Плутарх - Plutarch's Lives - Volume I

II. He is agreed by all to have been a child of vigorous impulses, naturally clever, and inclined to take an interest in important affairs and questions of statesmanship. During his holidays and times of leisure he did not play and trifle as other children do, but was always found arranging some speech by himself and thinking it over. The speech was always an attack on, or a defence of, some one of his playfellows. His schoolmaster was wont to say, "You will be nothing petty, my boy; you will be either a very good or a very bad man."

In his learning, he cared nothing for the exercises intended to form the character, and mere showy accomplishments and graces, but eagerly applied himself to all real knowledge, trusting to his natural gifts to enable him to master what was thought to be too abstruse for his time of life. In consequence of this, when in society he was ridiculed by those who thought themselves well mannered and well educated, he was obliged to make the somewhat vulgar retort that he could not tune a lute or play upon the harp, but he could make a small and obscure state great and glorious.

In spite of all this, Stesimbrotus says that Themistokles was a pupil of Anaxagoras, and attended the lectures of Melissus the physicist; but here he is wrong as to dates. Melissus was the general who was opposed to Perikles, a much younger man than Themistokles, when he was besieging Samos, and Anaxagoras was one of Perikles's friends. One is more inclined to believe those who tell us that Themistokles was a follower and admirer of Mnesiphilus of Phrearri, who was neither an orator nor a natural philosopher, but a man who had deeply studied what went by the name of wisdom, but was really political sharp practice and expedients of statesmanship, which he had, as it were, inherited as a legacy from Solon. Those who in later times mixed up this science with forensic devices, and used it, not to deal with the facts of politics, but the abstract ideas of speculative philosophy, were named Sophists. Themistokles used to converse with this man when he had already begun his political career. In his childhood he was capricious and unsteady, his genius, as yet untempered by reason and experience, showing great capacities both for good and evil, and after breaking out into vice, as he himself used afterwards to admit, saying that the colts which are the hardest to break in usually make the most valuable horses when properly taught. But as for the stories which some have fabricated out of this, about his being disinherited by his father, and about his mother committing suicide through grief at her son's disgrace, they seem to be untrue. On the other hand, some writers tell us that his father, wishing to dissuade him from taking part in politics, pointed out to him the old triremes lying abandoned on the beach, and told him that politicians, when the people had no farther use for them, were cast aside in like manner.

III. Very early in life Themistokles took a vigorous part in public affairs, possessed by vehement ambition. Determined from the very outset that he would become the leading man in the state, he eagerly entered into all the schemes for displacing those who where then at the head of affairs, especially attacking Aristeides, the son of Lysimachus, whose policy he opposed on every occasion. Yet his enmity with this man seems to have had a very boyish commencement; for they both entertained a passion for the beautiful Stesilaus, who, we are told by Ariston the philosopher, was descended from a family residing in the island of Keos. After this difference they espoused different parties in the state, and their different temper and habits widened the breach between them. Aristeides was of a mild and honourable nature, and as a statesman cared nothing for popularity or personal glory, but did what he thought right with great caution and strict rectitude. He was thus often brought into collision with Themistokles, who was trying to engage the people in many new schemes, and to introduce startling reforms, by which he would himself have gained credit, and which Aristeides steadily opposed.

He is said to have been so recklessly ambitious and so frenziedly eager to take part in great events, that though he was very young at the time of the battle of Marathon, when the country rang with the praises of the generalship of Miltiades, he was often to be seen buried in thought, passing sleepless nights and refusing invitations to wine–parties, and that he answered those who asked him the cause of his change of habits, that the trophies of Miltiades would not let him sleep. Other men thought that the victory of Marathon had put an end to the war, but Themistokles saw that it was but the prelude to a greater contest, in which he prepared himself to stand forth as the champion of Greece, and, foreseeing long before what was to come, endeavoured to make the city of Athens ready to meet it.

IV. First of all, he had the courage to propose that the Athenians, instead of dividing amongst themselves the revenues derived from the silver mines at Laurium, should construct ships out of this fund for the war with Aegina. This was then at its height, and the Aeginetans, who had a large navy, were masters of the sea. By this means Themistokles was more easily enabled to carry his point, not trying to terrify the people by alluding to Darius and the Persians, who lived a long way off, and whom few feared would ever come to attack them, but by cleverly appealing to their feelings of patriotism against the Aeginetans, to make them consent to the outlay.

With that money a hundred triremes were built, which were subsequently used to fight against Xerxes. After this he kept gradually turning the thoughts of the Athenians in the direction of the sea, because their land force was unable even to hold its own against the neighbouring states, while with a powerful fleet they could both beat off the barbarians and make themselves masters of the whole of Greece. Thus, as Plato says, instead of stationary soldiers as they were, he made them roving sailors, and gave rise to the contemptuous remark that Themistokles took away from the citizens of Athens the shield and the spear, and reduced them to the oar and the rower's bench. This, we are told by Stesimbrotus, he effected after quelling the opposition of Miltiades, who spoke on the other side. Whether his proceedings at this time were strictly constitutional or no I shall leave to others to determine; but that the only safety of Greece lay in its fleet, and that those triremes were the salvation of the Athenians after their city was taken, can be proved by the testimony, among others, of Xerxes himself; for although his land force was unbroken, he fled after his naval defeat, as though no longer able to contend with the Greeks, and he left Mardonius behind more to prevent pursuit, in my opinion, than with any hopes of conquest.

V. Some writers tell us that he was a keen man of business, and explain that his grand style of living made this necessary; for he made costly sacrifices, and entertained foreigners in a splendid manner, all of which required a large expenditure; but some accuse him of meanness and avarice, and even say that he sold presents which were sent for his table. When Philides the horse–dealer refused to sell him a colt, he threatened that he would soon make a wooden horse of the man's house; meaning that he would stir up lawsuits and claims against him from some of his relations.

In ambition he surpassed every one. When yet a young and unknown man he prevailed upon Epikles of Hermione, the admired performer on the harp, to practise his art in his house, hoping thereby to bring many people to it to listen. And he displeased the Greeks when he went to the Olympian games by vying with Kimon in the luxury of his table, his tents, and his other furniture. It was thought very proper for Kimon, a young man of noble birth, to do so; but for a man who had not yet made himself a reputation, and had not means to support the expense, such extravagance seemed mere vulgar ostentation. In the dramatic contest, which even then excited great interest and rivalry, the play whose expenses he paid for won the prize. He put up a tablet in memory of his success bearing the words: Themistokles of Phrearri was choragus, Phrynichus wrote the play, Adeimantus was archon. Yet he was popular, for he knew every one of the citizens by name, and gave impartial judgment in all cases referred to him as arbitrator. Once, when Simonides of Keos asked him to strain a point in his favour, Themistokles, who was a general at the time, answered that Simonides would be a bad poet if he sang out of tune; and he would be a bad magistrate if he favoured men against the law. At another time he rallied Simonides on his folly in abusing the Corinthians, who inhabited so fine a city, and in having his own statue carved, though he was so ugly. He continued to increase in popularity by judiciously courting the favour of the people, and was at length able to secure the triumph of his own party, and the banishment of his rival Aristeides.