rmer
services, and partly, perhaps, induced by the juncture of the times.
For being defeated at Tanagra in a great battle, and fearing the
Peloponnesians would come upon them at the opening of the spring, they
recalled Cimon by a decree, of which Pericles himself was author. So
reasonable were men's resentments in those times, and so moderate their
anger, that it always gave way to the public good. Even ambition,
the least governable of all human passions, could then yield to the
necessities of the State.

Cimon, as soon as he returned, put an end to the war, and reconciled the
two cities. Peace thus established, seeing the Athenians impatient of
being idle, and eager for the honor and aggrandizement of war, lest they
should set upon the Greeks themselves, or with so many ships cruising
about the isles and Peloponnesus, they should give occasions for
intestine wars, or complaints of their allies against them, he equipped
two hundred galleys, with design to make an attempt upon Egypt and
Cyprus; purposing, by this means, to accustom the Athenians to fight
against the barbarians, and enrich themselves honestly by despoiling
those who were the natural enemies to Greece. But when all things were
prepared, and the army ready to embark, Cimon had this dream. It seemed
to him that there was a furious female dog barking at him, and, mixed
with the barking, a kind of human voice uttered these words:

Come on, for thou shalt shortly be
A pleasure to my whelps and me.

This dream was hard to interpret, yet Astyphilus of Posidonia, a man
skilled in divinations, and intimate with Cimon, told him that his death
was presaged by this vision, which he thus explained. A dog is enemy
to him he barks at; and one is always most a pleasure to one's enemies,
when one is dead; the mixture of human voice with barking signifies the
Medes, for the army of the Medes is mixed up of Greeks and barbarians.
After this dream, as he was sacrificing to Bacchus, and the priest
cutting up the victim, a number of ants, taking up the congealed
particles of the blood, laid them about Cimon's great toes. This was not
observed for a good while, but at the very time when Cimon spied it, the
priest came and showed him the liver of the sacrifice imperfect, wanting
that part of it called the head. But he could not then recede from the
enterprise, so he set sail. Sixty of his ships he sent toward Egypt;
with the rest he went and fought the king of Persi