IN the case of Themistocles1 his family was too obscure to have lent him any distinction at the beginning of his career. His father was Neocles, a man of no particular mark at Athens, who belonged to one of the demes of Phrearrus and the tribe of Leontis. On his mother’s side he was an alien, as her epitaph tells us:
Abrotonon is my name
A woman of Thrace, yet famous among the Greeks:
I was the mother of Themistocles.
However, according to Phanias, Themistocles’ mother was not a Thracian but a woman of Caria, and her name was not Abrotonon but Euterpe, while Neanthes even adds the name of the city she came from in Caria – that is, Halicarnassus.
The Athenians who, like Themistocles, came of mixed or alien parentage were enrolled at the gymnasium of Cynosarges. This stands outside the city gates and is sacred to Heracles, since he, too, was not a pure-bred deity, but was regarded as something of an alien in the company of the gods, because his mother was mortal. Themistocles persuaded a number of young men of good family to go out to Cynosarges and take their exercise there with him, and by this ingenious social manoeuvre he is believed to have done away with the discrimination between pure Athenians and those of mixed descent. In spite of his own alien origins, it is clear that he was also connected with the family of the Lycomidae, because when the shrine of initiation at Phlya which belonged to the Lycomidae was burned down by the Persians, he had it rebuilt and decorated with paintings at his own expense, as Simonides has told us.
2. Still, however humble his birth, it is generally agreed that as a boy he was impetuous, naturally clever, and strongly drawn to a life of action and public service. Whenever he was on holiday or had time to spare from his lessons, he did not play or idle like the other boys, but was always to be found composing or rehearsing speeches by himself. These took the form of an impeachment or defence of the other children, so that his master remarked to him more than once: ‘At least there will be nothing petty about you, my boy. You are going to be a great man one way or the other, either for good or evil.’ In his studies, too, he was a slow and unwilling pupil at the kind of lessons which were intended to form the character or to teach any pleasing or graceful accomplishment. On the other hand his interest was immediately aroused by anything he was told which had a bearing on practical affairs or the improvement of his understanding: in short, he followed his natural bent in a way that was surprising in one so young.
In consequence, whenever in later life he found himself at any cultivated or elegant social gathering and was sneered at by men who regarded themselves as better educated, he could only defend himself rather arrogantly by saying that he had never learned how to tune a lyre or play a harp, but that he knew how to take a small or insignificant city in hand and raise it to glory and greatness. In spite of this Stesimbrotus asserts that Themistocles was a pupil of Anaxagoras and attended the lectures of Melissus the physicist. But here he is obviously mistaken in his dates, for when Pericles, who was much younger than Themistocles, was besieging Samos,1 Melissus was the general who opposed him, while Anaxagoras was one of Pericles’ intimate friends.
For this reason it is easier to believe the writers who say that Themistocles was an admirer of Mnesiphilus, a member of the same deme of Phrearrus. This man was neither an orator nor one of the so-called natural philosophers, but had made a special study of what at that time went by the name of ‘wisdom’. This was really a combination of political acumen and practical intelligence, which had been formulated and handed down in unbroken succession from Solon, as though it were a set of philosophical principles. His successors combined it with various forensic techniques and transferred its application from public affairs to the use of language and were termed Sophists. It was Mnesiphilus, then, whom Themistocles made his mentor at the beginning of his political career.
In his early ventures as a young man, however, he was erratic and unstable. He allowed himself to follow his natural instincts, and when these are unchecked by reason or discipline they are apt to lead a man into violent extremes and then often themselves to deteriorate. Themistocles admitted as much in later life, when he said that it is the wildest colts which make the best horses, provided that they are properly broken in and trained. On the other hand the stories which various writers have connected with this phase of his career, namely that his father solemnly and publicly disinherited him and that his mother committed suicide out of grief at her son’s disgrace, are generally believed to have been downright falsehoods. By contrast other writers have told us that his father tried to deter him from entering politics by pointing out to him the hulks of some old triremes lying abandoned on the sea-shore, and reminding him that this was how the people treated their leaders when they had no further use for them.
3. In spite of this there seems to be no doubt that Themistocles’ longing for fame laid an irresistible hold on him, and that he was swiftly drawn into public affairs while he was still in the vigour of youth. From the very beginning he was seized with the desire to win the leading place in the state, so that he accepted without any hesitation the hostility of those who were already established at the head of affairs; in particular this brought him into collision with Aristides, the son of Lysimachus, who was constantly his opponent. It appears, however, that the feud between the two men had its roots in a rather puerile affair. According to Ariston the philosopher they were both rivals for the affections of the handsome Stesilaus, a native of Ceos, and afterwards they continued to be antagonists in public life, though no doubt the utter dissimilarity of their lives and characters must have widened the breach between them. Aristides was gentle by nature and of a conservative temperament. As a politician he cared nothing for personal popularity or reputation. His efforts were always aimed at securing the utmost advantage for the state that was consistent with safety and justice, and consequently he found himself compelled time and again to oppose Themistocles and make a stand against the growth of his influence, since the latter was constantly introducing sweeping reforms and inciting the people to fresh enterprises. It is said, in fact, that Themistocles was quite carried away by his yearning for fame and that his ambition to play a part in great events had become a passion with him. So much so that although he was still quite a young man1 when the battle of Marathon was fought against the barbarians,2 and the whole country was ringing with the praise of Miltiades’ generalship, it was noticed that he kept to himself and seemed completely wrapped up in his own thoughts. He could not sleep at night and he stayed away from the drinking-parties he normally attended. When people asked him in astonishment what had brought about this change in his habits, his answer was that he could not sleep for thinking of Miltiades’ triumph. Now the rest of the Athenians supposed that the Persian defeat at Marathon meant the end of the war. Themistocles, however, believed that it was only the prelude to a far greater struggle, and he prepared, as it were, to anoint himself for this and come forward as the champion of all Greece: in fact he sensed the danger while it was still far away, and put his city into training to meet it.
4. In the first place he was the only man who had the courage to come before the people and propose that the revenue from the silver mines at Laurium,3 which the Athenians had been in the habit of dividing among themselves, should be set aside and the money used to build triremes for the war against Aegina.4 This conflict, at that moment the most important in all Greece, was at its height and the islanders, thanks to the size of their fleet, were masters of the sea. This made it all the easier for Themistocles to carry his point. There was no need to terrify the Athenians with the threat of Darius and the Persians, who were far away and whom few people seriously imagined would come and attack them; he had only to play upon the enmity and the jealousy the people felt towards the Aeginetans to make them agree to the outlay. The result was that the Athenians built a hundred triremes with the money, and these ships actually fought at Salamis1 against Xerxes.
After this he continued to draw on the Athenians little by little and turn their thoughts in the direction of the sea. He told them that their army was no match even for their nearest neighbours, the Boeotians, but that with the power they would command in their fleet they could not only drive off the barbarians, but become the leaders of all Greece. He turned them, to use Plato’s phrase,2 from steadfast hoplites into sea-tossed mariners, and he earned for himself the charge that he had deprived the Athenians of the spear and the shield and degraded them to the rowing bench and the oar. What is more he succeeded, as Stesimbrotus tells us, in forcing through this policy in spite of the opposition of Miltiades.
