CHAPTER XXII. THE AFTERMATH OF THE WAR
When the Persians had retreated from Europe after being conquered both by sea and land by the Greeks, and those of them had been destroyed who had fled with their ships to Mycale, Leotychides, king of the Lacedæmonians, returned home with the allies that were from the Peloponnesus, as we have already noted; while the Athenians, and the allies from Ionia and the Hellespont, who had now revolted from the king, stayed behind, and laid siege to Sestus, of which the Medes were in possession. Having spent the winter before it, they took it, after the barbarians had evacuated it; and then sailed away from the Hellespont, each to his own city. And the people of Athens, when they found the barbarians had departed from their country, proceeded immediately to carry over their children and wives, and the remnant of their furniture, from where they had put them out of the way; and were preparing to rebuild their city and their walls. For short spaces of the enclosure were standing, and, though the majority of the houses had fallen, a few remained in which the grandees of the Persians had themselves taken up their quarters.
ATHENS REBUILDS HER WALLS
[478-476 B.C.]
The Lacedæmonians, perceiving what they were about to do, sent an embassy to them; partly because they themselves would have been more pleased to see neither them nor any one else in possession of a wall; but still more because the allies instigated them, and were afraid of their numerous fleet, which before they had not had, and of the bravery they had shown in the Persian War. And they begged them not to build their walls, but rather to join them in throwing down those of the cities out of the Peloponnesus; not betraying their real wishes, and their suspicious feelings towards the Athenians; but representing that the barbarian, if he should again come against them, would not then be able to make his advances from any stronghold, as in the present instance he had done from Thebes; and the Peloponnesus, they said, was sufficient for all, as a place to retreat into and sally forth from. When the Lacedæmonians had thus spoken, the Athenians, by the advice of Themistocles, answered that they would send ambassadors to them concerning what they spoke of; and they immediately dismissed them. And Themistocles advised them to send himself as quickly as possible to Lacedæmon, and having chosen other ambassadors besides himself, not to despatch them immediately, but to wait till such time as they should have raised their wall to the height most absolutely necessary for fighting from; and that the whole population in the city, men, women, and children, should build it, sparing neither private nor public edifice, from which any assistance towards the work would be gained, but throwing down everything. After giving these instructions, and suggesting that he would himself manage all other matters there, he took his departure. On his arrival at Lacedæmon he did not apply to the authorities, but kept putting off and making excuses. And whenever any of those who were in office asked him why he did not come before the assembly, he said that he was waiting for his colleagues; that owing to some engagement they had been left behind; he expected, however, that they would shortly come, and wondered that they were not already there.
When they heard this, they believed Themistocles through their friendship for him; but when every one else came and distinctly informed them that the walls were building, and already advancing to some height, they did not know how to discredit it. When he found this, he told them not to be led away by tales, but rather to send men of their own body who were of good character, and would bring back a credible report after inspection. They despatched them therefore; and Themistocles secretly sent directions about them to the Athenians, to detain them, with as little appearance of it as possible, and not to let them go until they themselves had returned back; (for by this time his colleagues, Abronychus, the son of Lysicles, and Aristides, the son of Lysimachus, had also come to him with the news that the wall was sufficiently advanced) for he was afraid that the Lacedæmonians, when they heard the truth, might not then let them go. So the Athenians detained the ambassadors, as was told them; and Themistocles, having come to an audience of the Lacedæmonians, then indeed told them plainly that their city was already walled, so as to be capable of defending its inhabitants; and if the Lacedæmonians or the allies wished to send any embassy to them, they should in future go as to men who could discern what were their own and the general interests. For when they thought it better to abandon their city and to go on board their ships, they said that they had made up their minds, and had the courage to do it, without consulting them; and again, on whatever matters they had deliberated with them, they had shown themselves inferior to none in judgment. And so at the present time, likewise, they thought it was better that their city should have a wall, and that it would be more expedient for their citizens in particular, as well as for the allies in general; for it was not possible for any one without equal resources to give any equal or fair advice for the common good. Either all therefore, he said, should join the confederacy without walls, or they should consider that the present case also was as it ought to be.
The Lacedæmonians, on hearing this, did not let their anger appear to the Athenians; for they had not sent their embassy to obstruct their designs, but to offer counsel, they said, to their state; and besides, they were at that time on very friendly terms with them owing to their zeal against the Mede; in secret, however, they were annoyed at failing in their wish. So the ambassadors of each state returned home without any complaint being made.
In this way, Thucydides continues, the Athenians walled their city in a short time. And the building shows even now that it was executed in haste; for the foundations are laid with stones of all kinds, and in some places not wrought together, but as the several parties at any time brought them to the spot: and many columns from tombs, and wrought stones, were worked up in them.[b]
THE NEW ATHENS
The first indispensable step, in the renovation of Athens after her temporary extinction, was now happily accomplished: the city was made secure against external enemies. But Themistocles, to whom the Athenians owed the late successful stratagem, and whose influence must have been much strengthened by its success, had conceived plans of a wider and more ambitious range. He had been the original adviser of the great maritime start taken by his countrymen, as well as of the powerful naval force which they had created during the last few years, and which had so recently proved their salvation. He saw in that force both the only chance of salvation for the future, in case the Persians should renew their attack by sea,—a contingency at that time seemingly probable,—and boundless prospects of future ascendency over the Grecian coasts and islands: it was the great engine of defence, of offence, and of ambition. To continue this movement required much less foresight and genius than to begin it, and Themistocles, the moment that the walls of the city had been finished, brought back the attention of his countrymen to those wooden walls which had served them as a refuge against the Persian monarch. He prevailed upon them to provide harbour-room at once safe and adequate, by the enlargement and fortification of the Piræus. This again was only the prosecution of an enterprise previously begun: for he had already, while in office two or three years before, made his countrymen sensible that the open roadstead of Phalerum was thoroughly insecure, and had prevailed upon them to improve and employ in part the more spacious harbours of Piræus and Munychia—three natural basins, all capable of being closed and defended. Something had then been done towards the enlargement of this port, though it had probably been subsequently ruined by the Persian invaders: but Themistocles now resumed the scheme on a scale far grander than he could then have ventured to propose—a scale which demonstrates the vast auguries present to his mind respecting the destinies of Athens.
