Pasimondas

Pasimondas is a young Rhodian nobleman whose promised marriage to Iphigenia becomes the obstacle Cimon tries to overcome by force. When that attempt ends with Cimon imprisoned, Pasimondas urges his execution; later, his plan to hold his wedding on the same day as his brother’s creates the occasion for Lysimachus and Cimon to conspire to seize both brides.

Identity and Marriage Arrangement

Pasimondas is identified as a young nobleman of Rhodes and as Iphigenia’s appointed bridegroom. Her father, Cipseus, had promised her to Pasimondas and refused Cimon’s repeated requests for her hand, unwilling to break his word. The arrangement establishes Pasimondas’s claim before Cimon’s intervention, though the narrative gives no account of Pasimondas and Iphigenia’s courtship or of her wishes about the match.

Cimon’s Attack and Pasimondas’s Response

When Iphigenia set sail for Rhodes with the party accompanying her intended husband, Cimon intercepted the ship and carried her off. After a storm drove both vessels to Rhodes, Pasimondas learned that Cimon and Iphigenia had landed there. He complained to the island’s senate, and Lysimachus, then the island’s chief magistrate, came with armed men and took Cimon and his companions into custody.

Cimon and his men were spared execution because they had released the young Rhodian nobles captured in the earlier encounter. Pasimondas nevertheless did all he could to have them put to death. Instead, they were sentenced to perpetual imprisonment, leaving Cimon in despair and apparently without hope of release.

The Double Wedding and Its Consequences

As he prepared to celebrate his own marriage to Iphigenia, Pasimondas sought to arrange a wedding for his younger brother, Ormisdas, as well. Ormisdas had long sought to marry Cassandra, whom Lysimachus loved. Pasimondas renewed negotiations with Cassandra’s parents and secured the match, arranging for the brothers to marry on the same day. Holding both weddings together would spare the family the expense and festivities of a separate celebration.

That practical arrangement turns Pasimondas’s wedding plans into the occasion for another conflict. Lysimachus, concealing his distress at losing hope of Cassandra, eventually decides to carry her off. He approaches Cimon in prison and proposes that they join forces: Cimon can take Iphigenia, while Lysimachus takes Cassandra. Their plan is to enter the wedding celebrations at night on the day the brides are to enter their husbands’ homes, seize them amid the guests, and escape by a secretly equipped ship.

Narrative Role

Pasimondas has no narrated conversation with Cimon in these episodes, and the account does not develop his private character beyond his insistence on the execution and his wedding arrangements. His function in the plot is nevertheless consequential: the promise made to him gives Cimon a rival claim to overcome, his complaint helps bring about Cimon’s imprisonment, and the double wedding supplies Lysimachus with the occasion to seek Cassandra. The intended celebration thus shifts from a settlement of marriage promises into the setting for a planned seizure of both brides.