Plutarch: Lives of the noble Grecians and Romans
neighbors, with their ships they might be able to repel the Persians and
command Greece, thus, as Plato says, from steady soldiers he turned them
into mariners and seamen tossed about the sea, and gave occasion for the
reproach against him, that he took away from the Athenians the spear and
the shield, and bound them to the bench and the oar. These measures he
carried in the assembly, against the opposition, as Stesimbrotus
relates, of Miltiades; and whether or no he hereby injured the purity
and true balance of government, may be a question for philosophers, but
that the deliverance of Greece came at that time from the sea, and that
these galleys restored Athens again after it was destroyed, were others
wanting, Xerxes himself would be sufficient evidence, who, though his
land-forces were still entire, after his defeat at sea, fled away, and
thought himself no longer able to encounter the Greeks; and, as it seems
to me, left Mardonius behind him, not out of any hopes he could have to
bring them into subjection, but to hinder them from pursuing him.
Themistocles is said to have been eager in the acquisition of riches,
according to some, that he might be the more liberal; for loving to
sacrifice often, and to be splendid in his entertainment of strangers,
he required a plentiful revenue; yet he is accused by others of having
been parsimonious and sordid to that degree that he would sell
provisions which were sent to him as a present. He desired Diphilides,
who was a breeder of horses, to give him a colt, and when he refused it,
threatened that in a short time he would turn his house into a wooden
horse, intimating that he would stir up dispute and litigation between
him and some of his relations.
He went beyond all men in the passion for distinction. When he was
still young and unknown in the world, he entreated Epicles of Hermione,
who had a good hand at the lute and was much sought after by the
Athenians, to come and practice at home with him, being ambitious of
having people inquire after his house and frequent his company. When he
came to the Olympic games, and was so splendid in his equipage and
entertainments, in his rich tents and furniture, that he strove to outdo
Cimon, he displeased the Greeks, who thought that such magnificence
might be allowed in one who was a young man and of a great family but
was a great piece of insolence in one as yet undistinguished, and
without title or means for making any such display. In a dramatic
contest, the play he paid for won the prize, which was then a matter
that excited much emulation; he put up a tablet in record of it, with
the inscription, "Themistocles of Phrearrhi was at the charge of it;
Phrynichus made it; Adimantus was archon." He was well liked by the
common people, would salute every particular citizen by his own name,
and always show himself a just judge in questions of business between
private men; he said to Simonides, the poet of Ceos, who desired
something of him, when he was commander of the army, that was not
reasonable, "Simonides, you would be no good poet if you wrote false
measure, nor should I be a good magistrate if for favor I made false
law." And at another time, laughing at Simonides, he said, that he was
a man of little judgment to speak against the Corinthians, who were
inhabitants of a great city, and to have his own picture drawn so often,
having so ill-looking a face.
Gradually growing to be great, and winning the favor of the people, he
at last gained the day with his faction over that of Aristides, and
procured his banishment by ostracism. When the king of Persia was now
advancing against Greece, and the Athenians were in consultation who
should be general, and many withdrew themselves of their own accord,
being terrified with the greatness of the danger, there was one
Epicydes, a popular speaker, son to Euphemides, a man of an eloquent
tongue, but of a faint heart, and a slave to riches, who was desirous of
the command, and was looked upon to be in a fair way to carry it by the
number of votes; but Themistocles, fearing that, if the command should
fall into such hands, all would be lost, bought off Epicydes and his
pretensions, it is said, for a sum of money.
When the king of Persia sent messengers into Greece, with an
interpreter, to demand earth and water, as an acknowledgment of
subjection, Themistocles, by the consent of the people, seized upon the
interpreter, and put him to death, for presuming to publish the
barbarian orders and decrees in the Greek language; this is one of the
actions he is commended for, as also for what he did to Arthmius of
Zelea, who brought gold from the king of Persia to corrupt the Greeks,
and was, by an order from Themistocles, degraded and disfranchised, he
and his children and his posterity; but that which most of all redounded
to his credit was, that he put an end to all the civil wars of Greece,
composed their differences, and persuaded them to lay aside all enmity
during the war with the Persians; and in this great work, Chileus the
Arcadian was, it is said, of great assistance to him.
Having taken upon himself the command of the Athenian forces, he
immediately endeavored to persuade the citizens to leave the city, and
to embark upon their galleys, and meet with the Persians at a great
distance from Greece; but many being against this, he led a large force,
together with the Lacedaemonians, into Tempe, that in this pass they
might maintain the safety of Thessaly, which had not as yet declared for
the king; but when they returned without performing anything; and it
was known that not only the Thessalians, but all as far as Boeotia, was
going over to Xerxes, then the Athenians more willingly hearkened to the
advice of Themistocles to fight by sea, and sent him with a fleet to
guard the straits of Artemisium.