Piræus and Munychia, in his new plan, constituted a fortified space as large as the enlarged Athens, and with a wall far more elaborate and unassailable. The wall which surrounded them, sixty stadia in circuit [about seven and a half miles], was intended by him to be so stupendous, both in height and thickness, as to render assault hopeless, and to enable the whole military population to act on shipboard, leaving only old men and boys as a garrison. We may judge how vast his project was, when we learn that the wall, though in practice always found sufficient, was only carried up to half the height which he had contemplated. In respect to thickness, however, his ideas were exactly followed: two carts meeting one another brought stones which were laid together right and left on the outer side of each, and thus formed two primary parallel walls, between which the interior space—of course, at least as broad as the joint breadth of the two carts—was filled up, “not with rubble, in the usual manner of the Greeks, but constructed, throughout the whole thickness, of squared stones, cramped together with metal.” The result was a solid wall, probably not less than fourteen or fifteen feet thick, since it was intended to carry so very unusual a height. In the exhortations whereby he animated the people to this fatiguing and costly work, he laboured to impress upon them that Piræus was of more value to them than Athens itself, and that it afforded a shelter into which, if their territory should be again overwhelmed by a superior land-force, they might securely retire, with full liberty of that maritime action in which they were a match for all the world. We may even suspect that if Themistocles could have followed his own feelings, he would have altered the site of the city from Athens to Piræus: the attachment of the people to their ancient and holy rock doubtless prevented any such proposition. Nor did he at that time, probably, contemplate the possibility of those long walls which in a few years afterwards consolidated the two cities into one.
Forty-five years afterwards, at the beginning of the Peloponnesian War, we shall hear from Pericles, who espoused and carried out the large ideas of Themistocles, this same language about the capacity of Athens to sustain a great power exclusively or chiefly upon maritime action. But the Athenian empire was then an established reality, whereas in the time of Themistocles it was yet a dream, and his bold predictions, surpassed as they were by the future reality, mark that extraordinary power of practical divination which Thucydides so emphatically extols in him. And it proves the exuberant hope which had now passed into the temper of the Athenian people, when we find them, on the faith of these predictions, undertaking a new enterprise of so much toil and expense; and that too when just returned from exile into a desolated country, at a moment of private distress and public impoverishment. However, Piræus served other purposes besides its direct use as a dockyard for military marine: its secure fortifications and the protection of the Athenian navy, were well calculated to call back those metics, or resident foreigners, who had been driven away by the invasion of Xerxes, and who might feel themselves insecure in returning, unless some new and conspicuous means of protection were exhibited.
To invite them back, and to attract new residents of a similar description, Themistocles proposed to exempt them from the metoikion, or non-freeman’s annual tax: but this exemption can only have lasted for a time, and the great temptation for them to return must have consisted in the new securities and facilities for trade, which Athens, with her fortified ports and navy, now afforded. The presence of numerous metics was profitable to the Athenians, both privately and publicly: much of the trading, professional, and handicraft business was in their hands: and the Athenian legislation, while it excluded them from the political franchise, was in other respects equitable and protective to them.
We are further told that Themistocles prevailed on the Athenians to build every year twenty new ships of the line—so we may designate the trireme. Whether this number was always strictly adhered to, it is impossible to say; but to repair the ships, as well as to keep up their numbers, was always regarded among the most indispensable obligations of the executive government. It does not appear that the Spartans offered any opposition to the fortification of the Piræus, though it was an enterprise greater, more novel, and more menacing, than that of Athens. But Diodorus tells us, probably enough, that Themistocles thought it necessary to send an embassy to Sparta, intimating that his scheme was to provide a safe harbour for the collective navy of Greece, in the event of future Persian attack.
Works on so vast a scale must have taken a considerable time, and absorbed much of the Athenian force; yet they did not prevent Athens from lending active aid towards the expedition which, in the year after the battle of Platæa (478 B.C.), set sail for Asia under the Spartan Pausanias. Twenty ships from the various cities of the Peloponnesus were under his command: the Athenians alone furnished thirty, under the orders of Aristides and Cimon: other triremes also came from the Ionian and insular allies. They first sailed to Cyprus, in which island they liberated most of the Grecian cities from the Persian government: next, they turned to the Bosporus of Thrace, and undertook the siege of Byzantium, which, like Sestus in the Chersonesus, was a post of great moment, as well as of great strength—occupied by a considerable Persian force, with several leading Persians and even kinsmen of the monarch. The place was captured, seemingly after a prolonged siege: it might probably hold out even longer than Sestus, as being taken less unprepared. The line of communication between the Euxine Sea and Greece was thus cleared of obstruction.
THE MISCONDUCT OF PAUSANIAS
[478 B.C.]
The capture of Byzantium proved the signal for a capital and unexpected change in the relations of the various Grecian cities; a change, of which the proximate cause lay in the misconduct of Pausanias, but towards which other causes, deep-seated as well as various, also tended. In recounting the history of Miltiades, we noticed the deplorable liability of the Grecian leading men to be spoiled by success: this distemper worked with singular rapidity on Pausanias. As conqueror of Platæa, he had acquired a renown unparalleled in Grecian experience, together with a prodigious share of the plunder: the concubines, horses, camels, and gold plate, which had thus passed into his possession, were well calculated to make the sobriety and discipline of Spartan life irksome, while his power also, though great on foreign command, became subordinate to that of the ephors when he returned home. His newly acquired insolence was manifested immediately after the battle, in the commemorative tripod dedicated by his order at Delphi, which proclaimed himself by name and singly, as commander of the Greeks and destroyer of the Persians: an unseemly boast, of which the Lacedæmonians themselves were the first to mark their disapprobation, by causing the inscription to be erased, and the names of the cities who had taken part in the combat to be all enumerated on the tripod. Nevertheless, he was still sent on the command against Cyprus and Byzantium, and it was on the capture of this latter place that his ambition and discontent first ripened into distinct treason. He entered into correspondence with Gongylus the Eretrian exile (now a subject of Persia, and invested with the property and government of a district in Mysia), to whom he entrusted his new acquisition of Byzantium, and the care of the valuable prisoners taken in it. These prisoners were presently suffered to escape, or rather sent away underhand to Xerxes; together with a letter from the hand of Pausanias, himself, to the following effect: “Pausanias, the Spartan commander, having taken these captives, sends them back, in his anxiety to oblige thee. I am minded, if it so please thee, to marry thy daughter, and to bring under thy dominion both Sparta and the rest of Greece: with thy aid, I think myself competent to achieve this. If my proposition be acceptable, send some confidential person down to the sea-board, through whom we may hereafter correspond.”
Xerxes, highly pleased with the opening thus held out, immediately sent down Artabazus (the same who had been second in command in Bœotia) to supersede Megabates in the satrapy of Dascylium; the new satrap, furnished with a letter of reply bearing the regal seal, was instructed to further actively the projects of Pausanias. The letter was to this purport: “Thus saith King Xerxes to Pausanias. Thy name stands forever recorded in my house as a well-doer, on account of the men whom thou hast saved for me beyond sea at Byzantium: and thy propositions now received are acceptable to me. Relax not either night or day in accomplishing that which thou promisest, nor let thyself be held back by cost, either gold or silver, or numbers of men, if thou standest in need of them, but transact in confidence thy business and mine jointly with Artabazus, the good man whom I have now sent, in such manner as may be best for both of us.”
