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—