When the contingents met here, the Greeks would have the Lacedaemonians
to command, and Eurybiades to be their admiral; but the Athenians, who
surpassed all the rest together in number of vessels, would not submit
to come after any other, till Themistocles, perceiving the danger of
this contest, yielded his own command to Eurybiades, and got the
Athenians to submit, extenuating the loss by persuading them, that if in
this war they behaved themselves like men, he would answer for it after
that, that the Greeks, of their own will, would submit to their command.
And by this moderation of his, it is evident that he was the chief means
of the deliverance of Greece, and gained the Athenians the glory of
alike surpassing their enemies in valor, and their confederates in
wisdom.
As soon as the Persian armada arrived at Aphetae, Eurybiades was
astonished to see such a vast number of vessels before him, and, being
informed that two hundred more were sailing round behind the island of
Sciathus, he immediately determined to retire farther into Greece, and
to sail back into some part of Peloponnesus, where their land army and
their fleet might join, for he looked upon the Persian forces to be
altogether unassailable by sea. But the Euboeans, fearing that the
Greeks would forsake them, and leave them to the mercy of the enemy,
sent Pelagon to confer privately with Themistocles, taking with him a
good sum of money, which, as Herodotus reports, he accepted and gave to
Eurybiades. In this affair none of his own countrymen opposed him so
much as Architeles, captain of the sacred galley, who, having no money
to supply his seamen, was eager to go home; but Themistocles so incensed
the Athenians against him, that they set upon him and left him not so
much as his supper, at which Architeles was much surprised, and took it
very ill; but Themistocles immediately sent him in a chest a service of
provisions, and at the bottom of it a talent of silver, desiring him to
sup tonight, and tomorrow provide for his seamen; if not, he would
report it amongst the Athenians that he had received money from the
enemy. So Phanias the Lesbian tells the story.
Though the fights between the Greeks and Persians in the straits of
Euboea were not so important as to make any final decision of the war,
yet the experience which the Greeks obtained in them was of great
advantage, for thus, by actual trial and in real danger, they found out
that neither number of ships, nor riches and ornaments, nor boasting
shouts, nor barbarous songs of victory, were any way terrible to men
that knew how to fight, and were resolved to come hand to hand with
their enemies; these things they were to despise, and to come up close
and grapple with their foes. This, Pindar appears to have seen, and
says justly enough of the fight at Artemisium, that
There the sons of Athens set
The stone that freedom stands on yet.
For the first step towards victory undoubtedly is to gain courage.
Artemisium is in Euboea, beyond the city of Histiaea, a sea-beach open
to the north; most nearly opposite to it stands Olizon, in the country
which formerly was under Philoctetes; there is a small temple there,
dedicated to Diana, surnamed of the Dawn, and trees about it, around
which again stand pillars of white marble; and if you rub them with your
hand, they send forth both the smell and color of saffron. On one of
the pillars these verses are engraved,--
With numerous tribes from Asia's regions brought
The sons of Athens on these waters, fought;
Erecting, after they had quelled the Mede,
To Artemis this record of the deed.
There is a place still to be seen upon this shore, where, in the middle
of a great heap of sand, they take out from the bottom a dark powder
like ashes, or something that has passed the fire; and here, it is
supposed, the shipwrecks and bodies of the dead were burnt.
But when news came from Thermopylae to Artemisium, informing them that
king Leonidas was slain, and that Xerxes had made himself master of all
the passages by land, they returned back to the interior of Greece, the
Athenians having the command of the rear, the place of honor and danger,
and much elated by what had been done.
As Themistocles sailed along the coast, he took notice of the harbors
and fit places for the enemies' ships to come to land at, and engraved
large letters in such stones as he found there by chance, as also in
others which he set up on purpose near to the landing-places, or where
they were to water; in which inscriptions he called upon the Ionians to
forsake the Medes, if it were possible, and come over to the Greeks, who
were their proper founders and fathers, and were now hazarding all for
their liberties; but, if this could not be done, at any rate to impede
and disturb the Persians in all engagements. He hoped that these
writings would prevail with the Ionians to revolt, or raise some trouble
by making their fidelity doubtful to the Persians.
Now, though Xerxes had already passed through Doris and invaded the
country of Phocis, and was burning and destroying the cities of the
Phocians, yet the Greeks sent them no relief; and, though the Athenians
earnestly desired them to meet the Persians in Boeotia, before they
could come into Attica, as they themselves had come forward by sea at
Artemisium, they gave no ear to their request, being wholly intent upon
Peloponnesus, and resolved to gather all their forces together within
the Isthmus, and to build a wall from sea to sea in that narrow neck of
land; so that the Athenians were enraged to see themselves betrayed, and
at the same time afflicted and dejected at their own destitution. For
to fight alone against such a numerous army was to no purpose, and the
only expedient now left them was to leave their city and cling to their
ships; which the people were very unwilling to submit to, imagining that
it would signify little now to gain a victory, and not understanding how