Throughout the whole of this expedition, Pausanias had been insolent and domineering, degrading the allies at quarters and watering-places in the most offensive manner as compared with the Spartans, and treating the whole armament in a manner which Greek warriors could not tolerate, even in a Spartan Heraclid, and a victorious general. But when he received the letter from Xerxes, and found himself in immediate communication with Artabazus, as well as supplied with funds for corruption, his insane hopes knew no bounds, and he already fancied himself son-in-law of the Great King, as well as despot of Hellas. Fortunately for Greece, his treasonable plans were not deliberately laid and veiled until ripe for execution, but manifested with childish impatience. He clothed himself in Persian attire—(a proceeding which the Macedonian army, a century and a half afterwards, could not tolerate, even in Alexander the Great),—he traversed Thrace with a body of Median and Egyptian guards,—he copied the Persian chiefs, both in the luxury of his table and in his conduct towards the free women of Byzantium. Cleonice, a Byzantine maiden of conspicuous family, having been ravished from her parents by his order, was brought to his chamber at night: he happened to be asleep, and being suddenly awakened, knew not at first who was the person approaching his bed, but seized his sword and slew her. Moreover, his haughty reserve, with uncontrolled bursts of wrath, rendered him unapproachable; and the allies at length came to regard him as a despot rather than a general. The news of such outrageous behaviour, and the manifest evidences of his alliance with the Persians, were soon transmitted to the Spartans, who recalled him to answer for his conduct, and seemingly the Spartan vessels along with him.
In spite of the flagrant conduct of Pausanias, the Lacedæmonians acquitted him on the allegations of positive and individual wrong; yet, mistrusting his conduct in reference to collusion with the enemy, they sent out Dorcis to supersede him as commander. But a revolution, of immense importance for Greece, had taken place in the minds of the allies. The headship, or hegemony, was in the hands of Athens, and Dorcis the Spartan found the allies not disposed to recognise his authority.
Even before the battle of Salamis, the question had been raised, whether Athens was not entitled to the command at sea, in consequence of the preponderance of her naval contingent. The repugnance of the allies to any command except that of Sparta, either on land or water, had induced the Athenians to waive their pretensions at that critical moment. But the subsequent victories had materially exalted the latter in the eyes of Greece: while the armament now serving, differently composed from that which had fought at Salamis, contained a large proportion of the newly enfranchised Ionic Greeks, who not only had no preference for Spartan command, but were attached to the Athenians on every ground—as well from kindred race, as from the certainty that Athens with her superior fleet was the only protector upon whom they could rely against the Persians. Moreover, it happened that the Athenian generals on this expedition, Aristides and Cimon, were personally just and conciliating, forming a striking contrast with Pausanias. Hence the Ionic Greeks in the fleet, when they found that the behaviour of the latter was not only oppressive towards themselves but also revolting to Grecian sentiment generally, addressed themselves to the Athenian commanders for protection and redress, on the plausible ground of kindred race; entreating to be allowed to serve under Athens as leader instead of Sparta. The Spartan government about this time recalled Pausanias to undergo an examination, in consequence of the universal complaints against him which had reached them. He seems to have left no Spartan authority behind him,—even the small Spartan squadron accompanied him home: so that the Athenian generals had the best opportunity for insuring to themselves and exercising that command which the allies besought them to undertake. So effectually did they improve the moment, that when Dorcis arrived to replace Pausanias, they were already in full supremacy; while Dorcis, having only a small force, and being in no condition to employ constraint, found himself obliged to return home.
ATHENS TAKES THE LEADERSHIP
Type of Greek Helmet
This incident, though not a declaration of war against Sparta, was the first open renunciation of her authority as presiding state among the Greeks; the first avowed manifestation of a competitor for that dignity, with numerous and willing followers; the first separation of Greece—considered in herself alone and apart from foreign solicitations, such as the Persian invasion—into two distinct organised camps, each with collective interests and projects of its own. In spite of mortified pride, Sparta was constrained, and even in some points of view not indisposed, to patient acquiescence. The example of their king Leotychides, too, near about this time, was a second illustration of the same tendency. At the same time, apparently, that Pausanias embarked for Asia to carry on the war against the Persians, Leotychides was sent with an army into Thessaly to put down the Aleuadæ and those Thessalian parties who had sided with Xerxes and Mardonius. Successful in this expedition, he suffered himself to be bribed, and was even detected with a large sum of money actually on his person: in consequence of which the Lacedæmonians condemned him to banishment, and razed his house to the ground; he died afterwards in exile at Tegea. Two such instances were well calculated to make the Lacedæmonians distrust the conduct of their Heraclid leaders when on foreign service, and this feeling weighed much in inducing them to abandon the Asiatic headship in favour of Athens. It appears that their Peloponnesian allies retired from this contest at the same time as they did, so that the prosecution of the war was thus left to Athens as chief of the newly emancipated Greeks.
It was from these considerations that the Spartans were induced to submit to that loss of command which the misconduct of Pausanias had brought upon them. Their acquiescence facilitated the immense change about to take place in Grecian politics. According to the tendencies in progress prior to the Persian invasion, Sparta had become gradually more and more the president of something like a Panhellenic union, comprising the greater part of the Grecian states. Such at least was the point towards which things seemed to be tending; and if many separate states stood aloof from this union, none of them at least sought to form any counter-union, if we except the obsolete and impotent pretensions of Argos.
But the sympathies of the Peloponnesians still clung to Sparta, while those of the Ionian Greeks had turned to Athens: and thus not only the short-lived symptoms of an established Panhellenic union, but even all tendencies towards it from this time disappear. There now stands out a manifest schism, with two pronounced parties, towards one of which nearly all the constituent atoms of the Grecian world gravitate: the maritime states, newly enfranchised from Persia, towards Athens—the land-states, which had formed most part of the confederate army at Platæa, towards Sparta. Along with this national schism and called into action by it, appears the internal political schism in each separate city between oligarchy and democracy. Of course, the germ of these parties had already previously existed in the separate states, but the energetic democracy of Athens, and the pronounced tendency of Sparta to rest upon the native oligarchies in each separate city as her chief support, now began to bestow, on the conflict of internal political parties, an Hellenic importance, and an aggravated bitterness, which had never before belonged to it.
THE CONFEDERACY OF DELOS
[478-476 B.C.]
The general conditions of the confederacy of Delos were regulated in a common synod of the members appointed to meet periodically for deliberative purposes, in the temple of Apollo and Artemis at Delos—of old, the venerated spot for the religious festivals of the Ionic cities, and at the same time a convenient centre for the members. A definite obligation, either in equipped ships of war or in money, was imposed upon every separate city; and the Athenians, as leaders, determined in which form contribution should be made by each: their assessment must of course have been reviewed by the synod, nor had they at this time power to enforce any regulation not approved by that body. It had been the good fortune of Athens to profit by the genius of Themistocles on two recent critical occasions (the battle of Salamis and the rebuilding of her walls), where sagacity, craft, and decision were required in extraordinary measure, and where pecuniary probity was of less necessity: it was no less her good fortune now—in the delicate business of assessing a new tax and determining how much each state should bear, without precedents to guide them, when unimpeachable honesty in the assessor was the first of all qualities—not to have Themistocles; but to employ in his stead the well-known, we might almost say the ostentatious probity of Aristides. This must be accounted good fortune, since at the moment when Aristides was sent out, the Athenians could not have anticipated that any such duty would devolve upon him. His assessment not only found favour at the time of its original proposition, when it must have been freely canvassed by the assembled allies, but also maintained its place in general esteem, after Athens had degenerated into an unpopular empire.
