United States or Tunisia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
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.
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.
They were all killed, fighting bravely, and the victory was with the Spartans. Soon after, the virtuous Ephialtes was stabbed by some unknown person, and Pericles, feeling that good men could not be spared, moved that Kimôn should be called home again.
Moreover, Gorgias of Leontini says that Kimon acquired wealth in order to use it, and used it so as to gain honour: while Kritias, who was one of the Thirty, in his poems wishes to be "Rich as the Skopads, and as Kimon great, And like Agesilaus fortunate."
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.
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.
Kimon, on his return, was disgusted at the degradation of the ancient Senate of the Areopagus, and began to intrigue with a view of restoring the aristocratic constitution of Kleisthenes. This called down upon him a storm of abuse from the popular party, who brought up again the old scandals about his sister, and charged him with partiality for the Lacedæmonians.
Accordingly, therefore, Kimon introduced into his home one evening a certain young Athenian philosopher, a typical literary Bohemian of that time, one Socrates, a creature of wondrous wisdom and ready wit. The appearance of this suitor, presumptive if not apparent, did not particularly please Xanthippe. Socrates was an ill-favored young man. He was tall, raw-boned, and gangling.
When dying he ordered his friends to conceal his death, but at once to embark the army and sail home. This was effected, and we are told by Phanodemus that no one, either of the enemy or of the Athenian allies conceived any suspicion that Kimon had ceased to command the forces until after he had been dead for thirty days.
But when Aristeides was dead, Themistokles banished, and Kimon generally absent on distant campaigns, Perikles engaged in public affairs, taking the popular side, that of the poor and many against that of the rich and few, quite contrary to his own feelings, which were entirely aristocratic.
Word Of The Day