(514-449 B.C.)
[Illustration: Themistocles. [TN]]
Themistocles, who raised Athens from a subordinate position to her proud
rank as leader of the Grecian States, was born about the year B.C., 514.
He was the son of Nicocles, an Athenian of moderate fortune, who,
however, was connected with the priestly house of the Lycomedae; his
mother, Abrotonon, or, according to others Euterpe, was not an Athenian
citizen; and according to most authorities, not even a Greek, but either
a native of Caria or of Thrace. The education which he received was like
that of all Athenians of rank at the time, but Themistocles had no taste
for the elegant arts which then began to form a prominent part in the
education of Athenian youths; he applied himself with much more zeal to
the pursuit of practical and useful knowledge. This, as well as the
numerous anecdotes about his youthful wilfulness and waywardness,
together with the sleepless nights which he is said to have passed in
meditating on the trophies of Miltiades, are more or less clear symptoms
of the character which he subsequently displayed as a general and a
statesman. His mind was early bent upon great things, and was incapable
of being diverted from them by reverses, scruples, or difficulties. The
great object of his life appears to have been to make Athens great. The
powers with which nature had endowed him were quickness of perception,
an accurate judgment of the course which was to be taken on sudden and
extraordinary emergencies, and sagacity in calculating the consequences
of his own actions; and these were the qualities which Athens during her
wars with Persia stood most in need of. His ambition was unbounded, but
he was at the same time persuaded that it could not reach its end unless
Athens was the first among the Grecian States; and as he was not very
scrupulous about the means that he employed for these ends, he came into
frequent conflict with Aristides the Just, who had nothing at heart but
the welfare of his country and no desire for personal aggrandizement.
In the year 483 B.C., when Aristides was sent into exile by ostracism,
Themistocles, who had for several years taken an active part in public
affairs, and was one of the chief authors of the banishment of his
rival, remained in the almost undivided possession of the popular favor,
and the year after, B.C. 482, he was elected archon eponymus of Athens.
The city was at that time involved in a war with AEgina, which then
possessed the strongest navy in Greece, and with which Athens was unable
to cope. It was in this year that Themistocles conceived and partly
carried into effect the plans by which he intended to raise the power of
Athens. His first object was to increase the navy of Athens; and this he
did ostensibly to enable Athens to contend with AEgina, but his real
intention was to put his country in a position to meet the danger of a
second Persian invasion, with which Greece was threatened. The manner in
which he raised the naval power was this. Hitherto the people of Athens
had been accustomed to divide among themselves the yearly revenues of
the silver-mines of Laurion. In the year of his archonship these
revenues were unusually large, and he persuaded his countrymen to forego
their personal advantage, and to apply these revenues to the enlargement
of their fleet. His advice was followed, and the fleet was raised to the
number of two hundred sail. It was probably at the same time that he
induced the Athenians to pass a decree that for the purpose of keeping
up their navy, twenty new ships should be built every year. Athens soon
after made peace with AEgina, as Xerxes was at Sardis making preparations
for invading Greece with all the forces he could muster. At the same
time Themistocles was actively engaged in allaying the disputes and
hostile feelings which existed among the several states of Greece. He
acted, however, with great severity toward those who espoused the cause
of the Persians, and a Greek interpreter, who accompanied the envoys of
Xerxes that came to Athens to demand earth and water as a sign of
submission, was put to death for having made use of the Greek tongue in
the service of the common enemy.
After affairs among the Greeks were tolerably settled, a detachment of
the allied troops of the Greeks was sent out to take possession of
Tempe, under the command of Themistocles, of Athens, and Euaenetus, of
Sparta; but on finding that there they would be overwhelmed by the host
of the barbarians, they returned to the Corinthian isthmus. When Xerxes
arrived in Pieria, the Greek fleet took its post near Artemisium on the
north coast of Euboea, under the command of the Spartan admiral
Eurybiades, under whom Themistocles condescended to serve in order not
to cause new dissensions among the Greeks, although Athens alone
furnished one hundred and twenty-seven ships, and supplied the
Chalcidians with twenty others; while the Spartan contingent was
incomparably smaller. When the Persian fleet, notwithstanding the severe
losses which it had sustained by a storm, determined to sail round the
eastern and southern coasts of Euboea, and then up the Euripus, in order
to cut off the Greek fleet at Artemisium, the Greeks were so surprised
and alarmed that Themistocles had great difficulty in inducing them to
remain and maintain their station. The Euboeans, who perceived the
advantages of the plan of Themistocles, rewarded him with the sum of
fifty talents, part of which he gave to the Spartan Eurybiades and the
Corinthian Adimantus to induce them to remain at Artemisium. In the
battle which then took place, the Greeks gained considerable advantage,
though the victory was not decisive. A storm and a second engagement
near Artemisium, severely injured the fleet of the Persians, but the
Greeks also sustained great losses, as half of their ships were partly
destroyed and partly rendered unfit for further service. When at the
same time they received intelligence of the defeat of Leonidas, at
Thermopylae, the Greeks resolved to retreat from Artemisium, and sailed
to the Saronic gulf.