Respecting this first assessment, we scarcely know more than one single fact—the aggregate in money was four hundred and sixty talents [equal to about £106,000 or $530,000].
Of the items composing such aggregate, of the individual cities which paid it, of the distribution of obligations to furnish ships and money, we are entirely ignorant: the little information which we possess on these points relates to a period considerably later, shortly before the Peloponnesian War, under the uncontrolled empire then exercised by Athens. Thucydides, in his brief sketch, makes us clearly understand the difference between presiding Athens, with her autonomous and regularly assembled allies in 476 B.C., and imperial Athens, with her subject allies in 432 B.C.; the Greek word equivalent to ally left either of these epithets to be understood, by an ambiguity exceedingly convenient to the powerful states,—and he indicates the general causes of the change: but he gives us few particulars as to the modifying circumstances, and none at all as to the first start. He tells us only that the Athenians appointed a peculiar board of officers, called the hellenotamiæ, to receive and administer the common fund,—that Delos was constituted the general treasury, where the money was to be kept,—and that the payment thus levied was called the phorus; a name which appears then to have been first put into circulation, though afterwards usual, and to have conveyed at first no degrading import, though it afterwards became so odious as to be exchanged for a more innocent synonym.
The public import of the name hellenotamiæ, coined for the occasion, the selection of Delos as a centre, and the provision for regular meetings of the members, demonstrate the patriotic and fraternal purpose which the league was destined to serve. In truth, the protection of the Ægean Sea against foreign maritime force and lawless piracy, as well as that of the Hellespont and Bosporus against the transit of a Persian force, was a purpose essentially public, for which all the parties interested were bound in equity to provide by way of common contribution: any island or seaport which might refrain from contributing, was a gainer at the cost of others: and we cannot doubt that the general feeling of this common danger as well as equitable obligation, at a moment when the fear of Persia was yet serious, was the real cause which brought together so many contributing members, and enabled the forward parties to shame into concurrence such as were more backward.
How it was that the confederacy came to be turned afterwards to the purposes of Athenian ambition, we shall see at the proper time: but in its origin it was an equal alliance, in so far as alliance between the strong and the weak can ever be equal, not an Athenian empire: nay, it was an alliance in which every individual member was more exposed, more defenceless, and more essentially benefited in the way of protection, than Athens.
We have here in truth one of the few moments in Grecian history wherein a purpose at once common, equal, useful, and innocent, brought together spontaneously many fragments of this disunited race, and overlaid for a time that exclusive bent towards petty and isolated autonomy which ultimately made slaves of them all. It was a proceeding equitable and prudent, in principle as well as in detail; promising at the time the most beneficent consequences, not merely protection against the Persians, but a standing police of the Ægean Sea, regulated by a common superintending authority. And if such promise was not realised, we shall find that the inherent defects of the allies, indisposing them to the hearty appreciation and steady performance of their duties as equal confederates, are at least as much chargeable with the failure as the ambition of Athens. We may add that, in selecting Delos as a centre, the Ionic allies were conciliated by a renovation of the solemnities which their fathers, in the days of former freedom, had crowded to witness in that sacred island.
[477-470 B.C.]
At the time when this alliance was formed, the Persians still held not only the important posts of Eion on the Strymon and Doriscus in Thrace, but also several other posts in that country, which are not specified to us. We may thus understand why the Greek cities on and near the Chalcidic peninsula,—Argilus, Stagiras, Acanthus, Scolus, Olynthus, Spartolus, etc.,—which we know to have joined under the first assessment of Aristides, were not less anxious to seek protection in the bosom of the new confederacy, than the Dorian islands of Rhodes and Cos, the Ionic islands of Samos and Chios, the Æolic Lesbos and Tenedos, or continental towns such as Miletus and Byzantium: by all of whom adhesion to this alliance must have been contemplated, in 477 or 476 B.C., as the sole condition of emancipation from Persia. Nothing more was required for the success of a foreign enemy against Greece generally than complete autonomy of every Grecian city, small as well as great—such as the Persian monarch prescribed and tried to enforce ninety years afterwards, through the Lacedæmonian Antalcidas, in the pacification which bears the name of the latter. Some sort of union, organised and obligatory upon each city, was indispensable to the safety of all. Nor was it by any means certain, at the time when the confederacy of Delos was first formed, that, even with that aid, the Asiatic enemy would be effectually kept out; especially as the Persians were strong, not merely from their own force, but also from the aid of internal parties in many of the Grecian states—traitors within, as well as exiles without.
THE TREASON OF PAUSANIAS
Among these, the first in rank as well as the most formidable, was the Spartan Pausanias. Summoned home from Byzantium to Sparta, in order that the loud complaints against him might be examined, he had been acquitted of the charges of wrong and oppression against individuals; yet the presumptions of medism, or treacherous correspondence with the Persians, appeared so strong that, though not found guilty, he was still not reappointed to the command. Such treatment seems to have only emboldened him in the prosecution of his designs against Greece, and he came out with this view to Byzantium in a trireme belonging to Hermione, under pretence of aiding as a volunteer without any formal authority in the war. He there resumed his negotiations with Artabazus: his great station and celebrity still gave him a strong hold on men’s opinions, and he appears to have established a sort of mastery in Byzantium, from whence the Athenians, already recognised heads of the confederacy, were constrained to expel him by force: and we may be very sure that the terror excited by his presence as well as by his known designs tended materially to accelerate the organisation of the confederacy under Athens. He then retired to Colonæ in the Troad, where he continued for some time in the farther prosecution of his schemes, trying to form a Persian party, despatching emissaries to distribute Persian gold among various cities of Greece, and probably employing the name of Sparta to impede the formation of the new confederacy: until at length the Spartan authorities, apprised of his proceedings, sent a herald out to him, with peremptory orders that he should come home immediately along with the herald: if he disobeyed, “the Spartans would declare war against him,” or constitute him a public enemy.
[ca. 470 B.C.]
