the Athenians to pay a fine of fifty
talents, and being unable to do so, died in prison, leaving Kimon and
his sister Elpinike, who were then quite young children. Kimon passed
the earlier part of his life in obscurity, and was not regarded
favourably by the Athenians, who thought that he was disorderly and
given to wine, and altogether resembled his grandfather Kimon, who was
called Koalemus because of his stupidity.

Stesimbrotus of Thasos, who was a contemporary of Kimon, tells us that
he never was taught music or any of the other usual accomplishments of
a Greek gentleman, and that he had none of the smartness and readiness
of speech so common at Athens, but that he was of a noble, truthful
nature, and more like a Dorian of the Peloponnesus than an Athenian,

"Rough, unpretending, but a friend in need,"

as Euripides says of Herakles, which line we may well apply to Kimon
according to the account of him given by Stesimbrotus. While he was
still young he was accused of incest with his sister. Indeed Elpinike
is not recorded as having been a respectable woman in other respects,
as she carried on an intrigue with Polygnotus the painter; and
therefore it is said that when he painted the colonnade which was then
called the Peisianakteum, which is now called the Painted Porch, he
introduced the portrait of Elpinike as Laodike, one of the Trojan
ladies. Polygnotus was a man of noble birth, and he did not execute
his paintings for money, but gratis, from his wish to do honour to his
city. This we learn from the historians and from the poet Melanthius,
who wrote--

"With deeds of heroes old,
He made our city gay,
In market-place and porch,
Himself the cost did pay."

Some historians tell us that Elpinike was openly married to Kimon and
lived as his wife, because she was too poor to obtain a husband worthy
of her noble birth, but that at length Kallias, one of the richest men
in Athens, fell in love with her, and offered to pay off the fine
which had been imposed upon her father, by which means he won her
consent, and Kimon gave her away to Kallias as his wife. Kimon indeed
seems to have been of an amorous temperament, for Asterie, a lady of
Salamis, and one Mnestra are mentioned by the poet Melanthius, in some
playful verses he wrote upon Kimon, as being beloved by him; and we
know that he was passionately fond of Isodike, the daughter of
Euryptolemus the son of Megakles, who was his lawful w