Cimon   

Of all the Greeks, so Homer's verses say,
The ablest man an army to array:
So old the title of her sons the name
Of chiefs and champions in the field to claim."
Though the name of Cimon is not mentioned in these inscriptions, yet
his contemporaries considered them to be the very highest honours
to him; as neither Miltiades nor Themistocles ever received the like.
When Miltiades claimed a garland, Sochares of Decelea stood up in
the midst of the assembly and opposed it, using words which, though
ungracious, were received with applause by the people: "When you have
gained a victory by yourself, Miltiades, then you may ask to triumph
so too." What then induced them so particularly to honour Cimon? Was
it that under other commanders they stood upon the defensive? but
by his conduct, they not only attacked their enemies, but invaded
them in their own country, and acquired new territory, becoming masters
of Eion and Amphipolis, where they planted colonies, as also they
did in the isle of Scyros, which Cimon had taken on the following
occasion. The Dolopians were the inhabitants of this isle, a people
who neglected all husbandry, and had, for many generations, been devoted
to piracy; this they practised to that degree, that at last they began
to plunder foreigners that brought merchandise into their ports. Some
merchants of Thessaly, who had come to shore near to Ctesium, were
not only spoiled of their goods, but themselves put into confinement.
These men afterwards escaping from their prison, went and obtained
sentence against the Scyrians in a court of Amphictyons, and when
the Scyrian people declined to make public restitution, and called
upon the individuals who had got the plunder to give it up, these
persons, in alarm, wrote to Cimon to succour them, with his fleet,
and declared themselves ready to deliver the town into his hands.
Cimon, by these means, got the town, expelled the Dolopian pirates,
and so opened the traffic of the Aegean sea. And, understanding that
the ancient Theseus, the son of Aegeus, when he fled from Athens and
took refuge in this isle, was here treacherously slain by King Lycomedes,
who feared him, Cimon endeavoured to find out where he was buried.
For an oracle had commanded the Athenians to bring home his ashes,
and pay him all due honours as a hero; but hitherto they had not been
able to learn where he was interred, as the people of Scyros dissembled
the knowledge of it, and were not willing to allow a search. But now,
great inquiry being made, with some difficulty he found out the tomb
and carried the relics into his own galley, and with great pomp and
show brought them to Athens, four hundred years, or thereabouts, after
his expulsion. This act got Cimon great favour with the people, one
mark of which was the judgment, afterwards so famous, upon the tragic
poets. Sophocles, still a young man, had just brought forward his
first plays; opinions were much divided, and the spectators had taken
sides with some heat. So, to determine the case, Apsephion, who was
at that time archon, would not cast lots who should be judges; but
when Cimon and his brother commanders with him came into the theatre,
after they had performed the usual rites to the god of the festival,
he would not allow them to retire, but came forward and made them
swear (being ten in all, one from each tribe) the usual oath; and
so being sworn judges, he made them sit down to give sentence. The
eagerness for victory grew all the warmer from the ambition to get
the suffrages of such honourable judges. And the victory was at last
adjudged to Sophocles, which Aeschylus is said to have taken so ill,
that he left Athens shortly after, and went in anger to Sicily, where
he died, and was buried near the city of Gela.
Ion relates that when he was a young man, and recently come from Chios
to Athens, he chanced to sup with Cimon at Laomedon's house. After
supper, when they had, according to custom, poured out wine to the
honour of the gods, Cimon was desired by the company to give them
a song, which he did with sufficient success, and received the commendations
of the company, who remarked on his superiority to Themistocles, who,
on a like occasion, had declared he had never learnt to sing, nor