As the execution of this threat would have frustrated all the ulterior schemes of Pausanias, he thought it prudent to obey; the rather, as he felt entire confidence of escaping all the charges against him at Sparta by the employment of bribes, the means for which were abundantly furnished to him through Artabazus. He accordingly returned along with the herald, and was, in the first moments of indignation, imprisoned by order of the ephors; who, it seems, were legally competent to imprison him, even had he been king instead of regent. But he was soon let out, on his own requisition, and under a private arrangement with friends and partisans, to take his trial against all accusers. Even to stand forth as accuser against so powerful a man was a serious peril: to undertake the proof of specific matter of treason against him was yet more serious: nor does it appear that any Spartan ventured to do either. It was known that nothing short of the most manifest and invincible proof would be held to justify his condemnation, and amidst a long chain of acts carrying conviction when taken in the aggregate, there was no single treason sufficiently demonstrable for the purpose. Accordingly, Pausanias remained not only at large but unaccused, still audaciously persisting both in his intrigues at home and his correspondence abroad with Artabazus. He ventured to assail the unshielded side of Sparta by opening negotiations with the helots, and instigating them to revolt; promising them both liberation and admission to political privilege; with a view, first, to destroy the board of ephors, and render himself despot in his own country, next, to acquire through Persian help the supremacy of Greece. Some of those helots to whom he addressed himself revealed the plot to the ephors, who, nevertheless, in spite of such grave peril, did not choose to take measures against Pausanias upon no better information—so imposing was still his name and position. But though some few helots might inform, probably, many others, both gladly heard the proposition and faithfully kept the secret: we shall find, by what happened a few years afterwards, that there were a large number of them who had their spears in readiness for revolt. Suspected as Pausanias was, yet by the fears of some and the connivance of others, he was allowed to bring his plans to the very brink of consummation: and his last letters to Artabazus, intimating that he was ready for action, and bespeaking immediate performance of the engagements concerted between them, were actually in the hands of the messenger. Sparta was saved from an outbreak of the most formidable kind, not by the prudence of her authorities, but by a mere accident, or rather by the fact that Pausanias was not only a traitor to his country, but also base and cruel in his private relations.
The messenger to whom these last letters were entrusted was a native of Argilus in Thrace, a favourite and faithful slave of Pausanias; once connected with him by that intimate relation which Grecian manners tolerated, and admitted even to the full confidence of his treasonable projects. It was by no means the intention of this Argilian to betray his master; but, on receiving the letter to carry, he recollected, with some uneasiness, that none of the previous messengers had ever come back. Accordingly he broke the seal and read it, with the full view of carrying it forward to its destination, if he found nothing inconsistent with his own personal safety: he had further taken the precaution to counterfeit his master’s seal, so that he could easily reclose the letter. On reading it, he found his suspicions confirmed by an express injunction that the bearer was to be put to death—a discovery which left him no alternative except to deliver it to the ephors. But those magistrates, who had before disbelieved the helot informers, still refused to believe even the confidential slave with his master’s autograph and seal, and with the full account besides, which doubtless he would communicate at the same time, of all that had previously passed in the Persian correspondence. Partly from the suspicion which, in antiquity, always attached to the testimony of slaves, except when it was obtained under the pretended guarantee of torture, partly from the peril of dealing with so exalted a criminal, the ephors would not be satisfied with any evidence less than his own speech and their own ears. They directed the Argilian slave to plant himself as a suppliant in the sacred precinct of Poseidon, near Cape Tænarus, under the shelter of a double tent, or hut, behind which two of them concealed themselves. Apprised of this unexpected mark of alarm, Pausanias hastened to the temple, and demanded the reason: upon which the slave disclosed his knowledge of the contents of the letter, and complained bitterly that, after a long and faithful service,—with a secrecy never once betrayed, throughout this dangerous correspondence,—he was at length rewarded with nothing better than the same miserable fate which had befallen the previous messengers. Pausanias, admitting all these facts, tried to appease the slave’s disquietude, and gave him a solemn assurance of safety if he would quit the sanctuary; urging him at the same time to proceed on the journey forthwith, in order that the schemes in progress might not be retarded.
All this passed within the hearing of the concealed ephors; who at length, thoroughly satisfied, determined to arrest Pausanias immediately on his return to Sparta. They met him in the public street, not far from the temple of Athene Chalciœcus (or of the Brazen House); but as they came near, either their menacing looks, or a significant nod from one of them, revealed to this guilty man their purpose; and he fled for refuge to the temple, which was so near that he reached it before they could overtake him. He planted himself as a suppliant, far more hopeless than the Argilian slave whom he had so recently talked over at Tænarus, in a narrow-roofed chamber belonging to the sacred building; where the ephors, not warranted in touching him, took off the roof, built up the doors, and kept watch until he was on the point of death by starvation. According to a current story, not recognised by Thucydides, yet consistent with Spartan manners, his own mother was the person who placed the first stone to build up the door, in deep abhorrence of his treason. His last moments being carefully observed, he was brought away just in time to expire without, and thus to avoid the desecration of the temple. The first impulse of the ephors was to cast his body into the ravine, or hollow, called the Cæadas, the usual place of punishment for criminals: probably, his powerful friends averted this disgrace, and he was buried not far off, until, some time afterwards, under the mandate of the Delphian oracle, his body was exhumed and transported to the exact spot where he had died. Nor was the oracle satisfied even with this reinterment: pronouncing the whole proceeding to be a profanation of the sanctity of Athene, it enjoined that two bodies should be presented to her as an atonement for the one carried away. In the very early days of Greece, or among the Carthaginians, even at this period, such an injunction would probably have produced the slaughter of two human victims: on the present occasion, Athene, or Hicesius, the tutelary god of suppliants, was supposed to be satisfied by two brazen statues; not, however, without some attempts to make out that the expiation was inadequate.
Thus perished a Greek who reached the pinnacle of renown simply from the accidents of his lofty descent, and of his being general at Platæa, where it does not appear that he displayed any superior qualities. His treasonable projects implicated and brought to disgrace a man far greater than himself, the Athenian Themistocles.
[478-470 B.C.]
The chronology of this important period is not so fully known as to enable us to make out the full dates of particular events; but we are obliged—in consequence of the subsequent events connected with Themistocles, whose flight to Persia is tolerably well marked as to date—to admit an interval of about nine years between the retirement of Pausanias from his command at Byzantium, and his death. To suppose so long an interval engaged in treasonable correspondence, is perplexing; and we can only explain it to ourselves very imperfectly by considering that the Spartans were habitually slow in their movements, and that the suspected regent may perhaps have communicated with partisans, real or expected, in many parts of Greece. Among those whom he sought to enlist as accomplices was Themistocles, still in great power—though, as it would seem, in declining power—at Athens: and the charge of collusion with the Persians connects itself with the previous movement of political parties in that city.
The Dying Pausanias Carried from the Temple
POLITICAL CHANGES AT ATHENS
[478-476 B.C.]
