First he defeated these Persians in battle, and shut them up within the walls of their town. Then he fell upon the Thracians of the country beyond the Strymon, because they supplied Eion with victuals, and driving them entirely out of the country, took possession of it as conqueror, by which means he reduced the besieged to such straits, that Butes, who commanded there for the king, in desperation set fire to the town, and burned himself, his goods, and all his relations, in one common flame. By this means, Cimon got the town, but no great booty; as the barbarians had not only consumed themselves in the fire, but the richest of their effects.
However, he put the country about into the hands of the Athenians, a most advantageous and desirable situation for a settlement. For this action, the people permitted him to erect the stone Mercuries, upon the first of which was this inscription:-"Of bold and patient spirit, too, were those, Who, where the Strymon under Eion flows, With famine and the sword, to utmost need, Reduced at last the children of the Mede."Upon the second stood this:-"The Athenians to their leaders this reward For great and useful service did accord;Others hereafter shall, from their applause, Learn to be valiant in their country's cause."And upon the third the following:-"With Atreus' sons, this city sent of yore Divine Menestheus to the Trojan shore;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.