Whether in accomplishing this he really did harm to the original strictness and simplicity of the Athenian constitution, I am content to allow the philosophers to decide. The fact remains that the Greeks were saved at that time by their prowess at sea, and that it was these very triremes which won back the city of Athens after it had fallen. Xerxes’ own actions are the proof of this, and not the only one. For although his land forces were intact, he took to flight after the defeat of his ships because he believed that he was no longer a match for the Greeks, and he left behind Mardonius, not, in my opinion, in the hope of subduing them, but of hindering their pursuit.
5. Some writers tell us that Themistocles never missed an opportunity to make money, and that his grand style of living made this necessary because he liked entertaining and lavishing money on his guests and therefore needed a generous income. Others, on the contrary, accuse him of being stingy and avaricious and say that he used to sell even the provisions that were sent to him as presents. When Philides the horse-breeder was asked by him for a colt and refused to give him one, Themistocles threatened that he would soon turn his home into a wooden horse, hinting by this that he would get his own relatives to bring charges against him and would stir up lawsuits between him and his own household.
No man was ever more ambitious than Themistocles. While he was still young and quite unknown, he prevailed upon Epicles of Hermione, a harp player who was greatly admired by the Athenians, to come and practise at his house, because he wanted the honour of having many people seek out his home and come there often to see him. Again, when he went to Olympia, he annoyed the Greeks by trying to rival Cimon in the dinners he gave and in the magnificence of his furniture and the tents in which he entertained his visitors. People were prepared to excuse this kind of extravagance in Cimon because he was young and belonged to a great family. But coming from a man who had neither made himself a reputation nor possessed the means to support these expenses, such an attempt to raise himself above his station was regarded as sheer imposture. On another occasion he was the sponsor of the winning tragedy in the dramatic contest at Athens, which even at that date excited the keenest interest and competition, and he had a tablet put up to commemorate his victory, which read: ‘Themistocles of the deme of Phrearrus was the choregus, Phrynichus wrote the play, Adeimantus was archon.’
In spite of all this he stood high in the affections of the people, for he knew every one of the citizens by name and he showed himself a reliable arbitrator in private lawsuits which were settled out of court. Thus on one occasion, when Themistocles was serving as general, Simonides of Ceos asked him to stretch a point in his favour and Themistocles told him: ‘You would be a poor poet if you sang out of tune, and I should be a poor magistrate if I did people favours contrary to the law.’ Another time he made fun of Simonides by pointing out that it was nonsense for him to attack the Corinthians because they lived in a great and handsome city, while at the same time he had portraits made of a face as ugly as his own. All this while he continued to build up his power and increase his popularity with the Athenians, until he finally secured the triumph of the party he led and got Aristides banished by ostracism.1
6. The Persian king had already started his descent on Greece while the Athenians were still debating whom they should appoint as their commander. All the other candidates, it is said, were so alarmed at the danger that they declined to be considered, with the sole exception of Epicydes, the son of Euphemides and one of the popular leaders, a clever speaker but a man of cowardly spirit, who was notoriously open to bribery. He set himself to secure the post and it seemed extremely likely that he would be elected. Themistocles was afraid that if the leadership fell into such hands it would mean utter disaster for Athens, and so he arranged to bribe Epicydes and bought off his ambition.
Themistocles was also greatly admired for the example he made of the interpreter, who arrived with the envoys from the Persian king to demand earth and water in token of submission. He had this interpreter arrested and put to death by a special decree of the people, because he had dared to make use of the Greek language to transmit the commands of a barbarian. He was praised, too, for his treatment of Arthmius, who came from Zeleia, a town in the Troad. At Themistocles’ instance this man, together with his children and his family, was outlawed for bringing with him Persian gold and offering it to Greeks. But the greatest of all his achievements was to put an end to the fighting within Greece, to reconcile the various cities with one another and persuade them to lay aside their differences because of the war with Persia. In this task he is said to have been greatly helped by Chileos, the Arcadian.
7. As soon as he had taken up his command, his first step was to make the citizens man their triremes and urge them to leave the city and meet the barbarians at sea as far away from Greece as possible. But this plan was strongly opposed, and so he joined forces with the Spartans and led out a large army to the vale of Tempe, which they intended to make the first line of defence, since at that time nobody knew that Thessaly was about to declare for Xerxes. After a short while, however, the army withdrew from this position without accomplishing anything, and thereupon the Thessalians went over to the enemy and were followed by all the rest of Greece down as far as Boeotia. The Athenians were now at last more inclined to listen to Themistocles’ advice to fight by sea, and he was sent with a fleet to guard the straits at Artemisium.
It was here that the rest of the Greeks called upon Eurybiades to become their commander-in-chief and the Spartans their leaders, but the Athenians, since they supplied more ships than all the rest of the allies put together, refused to serve under the orders of another people. Themistocles immediately saw the danger of disagreement at this stage: he therefore surrendered his own command to Eurybiades and soothed the Athenians’ pride by promising them that if they proved their valour in the fighting, he would guarantee that the rest of the Greeks would accept their leadership later on. For this action Themistocles is generally regarded as the man most directly responsible for saving Greece, and also for earning for the Athenians the reputation of surpassing their enemies in courage and their allies in wisdom.
When the Persian fleet arrived at Aphetae, Eurybiades was appalled to learn the number of ships that he had to face. And when he also discovered that another 200 vessels were sailing round beyond the island of Sciathos to take him in the rear, his immediate impulse was to take the shortest way back into Greece, reach the Peloponnese and there use his land forces to screen the fleet, for he regarded the Persians as invincible at sea. This in turn alarmed the Euboeans, who were afraid that the rest of the Greeks might abandon them, and they got into touch with Themistocles secretly and sent Pelagon to him with large sums of money. Themistocles, according to Herodotus, accepted the money and gave it to Eurybiades.1
Among his own countrymen the bitterest opposition he encountered came from Architeles, the captain of the sacred state galley, who was anxious to sail back to Athens because he did not have enough money to pay his crew. So Themistocles stirred up the feelings of Architeles’ men against him to such a pitch that they made a rush at him and snatched away his dinner. Then while Architeles was still nursing his indignation and chagrin at this, Themistocles sent him a box containing a dinner of bread and meat and under it a talent of silver. He told Architeles to eat his dinner at once and look after his crew in the morning, otherwise he would denounce him publicly for accepting money from the enemy. This is the story we are told by Phanias of Lesbos.
8. The battles which now followed against the Persian fleet in the straits of Euboea did not decide the final issue of the war, but the experience gained in them was of inestimable value to the Greeks. They learned from their own behaviour in the face of danger that men who know how to come to close quarters and are determined to give battle have nothing to fear from mere numbers of ships, gaudily decorated figure-heads, boastful shouts, or barbaric war-songs: they have simply to show their contempt for these distractions, engage the enemy hand to hand and fight it out to the bitter end. Pindar seems to have understood this well enough, when he wrote of the battle of Artemisium:
That great fight where the brave sons of Athens planted the shining Cornerstone of their freedom…
for there is no doubt that courage is the foundation of victory.
Artemisium is one of the beaches of Euboea which stretches away to the north above Hestiaea. On the Thessalian shore opposite lies Olizon, in the territory which was once ruled by Philoctetes. Here there is a small temple of Artemis, named Proseoea, or ‘towards the east’, which is surrounded by trees and by a ring of upright slabs of white marble. This stone, if you rub it with your hand, gives off the colour and odour of saffron. On one of these slabs the following elegiac verses are engraved:
Here, by this arm of the sea, the valiant children of Athens
Sailed their ships into battle and shattered the fleets of the Mede,
Conquering a many-tongued host from the farthest confines of Asia.
