t up in their
ranks; and then, fighting in one body round it with desperate courage,
they all fell, one hundred in number, causing great grief to the
Athenians for their loss, and for the unmerited accusation which had
been brought against them. This event caused a revulsion of popular
feeling in favour of Kimon, when the Athenians remembered how much
they owed him, and reflected upon the straits to which they were now
reduced, as they had been defeated in a great battle at Tanagra, and
expected that during the summer Attica would be invaded by the
Lacedaemonians. They now recalled Kimon from exile; and Perikles
himself brought forward the decree for his restoration. So moderate
were the party-leaders of that time, and willing to subordinate their
own differences to the common welfare of their country.

XVIII. On his return Kimon at once put an end to the war, and
reconciled the two states. After the peace had been concluded,
however, he saw that the Athenians were unable to remain quiet, but
were eager to increase their empire by foreign conquest. In order,
therefore, to prevent their quarrelling with any other Greek state, or
cruising with a large fleet among the islands and the Peloponnesian
coast, and so becoming entangled in some petty war, he manned a fleet
of two hundred triremes with the intention of sailing a second time to
Cyprus and Egypt, wishing both to train the Athenians to fight against
barbarians, and also to gain legitimate advantages for Athens by the
plunder of her natural enemies. When all was ready, and the men were
about to embark, Kimon dreamed that he saw an angry dog barking at
him, and that in the midst of its barking it spoke with a human voice,
saying,

"Go, for thou shalt ever be
Loved both by my whelps and me."

This vision was very hard to interpret. Astyphilus of Poseidonia, a
soothsayer and an intimate friend of Kimon's, told him that it
portended his death, on the following grounds. The dog is the enemy of
the man at whom he barks: now a man is never so much loved by his
enemies as when he is dead; and the mixture of the voice, being partly
that of a dog and partly that of a man, signifies the Persians, as
their army was composed partly of Greeks and partly of barbarians.
After this dream Kimon sacrificed to Dionysus. The prophet cut up the
victim, and the blood as it congealed was carried by numbers of ants
towards Kimon, so that his great toe was covered with it before he