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 And unrefined, for great things well endued:"for this may fairly be added to the character which Stesimbrotus has given of him.
They accused him, in his younger years, of cohabiting with his own sister Elpinice, who, indeed, otherwise had no very clear reputation, but was reported to have been over-intimate with Polygnotus the painter; and hence, when he painted the Trojan women in the porch, then called the Plesianactium, and now the Poecile, he made Laodice a portrait of her. Polygnotus was not an ordinary mechanic, nor was he paid for his work, but out of a desire to please the Athenians painted the portico for nothing. So it is stated by the historians, and in the following verses by the poet Melanthius:-"Wrought by his hand the deeds of heroes grace At his own charge our temples and our place."Some affirm that Elpinice lived with her brother, not secretly, but as his married wife, her poverty excluding her from any suitable match.