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]