The double wedding raid is the violent turning point in the story of Cimon and Iphigenia: after a first attempt to claim her ends in capture and imprisonment, Cimon joins Lysimachus in a coordinated assault on two wedding celebrations. The raid frees both women from marriages arranged for them, but it also leaves two men dead and the attackers’ futures dependent on exile, negotiation, and eventual reconciliation.

The First Seizure and Its Reversal

Cimon’s actions begin with his love for Iphigenia, whom her father, Cipseus, has promised to Pasimondas of Rhodes. Cimon has repeatedly tried to obtain her through marriage, but Cipseus will not break his word to the bridegroom. When Iphigenia is sent by ship to Rhodes, Cimon secretly gathers young noblemen who are his friends and equips a vessel for battle. He intercepts the bridal ship at sea, grapples it to his own, and boards alone, attacking the defenders with a cutlass until they surrender.

Cimon explains that he has not come for plunder or out of hatred. He wants Iphigenia, whom he loves, and asks the Rhodians to yield her peacefully. They surrender her, weeping. He takes her aboard his ship, releases them without taking anything else, and turns toward Crete, where he expects that his kin and friends can offer safety. The seizure therefore looks, for a moment, like a successful rescue and a contained act of force: Cimon has obtained the woman he sought and let the rest of the ship’s company go.

That success lasts only hours. Before four full hours have passed, a violent storm fills the sky with clouds and drives the sea with winds so fierce that the sailors cannot see where to steer or even keep the deck. Fortune abruptly reverses the joy of the capture. By the time Cimon’s story reaches the wedding raid, he is imprisoned, and Lysimachus sees a chance to help him recover Iphigenia.

Two Loves, Two Weddings, One Plan

Lysimachus presents Cimon with a parallel danger. Pasimondas is preparing to marry Iphigenia, while Lysimachus’s brother, Ormisdas, is preparing to marry Cassandra, whom Lysimachus loves. Lysimachus argues that both women are about to be taken from the men who love them, and that the force of their own courage is the only way to prevent what he regards as an injustice of fortune. Cimon, his spirit revived by the proposal, agrees to help without hesitation.

They plan to act on the third day, when the newly married women are to enter their husbands’ homes for the first time. Lysimachus secretly equips a ship for their escape. On the wedding day, he divides the armed men into three groups: one is sent ahead to the harbor so that their departure will not be blocked, while the other two go with him toward Pasimondas’s house. One group remains at the door to keep the way out open; Lysimachus and Cimon take the rest upstairs. The plan depends on timing and coordination as much as on force: the women must be seized from among the wedding guests and carried to the waiting ship before armed help can stop them.

The Raid on the Wedding Feasts

Inside, the newly married women are seated at dinner with other ladies. Lysimachus and his companions rush into the room, overturn the tables, and take Cassandra and Iphigenia, handing each to the companions assigned to carry the women to the ship. The brides weep and cry out; the other ladies and servants join them, and celebration gives way to clamor and lamentation. The raid is not a quiet escape but a public rupture of two wedding feasts.

Cimon and Lysimachus draw their swords and make for the stairs. The guests give way, but Pasimondas confronts them with a great cudgel after being drawn by the uproar. Cimon strikes him on the head and kills him. Ormisdas rushes to his brother’s aid and is likewise killed by one of Cimon’s blows. The companions wound or beat back others who approach, while the two leaders and their party make their way out through the house. By the time they reach the shore, armed people have arrived to rescue the women, but the raiders get aboard the waiting ship and row away with their companions and the two brides.

Exile, Reconciliation, and the Double Marriage

In Crete, friends and relatives receive the fugitives joyfully. Cimon and Lysimachus marry Iphigenia and Cassandra with great ceremony and begin a period of happiness with them. Their actions provoke loud disputes in both Cyprus and Rhodes, but their families and friends intervene and eventually arrange a settlement. After some exile, Cimon returns to Cyprus with Iphigenia, and Lysimachus returns to Rhodes with Cassandra; both couples live together happily for many years.

The raid thus links two love stories through a shared design: Lysimachus’s peril gives Cimon a way out of imprisonment, while Cimon’s strength helps carry both women from the weddings. Its ending does not erase the deaths of Pasimondas and Ormisdas or the force used against the wedding parties. Instead, the story moves from violent seizure to exile and then to a negotiated return, making the lasting outcome depend not only on the lovers’ daring but also on the intervention of their kin and friends.