for this may fairly be added to the character which Stesimbrotus has given of him.
They accused him, in his younger years, of cohabiting with his own sister Elpinice, who, indeed, otherwise had no very clear reputation, but was reported to have been over intimate with Polygnotus, the painter; and hence, when he painted the Trojan women in the porch, then called the Plesianactium, and now the Pœcile, he made Laodice a portrait of her. Polygnotus was not an ordinary mechanic, nor was he paid for this work, but out of a desire to please the Athenians, painted the portico for nothing. So it is stated by the historians, and in the following verses by the poet Melanthius:—
Wrought by his hand the deeds of heroes grace
At his own charge our temples and our Place.[1]
Some affirm that Elpinice lived with her brother, not secretly, but as his married wife, her poverty excluding her from any suitable match. But afterward, when Callias, one of the richest men of Athens, fell in love with her, and proffered to pay the fine the father was condemned in, if he could obtain the daughter in marriage, with Elpinice's own consent, Cimon betrothed her to Callias. There is no doubt but that Cimon was, in general, of an amorous temper. For Melanthius, in his elegies, rallies him on his attachment for Asteria of Salamis, and again for a certain Mnestra. And there can be no doubt of his unusually passionate affection for his lawful wife Isodice,
- ↑ The agŏra, the public meeting or market-place; the place found in every Greek town, where, as the Persian noble scoffingly said, "they met together to cheat each other"; the scene, however, not of business only, but of politics, law, and amusement. The Place of the cities of southern Europe, that of St. Mark, for example, at Venice, still gives the image of it. In northern towns, shelter from the weather confines within doors much that in Greece was done under the open sky, or under colonnades; yet the Exchange, in some cases, shows a resemblance.