Xerxes was now advancing from Thermopylae, and Athens trembled for her
existence, while the Peloponnesians were bent upon seeking shelter and
safety in their peninsula, and upon fortifying themselves by a wall
across the Corinthian isthmus. On the approach of the danger the
Athenians had sent to Delphi to consult the oracle about the means they
should employ for their safety, and the god had commanded Athens to
defend herself behind wooden walls. This oracle, which probably had been
given at the suggestion of Themistocles, was now also interpreted by him
as referring to the fleet, and his advice to seek safety in the fleet
was followed. He then further moved that the Athenians should abandon
the city to the care of its tutelary deity, that the women, children,
and infirm should be removed to Salamis, AEgina, or Troezen, and that the
men should embark in the ships. The fleet of the Greeks, consisting of
three hundred and eighty ships, assembled at Salamis, still under the
supreme command of Eurybiades. When the Persians had made themselves
masters of Attica, and Athens was seen in flames at a distance, some of
the commanders of the fleet, under the influence of fear, began to make
preparation for an immediate retreat. Themistocles saw the disastrous
results of such a course, and exerted all his powers of persuasion to
induce the commanders of the fleet to maintain their post; when all
attempts proved ineffectual, Themistocles had recourse to threats, and
thus induced Eurybiades to stay. The example of the admiral was followed
by the other commanders also. In the meantime the Persian fleet arrived
in the Saronic gulf, and the fears of the Peloponnesians were revived
and doubled, and nothing seemed to be able to keep them together. At
this last and critical moment Themistocles devised a plan to compel them
to remain and face the enemy. He sent a message to the Persian admiral,
informing him that the Greeks were on the point of dispersing, and that
if the Persians would attack them while they were assembled, they would
easily conquer them all at once, whereas it would be otherwise necessary
to defeat them one after another.
This apparently well-meant advice was eagerly taken up by the enemy, who
now hastened, as he thought, to destroy the fleet of the Greeks. But the
event proved the wisdom of Themistocles. The unwieldy armament of the
Persians was unable to perform any movements in the narrow straits
between the island of Salamis and the mainland. The Greeks gained a most
complete and brilliant victory, for they only lost forty ships, while
the enemy lost two hundred, or according to Ctesias, even five hundred.
Very soon after the victory was decided, Xerxes with the remains of the
fleet left the Attic coast and sailed toward the Hellespont. The battles
of Artemisium and Salamis occurred in the same year, B.C. 480.
When the Greeks were informed of the departure of Xerxes, they pursued
him as far as Andros, without gaining sight of his fleet, and
Themistocles proposed to continue the chase. But he gave way to the
opposition that was made to this plan, and consented not to drive the
vanquished enemy to despair. The Greek fleet therefore only stayed some
time among the Cyclades, to chastise those islanders who had been
unfaithful to the national cause. Themistocles, in the meantime, in
order to get completely rid of the king and his fleet, sent a message to
him, exhorting him to hasten back to Asia as speedily as possible, for
otherwise he would be in danger of having his retreat cut off.
Themistocles availed himself of the stay of the Greek fleet among the
Cyclades for the purpose of enriching himself at the cost of the
islanders, partly by extorting money from them by way of punishment, and
partly by accepting bribes for securing them impunity for their conduct.
He was now, however, the greatest man in Greece, his fame spread
everywhere, and all acknowledged that the country had been saved through
his wisdom and resolution. But the confederate Greeks, actuated by
jealousy, awarded to him only the second prize; at Sparta, whither he
went, as Herodotus says, to be honored, he received a chaplet of
olive-leaves--a reward which they had bestowed upon their own admiral
Eurybiades--and the best chariot that the city possessed, and on his
return three hundred knights escorted him as far as Tegea in Arcadia.
When the Persian army had been again defeated at Plataea and Mycale in
B.C. 479, and when the Athenians had rebuilt their private dwellings, it
was also resolved, on the advice of Themistocles, to restore the
fortifications of Athens, but on a larger scale than they had been
before, and more in accordance with the proud position which the city
now occupied in Greece. This plan excited the fear and jealousy of the
rival states, and especially of Sparta, which sent an embassy to Athens,
and under the veil of friendship, which ill concealed its selfish
policy, endeavored to persuade the Athenians not to fortify the city.