These are the tokens of thanks to victorious Artemis paid.
There is also a place on the beach where deep down, mingled with the thick sand, you can find a dark ashy powder, which seems to have been produced by fire, and it is believed that the wrecks and dead bodies were burned here.
9. However, when the news of Thermopylae was brought to Artemisium and the Greeks learned that Leonidas had fallen and that Xerxes now commanded the passes, they withdrew southwards into Greece, with the Athenians guarding the rear because of the courage they had shown, and full of pride at their exploits in the battle. As Themistocles sailed along the coast, whenever he saw places where the enemy would have to land or put in for shelter or for supplies, he left messages conspicuously inscribed on the stones, some of which he found on the spot, while others he arranged to have set up by the likely anchorages and watering-places. In these inscriptions he appealed to the Ionians to come over, if they found the opportunity, to the side of the Athenians, who were their ancestors and who were risking everything for their liberty: if this was impossible, they should do their utmost to hinder the barbarians in battle and throw them into confusion. By these tactics he hoped he might either bring the Ionians over to his side, or else create chaos by making the barbarians suspect them.
Meanwhile, although Xerxes had marched up from Doris into Phocis and was burning and destroying the Phocian cities, the Greeks did not come to their rescue. The Athenians, it is true, pressed them to make a stand in Boeotia and protect Attica, just as they themselves had gone out by sea to fight in defence of the rest of Greece at Artemisium, but nobody would listen to them; instead, the remainder of the allies refused to budge from the Peloponnese. They were anxious to concentrate all their forces west of the Isthmus of Corinth and began to build a wall across it from sea to sea. The Athenians were furious at this betrayal, but at the same time felt thoroughly disheartened and dejected at being thus abandoned to their fate. They could not seriously think of engaging so vast an army by themselves, but the only choice which was now left them – namely to give up their city and entrust their very existence to the fleet – seemed utterly repugnant. The majority felt that they did not want victory on these terms and that safety meant nothing to them if it required that they should abandon the temples of their gods and the tombs of their forefathers to the enemy.
10. At this point Themistocles, seeing no hope of winning over the people to his plans by any power of human reasoning, set to work to influence them with oracles and signs from heaven, just as a poet introduces a deus ex machina into his tragedy. He seized upon the episode of the snake, which is believed to have disappeared at this time from its sacred enclosure on the Acropolis, and treated it as a divine portent. When the priests discovered that the first-fruits of sacrifice which were offered to it every day had been left untouched, they gave out to the people on Themistocles’ instructions that the goddess Athena had abandoned her city and was showing them their way to the sea. In his efforts to sway the people he again invoked the famous oracle from Delphi,1 and insisted that the ‘wooden wall’ could only refer to their ships and that Apollo had spoken of Salamis in his verses as divine, not as terrible or cruel, for the very reason that its name would one day be associated with a great blessing for the Greeks. At last he got his way and thereupon proposed a decree that the city should be handed over to the keeping of its patron goddess, Athena, but that all men of military age should be embarked on the warships, after everyone had provided as best they could for the safety of their wives, children, and slaves. As soon as the decree was passed, most of the Athenians sent their wives and children to Troezen, where the citizens vied with one another in welcoming them. They even voted to maintain the refugees at the public expense; they gave each family two obols a day, allowed the children to pick the fruit wherever they pleased as soon as it was ripe, and went so far as to pay schoolmasters to teach them. These measures were proposed by a man named Nicagoras.
At this moment the Athenians were without any public funds, and according to Aristotle it was the Council of the Areopagus which gave an advance of eight drachmae1 to each fighting man, and so was mainly instrumental in getting the triremes manned. However, Cleidemus claims that this, too, was achieved by a trick on Themistocles’ part. He says that as the Athenians were in the midst of abandoning their city and moving down to the Piraeus, the Gorgon’s head which ornamented the breastplate of Athena’s statue was found to be missing. Under the pretence of searching for it, Themistocles proceeded to have everything ransacked and discovered large sums of money hidden away in the baggage; these were confiscated and served to provide ample subsistence for the men embarking on the ships.
In this way the whole city of Athens put out to sea. It was a sight which filled some with pity and others with amazement at the hardihood of what they were doing, as they sent off their families in one direction and themselves crossed over to Salamis, unmoved by the cries and tears and embraces of their own kin. Most pathetic of all were the old men, who were left behind because of their years, and the domestic animals, too, who chose this moment to show a heart-rending affection and ran along howling piteously by the side of their masters as they went on board. The story has come down to us of the dog which belonged to Xanthippus, Pericles’ father, and which could not bear to be separated from him, and so leaped into the sea, swam across the straits alongside his master’s trireme, and was washed ashore at Salamis, where it fainted and died on the spot. Its tomb, they say, is the place which is named the Dog’s Mound, and is still pointed out to this day.
11. These were great achievements of Themistocles on any count. But in addition he had the insight to recognize that the Athenians longed to bring back Aristides,1 and were afraid that in his anger with them he might go over to the barbarians and ruin the Greek cause, for he had been defeated by Themistocles’ party and ostracized several years before the war. So Themistocles proposed a decree to grant permission for anyone who had been banished for a term of years to return and join his fellow-citizens in doing his utmost by word and deed for the deliverance of Greece.
Because of the prestige of Sparta the Greek fleet was under the command of Eurybiades, but he showed little determination in the face of danger and was anxious to hoist sail for the Isthmus, where the Peloponnesian army was concentrated. Themistocles, however, opposed this plan and it was then that he uttered a remark which became famous. Eurybiades had said to him: ‘You know, Themistocles, at the games they thrash anybody who starts before the signal’, to which Themistocles replied, ‘Yes, but they do not crown anybody who gets left at the post.’ Then, when Eurybiades lifted up his staff as if to strike him Themistocles said, ‘You may hit me if you like, but you must listen to me.’ Eurybiades was forced to admire his self-possession and told him to speak out, and Themistocles then tried to lead him back to the subject. At this point somebody objected that a man without a city had no right to press those who still possessed one to abandon it and forsake their country, whereupon Themistocles turned on him and retorted, ‘It is quite true, you wretch, that we have given up our houses and our city walls, because we did not choose to become enslaved for the sake of things that have no life or soul. But what we still possess is the greatest city in all Greece, our 200 ships of war, which are ready now to defend you, if you are still willing to be saved by them. But if you run away and betray us, as you did once before, the Greeks will soon hear the news that the Athenians have found themselves as free a city and as fine a country as the one they have sacrificed.’1 When he heard Themistocles speaking in this tone, Eurybiades began to reflect and was frightened at the thought that the Athenians might sail away and abandon him. Again, when one of the Eretrians tried to oppose him, Themistocles cut in: ‘What, are we going to be lectured on how to fight by your people, who are like the cuttle-fish, with nothing but a long pouch in the place where your heart ought to be?’
