a Thracian, and that her name was not Abrotonon but Euterpe. Manthes
even tells us that she came from the city of Halikarnassus in Caria. All
base-born Athenians were made to assemble at Kynosarges, a gymnasium
outside the walls sacred to Herakles, who was regarded as base born
among the gods because his mother was a mortal; and Themistokles induced
several youths of noble birth to come to Kynosarges with him and join in
the wrestling there, an ingenious device for destroying the exclusive
privileges of birth. But, for all that, he evidently was of the blood of
Lykomedes; for when the barbarians burned down the temple of the
Initiation at Phlya, which belonged to the whole race of the descendants
of Lykomedes, it was restored by Themistokles, as we are told by
Simonides.
II. He is agreed by all to have been a child of vigorous impulses,
naturally clever, and inclined to take an interest in important affairs
and questions of statesmanship. During his holidays and times of leisure
he did not play and trifle as other children do, but was always found
arranging some speech by himself and thinking it over. The speech was
always an attack on, or a defence of, some one of his playfellows. His
schoolmaster was wont to say, "You will be nothing petty, my boy; you
will be either a very good or a very bad man."
In his learning, he cared nothing for the exercises intended to form the
character, and mere showy accomplishments and graces, but eagerly
applied himself to all real knowledge, trusting to his natural gifts to
enable him to master what was thought to be too abstruse for his time of
life. In consequence of this, when in society he was ridiculed by those
who thought themselves well mannered and well educated, he was obliged
to make the somewhat vulgar retort that he could not tune a lute or play
upon the harp, but he could make a small and obscure state great and
glorious.
In spite of all this, Stesimbrotus says that Themistokles was a pupil of
Anaxagoras, and attended the lectures of Melissus the physicist; but
here he is wrong as to dates. Melissus was the general who was opposed
to Perikles, a much younger man than Themistokles, when he was besieging
Samos, and Anaxagoras was one of Perikles's friends. One is more
inclined to believe those who tell us that Themistokles was a follower
and admirer of Mnesiphilus of Phrearri, who was neither an orator nor a
natural philosopher, but a man who had deeply studied what went by the
name of wisdom, but was really political sharp practice and expedients
of statesmanship, which he had, as it were, inherited as a legacy from
Solon. Those who in later times mixed up this science with forensic
devices, and used it, not to deal with the facts of politics, but the
abstract ideas of speculative philosophy, were named Sophists.
Themistokles used to converse with this man when he had already begun
his political career. In his childhood he was capricious and unsteady,
his genius, as yet untempered by reason and experience, showing great
capacities both for good and evil, and after breaking out into vice, as
he himself used afterwards to admit, saying that the colts which are the
hardest to break in usually make the most valuable horses when properly
taught. But as for the stories which some have fabricated out of this,
about his being disinherited by his father, and about his mother
committing suicide through grief at her son's disgrace, they seem to be
untrue. On the other hand, some writers tell us that his father, wishing
to dissuade him from taking part in politics, pointed out to him the old
triremes lying abandoned on the beach, and told him that politicians,
when the people had no farther use for them, were cast aside in like
manner.
III. Very early in life Themistokles took a vigorous part in public
affairs, possessed by vehement ambition. Determined from the very outset
that he would become the leading man in the state, he eagerly entered
into all the schemes for displacing those who where then at the head of
affairs, especially attacking Aristeides, the son of Lysimachus, whose
policy he opposed on every occasion. Yet his enmity with this man seems
to have had a very boyish commencement; for they both entertained a
passion for the beautiful Stesilaus, who, we are told by Ariston the
philosopher, was descended from a family residing in the island of Keos.
After this difference they espoused different parties in the state, and
their different temper and habits widened the breach between them.
Aristeides was of a mild and honourable nature, and as a statesman cared
nothing for popularity or personal glory, but did what he thought right
with great caution and strict rectitude. He was thus often brought into
collision with Themistokles, who was trying to engage the people in many
new schemes, and to introduce startling reforms, by which he would
himself have gained credit, and which Aristeides steadily opposed.
