Plutarch's life of the Athenian general who defeated the Persians at the Eurymedon and bankrolled the city's poor from his own fields, paired in the Parallel Lives with Lucullus.
Plutarch's Cimon tells the career of Miltiades' son, born into disgrace when his father died in an Athenian debtor's prison, who rose to become Athens's most successful commander against Persia and its most lavish private benefactor. Cimon fought at Salamis as a young man, helped strip Pausanias of the allied command through tact rather than arms, captured Eion and Scyros, and won the double land-and-sea victory at the Eurymedon River that broke Persian naval power in the Aegean for a generation. He gave away the produce of his estates, kept an open table for his fellow demesmen, and clothed poor citizens in the street, all while holding political views Plutarch calls 'aristocratic and Laconian' -- he admired Sparta, opposed the radical democratic reforms of Ephialtes, and was eventually ostracized for it.
The life unfolds as a study in contrasts: military boldness paired with political moderation, personal generosity paired with disputed private conduct (Stesimbrotus's charge that he was intimate with his sister Elpinice, and his heavy drinking), and a life that ends, fittingly, in mid-campaign, besieging Citium on Cyprus, with his companions concealing his death for thirty days so the fleet could sail home unmolested under his name. Plutarch opens the whole life with an unusual preface -- the story of Damon of Chaeronea and the Roman officer, and of Lucullus sparing Plutarch's own home city from collective punishment -- to explain why he has paired Cimon with Lucullus at all, and to lay out his method: portraits should include blemishes but not dwell on them, since no life is without fault.
Historically the Life matters as one of the fullest surviving accounts of the Delian League's transformation from voluntary alliance into Athenian empire, a process Plutarch attributes directly to Cimon's policy of letting allies pay tribute instead of serving, which trained Athenians as professional fighters while allied citizens grew 'unwarlike... out of softness and folly.' It also preserves details found nowhere else: the recovery of Theseus's bones from Scyros, the judged tragic contest at which Sophocles first defeated Aeschylus, and eyewitness-adjacent testimony from contemporaries like Ion of Chios and Stesimbrotus of Thasos, on whom Plutarch draws throughout and whom he also treats with visible skepticism.
“For just as we require those who paint beautiful likenesses full of much charm, if some small blemish attaches to them, neither to leave it out entirely nor to render it with excessive precision”
— Cimon
“For the allies, sailing continuously and always handling weapons and being maintained and trained, through their own abstention from service grew accustomed to fear and flatter, and before they knew it had become, instead of allies, tributary subjects and slaves.”
— Cimon
“For he took down the fences of his fields, so that both foreigners and any citizens in need might take of the fruit without fear, and he provided at his own house each day a plain meal, ample enough for a great many”
— Cimon
“whether he preferred to have Cimon as a hireling or as a friend. And when the man said a friend, "Then," said Cimon, "take these away with you and go; for I shall make use of them whenever I need them, once I have become your friend."”
— Cimon
“As he lay dying he instructed his companions to put to sea immediately and keep his death hidden; and so it happened that, with neither enemy nor allies aware of it, the fleet was brought home safe, seemingly still led by Cimon”
— Cimon
Cimon is paired with the Roman general Lucullus. Plutarch explains the pairing through his own city's history: Lucullus had spared Chaeronea, Plutarch's home, from collective punishment after a citizen's murder of a Roman officer, and Plutarch judged the two men alike as brilliant, restrained commanders against barbarians who kept their homelands free of civil faction.
The double battle at the Eurymedon River, where on the same day Cimon's forces defeated the Persian fleet at sea and then, without resting, routed the Persian infantry on land. Plutarch calls it outdoing 'the Salamis trophy with a land battle and the Plataea trophy with a battle at sea.'
After leading Athenian troops to help Sparta suppress a helot revolt, the Spartans grew suspicious of Athenian daring and sent the contingent home, humiliating Cimon and fueling accusations that he favored Sparta over Athens. Combined with his opposition to Ephialtes' democratic reforms, this led to his ostracism for the standard ten-year term.
Stesimbrotus of Thasos charged that Cimon was intimate with Elpinice while young, and that she was not otherwise of orderly conduct. Plutarch reports the charge alongside a rival account that the two lived together openly only until Elpinice married the wealthy Callias, whose payment of the family's debts is what actually prompted the marriage.
He died besieging Citium on Cyprus, most sources say of sickness, others say of a wound. He ordered his companions to conceal his death and sail home at once, and the fleet returned safely still apparently under his command, thirty days after he had actually died.
After capturing Scyros and expelling the Dolopian pirates who held it, Cimon searched out and found the tomb of Theseus, who had died there in exile centuries earlier. He carried the bones back to Athens aboard his own trireme, fulfilling an oracle and earning the city's especially warm regard.
Plutarch begins with Damon of Chaeronea, a young man from his own city who killed a Roman officer and was later executed himself, and with the Roman commander Lucullus, who passed through soon after and cleared the city of collective guilt. Plutarch uses this local history to justify pairing Cimon with Lucullus and to state his method for writing biography.
When Sophocles staged his first production and rivalry among the audience threatened to disrupt the usual lottery of judges, the archon instead pressed Cimon and his fellow generals, who happened to be in the theater, into serving as judges under oath. Sophocles won, and Aeschylus, taking the loss badly, soon left Athens for Sicily, where he died.
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