The rivalry of Themistocles and Aristides had been greatly appeased by the invasion of Xerxes, which had imposed upon both the peremptory necessity of co-operation against a common enemy. Nor was it apparently resumed, during the times which immediately succeeded the return of the Athenians to their country: at least we hear of both in effective service, and in prominent posts. Themistocles stands forward as the contriver of the city walls and architect of Piræus: Aristides is commander of the fleet, and first organiser of the confederacy of Delos. Moreover, we seem to detect a change in the character of the latter: he had ceased to be the champion of Athenian old-fashioned landed interest, against Themistocles as the originator of the maritime innovations. Those innovations had now, since the battle of Salamis, become an established fact; a fact of overwhelming influence on the destinies and character, public as well as private, of the Athenians. During the exile at Salamis, every man, rich or poor, landed proprietor or artisan, had been for the time a seaman: and the anecdote of Cimon, who dedicated the bridle of his horse in the Acropolis, as a token that he was about to pass from the cavalry to service on shipboard, is a type of that change of feeling which must have been impressed more or less upon every rich man in Athens. From henceforward the fleet is endeared to every man as the grand force, offensive and defensive, of the state, in which character all the political leaders agree in accepting it.
We see by the active political sentiment of the German people, after the great struggles of 1813 and 1814, how much an energetic and successful military effort of the people at large, blended with endurance of serious hardship, tends to stimulate the sense of political dignity and the demand for developed citizenship: and if this be the tendency even among a people habitually passive on such subjects, much more was it to be expected in the Athenian population, who had gone through a previous training of near thirty years under the democracy of Clisthenes. At the time when that constitution was first established, it was perhaps the most democratical in Greece: it had worked extremely well and had diffused among the people a sentiment favourable to equal citizenship and unfriendly to avowed privilege: so that the impressions made by the struggle at Salamis found the popular mind prepared to receive them. Early after the return to Attica, the Clisthenean constitution was enlarged as respects eligibility to the magistracy. According to that constitution, the fourth or last class of the Solonian census, including the considerable majority of the freemen, were not admissible to offices of state, though they possessed votes in common with the rest: no person was eligible to be a magistrate unless he belonged to one of the three higher classes. This restriction was now annulled, and eligibility extended to all the citizens. We may appreciate the strength of feeling with which such reform was demanded, when we find that it was proposed by Aristides, a man the reverse of what is called a demagogue, and a strenuous friend of the Clisthenean constitution. No political system would work after the Persian War, which formally excluded “the maritime multitude” from holding magistracy. We rather imagine that election of magistrates was still retained, and not exchanged for drawing lots until a certain time, though not a long time, afterwards. That which the public sentiment first demanded was the recognition of the equal and open principle: after a certain length of experience, it was found that poor men, though legally qualified to be chosen, were in point of fact rarely chosen: then came the lot, to give them an equal chance with the rich. The principle of sortition, or choice by lot, was never applied, as we have before remarked, to all offices at Athens—never, for example, to the strategi, or generals, whose functions were more grave and responsible than those of any other person in the service of the state, and who always continued to be elected by show of hands.
And it was probably about this period, during the years immediately succeeding the battle of Salamis,—when the force of old habit and tradition had been partially enfeebled by so many stirring novelties,—that the archons were withdrawn altogether from political and military duties, and confined to civil or judicial administration. At the battle of Marathon, the polemarch is a military commander, president of the ten strategi: we know him afterwards only as a civil magistrate, administering justice to the metics, or non-freemen, while the strategi perform military duties without him. The special and important change which characterised the period immediately succeeding the battle of Salamis, was the more accurate line drawn between the archons and the strategi; assigning the foreign and military department entirely to the strategi, and rendering the archons purely civil magistrates,—administrative as well as judicial. It was by some such steps that the Athenian administration gradually attained that complete development which it exhibits in practise during the century from the Peloponnesian War downward, to which nearly all our positive and direct information relates.
THE DOWNFALL OF THEMISTOCLES
[476-472 B.C.]
With this expansion both of democratical feeling and of military activity at Athens, Aristides appears to have sympathised; and the popularity thus insured to him, probably heightened by some regret for his previous ostracism, was calculated to acquire permanence from his straightforward and incorruptible character, now brought into strong relief from his function as assessor to the new Delian confederacy. On the other hand, the ascendency of Themistocles, though so often exalted by his unrivalled political genius and daring, as well as by the signal value of his public recommendations, was as often overthrown by his duplicity of means and unprincipled thirst for money. New political opponents sprang up against him, men sympathising with Aristides, and far more violent in their antipathy than Aristides himself. Of these, the chief were Cimon, son of Miltiades and Alcmæon; moreover, it seems that the Lacedæmonians, though full of esteem for Themistocles immediately after the battle of Salamis, had now become extremely hostile to him—a change which may be sufficiently explained from his stratagem respecting the fortifications of Athens, and his subsequent ambitious projects in reference to the Piræus. The Lacedæmonian influence, then not inconsiderable in Athens, was employed to second the political combinations against him. He is said to have given offence by manifestations of personal vanity, by continual boasting of his great services to the state, and by the erection of a private chapel, close to his own house, in honour of Artemis Aristobule, or Artemis of admirable counsel; just as Pausanias had irritated the Lacedæmonians by inscribing his own single name on the Delphian tripod, and as the friends of Aristides had displeased the Athenians by endless encomiums upon his justice.
ARISTIDES AND THE PEASANT
But the main cause of his discredit was the prostitution of his great influence for arbitrary and corrupt purposes. In the unsettled condition of so many different Grecian communities, recently emancipated from Persia, when there was past misrule to avenge, wrong-doers to be deposed and perhaps punished, exiles to be restored, and all the disturbance and suspicions accompanying so great a change of political condition as well as of foreign policy, the influence of the leading men at Athens must have been great in determining the treatment of particular individuals. Themistocles, placed at the head of an Athenian squadron and sailing among the islands, partly for the purposes of war against Persia, partly for organising the new confederacy, is affirmed to have accepted bribes without scruple, for executing sentences just and unjust, restoring some citizens, expelling others, and even putting some to death. We learn this from a friend and guest of Themistocles, the poet Timocreon of Ialysus in Rhodes, who had expected his own restoration from the Athenian commander, but found that it was thwarted by a bribe of three talents from his opponents; so that he was still kept in exile on the charge of medism. The assertions of Timocreon, personally incensed on this ground against Themistocles, are doubtless to be considered as passionate and exaggerated: nevertheless, they are a valuable memorial of the feelings of the time, and are far too much in harmony with the general character of this eminent man to allow of our disbelieving them entirely. Timocreon is as emphatic in his admiration of Aristides as in his censure of Themistocles, whom he denounces as “a lying and unjust traitor.”
[472-471 B.C.]