12. Some writers say that while Themistocles was engaged in this argument on the deck of his ship, an owl was seen to fly from the right2 of the fleet and perch at his masthead. This omen lent further weight to his words and the Greeks began to prepare for battle. Presently, however, the enemy’s fleet arrived off Attica and occupied the bay of Phalerum and the great host of their ships quite blotted out the surrounding coastline. The king also came down to the sea in person with the land forces and could actually be recognized with the assembled army, and at the sight of this vast concentration of forces, Themistocles’ advice was swept out of mind and the Peloponnesians once more cast their eyes longingly towards the Isthmus. They would not listen to any other plan but decided to withdraw that very night, and the pilots were given their sailing orders. Themistocles was enraged at the prospect that the Greeks might throw away all the advantages of their position in these narrow waters and scatter to their various cities, and so he cast around for a counter-stroke and hit upon his celebrated trick with Sicinnus.
This man was a Persian prisoner of war, but he was devoted to Themistocles and was also the tutor of his children. He was sent to Xerxes secretly and told to give him the following message: ‘Themistocles, the Athenian commander, has come over to the king’s side and wishes to be the first to tell him that the Greeks are trying to slip away; he urges the king not to let them escape but to attack them and destroy their naval power, while they are still disorganized and before they have joined forces with their land army.’ Xerxes was delighted with this news, which he believed had been sent him in all good faith, and he immediately issued orders to his commanders. The main body of the fleet was to be manned at leisure, but 200 ships were to sail at once, surround the strait on all sides and bar the passages between Salamis and the neighbouring islands, to prevent any of the Greeks from escaping.
While this manoeuvre was being carried out, Aristides the son of Lysimachus, who was the first to learn about it, came to Themistocles’ tent. The two men were anything but friends – indeed, it was actually Themistocles, as I have explained, through whose efforts he had been ostracized – but Aristides now arrived to warn him, as he stepped out of his tent, that the Greeks had been encircled. Themistocles knew his opponent for a frank and noble character at all times, but he especially admired his coming at this moment; so he let him into the secret of the scheme he was carrying on with Sicinnus, and appealed to Aristides as a man who commanded more confidence among the allies than himself, to join him in the effort to keep the Greeks at their stations and encourage them to fight a battle in the straits. Aristides praised Themistocles for what he had done and proceeded to go the round of the other generals and captains, urging them to join battle. While they were still wondering whether to believe his news, a Tenian trireme commanded by Panaetius, which had deserted from the enemy, arrived and left them in no doubt that they were now surrounded, so that in the end anger played its part as well as necessity, as the Greeks set out to face their danger.
13. At daybreak Xerxes took his seat on some high ground, which enabled him to overlook his fleet and its order of battle. According to Phanodemus this place was situated above the temple of Heracles, at the point where the island of Salamis is separated from the mainland of Attica only by a narrow channel, but Acestodours says that the king’s point of vantage was near the Megarian frontier, above the hills known as ‘The Horns’. A golden throne had been set up for him and a crowd of secretaries were in attendance, whose duty it was to record the events of the battle.
Meanwhile, Themistocles was offering sacrifice alongside the admiral’s trireme. Here three remarkably handsome prisoners were brought before him, magnificently dressed and wearing gold ornaments. They were reported to be the sons of Sandauce, the king’ssister, and Artayctus. At the very moment that Euphrantides the prophet saw them, a great bright flame shot up from the victims awaiting sacrifice at the altar and a sneeze was heard on the right, which is a good omen. At this, Euphrantides clasped Themistocles by the right hand and commanded him to dedicate the young men by cutting off their forelocks and then to offer up a prayer and sacrifice them all to Dionysus, the Eater of Flesh,1 for if this were done, it would bring deliverance and victory to the Greeks. Themistocles was appalled at this terrible and monstrous command from the prophet, as it seemed to him. But the people, as so often happens at moments of crisis, were ready to find salvation in the miraculous rather than in a rational course of action. And so they called upon the name of the god with one voice, dragged the prisoners to the altar, and compelled the sacrifice to be carried out as the prophet had demanded. This, at any rate, is the account we have from Phanias of Lesbos, who was a philosopher and well read in history besides.
14. In his tragedy The Persians, the poet Aeschylus writes of the numbers of the barbarian ships as though he knew these for a fact:
But Xerxes, as I know well, had a thousand ships
At his command; the vessels built for speed
Numbered two hundred and seven, so stands the count.2
The Athenian contingent was 180 strong and each ship had eighteen men to fight on deck, four of these being archers and the rest infantrymen.
Themistocles appears to have chosen the time for the battle as judiciously as he had the place. He was careful not to let the triremes engage the barbarian ships head on, until the time of day when the wind usually blows fresh from the sea and sends a heavy swell rolling through the narrows. This breeze was no disadvantage to the Greek ships, which were comparatively small and lay low in the water, but it caught the Persian vessels, which were difficult to manoeuvre with their high decks and towering sterns, and swung them round broadside on to their opponents, who dashed in eagerly to the attack. The Greek captains kept a watchful eye on Themistocles, because they felt that he saw most clearly what were the right tactics to follow, and also because he had ranged opposite him Xerxes’ admiral, Ariamenes, a man of great courage, who was both the most stalwart and the most high-principled of the king’s brothers. He was stationed on a huge ship, from which he kept discharging arrows and javelins, as though he were on the wall of a fortress. Ameinias of Decelea and Socles of the deme of Paeania, who were both sailing in the same vessel, bore down upon his and met it bows on, and as the two ships crashed into each other and were held by their bronze beaks, Ariamenes tried to board their trireme; but the two Athenians faced him, ran him through with their spears, and pitched him into the sea. Artemisia, the queen of Caria, recognized his body, as it floated about with the wreckage, and she had if brought to Xerxes.
15. At this point in the battle it is said that a great light suddenly shone out from Eleusis and a loud cry seemed to fill the whole breadth of the Thriasian plain down to the sea, as though an immense crowd were escorting the mystic Iacchus in procession. Then, from the place where the shouting was heard, a cloud seemed to rise slowly from the land, drift out to sea, and descend upon the triremes. Others believed that they saw phantoms and the shapes of armed men coming from Aegina with hands outstretched to protect the Greek ships. These, they believed, were the sons of Aeacus, to whom they had offered prayers for help just before the battle.1
The first man to capture an enemy ship was Lycomedes, the commander of an Athenian trireme, who cut off the Persian’s figurehead and dedicated it to Apollo the Laurel-bearer at Phlya. The rest of the Greeks now found themselves on equal terms with their enemies, since the Persians could only bring a small part of their whole fleet into action at a time, as their ships constantly fouled one another in the narrow straits; and so, although they held out till the evening, the Greeks finally put them to utter rout. Thus they gained ‘that noble and famous victory’, as Simonides says, ‘the most glorious exploit ever achieved at sea by Greek or barbarian, and they owed it to the courage and determination of all those who fought their ships, but not least to the surpassing skill and judgement of Themistocles.’
16. After the battle, Xerxes, who was still enraged at his failure, tried to construct moles, so as to block up the straits and lead his land forces over to Salamis against the Greeks. Then Themistocles, by way of testing Aristides’ opinion, made a show of urging the Greeks to sail with the fleet to the Hellespont and break down the bridge of boats. ‘In this way,’ he said, ‘we could take Asia without stirring out of Europe.’ Aristides was not at all in favour of this suggestion and replied: ‘So far, the barbarian we have been fighting has taken life very easily. But if we shut him up in Greece and drive this man, who is master of such enormous forces, to extremities by frightening him, he will not go on sitting under a golden canopy quietly taking in the spectacle of our battles. He will nerve himself for anything, and because of his danger he will play an active part on each occasion, correct the mistakes he made before and take better advice on every issue. In fact, instead of breaking down the bridge which is there already, Themistocles, we ought to build another alongside it, if we can, and speed the man out of Europe with the least possible delay.’ ‘Very well, then,’ said Themistocles, ‘if we agree on that, it is high time we were considering and contriving some means to get him out of Greece as quickly as we can.’
