Themistocles

Themistocles, son of Neocles, an Athenian. The faults of his early youth were redeemed by great virtues, so much so that no one is set before him, and few are reckoned his equals. But we must begin from the start. His father Neocles was of noble birth. He took to wife a woman of Acarnania, of whom Themistocles was born. Since he was little approved by his parents, because he lived too freely and neglected the family estate, he was disinherited by his father. This affront did not break him, but roused him. For when he had judged that it could not be wiped out without the utmost exertion, he gave himself wholly to public life, serving his friends and his reputation with great diligence. He was much engaged in private trials and often came forward before the assembly of the people; no great affair was conducted without him; he quickly found what was needed and easily set the same forth in speech; nor was he less ready in action than in invention, since, as Thucydides says, he judged most truly concerning present matters and most shrewdly conjectured concerning the future. Hence it came about that in a short time he became famous.

His first step in public life was in the war with Corcyra; being made general by the people to conduct it, he rendered the state more warlike not only for the present war but also for the time to come. For whereas the public revenue derived from the mines was being squandered each year by the largesse of the magistrates, he persuaded the people that with this money a fleet of a hundred ships be built. This being quickly accomplished, he first crushed the Corcyraeans and then, by hunting down the pirates of the sea, made the sea safe. By this he both enriched the Athenians and made them most skilled in naval warfare. How greatly this contributed to the safety of all Greece was learned in the Persian war. For when Xerxes was making war by sea and land upon all Europe, he invaded it with such forces as no one ever had either before or since; for his fleet was of twelve hundred ships of war, which two thousand transports followed, while his land army numbered seven hundred thousand foot and four hundred thousand horse. When report of his coming had been brought into Greece, and the Athenians were said to be the special object of attack on account of the battle of Marathon, they sent to Delphi to inquire what they should do about their affairs. As they deliberated, the Pythia answered that they should fortify themselves with wooden walls. Since no one understood what this response meant, Themistocles persuaded them that it was the counsel of Apollo that they should betake themselves and their possessions to their ships; for it was a wooden wall that the god signified. This counsel being approved, they added to their earlier ships as many triremes again, and carried all their movable property partly to Salamis, partly to Troezen; the citadel they handed over to the priests and a few elders to attend to the sacred rites, and the rest of the town they abandoned.

His counsel was displeasing to most of the states, and they preferred to fight on land. And so picked men were sent with Leonidas, king of the Lacedaemonians, to seize Thermopylae and to suffer the barbarians to advance no farther. They could not withstand the enemy's force, and all perished in that place. But the combined fleet of Greece, of three hundred ships, in which two hundred were Athenian, first engaged the king's fleet off Artemisium, between Euboea and the mainland; for Themistocles sought the narrows, lest he be encircled by numbers. Hence, although they came off with the battle even, they did not dare remain in the same place, since there was danger that, if part of the enemy's ships rounded Euboea, they would be hemmed in by a twofold peril. Thus it came about that they withdrew from Artemisium and stationed their fleet off Salamis, over against Athens.

But Xerxes, having stormed Thermopylae, at once advanced upon the city and, with none defending it, slew the priests whom he found in the citadel and destroyed it by fire. Terrified by its flame, the men of the fleet did not dare to remain, and most urged that they disperse to their homes and defend themselves behind their walls; Themistocles alone stood firm and declared that united they could prove a match, but scattered they would perish, and he affirmed that this would befall them, addressing Eurybiades, king of the Lacedaemonians, who then held the supreme command. When he moved him less than he wished, he sent by night to the king the most trusty of his slaves, to announce in his own words that his adversaries were in flight: if they got away, the king would finish the war with greater toil and over a longer time, since he would be forced to pursue them one by one; but if he attacked them at once, he would in a short while overwhelm them all together. The aim of this was that against their will all should be forced to fight it out. When the barbarian heard this, believing that no deceit lay beneath it, on the next day he engaged in a place most unfavourable to himself and most opportune for his enemies — a strait so narrow that the multitude of his ships could not be deployed. He was therefore conquered more even by the counsel of Themistocles than by the arms of Greece.

Although Xerxes had fared badly, he still had such remnants of his forces that even then he could have overwhelmed the enemy with them; from this position he was a second time dislodged by the same man. For Themistocles, fearing that he would persist in the war, informed him that it was being contrived that the bridge which he had made over the Hellespont should be broken and his return into Asia cut off, and persuaded him of this. And so, by the same route which he had traversed in six months, he returned into Asia in less than thirty days, and judged that he had not been conquered by Themistocles but saved by him. Thus by the prudence of one man Greece was set free and Asia bowed to Europe. This was a second victory, one that can be compared with the trophy of Marathon: for in like manner off Salamis a very small number of ships overcame the greatest fleet within the memory of men.

Great was Themistocles in this war and no less so in peace. For since the Athenians were using the harbour of Phalerum, which was neither large nor good, by his counsel the threefold harbour of the Piraeus was established and surrounded by such walls that it equalled the city itself in dignity and surpassed it in usefulness. He likewise restored the walls of the Athenians, at especial peril to himself. For the Lacedaemonians, finding a plausible pretext in the inroads of the barbarians, by which to say that no city outside the Peloponnese ought to have walls, lest there be fortified places that the enemy might seize, tried to prevent the Athenians from building. This looked far otherwise than they wished it to seem. For the Athenians, by the two victories of Marathon and Salamis, had won such glory among all nations that the Lacedaemonians understood there would be a contest with them for the primacy. They therefore wished them to be as weak as possible. When they heard that the walls were being built, they sent envoys to Athens to forbid it. In their presence the Athenians ceased, and said that they would send envoys to them on the matter. This embassy Themistocles undertook, and at first set out alone; the remaining envoys he directed to go out only when the walls should seem to have been raised high enough for defence; meanwhile all, slave and free, were to ply the work and spare no place, whether sacred or private or public, and to bring together from every quarter whatever they thought suitable for fortification. Hence it came about that the walls of the Athenians were made up of shrines and sepulchres.

