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Updated: June 3, 2025
When all was ready, and the men were about to embark, Kimon dreamed that he saw an angry dog barking at him, and that in the midst of its barking it spoke with a human voice, saying, "Go, for thou shalt ever be Loved both by my whelps and me." This vision was very hard to interpret.
The greatest benefit he gave his people was the building of the Long Walls, which joined Athens and the Piræus together, so that the city could never be cut off from the harbour. Kimôn began them at his own expense, and Pericles persuaded the Athenians to go on with them, when their founder had been sent on an expedition to the isle of Cyprus, which was rising against the Persians.
Moreover, Lucullus was given the chief command by his country, but Kimon won for his country the honour of commanding the other Greek states.
The three greatest men in Athens were Pericles, the son of that Xanthippus who had impeached Miltiades; Kimôn, the son of Miltiades himself; and Ephialtes, a great orator, who was thought to be as upright as Aristides the Just.
Kimon, on the other hand, never forced any one to serve, but took an equivalent in money from those who were unwilling to serve in person, and took their ships without crews, permitting them to stay at home and enjoy repose, and by their luxury and folly convert themselves into farmers and merchants, losing all their ancient warlike spirit and skill, while by exercising many of the Athenians in turn in campaigns and military expeditions, he rendered them the masters of the allies by means of the very money which they themselves supplied.
If we are to believe it to be the greatest proof of ability in a general to be loved and willingly obeyed by his soldiers, then we see that Lucullus was despised by his soldiers, while Kimon was esteemed and looked up to by his allies, for the soldiers of Lucullus revolted from him, while the Greek states revolted from Sparta in order to join Kimon.
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,"
The Athenians at first viewed his Spartan partialities without dissatisfaction, especially as they gained considerable advantages by them; for during the early days of their empire when they first began to extend and consolidate their power, they were enabled to do so without rousing the jealousy of Sparta, in consequence of the popularity of Kimon with the Lacedæmonians.
And all this was not on any special occasion, or when his administration was especially popular, but for forty years he held the first place among such men as Ephialtes, Leokrates, Myronides, Kimon, Tolmides, and Thucydides; and, after the fall and banishment of Thucydides by ostracism, he united in himself for five-and-twenty years all the various offices of state, which were supposed to last only for one year; and yet during the whole of that period proved himself incorruptible by bribes.
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.
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