Such conduct as that described by this new Archilochus, even making every allowance for exaggeration, must have caused Themistocles to be both hated and feared among the insular allies, whose opinion was now of considerable importance to the Athenians. A similar sentiment grew up partially against him in Athens itself, and appears to have been connected with suspicions of treasonable inclinations towards the Persians. As the Persians could offer the highest bribes, a man open to corruption might naturally be suspected of inclinations towards their cause; and if Themistocles had rendered pre-eminent service against them, so also had Pausanias, whose conduct had undergone so fatal a change for the worse. It was the treason of Pausanias, suspected and believed against him by the Athenians even when he was in command at Byzantium, though not proved against him at Sparta until long afterwards, which first seems to have raised the presumption of medism against Themistocles also, when combined with the corrupt proceedings which stained his public conduct: we must recollect, also, that Themistocles had given some colour to these presumptions, even by the stratagems in reference to Xerxes, which wore a double-faced aspect, capable of being construed either in a Persian or in a Grecian sense. The Lacedæmonians, hostile to Themistocles since the time when he had outwitted them respecting the walls of Athens, and fearing him also as a supposed accomplice of the suspected Pausanias, procured the charge of medism to be preferred against him at Athens; by secret instigations, and, as it is said, by bribes, to his political opponents. But no satisfactory proof could be furnished of the accusation, which Themistocles himself strenuously denied, not without emphatic appeals to his illustrious services. In spite of violent invectives against him from Alcmæon and Cimon, tempered, indeed, by a generous moderation on the part of Aristides, his defence was successful. He carried the people with him and was acquitted of the charge. Nor was he merely acquitted, but, as might naturally be expected, a reaction took place in his favour: his splendid qualities and exploits were brought impressively before the public mind, and he seemed for the time to acquire greater ascendency than ever.
Such a charge, and such a failure, must have exasperated to the utmost the animosity between him and his chief opponents,—Aristides, Cimon, Alcmæon, and others; nor can we wonder that they were anxious to get rid of him by ostracism. In explaining this peculiar process, we have already stated that it could never be raised against any one individual separately and ostensibly, and that it could never be brought into operation at all, unless its necessity were made clear, not merely to violent party men, but also to the assembled senate and people, including, of course, a considerable proportion of the more moderate citizens. We may well conceive that the conjuncture was deemed by many dispassionate Athenians well suited for the tutelary intervention of ostracism, the express benefit of which consisted in its separating political opponents when the antipathy between them threatened to push one or the other into extra-constitutional proceedings—especially when one of those parties was Themistocles, a man alike vast in his abilities and unscrupulous in his morality. Probably also there were not a few wished to revenge the previous ostracism of Aristides: and lastly, the friends of Themistocles himself, elate with his acquittal and his seemingly augmented popularity, might indulge hopes that the vote of ostracism would turn out in his favour, and remove one or other of his chief political opponents. From all these circumstances we learn without astonishment, that a vote of ostracism was soon after resorted to. It ended in the temporary banishment of Themistocles.
[471-466 B.C.]
He retired into exile, and was residing at Argos, whither he carried a considerable property, yet occasionally visiting other parts of the Peloponnesus, when the exposure and death of Pausanias, together with the discovery of his correspondence, took place at Sparta. Among this correspondence were found proofs, which Thucydides seems to have considered as real and sufficient, of the privity of Themistocles. According to Ephorus and others, he is admitted to have been solicited by Pausanias, and to have known his plans, but to have kept them secret while refusing to co-operate in them, but probably after his exile he took a more decided share in them than before; being well-placed for that purpose at Argos, a city not only unfriendly to Sparta, but strongly believed to have been in collusion with Xerxes at his invasion of Greece. On this occasion the Lacedæmonians sent to Athens, publicly to prefer a formal charge of treason against him, and to urge the necessity of trying him as a Panhellenic criminal before the synod of the allies assembled at Sparta. Whether this latter request would have been granted, or whether Themistocles would have been tried at Athens, we cannot tell: for no sooner was he apprised that joint envoys from Sparta and Athens had been despatched to arrest him, than he fled forthwith from Argos to Corcyra. The inhabitants of that island, though owing gratitude to him and favourably disposed, could not venture to protect him against the two most powerful states in Greece, but sent him to the neighbouring continent.
Here, however, being still tracked and followed by the envoys, he was obliged to seek protection from a man whom he had formerly thwarted in a demand at Athens, and who had become his personal enemy—Admetus, king of the Molossians. Fortunately for him, at the moment when he arrived, Admetus was not at home; and Themistocles, becoming a suppliant to his wife, conciliated her sympathy so entirely, that she placed her child in his arms, and planted him at the hearth in the full solemnity of supplication to soften her husband. As soon as Admetus returned, Themistocles revealed his name, his pursuers, and his danger, entreating protection as a helpless suppliant in the last extremity. He appealed to the generosity of the Epirotic prince not to take revenge on a man now defenceless, for offence given under such very different circumstances; and for an offence too, after all, not of capital moment, while the protection now entreated was to the suppliant a matter of life or death. Admetus raised him up from the hearth with the child in his arms, an evidence that he accepted the appeal and engaged to protect him; refusing to give him up to the envoys, and at last only sending him away on the expression of his own wish to visit the king of Persia. Two Macedonian guides conducted him across the mountains to Pydna, in the Thermaic Gulf, where he found a merchant ship about to set sail for the coast of Asia Minor, and took a passage on board; neither the master nor the crew knowing his name. An untoward storm drove the vessel to the island of Naxos, at that moment besieged by an Athenian armament: had he been forced to land there, he would of course have been recognised and seized, but his wonted subtlety did not desert him. Having communicated both his name and the peril which awaited him, he conjured the master of the ship to assist in saving him, and not to suffer any one of the crew to land; menacing that if by any accident he were discovered, he would bring the master to ruin along with himself, by representing him as an accomplice induced by money to facilitate the escape of Themistocles: on the other hand, in case of safety, he promised a large reward. Such promises and threats weighed with the master, who controlled his crew, and forced them to beat about during a day and a night off the coast, without seeking to land. After that dangerous interval, the storm abated, and the ship reached Ephesus in safety.
[466-460 (?) B.C.]
Thus did Themistocles, after a series of perils, find himself safe on the Persian side of the Ægean. At Athens, he was proclaimed a traitor, and his property confiscated: nevertheless, as it frequently happened in cases of confiscation, his friends secreted a considerable sum, and sent it over to him in Asia, together with the money which he had left at Argos; so that he was thus enabled liberally to reward the ship-captain who had preserved him. With all this deduction, the property which he possessed of a character not susceptible of concealment, and which was therefore actually seized, was found to amount to eighty talents [about £16,000 or $80,000] according to Theophrastus, to one hundred talents according to Theopompus. In contrast with this large sum, it is melancholy to learn that he had begun his political career with a property not greater than three talents. The poverty of Aristides at the end of his life presents an impressive contrast to the enrichment of his rival.