Themistocles, who saw through their designs, undertook the task of
defeating them with their own weapons. He advised his countrymen to
dismiss the Spartan ambassadors, and to promise that Athenian envoys
should be sent to Sparta to treat with them there respecting the
fortifications. He himself offered to go as one of the envoys, but he
directed the Athenians not to let his colleagues follow him until the
walls, on which all hands should be employed during his absence, should
be raised to such a height as to afford sufficient protection against
any attack that might be made upon them. His advice was followed, and
Themistocles, after his arrival at Sparta, took no steps toward opening
the negotiations, but pretended that he was obliged to wait for the
arrival of his colleagues. When he was informed that the walls had
reached a sufficient height, and when he could drop the mask with
safety, he gave the Spartans a well-deserved rebuke, returned home, and
the walls were completed without any hindrance. He then proceeded to
carry into effect the chief thing which remained to be done to make
Athens the first maritime power of Greece. He induced the Athenians to
fortify the three ports of Phalerum, Munychia, and Piraeus by a double
range of walls.
[Illustration: The victors of Salamis.]
When Athens was thus raised to the station on which it had been the
ambition of Themistocles to place it, his star began to sink, though he
still continued for some time to enjoy the fruits of his memorable
deeds. He was conscious of the services he had done his country, and
never scrupled to show that he knew his own value. His extortion and
avarice, which made him ready to do anything, and by which he
accumulated extraordinary wealth, could not fail to raise enemies
against him. But what perhaps contributed more to his downfall was his
constant watchfulness in maintaining and promoting the interests of
Athens against the encroachments of Sparta, which in its turn was ever
looking out for an opportunity to crush him. The great men who had grown
up by his side at Athens, such as Cimon, and who were no less indebted
to him for their greatness in the eyes of Greece than to their own
talents, were his natural rivals, and succeeded in gradually supplanting
him in the favor of the people. They also endeavored to represent him as
a man of too much power, and as dangerous to the public. The consequence
of all this was that in B.C. 472, he was banished from Athens by the
ostracism. He took up his residence at Argos, where he was still
residing when, in the same year, B.C. 472, Pausanias was put to death at
Sparta for his ambitious and treacherous designs, and his fate involved
that of Themistocles. The Spartans, in their search to discover more
traces of the plot of Pausanias, found a letter of Themistocles from
which it was evident that he had been acquainted with his plans. This
was sufficient for the Spartans to ground upon it the charge that
Themistocles had been an accomplice in his crime, and ambassadors were
forthwith sent to Athens to demand that he should suffer the same
punishment as Pausanias.
This charge was no less welcome to his enemies at Athens than the
discovery of his letter had been to the Spartans. Orders were
consequently issued to arrest and convey him to Athens; and foreseeing
that his destruction would be unavoidable if he should fall into the
hands of his enemies, he fled to Corcyra, and thence to the opposite
coast of Epirus, where he took refuge at the court of Admetus, king of
the Molossians. On his arrival the king was absent, but his Queen Phthia
received him kindly, and pointed out to him in what manner he might win
the sympathy of Admetus. When the king returned home, Themistocles,
seated on the hearth and holding the child of Admetus in his arms,
implored the king not to deliver him up to his persecutors, who traced
him to the court of the Molossians. It is stated that Themistocles was
here joined by his wife and children. The king not only granted his
request, but provided him with the means of reaching the coast of the
AEgean, whence he intended to proceed to Asia and seek refuge at the
court of the king of Persia. From Pydna he sailed in a merchant ship to
the coast of Asia Minor. At Ephesus he received such part of his
property as his friends had been able to wrest from the hands of his
enemies at Athens, together with that which he had left at Argos.
A few months after his arrival in Asia, Xerxes was assassinated (B.C.
465), and was after a short interval succeeded by Artaxerxes. Various
adventures are told of Themistocles before he reached the residence of
the Persian king. On his arrival he sent him a letter, in which he
acknowledged the evils he had inflicted upon his predecessor; but at the
same time claimed the merit of having saved him from destruction by his
timely advice. He added that his present exile was only the consequence
of his great zeal for the interests of the king of Persia. He did not
ask for an immediate interview with the king, as he was yet unacquainted
with the language and the manners of the Persians, to acquire which he
requested a year's time. During this period he applied himself so
zealously and with such success to these studies that at the close of
the year, when he was presented to the king, he is said to have excited
the jealousy of the courtiers, and was most kindly received by the king,
to whom he held out prospects of conquering Greece by his assistance.
The king became so attached to him, that Themistocles was always in his
company.
But death overtook him at the age of sixty-five, before any of his plans
were carried into effect. Most of the ancient writers state that he put
an end to his life by poison, or according to another strange story, by
drinking the blood of a bull, because he despaired of being able to
fulfil his promises to the king. The motive for his suicide is very
questionable. Reflection on his past life and upon the glory of his
former rivals at Athens, are much more likely to have rendered him
dissatisfied with life. Before he took the poison he is said to have
requested his friends to convey his remains secretly to Attica, and in
later times a tomb which was believed to contain them existed in Piraeus.
In the market-place of Magnesia a splendid monument was erected to his
memory, and his descendants in that place continued to be distinguished
by certain privileges down to the time of Plutarch.