As soon as this plan was adopted, Themistocles dispatched one of the royal eunuchs named Arnaces, whom he had picked out among the prisoners of war. This man was to tell Xerxes that the Greeks, now that they were masters of the sea, had decided to sail up to the Hellespont and destroy the bridge of boats there, but that Themistocles, out of his regard for the king, urged him to hurry back to his home waters and cross over into Asia. Meanwhile, he himself, so he declared, would arrange various delays for the allies and make them lose time in their pursuit. Xerxes was thoroughly alarmed when he heard this, and at once set about arranging his withdrawal. How shrewdly Themistocles and Aristides acted was proved later on in the campaign against Mardonius, for the battle of Plataea was one in which the Greeks stood in danger of losing everything, even though they were only fighting against a fraction of Xerxes’ army.
17. Herodotus tells us1 that of all the Greek states Aegina received the palm for valour, and that of the men who took part in the battle everyone, in effect, awarded the highest honour to Themistocles, although their jealousy made them unwilling to admit this. When the generals retired to the Isthmus and took their ballots from the altar of Poseidon1 there, each one declared that the first place for bravery belonged to himself and the second to Themistocles. After this the Spartans brought him down to their country with them. They gave Eurybiades a prize for valour, but Themistocles one for wisdom – it was a crown of olive in each case – and they also presented him with the finest chariot in the city and sent a guard of 300 picked young men to escort him to the frontier. It is related, too, how at the next Olympic games, when Themistocles entered the stadium, the audience took no further interest in the competitors, but spent the whole day gazing at him, pointing him out to strangers and admiring and applauding him as they did so. Themistocles was delighted at this and admitted to his friends that he was now reaping the fruit of all his labours for Greece.
18. Certainly he carried ambition to its furthest limit, if we may judge by the stories about him which have been handed down. For example, when the Athenians had elected him admiral, he would refuse to settle any public or private business as it came up, but would postpone everything until the day appointed for sailing; he did this in order to deal with an immense quantity of business all at once and have meetings with many different kinds of people and thus make himself out to be a person of great importance and power. On another occasion, when his eye fell on a number of Persian corpses, which had been washed up along the sea-shore, and he saw that many of them were ornamented with gold bracelets and collars, he passed by them himself but pointed them out to a friend who was following him, with the words, ‘Help yourself! You are not Themistocles!’ He said to Antiphates, who had been a handsome young man, and who at that period had treated Themistocles with disdain, but afterwards had cultivated him because of the fame he had earned, ‘Well, my boy, time has taught both of us a lesson, even if we have left it late.’ He used to say of the Athenians, too, that they did not admire or honour him for himself, but treated him like a plane-tree; when it was stormy, they ran under his branches for shelter, but as soon as it was fine, they plucked his leaves and lopped his branches. Another time, a man from Seriphos told him that he did not owe his great reputation to his own efforts at all, but to his city. ‘Very true,’ retorted Themistocles, ‘I should never have become famous if I had been a Seriphian, and neither would you if you had been an Athenian!’
On another occasion, one of his fellow generals, who believed that he himself had rendered great service to the state, began to behave arrogantly towards Themistocles and to compare their achievements. Themistocles answered him: ‘The-day-after-the-Festival once started a quarrel with the Festival-day and said, “You provide nothing but anxiety and trouble, but when I come along, people can enjoy at their leisure everything they have been getting ready beforehand.” The Festival-day’s answer was, “True, but if I had not come first, you would not have come at all.” So it is with us. If Themistocles had not been there on the day of Salamis, where would all the rest of you be now?’
He once said jokingly that his son, who was spoiled by his mother and through her by himself, was more powerful than any man in Greece, ‘for the Athenians command the Greeks, I command the Athenians, his mother commands me, and he commands her.’ He took pleasure in being different from everybody else, and so when he put up a certain estate for sale, he ordered the crier to announce that it had an excellent neighbour into the bargain. And when two suitors presented themselves for his daughter’s hand, he chose the more worthy in preference to the richer, saying that he would sooner have a man without money than money without a man. Such was his character as it was revealed in his talk.
19. No sooner were these great achievements behind him, than he immediately took in hand the rebuilding and fortification of Athens; according to Theopompus’s account he bribed the Spartan ephors not to oppose his plans, but most writers agree that he outwitted them. He arranged a visit to Sparta, giving himself the title of an ambassador, and the Spartans then complained to him that the Athenians were fortifying their city, while Polyarchus was sent expressly from Aegina to confront him with this charge. Themistocles, however, denied it and told them to send men to Athens to see for themselves; this delay, he calculated, would gain time for the fortifications to be built, and he was also anxious that the Athenians should hold the envoys as hostages for his own safety. This was just how things turned out. The Spartans, when they discovered the truth, did not retaliate against him, but concealed their resentment and sent him away.
After this he proceeded to develop the Piraeus as a port, for he had already taken note of the natural advantages1 of its harbours and it was his ambition to unite the whole city to the sea. In this he was to some extent reversing the policy of the ancient kings of Attica, for they are said to have aimed at drawing the citizens away from the sea and accustoming them to live not by seafaring but by tilling and planting the soil. It was they who had spread the legend about Athena, how when she and Poscidon were contesting the possession of the country, she produced the sacred olive tree of the Acropolis before the judges and so won the verdict. Themistocles, however, did not, as Aristophanes the comic poet puts it, ‘knead the Piraeus on to the city’:2 on the contrary, he attached the city to the Piraeus and made the land dependent on the sea. The effect of this was to increase the influence of the people at the expense of the nobility and to fill them with confidence, since the control of policy now passed into the hands of sailors and boatswains and pilots. This was also the reason why the platform of the people’s Assembly in the Phnx, which had been built so as to look out to sea, was later turned round by the Thirty Tyrants, so that it faced inland, for they believed that Athens’ naval empire had proved to be the mother of democracy and that an oligarchy was more easily accepted by men who tilled the soil.
20. But Themistocles had even more ambitious schemes in mind for making Athens supreme at sea. After Xerxes’ withdrawal, when the Greek fleet had put in at Pagasae and was drawn up on shore to winter there, he made a speech to the Athenians in which he told them that he had a plan which promised not only security but great advantages for Athens, but which could not be mentioned in public. The Athenians told him to confide it to nobody but Aristides, and if he approved, then it should be carried out. So he explained to Aristides that his scheme was to burn the whole Greek fleet where it lay. Thereupon Aristides came forward and told the people that no proposal could be more profitable, or at the same time more outrageous, and the Athenians then ordered Themistocles to give it up.
When the Greek states met at the Amphictyonic Congress, the Spartans put forward a motion that all those states which had not taken part in resisting the Persians should be debarred from membership. Themistocles was afraid that if the Spartans succeeded in expelling the Thessalians, the Argives and the Thebans from the Congress, they would gain complete control of the votes and be able to carry whatever measures they pleased. He therefore spoke in defence of these cities and won over the majority of the delegates to his side by pointing out that only thirty-one states had played an active part in the war, and that most of these were very small ones, so that it would be an intolerable situation if the rest of Greece were excluded and the Congress dominated by the two or three largest states. It was the stand he took on this occasion which gave particular offence to the Spartans, and made them try to strengthen Cimon’s position by showing him favours and thus establish him as a political rival to Themistocles.
