Themistocles never missed an opportunity to make money. He lived in considerable style, entertaining lavishly and showering his friends with gifts. At Olympia he tried to outdo a young playboy, Cimon, son of the hero of the hour, Miltiades, in the extravagance of the dinners he gave, and in the magnificence of his tents and furnishings. This left a bad impression. It was all very well for a rich young man to behave in this way, but not a statesman.
We have a portrait of the man in stone. He is thick-necked and, although we see only his bust, he gives the impression of a stocky build. He has short, curly hair and a short curly beard, proudly surmounted by a heavy, drooping mustache. He eyes are wide open and he has a broad, sensuous mouth, which carries the hint of a smile. Intelligent, ready to learn, and amused, this is exactly how one might have imagined an experienced political operator who had seen everything and knew everyone.
He became a prominent personality in the ecclesia and was popular with the masses. The first radical democrat in Athenian history, he served as Eponymous Archon in 493. It was during his term of office, or around that time, that the trial of Miltiades took place under anti-tyrant legislation (see this page for more on this). It may very well be that Themistocles had a hand in engineering the acquittal, although he and the old-fashioned aristocrat had almost nothing in common. But Miltiades was the best general around and it was essential that he was available for the approaching Persian invasion. Whoever opposed the enemy was his friend.
But once the battle of Marathon had been fought and won, Themistocles found himself prey to very mixed emotions. When the genius of Miltiades was on everybody’s lips, Plutarch writes, for the most part he
was wrapped up in his own thoughts. He became insomniac and refused invitations to the drinking-parties he usually went to. When people asked him in amazement what the matter was, he replied that the trophy set up on the battlefield in Miltiades’s honor stopped him from getting any sleep.
It was not just envy that motivated Themistocles. He feared that the rise of a forceful nobleman like Miltiades would threaten the democracy. Fortunately, the victorious general was his own worst enemy.
Such was his popularity that the demos happily voted him seventy ships so that he could “make war on the islands that had assisted the barbarians” and, more to the point perhaps, “make them all rich.” Miltiades had his eye on the Cycladic island of Paros, famous for its white marble, which had incautiously contributed one trireme to the Persian fleet.
However, he disciplined some other islands first and so forewarned the Parians of what lay in store for them. They had time to strengthen their defenses and when Miltiades gave them an ultimatum to hand over the large sum of 100 talents or face destruction, they gave him a firm refusal. The Athenians laid siege to the port.
The Parians held out. A month passed and they began to waver. Miltiades opened secret discussions with a local priestess on how the island might be taken. He arranged to meet her at a shrine of Demeter, goddess of agriculture, on a hill outside the town. He went there one night, but badly hurt his knee (or, others said, his thigh) when jumping over the sanctuary wall.
Meanwhile the Parians received a boost to their morale, when they misinterpreted an accidental forest fire on a neighboring island as a beacon signal that help from the Persian fleet was at hand and refused to surrender.
The injured Miltiades had no choice but to return to Athens empty-handed. His enemies—and he had plenty, among both other aristocratic clans and democratic leaders—closed in for the kill. For the second time, he was brought to trial. The Alcmaeonid by marriage, Xanthippus, charged Miltiades with defrauding the state.
The knee had not healed and was turning gangrenous. The general was now so ill that he had to be brought into court on a stretcher. It may be that many of his soldiers and sailors had not been paid. If so this must have contributed to a transformation of the public mood. From hero to antihero can be a short ride.
Superfluously as it turned out, the prosecution called for the death penalty, but instead a massive fine of fifty talents was imposed. Miltiades died before he could pay it. His twenty-year-old son, Cimon, settled the account, nearly bankrupting his clan, the Philaids, in the process.
The general suffered an ungrateful end. But at the museum at Olympia there is a helmet on which is inscribed MILTIADES DEDICATED and is probably the one he wore at Marathon. It is a suitable memorial.
Hardly one year had passed since the victory over the Great King.
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Many Athenians supposed, self-comfortingly, that the defeat of the Persians was the end of the affair. The barbarians had been given a bloody nose and would not be coming back. Themistocles fiercely disagreed and believed that the recent invasion had been merely a prelude. Like an athlete, wrote Plutarch, he should oil his body and enter the race to be champion of all Hellas. He should put the polis into training for greater games. There was not much time to get ready and Athens could not count on more than a few years’ grace.
Themistocles was right. Darius had been furious with Athens for its intervention in the Ionian Revolt. He had been looking forward to his revenge, instead of which his armada had been easily repulsed. He was now even angrier.
Soon stories filtered out from the east that another expedition against Greece was in preparation, this time much larger than the first. The Great King sent messengers to the main cities throughout his empire with instructions to provide horses, food, warships, and troop transport boats. Men were enlisted into the army. Taxation was raised to cover costs. Herodotus writes: “The announcement of these orders threw Asia into commotion for three years.”
Then fate dealt two disobliging cards. First, in 486 a major revolt, caused by increased taxes, broke out in Egypt, then a Persian province. The Great King was the pharaoh, but a satrap was appointed to run the country. Egyptians were left in no doubt about their subjection. The copy of a statue of Darius in full native regalia has been found in Susa with inscriptions both in cuneiform and hieroglyphs; the original probably stood in Heliopolis. The Persian text reads, in the tones of Ozymandias: “This is the stone statue which Darius the king ordered to be completed in Egypt, so that whoever beholds it in future times will know that the man of Persia has gained possession of Egypt.”
Oh no, you have not, replied the Egyptians and prepared to resist the inevitable punitive invasion. But before the insurrection could be quashed, in November of the same year the Great King died at the age of sixty-four after ruling as Great King for thirty-six years. He was buried with all due ceremony in a tomb carved into a rock face high up a mountainside. In an inscription he presented himself in the most favorable possible light:
What is right, that is my desire. I am not a friend to the man who is a Lie-follower. I am not hot-tempered. What things develop in my anger I hold firmly under control by my thinking power. I am firmly ruling over my own [impulses].
This is not a characterization of the vengeful monarch that the battered Greeks would recognize, but it is a reminder that, provided their subjects were obedient, the Persian kings did offer orderly, predictable, and benevolent government.
Darius’s chosen heir was his son, the thirty-two-year-old Xerxes, who was the grandson of Cyrus on his mother’s side. His first task was to reconquer Egypt, and this with some trouble he did. He imposed a more oppressive regime than his father had done and, insultingly, declined to assume the title of pharaoh.
In 484, the new Great King turned his attention to Hellas.