the conversation turned upon Kimon’s exploits, and each mentioned what he thought the most important.  Hereupon Kimon himself described what he considered to be the cleverest thing he had ever done.  After the capture of Sestos and Byzantium by the Athenians and their allies, there were a great number of Persians taken prisoners, whom the allies desired Kimon to divide amongst them.  He placed the prisoners on one side, and all their clothes and jewellery on the other, and offered the allies their choice between the two.  They complained that he had made an unequal division, but he bade them take whichever they pleased, assuring them that the Athenians would willingly take whichever part they rejected.  By the advice of Herophytus of Samos, who urged them to take the property of the Persians, rather than the Persians themselves, the allies took the clothes and jewels.  At this Kimon was thought to have made a most ridiculous division of the spoil, as the allies went swaggering about with gold bracelets, armlets, and necklaces, dressed in Median robes of rich purple, while the Athenians possessed only the naked bodies of men who were very unfit for labour.  Shortly afterwards, however, the friends and relations of the captives came down to the Athenian camp from Phrygia and Lydia, and ransomed each of them for great sums of money, so that Kimon was able to give his fleet four months’ pay, and also to remit a large sum to Athens, out of the money paid for their ransom.

X. The money which Kimon had honourably gained in the war he spent yet more honourably upon his countrymen.  He took down the fences round his fields, that both strangers and needy Athenians might help themselves to his crops and fruit.  He provided daily a plain but plentiful table, at which any poor Athenian was welcome to dine, so that he might live at his ease, and be able to devote all his attention to public matters.  Aristotle tells us that it was not for all the Athenians, but only for the Lakiadae, or members of his own township, that he kept this public table.  He used to be attended by young men dressed in rich cloaks, who, if he met any elderly citizen poorly clothed, would exchange cloaks with the old man; and this was thought to be a very noble act.  The same young men carried pockets full of small change and would silently put money into the hands of the better class of poor in the market-place.  All this is alluded to by Kratinus, the comic poet, in the following passage from his play of the Archilochi: 

    “I too, Metrobius, hoped to end
    My days with him, my noblest friend,
    Kimon, of all the Greeks the best,
    And, richly feasting, sink to rest. 
    But now he’s gone, and I remain unblest.”

Moreover, Gorgias of Leontini says that Kimon acquired wealth in order to use it, and used it so as to gain honour:  while Kritias, who was one of the Thirty, in his poems wishes to be

    “Rich as the Skopads, and as Kimon great,
    And like Agesilaus fortunate.”