonged to the township of Halimus, and the family of Miltiades to that of Lakia.
Miltiades was condemned by the Athenians to pay a fine of fifty talents, and being unable to do so, died in prison, leaving Kimon and his sister Elpinike, who were then quite young children. Kimon passed the earlier part of his life in obscurity, and was not regarded favourably by the Athenians, who thought that he was disorderly and given to wine, and altogether resembled his grandfather Kimon, who was called Koalemus because of his stupidity.
Stesimbrotus of Thasos, who was a contemporary of Kimon, tells us that he never was taught music or any of the other usual accomplishments of a Greek gentleman, and that he had none of the smartness and readiness of speech so common at Athens, but that he was of a noble, truthful nature, and more like a Dorian of the Peloponnesus than an Athenian, "Rough, unpretending, but a friend in need," as Euripides says of Herakles, which line we may well apply to Kimon according to the account of him given by Stesimbrotus. While he was still young he was accused of incest with his sister. Indeed Elpinike is not recorded as having been a respectable woman in other respects, as she carried on an intrigue with Polygnotus the painter; and therefore it is said that when he painted the colonnade which was then called the Peisianakteum, which is now called the Painted Porch, he introduced the portrait of Elpinike as Laodike, one of the Trojan ladies. Polygnotus was a man of noble birth, and he did not execute his paintings for money, but gratis, from his wish to do honour to his city. This we learn from the historians and from the poet Melanthius, who wrote-- "With deeds of heroes old, He made our city gay, In market-place and porch, Himself the cost did pay."
Some historians tell us that Elpinike was openly married to Kimon and lived as his wife, because she was too poor to obtain a husband worthy of her noble birth, but that at length Kallias, one of the richest men in Athens, fell in love with her, and offered to pay off the fine which had been imposed upon her father, by which means he won her consent, and Kimon gave her away to Kallias as his wife. Kimon indeed seems to have been of an amorous temperament, for Asterie, a lady of Salamis, and one Mnestra are mentioned by the poet Melanthius, in some playful verses he wrote upon Kimon, as being beloved by him; and we know that he was passionately fond of Isodike, the daughter of Euryptolemus the son of Megakles, who was his lawful wife, and that he was terribly afflicted by her death, to judge by the elegiac poem which was written to console him, of which Panætius the philosopher very reasonably conjectures Archelaus to have been the author.
V. All the rest that we know of Kimon is to his honour. He was as brave as Miltiades, as clever as Themistokles, and more straightforward than either. Nor was he inferior to either of them in military skill, while he far surpassed them in political sagacity, even when he was quite a young man, and without any experience of war. For instance, when Themistokles, at the time of the Persian invasion, urged the Athenians to abandon their city and territory, and resist the enemy at Salamis, on board of their fleet, while the greater part of the citizens were struck with astonishment at so daring a proposal, Kimon was seen with a cheerful countenance walking through the Kerameikus with his friends, carrying in his hand his horse's bridle, which he was going to offer up to the goddess Athena in the Acropolis, in token that at that crisis the city did not need horsemen so much as sailors. He hung up the bridle as a votive offering in the temple, and, taking down one of the shields which hung there, walked with it down towards the sea, thereby causing many of his countrymen to take courage and recover their spirits. He was not an ill-looking man, as Ion the poet says, but tall, and with a thick curly head of hair. As he proved himself a brave man in action he quickly became popular and renowned in Athens, and many flocked round him, urging him to emulate the glories won by his father at Marathon.
The people gladly welcomed him on his first entrance into political life, for they were weary of Themistokles, and were well pleased to bestow the highest honours in the state upon one whose simple and unaffected goodness of heart had made him a universal favourite. He was greatly indebted for his success to the support given him by Aristeides, who early perceived his good qualities, and endeavoured to set him up as an opponent to the rash projects and crooked policy of Themistokles.
