Plutarch's Lives: Volume I

"Though ye may sing Pausanias or Xanthippus in your lays,
Or Leotychides, 'tis Aristeides whom I praise,
The best of men as yet produced by holy Athens' State,
Since thus upon Themistokles has fall'n Latona's hate:
That liar and that traitor base, who for a bribe unclean,
Refused to reinstate a man who his own guest had been.
His friend too, in his native Ialysus, but who took
Three silver talents with him, and his friend forsook.
Bad luck go with the fellow, who unjustly some restores
From exile, while some others he had banished from our shores,
And some he puts to death; and sits among us gorged with pelf.
He kept an ample table at the Isthmian games himself,
And gave to every guest that came full plenty of cold meat,
The which they with a prayer did each and every of them eat,
But their prayer was 'Next year be there no Themistokles to meet.'"

And after the exile and condemnation of Themistokles, Timokreon wrote much more abusively about him in a song which begins,

"Muse, far away,
Sound this my lay,
For it both meet and right is."

It is said that Timokreon was exiled from home for having dealings with the Persians, and that Themistokles confirmed his sentence. When, then, Themistokles was charged with intriguing with the Persians, Timokreon wrote upon him,

"Timokreon is not the only Greek
That turned a traitor, Persian gold to seek;
I'm not the only fox without a tail,
But others put their honour up for sale."

XXII. As the Athenians, through his unpopularity, eagerly listened to any story to his discredit, he was obliged to weary them by constantly repeating the tale of his own exploits to them. In answer to those who were angry with him, he would ask, "Are you weary of always receiving benefits from the same hand?" He also vexed the people by building the Temple of Artemis of Good Counsel, as he called her, hinting that he had taken good counsel for the Greeks. This temple he placed close to his own house in Melite, at the place where at the present day the public executioner casts out the bodies of executed criminals, and the clothes and ropes of men who have hanged themselves. Even in our own times a small statue of Themistokles used to stand in the Temple of Artemis of Good Counsel; and he seems to have been a hero not only in mind, but in appearance. The Athenians made use of ostracism to banish him, in order to reduce his extravagant pretensions, as they always were wont to do in the case of men whom they thought over powerful and unfit for living in the equality of a democracy. For ostracism implied no censure, but was intended as a vent for envious feelings, which were satisfied by seeing the object of their hatred thus humbled.

XXIII. When Themistokles was banished from Athens, he lived in Argos, during which time the proceedings of Pausanias gave a great opportunity to his enemies. He was impeached on a charge of treason by Leobotes, the son of Alkmaeon of Agraulai, and the Spartans joined in the impeachment. Pausanias, indeed, at first concealed his treacherous designs from Themistokles, although he was his friend; but when he saw that Themistokles was banished, and chafing at the treatment he had received, he was encouraged to ask him to share his treason, and showed him the letters which he had received from the Persian king, at the same time inflaming his resentment against the Greeks, whom he spoke of as ungrateful wretches. Themistokles refused utterly to join Pausanias, but nevertheless told no one of his treasonable practices, either because he hoped that he would desist, or that his visionary and impossible projects would be disclosed by other means. And thus it was that when Pausanias was put to death, certain letters and writings on this subject were found, which threw suspicion upon Themistokles. The Lacedaemonians loudly condemned him, and many of his own countrymen, because of the enmity they bore him, brought charges against him. He did not appear in person at first, but answered these attacks by letters. In these he told his accusers that he had always sought to rule, and was not born to obey; so that he never would sell himself and Greece to be a slave to the Persians. But in spite of these arguments, his enemies prevailed upon the Athenians to send men with orders to seize him, and bring him to be tried by Greece.

XXIV. He was apprised of this in time to take refuge in Korkyra, a State which was under obligations to him. For once, when Korkyra was at variance with Corinth, he had been chosen to arbitrate between them, and had reconciled them, giving as his award that the Corinthians were to pay down twenty talents, and each State to have an equal share in the city and island of Leucas, as being a colony from both of them. From thence he fled to Epirus; but, being still pursued by the Athenians and Lacedaemonians, he adopted a desperate resolution. Admetus, the king of the Molossians, had once made some request to the Athenians, which Themistokles, who was then in the height of his power, insultingly refused to grant. Admetus was deeply incensed, and eager for vengeance; but now Themistokles feared the fresh fury of his countrymen more than this old grudge of the king's, put himself at his mercy, and became a suppliant to Admetus in a novel and strange fashion; for he lay down at the hearth of Admetus, holding that prince's infant son, which is considered among the Molossians to be the most solemn manner of becoming a suppliant, and one which cannot be refused. Some say that Phthia, the king's wife, suggested this posture to Themistokles, and placed her infant on the hearth with him; while others say that Admetus, in order to be able to allege religious reasons for his refusal to give up Themistokles to his pursuers, himself arranged the scene with him. After this, Epikrates, of the township of Acharnai, managed to convey his wife and children out of Athens to join him, for which, we are told by Stesimbrotus, Kimon subsequently had him condemned and executed. But, singularly enough, afterwards Stesimbrotus either forgets his wife and children, or makes Themistokles forget them, when he says that he sailed to Sicily and demanded the daughter of the despot Hiero in marriage, promising that he would make all Greece obey him. As Hiero rejected his proposals, he then went to Asia.

XXV. Now it is not probable that this ever took place. Theophrastus, in his treatise on monarchy, relates that when Hiero sent race–horses to Olympia and pitched a costly tent there, Themistokles said to the assembled Greeks that they ought to destroy the despot's tent, and not permit his horses to run. Thucydides too informs us that he crossed to the Aegean sea, and set sail from Pydna, none of his fellow–travellers knowing who he was until the ship was driven by contrary winds to Naxos, which was then being besieged by the Athenians. Then he became alarmed, and told the captain and the pilot who he was, and, partly by entreaties, partly by threats that he would denounce them to the Athenians, and say that they well knew who he was, but were carrying him out of the country for a bribe, he prevailed on them to hold on their course to the coast of Asia.

Of his property, much was concealed by his friends and sent over to him in Asia; but what was confiscated to the public treasury amounted, according to Theopompus, to a hundred talents, and according to Theophrastus to eighty, albeit Themistokles, before his entrance into political life, did not possess property worth three talents.

XXVI. When he sailed to Kyme, he found that many of the inhabitants of the Ionic coast were watching for an opportunity to capture him, especially Ergoteles and Pythodorus (for indeed, to men who cared not how they made their money, he would have been a rich prize, as the Persian king had offered a reward of two hundred talents for him), he fled to Aegae, a little Aeolian city, where he was known by no one except his friend Nikogenes, the richest of all the Aeolians, who was well known to the Persians of the interior. In this man's house he lay concealed for some days. Here, after the feast which followed a sacrifice, Olbius, who took charge of Nikogenes's children, fell into a kind of inspired frenzy, and spoke the following verse: