Cimon   

the character and habits to be a greater honour than one merely representing
the face and the person, we will put Lucullus's life amongst our parallels
of illustrious men, and without swerving from the truth, will record
his actions. The commemoration will be itself a sufficient proof of
our grateful feeling, and he himself would not thank us, if in recompense
for a service which consisted in speaking the truth, we should abuse
his memory with a false and counterfeit narration. For as we would
wish that a painter who is to draw a beautiful face, in which there
is yet some imperfection, should neither wholly leave out, nor yet
too pointedly express what is defective, because this would deform
it, and that spoil the resemblance; so since it is hard, or indeed
perhaps impossible, to show the life of a man wholly free from blemish,
in all that is excellent we must follow truth exactly, and give it
fully; any lapses or faults that occur, through human passions or
political necessities, we may regard rather as the shortcomings of
some particular virtue, than as the natural effects of vice; and may
be content without introducing them, curiously and officiously, into
our narrative, if it be but out of tenderness to the weakness of nature,
which has never succeeded in producing any human character so perfect
in virtue as to be pure from all admixture and open to no criticism.
On considering with myself to whom I should compare Lucullus I find
none so exactly his parallel as Cimon.
They were both valiant in war, and successful against the barbarians;
both gentle in political life, and more than any others gave their
countrymen a respite from civil troubles at home, while abroad each
of them raised trophies and gained famous victories. No Greek before
Cimon, nor Roman before Lucullus, ever carried the scene of war so
far from their own country; putting out of the question the acts of
Bacchus and Hercules, and any exploit of Perseus against the Ethiopians,
Medes, and Armenians, or again of Jason, of which any record that
deserves credit can be said to have come down to our days. Moreover
in this they were alike, that they did not finish the enterprises
they undertook. They brought their enemies near their ruin, but never
entirely conquered them. There was yet a great conformity in the free
good-will and lavish abundance of their entertainments and general
hospitalities, and in the youthful laxity of their habits. Other points
of resemblance, which we have failed to notice, may be easily collected
from our narrative itself.
Cimon was the son of Miltiades and Hegesipyle, who was by birth a
Thracian, and daughter to the King Olorus, as appears from the poems
of Melanthius and Archelaus, written in praise of Cimon. By this means
the historian Thucydides was his kinsman by the mother's side; for
his father's name also, in remembrance of this common ancestor, was
Olorus, and he was the owner of the gold mines in Thrace, and met
his death, it is said, by violence, in Scapte Hyle, a district of
Thrace; and his remains having afterwards been brought into Attica,
a monument is shown as his among those of the family of Cimon, near
the tomb of Elpinice, Cimon's sister. But Thucydides was of the township
of Halimus, and Miltiades and his family were Laciadae. Miltiades,
being condemned in a fine of fifty talents of the state, and unable
to pay it, was cast into prison, and there died. Thus Cimon was left
an orphan very young, with his sister Elpinice, who was also young
and unmarried. And at first he had but an indifferent reputation,
being looked upon as disorderly in his habits, fond of drinking, and
resembling his grandfather, also called Cimon, in character, whose
simplicity got him the surname of Coalemus. Stesimbrotus of Thasos,
who lived near about the same time with Cimon, reports of him that
he had little acquaintance either with music, or any of the other
liberal studies and accomplishments, then common among the Greeks;
that he had nothing whatever of the quickness and the ready speech
of his countrymen in Attica; that he had great nobleness and candour
in his disposition, and in his character in general resembled rather
a native of Peloponnesus than of Athens; as Euripides describes Hercules-
"----Rude