VI. When, after the repulse of the Persian invasion, Kimon was sent as general of the Athenian forces to operate against the enemy in Asia, acting under the orders of Pausanias, as the Athenians had not then acquired their supremacy at sea, the troops whom he commanded were distinguished by the splendour of their dress and arms, and the exactness of their discipline. Pausanias at this time was carrying on a treasonable correspondence with the king of Persia, and treated the allied Greek troops with harshness and wanton insolence, the offspring of unlimited power. Kimon, on the other hand, punished offenders leniently, treated all alike with kindness and condescension, and became in all but name the chief of the Greek forces in Asia, a position which he gained, not by force of arms, but by amiability of character. Most of the allies transferred their allegiance to Kimon and Aristeides, through disgust at the cruelty and arrogance of Pausanias. There is a tradition that Pausanias when at Byzantium became enamoured of Kleonike, the daughter of one of the leading citizens there. He demanded that she should be brought to his chamber, and her wretched parents dared not disobey the tyrant's order. From feelings of modesty Kleonike entreated the attendants at the door of his bedchamber to extinguish all the lights, and she then silently in the darkness approached the bed where Pausanias lay asleep. But she stumbled and overset the lamp.[307] He, awakened by the noise, snatched up his dagger, and imagining that some enemy was coming to assassinate him, stabbed the girl with it, wounding her mortally. It is said that after this her spirit would never let Pausanias rest, but nightly appeared to him, angrily reciting the verse-- "Go, meet thy doom; pride leadeth men to sin."
The conduct of Pausanias in this matter so enraged the allied Greeks that, under Kimon's command, they besieged him in Byzantium, which they took by assault. He, however, escaped, and, it is said, fled for refuge to the oracle of the dead at Heraklea, where he called up the soul of Kleonike and besought her to pardon him. She appeared, and told him that if he went to Sparta he would soon be relieved of all his troubles, an enigmatical sentence alluding, it is supposed, to his approaching death there.
VII. Kimon, who was now commander-in-chief, sailed to Thrace, as he heard that the Persians, led by certain nobles nearly related to Xerxes himself, had captured the city of Eion on the river Strymon, and were making war upon the neighbouring Greek cities. His first act on landing was to defeat the Persians, and shut them up in the city.
He next drove away the Thracian tribes beyond the Strymon, who supplied the garrison with provisions, and by carefully watching the country round he reduced the city to such straits that Boutes, the Persian general, perceiving that escape was impossible, set it on fire, and himself with his friends and property perished in the flames. When Kimon took the city he found nothing in it of any value, as everything had been destroyed in the fire together with the Persian garrison; but as the country was beautiful and fertile, he made it an Athenian colony. Three stone statues of Hermes at Athens were now set up by a decree of the people, on the first of which is written:-- "Brave men were they, who, by the Strymon fair, First taught the haughty Persians to despair;" and on the second-- "Their mighty chiefs to thank and praise, The Athenians do these columns raise; That generations yet to come, May fight as well for hearth and home;" and on the third-- "Mnestheus from Athens led our hosts of yore, With Agamemnon, to the Trojan shore; Than whom no chief knew better to array, The mail-clad Greeks, when mustering for the fray: Thus Homer sung; and Athens now, as then, Doth bear away the palm for ruling men."
VIII. These verses, although Kimon's name is nowhere mentioned in them, appeared to the men of that time excessively adulatory. Neither Themistokles nor Miltiades had ever been so honoured. When Miltiades demanded the honour of an olive crown, Sophanes of Dekeleia rose up in the public assembly and said,--"Miltiades, when you have fought and conquered the barbarians alone, you may ask to be honoured alone, but not before"--a harsh speech, but one which perfectly expressed the feeling of the people.
Why, then, were the Athenians so charmed with Kimon's exploit? The reason probably was because their other commanders had merely defended them from attack, while under him they had been able themselves to attack the enemy, and had moreover won territory near Eion, and founded the colony of Amphipolis. Kimon also led a colony to Skyros, which island was taken by Kimon on the following pretext.