The escape of Themistocles, and his adventures in Persia, appear to have formed a favourite theme for the fancy and exaggeration of authors a century afterwards: we have thus many anecdotes which contradict either directly or by implication the simple narrative of Thucydides. Thus we are told that at the moment when he was running away from the Greeks, the Persian king also had proclaimed a reward of two hundred talents for his head, and that some Greeks on the coast of Asia were watching to take him for this reward: that he was forced to conceal himself strictly near the coast, until means were found to send him up to Susa in a closed litter, under pretence that it was a woman for the king’s harem: that Mandane, sister of Xerxes, insisted upon having him delivered up to her as an expiation for the loss of her son at the battle of Salamis: that he learned Persian so well, and discoursed in it so eloquently, as to procure for himself an acquittal from the Persian judges, when put upon his trial through the importunity of Mandane: that the officers of the king’s household at Susa, and the satraps on his way back, threatened him with still further perils: that he was admitted to see the king in person, after having received a lecture from the chamberlain on the indispensable duty of falling down before him to do homage, etc., with several other uncertified details, which make us value more highly the narrative of Thucydides. Indeed, Ephorus, Dinon, Clitarchus, and Heraclides, from whom these anecdotes appear mostly to be derived, even affirmed that Themistocles had found Xerxes himself alive and seen him: whereas, Thucydides and Charon, the two contemporary authors, for the former is nearly contemporary, asserted that he had found Xerxes recently dead, and his son Artaxerxes on the throne.
According to Thucydides, the eminent exile does not seem to have been exposed to the least danger in Persia. He presented himself as a deserter from Greece, and was accepted as such: moreover,—what is more strange, though it seems true,—he was received as an actual benefactor of the Persian king, and a sufferer from the Greeks on account of such dispositions, in consequence of his communications made to Xerxes respecting the intended retreat of the Greeks from Salamis, and respecting the contemplated destruction of the Hellespontine bridge. He was conducted by some Persians on the coast up to Susa, where he addressed a letter to the king couched in the following terms, such as probably no modern European king would tolerate except from a Quaker: “I, Themistocles, am come to thee, having done to thy house more mischief than any other Greek, as long as I was compelled in my own defence to resist the attack of thy father—but having also done him yet greater good, when I could do so with safety to myself, and when his retreat was endangered. Reward is yet owing to me for my past service: moreover, I am now here, chased away by the Greeks, in consequence of my attachment to thee, but able still to serve thee with great effect. I wish to wait a year, and then to come before thee in person to explain my views.”
Whether the Persian interpreters, who read this letter to Artaxerxes Longimanus, exactly rendered its brief and direct expression, we cannot say. But it made a strong impression upon him, combined with the previous reputation of the writer, and he willingly granted the prayer for delay: though we shall not readily believe that he was so transported as to show his joy by immediate sacrifice to the gods, by an unusual measure of convivial indulgence, and by crying out thrice in his sleep, “I have got Themistocles the Athenian,”—as some of Plutarch’s authors informed him. In the course of the year granted, Themistocles had learned so much of the Persian language and customs as to be able to communicate personally with the king, and acquire his confidence: no Greek, says Thucydides, had ever before attained such a commanding influence and position at the Persian court. His ingenuity was now displayed in laying out schemes for the subjugation of Greece to Persia, which were eminently captivating to the monarch, who rewarded him with a Persian wife and large presents, sending him down to Magnesia, on the Mæander, not far from the coast of Ionia. The revenues of the district round that town, amounting to the large sum of fifty talents [£10,000 or $50,000] yearly, were assigned to him for bread: those of the neighbouring seaport of Myus, for articles of condiment to his bread, which was always accounted the main nourishment: those of Lampsacus on the Hellespont, for wine. Not knowing the amount of these two latter items, we can not determine how much revenue Themistocles received altogether: but there can be no doubt, judging from the revenues of Magnesia alone, that he was a great pecuniary gainer by his change of country. After having visited various parts of Asia, he lived for a certain time at Magnesia, in which place his family joined him from Athens. How long his residence at Magnesia lasted we do not know, but seemingly long enough to acquire local estimation and leave mementos behind him. He at length died of sickness, when sixty-five years old, without having taken any step towards the accomplishment of those victorious campaigns which he had promised to Artaxerxes. That sickness was the real cause of his death, we may believe on the distinct statement of Thucydides; who at the same time notices a rumour partially current in his own time, of poison voluntarily taken, from painful consciousness on the part of Themistocles himself that the promises made could never be performed—a further proof of the general tendency to surround the last years of this distinguished man with impressive adventures, and to dignify his last moments with a revived feeling, not unworthy of his earlier patriotism. The report may possibly have been designedly circulated by his friends and relatives, in order to conciliate some tenderness towards his memory (his sons still continued citizens at Athens, and his daughters were married there). These friends further stated that they had brought back his bones to Attica, at his own express command, and buried them privately without the knowledge of the Athenians; no condemned traitor being permitted to be buried in Attic soil. If, however, we even suppose that this statement was true, no one could point out with certainty the spot wherein such interment had taken place: nor does it seem, when we mark the cautious expressions of Thucydides, that he himself was satisfied of the fact: moreover, we may affirm with confidence that the inhabitants of Magnesia, when they showed the splendid sepulchral monument erected in honour of Themistocles in their own market-place, were persuaded that his bones were really enclosed within it.
[468 B.C.]
Aristides died about three or four years after the ostracism of Themistocles; but respecting the place and manner of his death, there were several contradictions among the authors whom Plutarch had before him. Some affirmed that he perished on foreign service in the Euxine Sea; others, that he died at home, amidst the universal esteem and grief of his fellow-citizens. A third story, confined to the single statement of Craterus, and strenuously rejected by Plutarch, represents Aristides as having been falsely accused before the Athenian judicature and condemned to a fine of fifty minæ [£180, or $900], on the allegation of having taken bribes during the assessment of the tribute on the allies—which fine he was unable to pay, and was therefore obliged to retire to Ionia, where he died. Dismissing this last story, we find nothing certain about his death except one fact,—but that fact at the same time the most honourable of all,—that he died very poor. It is even asserted that he did not leave enough to pay funeral expenses, that a sepulchre was provided for him at Phalerum at the public cost, besides a handsome donation to his son Lysimachus, and a dowry to each of his two daughters. In the two or three ensuing generations, however, his descendants still continued poor, and even at that remote day, some of them received aid out of the public purse, from the recollection of their incorruptible ancestor. Near a century and a half afterwards, a poor man, named Lysimachus, descendant of the just Aristides, was to be seen at Athens, near the chapel of Iacchus, carrying a mysterious tablet, and obtaining his scanty fee of two oboli [3d. or 6 cents] for interpreting the dreams of the passers-by: Demetrius the Phalerean procured from the people, for the mother and aunt of this poor man, a small daily allowance.
On all these points the contrast is marked when we compare Aristides with Themistocles. The latter, having distinguished himself by ostentatious cost at Olympia, and by a choregic victory at Athens, with little scruple as to the means of acquisition, ended his life at Magnesia in dishonourable affluence greater than ever, and left an enriched posterity both at that place and at Athens. More than five centuries afterwards, his descendant, the Athenian Themistocles, attended the lectures of the philosopher Ammonius at Athens, as the comrade and friend of Plutarch himself.[c]
Grecian Seal Rings
Greek Boat
(From a wall decoration)