21. He also incurred the hatred of the allies by sailing round the islands and trying to extort money from them. For example, when he demanded money from the people of Andros, Herodotus1 tells us of the exchange which took place. Themistocles told them that he had brought with him two gods, Persuasion and Compulsion, to which the islanders replied that they also had two great divinities, Poverty and Scarcity, who prevented them from giving him money.
Timocreon, the lyric poet of Rhodes, attacks Themistocles very sharply in a song, in which he says that, in return for a bribe, Themistocles arranged for certain exiles to be restored, but abandoned him, although the poet was his host and a friend, and that this was all done for money.
Others may praise Pausanias in their songs
Or brave Xanthippus, or Leotychidas.
My choice is Aristides, the one true man
To come from holy Athens. We know that Leto,
Who loves the truth, detests Themistocles
That liar, cheat, and traitor, who broke his word
And, for a sordid bribe, refused to restore
His host Timocreon to his native Rhodes,
But pocketed three silver talents, no less
And then sailed off. Well, he has his reward.
Now he has brought back some who never deserved it,
While some are banished, and others done to death,
But always he lines his purse, and at the Isthmus
Plays the great host – and the great laughing-stock –
With that cold banquet he gave, where all the guests
Ate, and then prayed he would come to no good end.
But after Themistocles had been condemned and exiled, Timocreon abused him far more extravagantly and outrageously in the poem which begins:
Go then, my Muse,
Make my song known from end to end of Hellas,
Justice demands no less.
The story goes that Timocreon had been banished on a charge of having collaborated with the Persians and that Themistocles joined in condemning him. So when Themistocles in his turn was also accused of ‘medising’, Timocreon composed these verses:
Timocreon was not the only Greek
To make a deal with the Persians: many more
Were no less guilty: other foxes too
Have lost their tails.
22. At last even his fellow citizens reached the point at which their jealousy made them listen to any slander at his expense, and so Themistocles was forced to remind the Assembly of his achievements until they could bear this no longer. He once said to those who were complaining of him: ‘Why are you tired of receiving benefits so often from the same men?’ Besides this he gave offence to the people when he built the temple of Artemis, for not only did he style the goddess Artemis Aristoboule, or Artemis wisest in counsel – with the hint that it was he who had given the best counsel to the Athenians and the Greeks – but he chose a site for it near his own house at Melite. This is the place where today the public executioners cast out the bodies of executed criminals and leave the clothes and halters of those who have hanged themselves. A small statue of Themistocles used to stand in this temple of Artemis Aristoboule even down to my own times, and to judge by this he must have been a man not only of heroic spirit but of heroic appearance.
So at last the Athenians banished him.1 They made use of the ostracism to humble his great reputation and his authority, as indeed was their habit with any man whose power they regarded as oppressive, or who had risen to an eminence which they considered out of keeping with the equality of a democracy. They did not regard ostracism as a punishment, but rather as a means of appeasing and blunting that spirit of envy, which delights in bringing down the mighty and finds an outlet for its own rancour in this penalty of disfranchisement.
23. After he had been banished from Athens and was living at Argos, the affair of Pausanias1 gave Themistocles’ enemies a handle against him. The man who indicted Themistocles for treason was Leobotes, the son of Alcmaeon of the deme of Agraule, and the Spartans joined in the impeachment. While Pausanias was negotiating his treasonable plot, he concealed it at first from Themistocles, although the two men were personal friends. But when he saw the latter banished from his country and full of resentment, he ventured to invite Themistocles to become a partner in his negotiations, showed him a letter from the king of Persia and tried at the same time to stir up his anger against the Greeks, whom he spoke of as ungrateful wretches. Themistocles rejected this approach from Pausanias and refused to be associated with him in any way, but he did not report their conversations to anyone else, nor did he denounce Pausanias’s plans. He seems to have expected that Pausanias would either give them up of his own accord, or else that he would betray himself in some other way, seeing that he was pursuing such wild and desperate projects with a complete lack of judgement.
This was the reason why, after Pausanias had been put to death, certain letters and documents came to light which threw suspicion on Themistocles. The Spartans raised an outcry, and those of the Athenians who were jealous of him also launched their accusations. Themistocles could not defend himself in person, but he did so in writing and dwelt at length on the earlier charges that had been brought against him. His enemies, he pointed out, were slanderously accusing him of being a man who constantly sought authority over others, but was not prepared either by temperament or by choice to obey it himself. But if this were true, he could never have sold himself and Greece to barbarians, still less to his country’s enemies. However, in spite of anything he could say, his accusers prevailed with the people, and officers were sent to arrest him and bring him to stand his trial before the Pan-Hellenic Council.
24. Themistocles, however, got word of this in advance and crossed over to Corcyra, where he had been recognized as a public benefactor of the city. When he had been chosen to arbitrate in a dispute between Corcyra and Corinth, he had solved it by announcing as his verdict that the Corinthians should pay an indemnity of twenty talents and that the island of Leucas should be administered as a joint colony of both cities. From Corcyra he fled next to Epirus, and as the Athenians and Spartans still pursued him, he decided to gamble upon a difficult and almost desperate chance by taking refuge with Admetus, the king of the Molossians. This ruler had once approached the Athenians with some request, and Themistocles, then at the height of his power, had humiliated him by refusing it. Admetus had never forgiven him for this and had made it clear that he would take his revenge if Themistocles ever fell into his hands. Still, in the present state of affairs, Themistocles feared the jealousy of his own people, which had just been aroused, more than any long-standing grievance of the king’s. He therefore threw himself upon the latter’s mercy, by making himself a suppliant to Admetus in a peculiar fashion which is found in no other country. He took the king’s young son in his arms and prostrated himself before the hearth, this being the form of supplication which the Molossians consider the most solemn and which it is virtually impossible to refuse. Some people say that it was Phthia, the king’s wife, who had suggested this form of entreaty to Themistocles, and that she placed her child on the hearth with him, and others that it was Admetus himself who arranged it beforehand and played this scene with Themistocles, so as to put himself under a religious obligation not to deliver him up to his pursuers.
Epicrates of Acharnae smuggled Themistocles’ wife and children out of Athens to join him in Epirus, and for this action, according to Stesimbrotus, he was afterwards prosecuted by Cimon and put to death. But a little later Stesimbrotus in some way or other either forgets this episode himself or makes Themistocles forget it, and tells us that he sailed to Sicily and asked for the hand of the daughter of the tyrant Hiero, promising to make the Greeks subject to him, but that Hiero refused him and so he then sailed for Asia.
25. This account seems an unlikely one. For Theophrastus in his treatise On Royalty tells us that when Hiero sent horses to race at Olympia and set up a lavishly decorated pavilion there, Themistocles made a speech to the assembled Greeks, inciting them to tear down the tyrant’s building and to prevent his horses from competing. And Thucydides1 tells us that Themistocles made his way across Greece to the Aegean, and sailed from Pydna without any of his fellow passengers knowing who he was, until the ship was driven by a storm to Naxos, which was then being besieged by the Athenians.2 Themistocles thereupon took fright and revealed himself to the owner and the captain of the vessel. But partly by entreaties and partly by the threat that he would denounce them to the Athenians and make it appear that they had known all along who he was, but had taken him on board in the first instance for a bribe, he forced them to stand out to sea and reach the coast of Asia.