He is said to have been so recklessly ambitious and so frenziedly eager
to take part in great events, that though he was very young at the time
of the battle of Marathon, when the country rang with the praises of the
generalship of Miltiades, he was often to be seen buried in thought,
passing sleepless nights and refusing invitations to wine-parties, and
that he answered those who asked him the cause of his change of habits,
that the trophies of Miltiades would not let him sleep. Other men
thought that the victory of Marathon had put an end to the war, but
Themistokles saw that it was but the prelude to a greater contest, in
which he prepared himself to stand forth as the champion of Greece, and,
foreseeing long before what was to come, endeavoured to make the city
of Athens ready to meet it.
IV. First of all, he had the courage to propose that the Athenians,
instead of dividing amongst themselves the revenues derived from the
silver mines at Laurium, should construct ships out of this fund for the
war with Aegina. This was then at its height, and the Aeginetans, who
had a large navy, were masters of the sea. By this means Themistokles
was more easily enabled to carry his point, not trying to terrify the
people by alluding to Darius and the Persians, who lived a long way off,
and whom few feared would ever come to attack them, but by cleverly
appealing to their feelings of patriotism against the Aeginetans, to
make them consent to the outlay.
With that money a hundred triremes were built, which were subsequently
used to fight against Xerxes. After this he kept gradually turning the
thoughts of the Athenians in the direction of the sea, because their
land force was unable even to hold its own against the neighbouring
states, while with a powerful fleet they could both beat off the
barbarians and make themselves masters of the whole of Greece. Thus, as
Plato says, instead of stationary soldiers as they were, he made them
roving sailors, and gave rise to the contemptuous remark that
Themistokles took away from the citizens of Athens the shield and the
spear, and reduced them to the oar and the rower's bench. This, we are
told by Stesimbrotus, he effected after quelling the opposition of
Miltiades, who spoke on the other side. Whether his proceedings at this
time were strictly constitutional or no I shall leave to others to
determine; but that the only safety of Greece lay in its fleet, and that
those triremes were the salvation of the Athenians after their city was
taken, can be proved by the testimony, among others, of Xerxes himself;
for although his land force was unbroken, he fled after his naval
defeat, as though no longer able to contend with the Greeks, and he left
Mardonius behind more to prevent pursuit, in my opinion, than with any
hopes of conquest.
V. Some writers tell us that he was a keen man of business, and explain
that his grand style of living made this necessary; for he made costly
sacrifices, and entertained foreigners in a splendid manner, all of
which required a large expenditure; but some accuse him of meanness and
avarice, and even say that he sold presents which were sent for his
table. When Philides the horse-dealer refused to sell him a colt, he
threatened that he would soon make a wooden horse of the man's house;
meaning that he would stir up lawsuits and claims against him from some
of his relations.
In ambition he surpassed every one. When yet a young and unknown man he
prevailed upon Epikles of Hermione, the admired performer on the harp,
to practise his art in his house, hoping thereby to bring many people to
it to listen. And he displeased the Greeks when he went to the Olympian
games by vying with Kimon in the luxury of his table, his tents, and his
other furniture. It was thought very proper for Kimon, a young man of
noble birth, to do so; but for a man who had not yet made himself a
reputation, and had not means to support the expense, such extravagance
seemed mere vulgar ostentation. In the dramatic contest, which even then
excited great interest and rivalry, the play whose expenses he paid for
won the prize. He put up a tablet in memory of his success bearing the
words: Themistokles of Phrearri was choragus, Phrynichus wrote the play,
Adeimantus was archon. Yet he was popular, for he knew every one of the
citizens by name, and gave impartial judgment in all cases referred to
him as arbitrator. Once, when Simonides of Keos asked him to strain a
point in his favour, Themistokles, who was a general at the time,
answered that Simonides would be a bad poet if he sang out of tune; and
he would be a bad magistrate if he favoured men against the law. At
another time he rallied Simonides on his folly in abusing the
Corinthians, who inhabited so fine a city, and in having his own statue
carved, though he was so ugly. He continued to increase in popularity by
judiciously courting the favour of the people, and was at length able to
secure the triumph of his own party, and the banishment of his rival
Aristeides.
