‘None at all,’ answered the fellow, ‘neither know I the man, but I am tired of everywhere hearing him called the Just.’ Aristides did not answer the ignorant countryman, but he quietly wrote his own name upon the shell and handed it back to its owner.
The necessary number of votes being recorded against him he was ostracised. As he left the city he lifted up his hands to heaven and prayed that the Athenians ‘might never have any occasion which should constrain them to remember Aristides.’ And this he did although it was a bitter thing to him to leave the city that he loved so well. In his absence he knew that Themistocles would be able to carry out his plans unopposed, and this added to his pain.
But Themistocles was wiser than Aristides when he urged the Athenians to increase their fleet. For although the great king Darius was dead, Xerxes his son was preparing to invade Greece as his father had hoped to do. And without a large and well-equipped fleet, the Athenians would have been unable to meet the Persians at sea.
CHAPTER XLIV
THE DREAM OF XERXES
Xerxes, the new ruler of Persia, looked every inch a king. He was tall and handsome, standing head and shoulders above the great warriors he led to battle. But although he looked a king among men, in character he was most unkingly, for he was both weak and foolish. It is true that he was sometimes good-natured, but it was not wise for his people to trust his temper, for he was often seized by sudden fits of rage, when he would do deeds of terrible cruelty.
In 483 B.C. Xerxes put down a revolt in Egypt. Then his captain and kinsman, Mardonius, begged the king to go to Greece to avenge the Persian defeat at Marathon.
‘O king,’ said Mardonius, ‘it is not seemly that the Athenians, who have done much wrong to the Persians, should not suffer for their doings.... And now, will any one dare to face thee, O king, with thy great army from Asia and all thy ships? Sure I am that the Greeks are not so desperate. But if I am wrong and in their rash folly they come out to battle, they will find that of all men we are the bravest.’
To tempt Xerxes yet farther to do as he wished, Mardonius told him how fair a country Europe was, how rich in fruit and trees. ‘Such a country,’ said the subtle flatterer, ‘should belong to none save to thee, O king.’ Mardonius hoped that if Greece was made a province of Persia, he himself would become her ruler.
But while Mardonius urged one thing, Artabanus the king’s uncle urged another.