A great deal of his property was secretly removed for him by his friends and sent across the sea to Asia. However, the total sum which the Athenian treasury discovered and confiscated amounted to 100 talents, according to Theopompus, while Theophrastus gives the figure of eighty. At the same time it is worth remarking that before he entered public life, Themistocles did not possess so much as three talents’ worth of property.
26. When he landed at Cyme, he learned that all along the coast there were many people lying in wait to capture him, especially Ergoteles and Pythodorus. Indeed, since the Persian king had publicly set the price of 200 talents on his head, he certainly offered a tempting quarry to those who had few scruples as to how they made their money. So he fled to Aegae, a small town in Aeolia. In this place nobody had heard of him, except for his host Nicogenes, the richest man in Aeolia, who was well known to the nobles of the interior, and here he spent a few days in hiding. One night, after the dinner which followed a sacrifice, Olbius, the tutor of Nicogenes’ children, suddenly fell into a kind of inspired trance and uttered the following verse:
‘Night shall speak and give thee counsel, night shall give thee victory.’
The same night Themistocles, as he lay in bed, dreamed a dream. He fancied that he saw a snake winding its way over his belly and creeping up to his neck; as soon as it touched his face it turned into an eagle, enfolded him in its wings, lifted him from the ground, and carried him a great way off. Then there appeared before him a herald’s golden staff; the eagle set him down safely upon it, and he suddenly felt himself delivered from his helpless state of anxiety.1
At any rate he was sent on his way by Nicogenes, who arranged the following trick. Most barbarous nations, and the Persians in particular, reveal the harsh and cruel side of their nature in the jealousy with which they behave to their women. Not only their wives, but even their slaves and concubines are closely guarded, so that they are never seen by strangers; at home they are shut up indoors, and when they travel they are carried about under awnings which are surrounded with curtains and placed on four-wheeled waggons. This was the kind of vehicle which they got ready for Themistocles and he travelled safely ensconced inside, while his attendants replied to anybody who met or questioned them that they were escorting a poor Greek woman to one of the king’s courtiers.
27. According to Thucydides2 and Charon of Lampsacus, Xerxes was now dead and it was his son Artaxerxes with whom Themistocles had his audience. On the other hand Ephorus, Dinon, Clitarchus, Heracleides, and many other authorities maintain that he came to Xerxes. Thucydides’ version seems to me to fit in better with the dates that are known to us over this period, although these are by no means firmly established. At any rate Themistocles now had to face his long-awaited ordeal, and he was received first of all by Artabanus, the vizier. Themistocles announced to him that he was a Greek and wished to have an audience with the king on matters which were of special concern to him and of the highest importance. Artabanus replied: ‘Stranger, the customs of men differ very greatly from one another. Every people has its own standards of right and wrong, but all agree that it is right to honour and uphold the customs of their own country. Now you Greeks have the reputation of admiring liberty and equality above all else. We, on the other hand, out of all the excellent laws we possess, take most pride in honouring the king and prostrating ourselves before him as the image of the god who is the preserver of the universe. If you approve our customs, then, and will make obeisance to him, you may see and speak to the king. But if your ideas are different, you must find intermediaries other than myself to communicate with him, since it is contrary to our customs for the king to give audience to a man who has not paid obeisance to him.’ Themistocles, when he heard this, said: ‘My purpose in coming here, Artabanus, is to increase the king’s fame and his power, and I will not only comply with your customs myself, since this is the will of the god who exalts the Persians, but I will multiply the number of those who now do homage to the king. So do not let this matter stand in the way of what I have to tell him.’ ‘Which of the Greeks,’ asked Artabanus, ‘am I to say has arrived, for you are evidently a man far out of the ordinary run of intelligence?’ ‘No one,’ Themistocles replied, ‘must learn my name before the king himself.’
This is the story we are told by Phanias, but Eratosthenes in his treatise On Wealth adds that Themistocles secured his interview and his conversation with the vizier through a woman of Eretria whom the latter had married.
28. However this may be, when Themistocles was led into the king’s presence, he kissed the ground in front of him and stood silent. The king then ordered his interpreter to ask him who he was, and to this question he answered: ‘May it please Your Majesty, I, who come before you now, am Themistocles the Athenian, an exile pursued by the Greeks. I have done great harm to the Persians, and yet more good than harm, for I prevented the Greeks from pursuing you once they were safe, and the fact that my own country’s affairs were out of danger gave me the chance to do you a service. As for myself, the present state of my fortunes makes me resigned to anything. I have come here prepared either to receive your favour, if you are graciously pleased to be reconciled, or to plead with you if you still bear a grudge against me. At any rate you may take my enemies at home as witnesses of the good I have done to Persia, and perhaps you will make my misfortunes the occasion to prove your magnanimity rather than to satisfy your revenge. If you save me, you will be saving a man who has thrown himself on your mercy, but if you destroy me, you will be destroying an enemy of the Greeks.’ Themistocles went on to invoke the supernatural to lend force to his words: he described his dream in the house of Nicogenes, and also the oracle pronounced by Zeus at Dodona, which had commanded him to go to the god’s namesake, and how he had concluded from this that Zeus was directing him to the king of Persia, since both were supreme and bore the title of king.
The king listened to him, and although he made no direct answer, he could not help admiring Themistocles’ boldness and self-confidence. But later in conversation with his friends, he congratulated himself on what he considered a supreme stroke of good fortune, and he prayed the god Ahriman to make his enemies always of this mind, so that they would continue to drive away their ablest men. After this it is said that he sacrificed to the gods and at once fell to drinking, and that later during the night he called out three times in his sleep for joy: ‘I have Themistocles the Athenian!’
29. At daybreak he called his friends together and sent for Themistocles. The latter found little to hope for in the sight which greeted him at the palace gates, for the guards, as soon as they learned his name when he went in, showed themselves hostile and began to abuse him. Besides this Roxanes, the commander of a thousand men, at the moment when Themistocles passed him – the king being seated and the rest of the court waiting in silence – said in angry undertones: ‘You subtle serpent of Greece, it is the king’s good genius that has brought you here.’ In spite of this, when he arrived in the king’s presence and had once more made obeisance, the king welcomed him and spoke to him kindly. He declared that he already owed him 200 talents, for since he had delivered himself up, it was only right that he should receive the reward offered to whoever had brought him there. He promised Themistocles much more than this, encouraged him and gave him leave to speak with complete frankness about the affairs of Greece.