VI. As the Persians were now about to invade Greece, the Athenians
deliberated as to who should be their leader. It is said that most men
refused the post of General through fear, but that Epikydes, the son of
Euphemides, a clever mob-orator, but cowardly and accessible to bribes,
desired to be appointed, and seemed very likely to be elected.
Themistokles, fearing that the state would be utterly ruined if its
affairs fell into such hands, bribed him into forgetting his ambitious
designs, and withdrawing his candidature.
He was much admired for his conduct when envoys came from the Persian
king to demand earth and water, in token of submission. He seized the
interpreter, and by a decree of the people had him put to death, because
he had dared to translate the commands of a barbarian into the language
of free Greeks. He acted in the same way to Arthmias of Zelea. This man,
at the instance of Themistokles, was declared infamous, he and his
children and his descendants for ever, because he brought Persian gold
among the Greeks. His greatest achievement of all, however, was, that he
put an end to all the internal wars in Greece, and reconciled the states
with one another, inducing them to defer the settlement of their feuds
until after the Persian war. In this he is said to have been greatly
assisted by Chileon the Arcadian.
VII. On his appointment as General, he at once endeavoured to prevail
upon his countrymen to man their fleet, leave their city, and go to meet
the enemy by sea as far from Greece as possible. As this met with great
opposition, he, together with the Lacedaemonians, led a large force as
far as the Vale of Tempe, which they intended to make their first line
of defence, as Thessaly had not at that time declared for the Persians.
When, however, the armies were forced to retire from thence, and all
Greece, up to Boeotia, declared for the Persians, the Athenians became
more willing to listen to Themistokles about fighting by sea, and he was
sent with a fleet to guard the straits at Artemisium. Here the Greeks
chose the Lacedaemonians, and their general, Eurybiades, to take the
command; but the Athenians refused to submit to any other state, because
they alone furnished more ships than all the rest. Themistokles, at this
crisis perceiving the danger, gave up his claims to Eurybiades, and
soothed the wounded pride of the Athenians, telling them that if they
proved themselves brave men in the war, they would find that all the
other states in Greece would cheerfully recognise their supremacy. On
this account he seems more than any one else to deserve the credit of
having saved Greece, and to have covered the Athenians with glory by
teaching them to surpass their enemies in bravery, and their allies in
good sense. When the Persian fleet reached Aphetai, Eurybiades was
terrified at the number of ships at the mouth of the Straits, and,
learning that two hundred sail more were gone round the outside of
Euboea to take him in the rear, he at once wished to retire further into
Greece, and support the fleet by the land army in Peloponnesus, for he
regarded the Persian king's fleet as utterly irresistible at sea. Upon
this the Euboeans, who feared to be deserted by the Greeks, sent one
Pelagon with a large sum of money, to make secret proposals to
Themistokles. He took the money, Herodotus tells us, and gave it to
Eurybiades and his party. One of those who most vehemently opposed him
was Architeles, the captain of the Sacred Trireme, who had not
sufficient money to pay his crew, and therefore wished to sail back to
Athens. Themistokles stirred up the anger of his men to such a pitch
that they rushed upon him and took away his supper. At this, Architeles
was much vexed, but Themistokles sent him a basket containing bread and
meat, with a talent of silver hidden underneath it, with a message
bidding him eat his supper and pay his men the next day, but that, if he
did not, Themistokles would denounce him to his countrymen as having
received bribes from the enemy. This we are told by Phanias of Lesbos.
