Plutarch, a Greek writing around 100 AD, wrote Parallel Lives: paired biographies of Greeks and Romans. This life is Cimon, an Athenian general of the fifth century BC, in Greece, the Aegean, and Cyprus. Plutarch sets him beside Lucullus, a later Roman commander: two generous conquerors the new politics outgrew.

Cimon was son of Miltiades, commander at Marathon, the fight near Athens against Persia. Young, he paid his father's fine. Grown, he drove Persians from the Aegean. At the Eurymedon River in southern Turkey he won on land and sea the same day. He planted trees in the Agora, Athens' public square, and kept an open table so the poor could eat. Too friendly to Sparta for the democracy coming, he was ostracized, meaning voted into exile, then recalled, and died at the siege of Citium in Cyprus. Pericles buried the old alliance with him. His ships brought home bones said to be Theseus, Athens' legendary founder.