Themistocles replied that human speech may be compared to an embroidered tapestry, which shows its various patterns when it is spread out, but conceals and distorts them when it is rolled up, and for this reason he needed time. The king was pleased with this simile and told him to take as much time as he chose. Themistocles asked for a year and in that time he mastered the Persian tongue sufficiently well to converse with the king without an interpreter. Those outside the court supposed that these conversations were concerned with Greek affairs. But as the king at about that time introduced a great many innovations which affected his favourites and the court in general, Themistocles incurred the dislike of the great nobles for having presumed to use his freedom of speech with the king to their disadvantage. Certainly the honours paid to him were far greater than those enjoyed by other foreigners. He actually took part in the king’s hunts and in his indoor pastimes and pursuits, he was privileged to see the queen mother and became her intimate friend, and at the king’s command he was instructed in the religious doctrines of the Magians. Then, too, when Demaratus, the exiled king of Sparta who was living in Persia, was ordered to choose a reward for himself, he asked to be allowed to ride in state into Sardis and through it, wearing his tiara upright, as the Persian kings do. At this Mithropaustes, the king’s cousin, laid his hand on Demaratus’s tiara and remarked: ‘This tiara of yours has no brains to cover, and as for yourself, you will not become Zeus simply by taking hold of his thunderbolt!’ The king also showed his extreme displeasure towards Demaratus for his request and seemed to have made up his mind never to pardon him, but Themistocles pleaded Demaratus’s case and persuaded the king to be reconciled with him.
We are told, besides, that the later kings of Persia, in whose reigns Persian affairs became more closely involved with those of Greece, whenever they sought a Greek adviser, used to promise each of them in writing that he would have a greater position at court than Themistocles. Themistocles, himself, as the story goes, now that he had become a great man and was courted by many people, remarked to his children on one occasion, when a magnificent banquet was set before him: ‘My children, we should have been ruined now, if we had not been ruined just when we were!’1 According to most writers he was given three cities to provide his bread, wine, and meat, namely Magnesia, Lampsacus, and Myus, while Neanthes of Cyzicus and Phanias add two more – Percote and Palaescepsis – which supplied his bedding and his clothes.
30. Once as he was travelling to the coast on his commission to deal with Greek affairs, a Persian named Epixyes, the satrap of Upper Phrygia, plotted to assassinate him. He had a long while before engaged some Pisidians, who were to kill Themistocles when he arrived to stop for the night at a village called the Lion’s Head. But the story goes that at noon on that day, while Themistocles slept, Cybele the Great Mother appeared to him in a dream and said: ‘Themistocles, avoid the Lion’s Head, or else you may fall into a lion’s jaws. But in return for this service, you must make your daughter Mnesiptolema my priestess.’ Themistocles was greatly disturbed and after offering a prayer to the goddess, he left the highroad, took a roundabout way and passing by the village, encamped when it was dark in the open country.
It so happened that one of the draught animals which carried his tent had fallen into the river, and so Themistocles’ servants had spread out the curtains, which were dripping wet, and were drying them out. At this moment the Pisidians came up with drawn swords, and not being able to make out clearly in the moonlight what was being dried, they supposed that it was Themistocles’ tent and that they would find him resting inside. But when they approached and were in the act of lifting up the hangings, the guards pounced upon them and seized them. In this way Themistocles escaped the danger and he was so struck by this manifestation of the goddess, that he built a temple in Magnesia in honour of Cybele Dindymene and appointed his daughter, Mnesiptolema, to be her priestess.
31. When he arrived in Sardis and was inspecting at his leisure the architecture of the temples and the great number of votive offerings, he saw in the temple of the Great Mother the so-called Water-carrier. This was a bronze statue of a girl, some three feet high, which he had had made and dedicated at the time when he was commissioner for the water supply at Athens; it was paid for out of the fines imposed on those he had convicted of tapping or diverting the public water. Whether it was because his feelings were touched at seeing this offering in captivity, or because he wanted to demonstrate to the Athenians the measure of honour and influence which he commanded in the king’s service, he approached the satrap of Lydia with the request that he should send the statue back to Athens. But the barbarian took offence at this and declared that he would report the matter to the king. Themistocles then became alarmed and turned for help to the satrap’s harem; he was able to buy the goodwill of the concubines there and so to pacify the satrap himself. After this he showed a good deal more caution, as he saw that he had even now to fear the jealousy of the barbarians. For this reason he did not travel about Asia, as Theopompus says, but had a house in Magnesia, enjoyed generous presents from the king, and was accorded equal honours with the great Persian nobles. In this way he was able to live for many years without disturbance, because the king paid no attention to Greek affairs and was far more concerned with the state of the interior.
But the time came1 when Egypt revolted from the Persian Empire and was abetted by the Athenians, when Greek triremes cruised freely as far as Cyprus and the shores of Cilicia, and when Cimon’s control of the sea forced the king to attempt a counter-stroke against the Greeks to check the growth of their power at his expense. Then, at last, troops were moved and generals posted in all directions, and messages came to Themistocles from the court to the effect that the king now commanded him to fulfil his promises and apply himself to Greek affairs in earnest. Themistocles was not swayed by any desire to take revenge on his countrymen, nor was he elated by the great power and position which he would enjoy in the war. It may be that he believed his task was an impossible one, when he measured himself against the other great commanders whom Greece possessed at this time, especially Cimon, who was winning brilliant successes in his campaigns: but what seems most probable is that he refused to tarnish the glory of his earlier achievements, or dishonour the trophies he had won. At any rate he decided that his best course was to end his life in a manner that was worthy of it, and so after offering sacrifice to the gods, he called his friends together, clasped their hands and bade them farewell. Then, according to the generally accepted story, he drank bull’s blood, or as others say, a swift poison, and died in the sixty-fifth year of his life,2 most of which he had spent in politics and in wars, in government and in command. It is said that when the king learned of the manner of his death and the reasons for it, he admired Themistocles more than ever and continued to show kindness both to his friends and his family.
32. Themistocles left three children by Archippe, the daughter of Lysander from the deme of Alopece; these were Archeptolis, Polyeuctus, and Cleophantus. Of these Plato the philosopher1 mentions Cleophantus as being a fine horseman, but otherwise insignificant. One of the two eldest sons, Neocles, was bitten by a horse and died while he was still a child, and Diodes was adopted by his maternal grandfather, Lysander. Themistocles also had several daughters, of whom Mnesiptolema, a child of his second wife, married Archeptolis, her half-brother, Italia married Panthoides of Chios, and Sybaris married Nicomedes the Athenian. After Themistocles’ death, his nephew, Phrasicles, sailed to Magnesia and with her brothers’ consent married Nicomache and also took charge of the youngest of all the children, who was named Asia.
The people of Magnesia have a magnificent tomb of Themistocles in their market-place. As for his remains we need pay no attention to Andocides, when he says in his Address To His Associates that the Athenians stole them and scattered them into thin air, since this writer is plainly telling untruths to stir up the hatred of the oligarchs against, the people. Phylarchus, too, dramatizes his narrative to such an extent that he all but employs stage machinery, bringing on a certain Neocles and Demopbilus as Themistocles’ children simply to introduce a touching scene, which anybody can see is pure invention.
But Diodorus the Topographer, in his treatise On Tombs, mentions, as a surmise rather than as an established fact, that near the great harbour of Piraeus a kind of elbow juts out from the headland opposite Alcimus: as you round this, he says, where the sea begins to grow calm, there is a large plinth, and the monument resting on this and shaped like an altar, he believes, is the tomb of Themistocles. And he claims the support of Plato, the comic poet, who writes:
There on a noble height they heaped your tomb
Above the shore, and there the merchantmen
Shall hail it as they pass; there you look down
Upon the outward and the inward bound,
And the galleys crowding sail as they race for home.
There were certain honours, too, which the Magnesians kept up for the descendants of Themistocles even down to my own times, and these were enjoyed by Themistocles the Athenian, who was a friend and fellow-student of mine in the school of Ammonius the philosopher.