VIII. The battles which took place in the Straits with the Persian
ships, were indeed indecisive, but the experience gained in them was of
the greatest value to the Greeks, as they were taught by their result
that multitudes of ships and splendid ensigns, and the boastful
war-cries of barbarians, avail nothing against men who dare to fight
hand to hand, and that they must disregard all these and boldly grapple
with their enemies. Pindar seems to have understood this when he says,
about the battle at Artemisium, that there
"The sons of Athena laid
Their freedom's grand foundation."
for indeed confidence leads to victory. This Artemisium is a promontory
of the island of Euboea, stretching northwards beyond Hestiaea; and
opposite to it is Olizon, which was once part of the dominions of
Philoktetes. There is upon it a small temple of Artemis (Diana), which
is called the "Temple towards the East." Round it stand trees and a
circle of pillars of white stone. This stone, when rubbed in the hand,
has the colour and smell of saffron. On one of these pillars were
written the following verses:
"The sons of Athens once o'ercame in fight
All Asia's tribes, on yonder sea;
They raised these pillars round Diana's shrine,
To thank her for their victory."
Even now a place is pointed out on the beach where, under a great heap
of sand, there is a deep bed of black ashes where it is thought the
wrecks and dead bodies were burned.
IX. But when the news of Thermopylae was brought to the Greeks at
Artemisium, that Leonidas had fallen, and Xerxes was in possession of
the passes, they retired further into Greece, the Athenians protecting
the rear on account of their bravery, and full of pride at their
achievements. At all the harbours and landing-places along the coast,
Themistokles, as he passed by, cut conspicuous inscriptions on stones,
some of which he found on the spot, and others which he himself set up
at all the watering-places and convenient stations for ships. In these
inscriptions he besought the Ionians, if possible, to come over to the
Athenians, who were their fathers, and who were fighting for their
liberty; and if they could not do this, to throw the barbarian army into
confusion during battle. He hoped that these writings would either bring
the Ionians over to the side of the Greeks, or make them suspected of
treason by the Persians.
Meanwhile Xerxes invaded Greece through Doris, and came into Phokis,
where he burned the city of the Phokaeans. The Greeks made no
resistance, although the Athenians begged them to make a stand in
Boeotia, and cover Attica, urging that they had fought in defence of the
whole of Greece at Artemisium. However, as no one would listen to them,
but all the rest of the Greeks determined to defend the Peloponnesus,
and were collecting all their forces within it, and building a wall
across the Isthmus from sea to sea, the Athenians were enraged at their
treachery, and disheartened at being thus abandoned to their fate. They
had no thoughts of resisting so enormous an army; and the only thing
they could do under the circumstances, to abandon their city and trust
to their ships, was distasteful to the people, who saw nothing to be
gained by victory, and no advantage in life, if they had to desert the
temples of their gods and the monuments of their fathers.
X. At this crisis, Themistokles, despairing of influencing the populace
by human reasoning, just as a dramatist has recourse to supernatural
machinery, produced signs and wonders and oracles. He argued that it was
a portent that the sacred snake during those days deserted his usual
haunt. The priests, who found their daily offerings to him of the first
fruits of the sacrifices left untouched, told the people, at the
instigation of Themistokles, that the goddess Athena (Minerva) had left
the city, and was leading them to the sea. He also swayed the popular
mind by the oracle, in which he argued that by "wooden walls" ships were
alluded to; and that Apollo spoke of Salamis as "divine," not terrible
or sad, because Salamis would be the cause of great good fortune to the
Greeks. Having thus gained his point, he proposed a decree, that the
city be left to the care of the tutelary goddess of the Athenians, that
all able-bodied men should embark in the ships of war, and that each man
should take the best measures in his power to save the women and
children and slaves.
When this decree was passed, most of the Athenians sent their aged folks
and women over to Troezen, where they were hospitably received by the
Troezenians, who decreed that they should be maintained at the public
expense, receiving each two obols a day, that the children should be
allowed to pick the fruit from any man's tree, and even that their
school expenses should be paid. This decree was proposed by Nikagoras.
The Athenians at this time had no public funds, yet Aristotle tells us
that the Senate of the Areopagus, by supplying each fighting man with
eight drachmas, did good service in manning the fleet; and Kleidemus
tells us that this money was obtained by an artifice of Themistokles.
