Cimon (born c. 510 bc—died c. 451, Cyprus) was an Athenian statesman and general who played an active part in building up the Athenian empire in the period following the Greco-Persian Wars and whose conservatism and policy of friendship with Sparta were opposed to the policy of Pericles. His greatest military victory was the defeat of a Persian fleet (manned by Phoenicians) at the mouth of the River Eurymedon in Pamphylia in 466 bc.
Cimon was the son of Miltiades, of an aristocratic Athenian family, and a Thracian princess. Miltiades, who defeated the Persians in the Battle of Marathon (490), died in disgrace the next year, unable to pay a large fine imposed on him for allegedly misconducting a subsequent operation; but Cimon, after arranging the marriage of his sister to the richest man in Athens, was able to discharge the debt. His conspicuous valour in the victorious sea fight with the Persians at Salamis (480) led soon to his election as strategus—one of Athens’ 10 annual war ministers and generals—and he was apparently reelected every year until his ostracism in 461. In 478 he helped the Athenian statesman and general Aristides to secure the transference from Sparta to Athens of the leadership of the Greek maritime states, which had been recently liberated from Persia, and he became the principal commander of the Delian League thus formed.
He first expelled from Byzantium the Spartan general Pausanias, who had been dismissed on suspicion of treasonable dealings with Persia, and he drove the Persians from most of their strongholds on the Thracian coast. Next he subdued the pirates of the island of Scyros and replaced them with Athenian settlers and transported back to Athens in triumph the supposed remains of Theseus, the ancient king of Athens, who was said to have been buried there. Cimon gained his greatest victory (c. 466) when, as leader of an allied fleet of 200 ships, he routed the much larger Phoenician fleet near the mouth of the River Eurymedon in Pamphylia and subsequently defeated the King’s forces on land, thus gravely weakening Persian control over the eastern Mediterranean.
Cimon now returned to the Aegean and drove the Persians out of the Thracian Chersonese (Gallipoli). When the rich island of Thasos seceded from the Delian League, Cimon defeated the Thasians at sea, and after a blockade of two years, they surrendered to him (463). Back in Athens, however, he was charged by Pericles and other democratic politicians with having been bribed not to attack the King of Macedonia (who may have been suspected of covertly helping the Thasian rebels).
Though Cimon was acquitted, his star was no longer in the ascendant. The aristocratic faction, which he led, was losing influence; its support rested on the well-to-do citizens who fought as hoplites (heavy armed infantry) and who admired the conservative land power of Sparta. Cimon was personally popular because of his victories and because he spent the wealth those victories brought him on the adornment of the city and the entertainment of the citizens. But the victories were achieved mainly by the fleet, which was manned by the poorer Athenians, who were less well disposed toward Sparta. Elated by their successes and beginning to feel their power, the sailors looked to other leaders, Ephialtes and Pericles, who shared their distrust of Sparta and promised them a larger share in the government.
Those new leaders soon came into their own. When, in 462, the Spartans were vainly endeavouring to reduce the mountain stronghold of Mt. Ithome in Messenia, where a large force of rebellious helots (state-owned serfs) had taken refuge, they asked all their erstwhile allies of the Persian wars, including the Athenians, to help. Cimon urged compliance, comparing Athens and Sparta to a yoke of oxen working together for the good of Greece. Although Ephialtes maintained that Sparta was Athens’ rival for power and should be left to fend for herself, Cimon’s view prevailed, and he himself led 4,000 hoplites to Mount Ithome. But after an attempt to storm the place had failed, the Spartans began to wonder if they could trust the Athenians not to take the helot side and, retaining their other allies, sent Cimon and his men home. This insulting rebuff caused the immediate collapse of Cimon’s popularity at Athens: at the next opportunity an ostracism, or vote for the exile of the most unpopular citizen, was held; Cimon headed the poll and had to leave Athens for 10 years (461).
The end of his ascendancy was marked by democratic reforms and the renunciation of the alliance with Sparta. Soon the two states were at war. In 457 their land armies met at Tanagra in Boeotia. Cimon presented himself to the Athenian generals and begged leave to fight in the ranks but was refused. He adjured his personal followers, suspected like him of favouring the Spartans, to fight bravely, and they all perished in the battle.
Perhaps this caused a revulsion of feeling. At any event, Pericles himself proposed and obtained an abbreviation of Cimon’s exile. On his return he worked for peace with Sparta. When, eventually, peace came (451), he was allowed to lead a big, new naval expedition against Persia, despite the disastrous failure of the previous Greek enterprise in Egypt (459–454). He took 200 ships to Cyprus, detaching 60 to help the Egyptian nationalists, but during the siege of the Phoenician city of Citium, he died of sickness or a wound.
Cimon was tall and handsome, open and affable in manner, and straightforward in action, a natural leader and perhaps the best general Athens ever had. He married twice: a woman from Arcadia, and then Isodice, of the noble Athenian family of the Alcmaeonids. Of his six sons, three were named after the peoples of Sparta, Elis, and Thessaly, whose interests he represented at Athens. He was no less determined than Pericles to maintain Athenian naval supremacy in the Aegean but differed from him in upholding the leadership of Sparta on the Greek mainland.