Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1870) - Volume 1.djvu/769

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.
loc cit.
loc cit.

CIMON. to meet it : Ciraon requested permission to fight ill his place ; the generals in suspicion refused : he departed, begging his own friends to vindicate his character : they, in number a hundred, placed in the ensuing battle his panoply among them, and fell around it to the last man. Before five years of his exile were fully out, b. c. 453 or 454, he was recalled on the motion of Pericles himself; late reverses having inclined the people to tranquillity in Greece, and the democratic leaders perhaps being ready, in fear of more unscrupulous oppo- nents, to make concessions to those of them who were patriotic and temperate. He was probably employed in effecting the five years' truce with Sparta which commenced in 450. In the next year he sailed out with 200 ships to Cyprus, with the view of retrieving the late mishaps in Egypt. Here, while besieging Citium, illness or the effects of a wound carried him off. His forces, while sail- ing away with his remains, as if animated by his spirit, fell in with and defeated a fleet of Phoeni- cian and Cilician galleys, and added to their naval victory a second over forces on shore. (Plut. Cim. 1 4—1 9 ; Thuc. i. 112 ; Diod. xi. 64, 86, xii. 3, 4 ; Theopomp. ap. Ephori fragm. ed. Marx, 224.) Cimon's character (see Plut. Cim. 4, 5, 9, 10, 16, Peric. 5) is marked by his policy. Exerting himself to aggrandize Athens, and to centralize in her the power of the naval confederacy, he still looked mainly to the humiliation of the common enemy, Persia, and had no jealous feeling towards his country's rivals at home. He was always an ad- mirer of Sparta : his words to the people when urging the succours in the revolt of the Helots were, as recorded by Ion (Plut. Cim. 16) "not to suffer Greece to be lamed, and Athens to lose its yoke-fellow." He is described himself to have had something of the Spartan character, being de- ficient in the Athenian points of readiness and quick discernment. He was of a cheerful, convi- vial temper, free and indulgent perhaps rather than excessive in his pleasures {jpiKo-nST-qs Kol d^ie-/is^ Eupolis, ap. Plut. Cim. 15), delighting in achieve- ment for its own sake rather than from ambition. His frankness, affability, and mildness, won over the allies from Pausanias ; and at home, when the recovery of his patrimony or his share of spoils had made him rich, his liberality and munificence were unbounded. His orchards and gardens were thrown open; his fellow demesmen(Aristot. ap.Plut. Cim. 10; comp. Cic. rfe Q^. ii. 18 and Theopomp. ojo.J^Acw. xii. 533) were free daily to his table, and his public bounty verged on ostentation. With the treasure he brought from Asia the southern wall of the citadel was built, and at his own private charge the founda- tion of the long walls to the Peiraeeus, works which the marshy soil made difficult and expensive, were laid down in the most costly and eflicient style. According to the report of Ion, the tragic poet, who as a boy supped in his company (Plut. Cim. 5, 9), he was in person tall and good-looking, and his hair, which he wore long, thick and curly. He left three sons, Lacedaemonius, Eleus, and Thessa- lus, and was, according to one account, married to Isodice, a daughter of Euryptolemus, the cousin of Pericles, as also to an Arcadian wife. (Diodorus Periegetes, ap. Plut. Cim. 16.) Another record gives him three more sons, Miltiades, Cimon, and Pei- sianax. (Schol. ad Aristid. iii. p. 515, Dindorf.) (Herod., Thucyd.; Vi. Cimon; Nepos, Cmow; Diodorus. Plutarch's life of Cimon is separately CINADON. 751 edited in an tiseful form by Arnold Ekker, Utrecht, 1843, in which references will be found to other illustrative works.) [A. H. C] CIMON. 1. Of Cleonae, a painter of great renown, praised by Pliny (//. N. xxxv. 34) and Aelian. ( V. H. viii. 8.) It is difficult to ascer- tain, from Pliny's obscure words, wherein the peculiar merits of Cimon consisted : it is certain, however, that he was not sjitisfied with drawing simply the outlines of his figures, such as we seo in the oldest painted vases, but that he also repre- sented limbs, veins, and the folds of garments. He invented the Calayraplia, that is, not the pro- file, according to the common interpretation (Cay- lus, Mem. de VAcad. vol. xxv. p. 265), but the various positions of figures, as they appear when looking upwards, downwards, and sideways; and he must therefore be considered as the first painter of perspective. It would appear from an epigram of Simonides (Anthol. Palat. ix. 758), that he wag a contemporary of Dionysius, and belonged there- fore to the 80th Olympiad ; but as he was cer- tainly more ancient, Klfunv should in that passage be changed into Mixov. (Bottiger, Arch'dolog. d. Malerei, p. 234, &c.; Miiller, Handb. § 99.) 2. An artist who made ornamented cups. (Athen. xi. p. 781, e.) [L. U.] CI'NADON (KtvoSwi/), the chief of a conspiracy against the Spartan peers {bfwioi) in the first year of Agesilaus II. (b. c. 398—397.) This plot" ap- pears to have arisen out of the increased power of the ephors, and the more oligarchical character which the Spartan constitution had by this time assumed. (Thirl wall's Greece^ iv. pp. 373 — 378 ; Manso's Sparta, iii. 1, p. 219, &c. ; Wachsmuth, Helten.Alter. i. 2, pp. 214, 215, 260, 262.) Cina- don was a young man of personal accomplishment and courage, but not one of the peers. The de- sign of his conspiracy was to assassinate all the peers, in order, as he himself said, "that he might have no superior in Lacedaemon." The first hint of the existence of the plot was given by a sooth- sayer, who was assisting Agesilaus at a sacrifice. Five days afterwards, a person came to the ephors, and told them the following story : He had been taken, he said, into the agora by Cinadon, who asked him to count the Spartans there. He did so, and found that, including one of the kings, the ephors, the senators, and others, there were less than forty. " These," said Cinadon, " account your enemies, but the others in the agora, who are more than four thousand, your confederates," Ha then referred to the like disparity which might be seen in the streets and in the country. The leaders of the conspiracy, Cinadon further told him, were few, but trustworthy ; but their associates were in fact all the Helots, and Neodamodes, and Hypo- meiones, who, if the Spartans were mentioned in their presence, were unable to conceal their fero- cious hatred towards them. For arms, he added, there were at hand the knives, swords, spits, hatchets, and so forth, in the iron market ; the rustics would use bludgeons and stones, and the artificers had each his own tools. Cinadon finally warned him, he said, to keep at home, for the time of action was at hand. Upon hearing this account, the ephors called no assembly, but consulted with the senators as they happened to meet them. Cinadon, who had been at other times employed by the ephcrs on impor- tant commissions, was sent to Aulon in Messenia,