ine 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 h