When the Athenians were going down to the Peiraeus, he gave out that the
Gorgon's head had been lost from the statue of the goddess.
Themistokles, under pretext of seeking for it, searched every man, and
found great stores of money hidden in their luggage, which he
confiscated, and thus was able to supply the crews of the ships with
abundance of necessaries. When the whole city put to sea, the sight
affected some to pity, while others admired their courage in sending
their families out of the way that they might not be disturbed by
weeping and wailing as they went over to Salamis. Yet many of the aged
citizens who were left behind at Athens afforded a piteous sight; and
even the domestic animals, as they ran howling to the sea-shore,
accompanying their masters, touched men's hearts. It is said that the
dog of Xanthippus, the father of Perikles, could not endure to be
separated from him, and jumping into the sea swam alongside of his
trireme, reached Salamis, and then at once died. His tomb is even now to
be seen at the place called Kynossema.
XI. Besides these great achievements, Themistokles, perceiving that his
countrymen longed to have Aristeides back again, and fearing that he
might ally himself with the Persian, and work ruin to Greece out of
anger against his own country (for Aristeides had been banished from
Athens before the war when Themistokles came into power), proposed a
decree, that any citizen who had been banished for a term of years,
might return and do his best by word and deed to serve his country
together with the other citizens.
Eurybiades, on account of the prestige of Sparta, held the chief command
of the fleet, but was unwilling to risk a battle, preferring to weigh
anchor and sail to the Isthmus where the land army of the Peloponnesians
was assembled. This project was opposed by Themistokles; and it was on
this occasion that he made use of the following well-known saying: When
Eurybiades said to him, "Themistokles, in the public games they whip
those who rise before their turn." "True," said Themistokles, "but they
do not crown those who lag behind." And when Eurybiades raised his
staff as if he would strike him, Themistokles said, "Strike, but hear
me." When Eurybiades, in wonder at his gentle temper, bade him speak, he
again urged Eurybiades to remain at Salamis. Some one then said, that a
man without a city had no right to tell those who still possessed one to
abandon it, but Themistokles turning upon him, answered, "Wretch, we
Athenians have indeed abandoned our walls and houses, because we scorn
to be slaves for the sake of mere buildings, but we have the greatest
city of all Greece, our two hundred ships of war, which now are ready to
help you if you choose to be saved by their means; but, if you betray us
and leave us, some of the Greeks will soon learn to their cost that the
Athenians have obtained a free city and a territory no worse than that
which they left behind." When Eurybiades heard Themistokles use this
language, he began to fear that the Athenians might really sail away and
leave him.
When Eretrieus tried to say something to Themistokles, he answered, "Do
you too dare to say anything about war, you, who like a cuttle-fish,
have a sword but no heart."
XII. It is said by some writers that while Themistokles was talking
about these matters upon the deck of his ship, an owl was seen to fly
from the right-hand side of the fleet, and to perch upon his mast; which
omen encouraged all the Athenians to fight. But when the Persian host
poured down to Phalerum, covering the whole sea-shore, and the king
himself was seen with all his forces, coming down to the beach with the
infantry, the Greeks forgot the words of Themistokles, and began to cast
eager glances towards the Isthmus and to be angry with any one who
proposed to do anything else than withdraw. They determined to retire by
night, and the steersmen were given orders to prepare for a voyage.
Themistokles, enraged at the idea of the Greek fleet dispersing, and
losing the advantage of the narrow waters, planned the affair of
Sikinnus. This Sikinnus was a Persian who had been taken prisoner, and
who was fond of Themistokles and took charge of his children. He sent
this man secretly to Xerxes, ordering him to say that Themistokles, the
general of the Athenians, has determined to come over to the king of the
Persians, and is the first to tell him that the Greeks are about to
retreat. He bids him not to allow them to fly, but to attack them while
they are disheartened at not being supported by a land force, and
destroy their fleet.