Плутарх - Plutarch's Lives - Volume I

XIX. Immediately after the great war, he began to rebuild and fortify the city. In order to succeed in this, Theopompus says that he bribed the Spartan ephors into laying aside opposition, but most writers say that he outwitted them by proceeding to Sparta nominally on an embassy. Then when the Spartans complained to him that Athens was being fortified, and when Poliarchus came expressly from Aegina to charge him with it, he denied it, and bade them send commissioners to Athens to see whether it was true, wishing both to obtain time for the fortifications to be built, and also to place these commissioners in the hands of the Athenians, as hostages for his own safety. His expectations were realised; for the Lacedaemonians, on discovering the truth, did him no harm, but dissembled their anger and sent him away. After this he built Peiraeus, as he perceived the excellence of its harbours, and was desirous to turn the whole attention of the Athenians to naval pursuits. In this he pursued a policy exactly the opposite to that of the ancient kings of Attica; for they are said to have endeavoured to keep their subjects away from the sea, and to accustom them to till the ground instead of going on board ships, quoting the legend that Athene and Poseidon had a contest for the possession of the land, and that she gained a decision in her favour by the production of the sacred olive. Themistokles, on the other hand, did not so much "stick Peiraeus on to Athens," as Aristophanes the comic poet said, as make the city dependent upon Peiraeus, and the land dependent on the sea. By this means he transferred power from the nobles to the people, because sailors and pilots became the real strength of the State. For this reason the thirty tyrants destroyed the bema, or tribune on the place of public assembly, which was built looking towards the sea, and built another which looked inland, because they thought that the naval supremacy of Athens had been the origin of its democratic constitution, and that an oligarchy had less to fear from men who cultivated the land.

XX. Themistokles had even more extended views than these about making the Athenians supreme at sea. When Xerxes was gone, the whole Greek fleet was drawn up on shore for the winter at Pagasae. Themistokles then publicly told the Athenians that he had a plan which would save and benefit them all, but which must not be divulged. The Athenians bade him tell Aristeides only, and to execute his designs if he approved.

Themistokles then told Aristeides that his design was to burn the whole Greek fleet as they lay on the beach. But Aristeides came forward and told the people that no proposal could be more advantageous or more villainous; so that the Athenians forbade Themistokles to proceed with it. On another occasion the Lacedaemonians proposed, in a meeting of the Amphiktyonic council, that all States that had taken no part in the Persian war should be excluded from that council; Themistokles, fearing that if the Lacedaemonians should exclude Thessaly, Argos, and Thebes, they would have complete control over the votes, and be able to carry what measures they pleased, made representations to the various States, and influenced the votes of their deputies at the meeting, pointing out to them that there were only thirty–one States which took any part in the war, and that most of these were very small ones, so that it would be unreasonable for one or two powerful States to pronounce the rest of Greece outlawed, and be supreme in the council. After this he generally opposed the Lacedaemonians; wherefore they paid special court to Kimon, in order to establish him as a political rival to Themistokles.

XXI. Moreover, he made himself odious to the allies by sailing about the islands and wringing money from them. A case in point is the conversation which Herodotus tells us he held with the people of Andros, when trying to get money from them. He said that he was come, bringing with him two gods, Persuasion and Necessity; but they replied that they also possessed two equally powerful ones, Poverty and Helplessness, by whom they were prevented from supplying him with money. The poet, Timokreon of Rhodes, in one of his songs, writes bitterly of Themistokles, saying that he was prevailed upon by the bribes which he received from exiles to restore them to their native country, but abandoned himself, who was his guest and friend. The song runs as follows:

And after the exile and condemnation of Themistokles, Timokreon wrote much more abusively about him in a song which begins,

It is said that Timokreon was exiled from home for having dealings with the Persians, and that Themistokles confirmed his sentence. When, then, Themistokles was charged with intriguing with the Persians, Timokreon wrote upon him,

XXII. As the Athenians, through his unpopularity, eagerly listened to any story to his discredit, he was obliged to weary them by constantly repeating the tale of his own exploits to them. In answer to those who were angry with him, he would ask, "Are you weary of always receiving benefits from the same hand?" He also vexed the people by building the Temple of Artemis of Good Counsel, as he called her, hinting that he had taken good counsel for the Greeks. This temple he placed close to his own house in Melite, at the place where at the present day the public executioner casts out the bodies of executed criminals, and the clothes and ropes of men who have hanged themselves. Even in our own times a small statue of Themistokles used to stand in the Temple of Artemis of Good Counsel; and he seems to have been a hero not only in mind, but in appearance. The Athenians made use of ostracism to banish him, in order to reduce his extravagant pretensions, as they always were wont to do in the case of men whom they thought over powerful and unfit for living in the equality of a democracy. For ostracism implied no censure, but was intended as a vent for envious feelings, which were satisfied by seeing the object of their hatred thus humbled.

XXIII. When Themistokles was banished from Athens, he lived in Argos, during which time the proceedings of Pausanias gave a great opportunity to his enemies. He was impeached on a charge of treason by Leobotes, the son of Alkmaeon of Agraulai, and the Spartans joined in the impeachment. Pausanias, indeed, at first concealed his treacherous designs from Themistokles, although he was his friend; but when he saw that Themistokles was banished, and chafing at the treatment he had received, he was encouraged to ask him to share his treason, and showed him the letters which he had received from the Persian king, at the same time inflaming his resentment against the Greeks, whom he spoke of as ungrateful wretches. Themistokles refused utterly to join Pausanias, but nevertheless told no one of his treasonable practices, either because he hoped that he would desist, or that his visionary and impossible projects would be disclosed by other means. And thus it was that when Pausanias was put to death, certain letters and writings on this subject were found, which threw suspicion upon Themistokles. The Lacedaemonians loudly condemned him, and many of his own countrymen, because of the enmity they bore him, brought charges against him. He did not appear in person at first, but answered these attacks by letters. In these he told his accusers that he had always sought to rule, and was not born to obey; so that he never would sell himself and Greece to be a slave to the Persians. But in spite of these arguments, his enemies prevailed upon the Athenians to send men with orders to seize him, and bring him to be tried by Greece.