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Updated: June 3, 2025
The Athenians, already beloved by the Greeks, on account of the justice of Aristeides and the kindliness of Kimon, were much more endeared to them by the insolent brutality of Pausanias, who always spoke roughly and angrily to the chiefs of the various contingents of allies, and used to punish the common men by stripes, or by forcing them to stand all day with a heavy iron anchor on their shoulders.
Still less can we compare the generous and popular hospitality of Kimon with the Eastern profusion and extravagance of Lucullus's table; for Kimon, at a small expense, fed many of his countrymen daily, while the other spent enormous sums to provide luxuries for a small circle of friends.
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.
As he was not so rich a man as Kimon, who used from his own ample means to give a dinner daily to any poor Athenian who required it, clothe aged persons, and take away the fences round his property, so that any one might gather the fruit, Perikles, unable to vie with him in this, turned his attention to a distribution of the public funds among the people, at the suggestion, we are told by Aristotle, of Damonides of Oia.
The truth was that, having prospered in his trade, Kimon pined for social recognition; it grieved him that one of his daughters had wed a tinker, and he had registered a vow with Pallas that his other daughter should be given into the arms of a worthier man.
When the request from Sparta came, Ephialtes was against helping the rival of Athens; but Kimôn, who had friends in Laconia, declared that it would be unbecoming in Athens to let Greece be crippled in one of her two legs, or to lose her own yoke-fellow.
Prosperous in a worldly way, Kimon was enabled to give this favorite daughter the best educational advantages; and he was justly proud when at the age of nineteen Xanthippe was graduated from the Minerva Female College with all the highest honors of her class.
In this point Lucullus and Kimon are alike; for Kimon was often impeached by his countrymen, who at last banished him by ostracism, in order that, as Plato said, they might not hear his voice for ten years.
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.
XII. Moreover, no one contributed so powerfully as Kimon to the humbling of the king of Persia; for Kimon would not relax his pursuit of him when he retreated from Greece, but hung on the rear of the barbarian army and would not allow them any breathing-time for rallying their forces.
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