Themistocles, however, when he came to Lacedaemon, was unwilling to approach the magistrates and took pains to draw out the time as long as possible, putting forward as a pretext that he was awaiting his colleagues. When the Lacedaemonians complained that the work was going forward none the less and that he was trying to deceive them in the matter, in the meantime the rest of the envoys arrived. Having heard from them that not much of the fortification remained to be done, he approached the ephors of the Lacedaemonians, in whose hands lay the supreme power, and maintained before them that false reports had been brought; that it was therefore fair that they should send good men of noble birth, to whom credit might be given, to investigate the matter, and that meanwhile they should hold him as a hostage. His wish was granted, and three envoys who had held the highest offices were sent to Athens. Themistocles bade his colleagues set out with these, and instructed them not to send back the Lacedaemonian envoys before he himself had been sent home. After he judged that these had reached Athens, he went to the magistrates and senate of the Lacedaemonians and declared most openly before them: that the Athenians, by his counsel, which they were entitled to follow by the common law of nations, had walled in their public gods and their ancestral household deities, that they might the more easily defend them from the enemy, and had done nothing in this that was disadvantageous to Greece. For their city stood as a bulwark set against the barbarians, before which the king's forces had already twice made shipwreck. But the Lacedaemonians were acting ill and unjustly, in that they regarded rather what was useful to their own dominion than what was useful to all Greece. Therefore, if they wished to recover their own envoys whom they had sent to Athens, they must send him back, since otherwise they would never receive those men again into their country.

Yet he did not escape the envy of his fellow-citizens. For through the same fear by which Miltiades had been condemned, he was cast out of the state by the votes of the potsherds and withdrew to dwell at Argos. There, while he lived with great dignity on account of his many virtues, the Lacedaemonians sent envoys to Athens to accuse him in his absence, on the ground that he had formed an alliance with the Persian king to overwhelm Greece. On this charge he was condemned in his absence. When he heard this, since he did not see himself safe enough at Argos, he removed to Corcyra. There, when he had observed that the leading men of the island feared lest on his account the Lacedaemonians and Athenians declare war upon them, he fled to Admetus, king of the Molossians, with whom he had no tie of guest-friendship. When he had come there and the king happened to be away, in order that he might be received under a more binding obligation, he caught up the king's little son and with him cast himself into the shrine that was worshipped with the highest reverence. From there he did not come forth until the king, giving his right hand, took him under his protection — a pledge which he honoured. For when the Athenians and Lacedaemonians demanded him by a public embassy, the king did not betray his suppliant, but warned him to look to his safety; for it was difficult for him to be safe in a place so near. And so he ordered him to be conducted to Pydna and gave him an escort sufficient for his protection. There he embarked, unknown to all the sailors, on a ship which, when it was being carried by a great storm toward Naxos, where the army of the Athenians then was, Themistocles perceived that, if he reached that place, he must perish. Compelled by this necessity, he disclosed to the master of the ship who he was, promising much if he would save him. And the man, moved by pity for so renowned a man, kept the ship at anchor through a day and a night in the open sea, far from the island, and allowed no one to leave it. Thence he came to Ephesus and there set Themistocles ashore; and Themistocles afterwards repaid him a kindness in proportion to his deserts.

I know that very many have written that Themistocles crossed into Asia in the reign of Xerxes; but I give my preference to Thucydides, because he was, of those who have left a history of those times, the nearest in age, and was of the same state. He, moreover, says that Themistocles came to Artaxerxes and sent a letter in these words: 'I, Themistocles, have come to you, I who of all the Greeks brought the most evils upon your house, so long as it was necessary for me to make war against your father and to defend my country. Yet I did far more good after I myself began to be in safety and he in peril. For when he wished to return into Asia after the battle of Salamis, I informed him by letter that it was being contrived that the bridge which he had made over the Hellespont should be broken and that he should be cut off by the enemy; by which message he was freed from his danger. But now, harried by all Greece, I have fled to you, seeking your friendship; and if I obtain it, you shall have me as good a friend as he found me a brave enemy. But I ask of you that, concerning the matters which I wish to discuss with you, you grant me the space of a year, and at its end allow me to come to you.'

The king, admiring his greatness of soul and desiring to win such a man to himself, granted his request. He gave all that time to the language and discourse of the Persians, in which he became so learned that he is said to have spoken before the king far more elegantly than those who had been born in Persia could. There, having promised much to the king, and as the most welcome of all, that, if the king would follow his counsels, he would crush Greece in war, he was loaded with great gifts by Artaxerxes and returned into Asia, and made his dwelling at Magnesia. For the king had given him that city — in these very words, that it should furnish his bread (and from that region fifty talents came in yearly); Lampsacus, moreover, from which he was to get his wine; and Myus, from which he was to have his relish. Two monuments of him have remained down to our own memory: his tomb near the town in which he was buried, and a statue in the market-place of Magnesia. Concerning his death much has been written in various ways by most authors, but we approve as our authority the same Thucydides, who says that he died of disease at Magnesia, and does not deny that there was a report that he took poison of his own accord, when he despaired of being able to make good what he had promised the king concerning the crushing of Greece. The same writer has recorded for memory that his bones were secretly buried in Attica by his friends, since by the laws it was not permitted, because he had been condemned for treason.