The original inhabitants were Dolopes,[308] who were bad farmers, and lived chiefly by piracy. Emboldened by success they even began to plunder the strangers who came into their ports, and at last robbed and imprisoned some Thessalian merchants whose ships were anchored at Ktesium. The merchants escaped from prison, and laid a complaint against the people of Skyros before the Amphiktyonic council. The people refused to pay the fine imposed by the council, and said that it ought to be paid by those alone who had shared the plunder. These men, in terror for their ill-gotten gains, at once opened a correspondence with Kimon, and offered to betray the island into his hands if he would appear before it with an Athenian fleet. Thus Kimon was enabled to make himself master of Skyros, where he expelled the Dolopes and put an end to their piracies; after which, as he learned that in ancient times the hero Theseus, the son of Ægeus, after he had been driven out of Athens, took refuge at Skyros, and was murdered there by Lykomedes, who feared him, he endeavoured to discover where he was buried. Indeed there was an oracle which commanded the Athenians to bring back the bones of Theseus to their city and pay them fitting honours, but they knew not where they lay, as the people of Skyros did not admit that they possessed them, and refused to allow the Athenians to search for them. Great interest was now manifested in the search, and after his sepulchre[309] had with great difficulty been discovered, Kimon placed the remains of the hero on board of his own ship and brought them back to Athens, from which they had been absent four hundred years. This act made him very popular with the people of Athens, one mark of which is to be found in his decision in the case of the rival tragic poets. When Sophokles produced his first play, being then very young, Aphepsion,[310] the archon, seeing that party feeling ran high among the spectators, would not cast lots to decide who were to be the judges, but when Kimon with the other nine generals, his colleagues, entered to make the usual libation to the god, he refused to allow them to depart, but put them on their oath, and forced them to sit as judges, they being ten in number, one from each of the ten tribes. The excitement of the contest was much increased by the high position of the judges. The prize was adjudged to Sophokles, and it is said that Æschylus was so grieved and enraged at his failure that he shortly afterwards left Athens and retired to Sicily, where he died, and was buried near the city of Gela.
IX. Ion tells us that when quite a boy he came from Chios to Athens, and met Kimon at supper in the house of Laomedon. After supper he was asked to sing, and he sang well. The guests all praised him, and said that he was a cleverer man than Themistokles; for Themistokles was wont to say that he did not know how to sing or to play the harp, but that he knew how to make a state rich and great. Afterwards the conversation turned upon Kimon's exploits, and each mentioned what he thought the most important. Hereupon Kimon himself described what he considered to be the cleverest thing he had ever done. After the capture of Sestos and Byzantium by the Athenians and their allies, there were a great number of Persians taken prisoners, whom the allies desired Kimon to divide amongst them. He placed the prisoners on one side, and all their clothes and jewellery on the other, and offered the allies their choice between the two. They complained that he had made an unequal division, but he bade them take whichever they pleased, assuring them that the Athenians would willingly take whichever part they rejected. By the advice of Herophytus of Samos, who urged them to take the property of the Persians, rather than the Persians themselves, the allies took the clothes and jewels. At this Kimon was thought to have made a most ridiculous division of the spoil, as the allies went swaggering about with gold bracelets, armlets, and necklaces, dressed in Median robes of rich purple, while the Athenians possessed only the naked bodies of men who were very unfit for labour. Shortly afterwards, however, the friends and relations of the captives came down to the Athenian camp from Phrygia and Lydia, and ransomed each of them for great sums of money, so that Kimon was able to give his fleet four months' pay, and also to remit a large sum to Athens, out of the money paid for their ransom.
X. The money which Kimon had honourably gained in the war he spent yet more honourably upon his countrymen. He took down the fences round his fields, that both strangers and needy Athenians might help themselves to his crops and fruit. He provided daily a plain but plentiful table, at which any poor Athenian was welcome to dine, so that he might live at his ease, and be able to devote all his attention to public