The original inhabitants were Dolopes,[308] who were bad farmers, and lived chiefly by piracy.  Emboldened by success they even began to plunder the strangers who came into their ports, and at last robbed and imprisoned some Thessalian merchants whose ships were anchored at Ktesium.  The merchants escaped from prison, and laid a complaint against the people of Skyros before the Amphiktyonic council.  The people refused to pay the fine imposed by the council, and said that it ought to be paid by those alone who had shared the plunder.  These men, in terror for their ill-gotten gains, at once opened a correspondence with Kimon, and offered to betray the island into his hands if he would appear before it with an Athenian fleet.  Thus Kimon was enabled to make himself master of Skyros, where he expelled the Dolopes and put an end to their piracies; after which, as he learned that in ancient times the hero Theseus, the son of AEgeus, after he had been driven out of Athens, took refuge at Skyros, and was murdered there by Lykomedes, who feared him, he endeavoured to discover where he was buried.  Indeed there was an oracle which commanded the Athenians to bring back the bones of Theseus to their city and pay them fitting honours, but they knew not where they lay, as the people of Skyros did not admit that they possessed them, and refused to allow the Athenians to search for them.  Great interest was now manifested in the search, and after his sepulchre[309] had with great difficulty been discovered, Kimon placed the remains of the hero on board of his own ship and brought them back to Athens, from which they had been absent four hundred years.  This act made him very popular with the people of Athens, one mark of which is to be found in his decision in the case of the rival tragic poets.  When Sophokles produced his first play, being then very young, Aphepsion,[310] the archon, seeing that party feeling ran high among the spectators, would not cast lots to decide who were to be the judges, but when Kimon with the other nine generals, his colleagues, entered to make the usual libation to the god, he refused to allow them to depart, but put them on their oath, and forced them to sit as judges, they being ten in number, one from each of the ten tribes.  The excitement of the contest was much increased by the high position of the judges.  The prize was adjudged to Sophokles, and it is said that AEschylus was so grieved and enraged at his failure that he shortly afterwards left Athens and retired to Sicily, where he died, and was buried near the city of Gela.

IX.  Ion tells us that when quite a boy he came from Chios to Athens, and met Kimon at supper in the house of Laomedon.  After supper he was asked to sing, and he sang well.  The guests all praised him, and said that he was a cleverer man than Themistokles; for Themistokles was wont to say that he did not know how to sing or to play the harp, but that he knew how to make a state rich and great.  Afterwards