Themistocles

Themistocles (born c. 524 bce—died c. 460) was an Athenian politician and naval strategist who was the creator of Athenian sea power and the chief saviour of Greece from subjection to the Persian empire at the Battle of Salamis in 480 bce.

Early life

Themistocles’ father, Neocles, came of the aristocratic Lycomid family and was not poor, but his mother was a concubine, non-Athenian and possibly non-Greek. He thus owed his citizenship to the legislation of Cleisthenes, which in 508 had made citizens of all free men of Athens. This no doubt contributed to Themistocles’ democratic sympathies. In 493 he was elected archon, the chief judicial and civilian executive officer in Athens; this is the first recorded event of his life. As archon, he sponsored the first public works destined to make the defensible rocky bays of Piraeus, five miles from Athens, into harbours, replacing the nearer but unprotected beaches of Phaleron. He must also have been concerned in the trial of Miltiades, the great Athenian aristocrat and general, who arrived in flight from the Chersonese (Gallipoli Peninsula) and was prosecuted by aristocratic rivals for having ruled there as a tyrant. Themistocles himself took a cool view of Miltiades’ autocratic character, but his judgment was not at fault if he helped to save the strategist and tactician who in 490 had beat off the first Persian attack on Athens at Marathon.

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Advocacy of a large navy

After Marathon, most Athenians thought that the danger was past, but not Themistocles. He also saw that Marathon—a victory for Athens’s spearmen, middle-class men who could afford the costly bronze panoply—could not be repeated if the enemy, strong in archers and cavalry, came again in much greater force. The only hope was to exploit the invader’s supply difficulties, which would be great if Persia’s naval allies, including the formidable Phoenicians, could be beaten at sea. To carry out this strategy, however, Greece needed far more warships—the newly developed specialized triremes—than it then had. Themistocles urged that the Athenian fleet, then 70 strong, be doubled or trebled, but he was opposed. The opposition was not without political overtones. Building a strong navy would require the wealthy to pay higher taxes to purchase new ships while giving political weight to the men who rowed the galleys, the poorer voters. Maintaining a land-oriented defense, by comparison, would cost less and would increase the status of the infantry, whose ranks were drawn primarily from the middle class.

The 480s were a period of intense political struggle. Miltiades died in disgrace (489), and from 487 to 483 other leaders were successively ostracized. Though never himself defeated, Themistocles must have been attacked repeatedly; he was the man accused by his enemies of being a danger to the established order. Nonetheless, in 483 he won his greatest triumph. The state-owned silver mines near Sunium were the site of a rich strike, and he persuaded the assembly, instead of “declaring a dividend,” to devote the whole surplus to increasing the navy. Thus, when Xerxes I, the Persian king, marched in 480, Athens had 200 triremes, though many of the rowers were still untrained.

Themistocles further succeeded in selling his naval strategy to the Peloponnesians, headed by Sparta, who could raise another 150 triremes. The combined fleet was to fight not on their own doorstep, as Greeks preferred to do, but as far forward as possible, exploiting the geographical situation. Serving under a Spartan admiral (since Corinth and Aegina would not serve under an Athenian), Themistocles conducted the main fleet to the straits north of Euboea. There their presence forced the enemy to approach en masse down a coast with few beaches, and a typical north Aegean storm there inflicted losses that probably, in the end, proved decisive. The Greeks were still outnumbered, however. In the Battle of Artemisium, fighting in a defensive half-moon formation, they suffered as well as inflicted heavy losses, and they knew that they must retire even before they heard that their small holding force on land had been destroyed at Thermopylae.

Battle of Salamis

One hope remained. Themistocles had persuaded the Athenians to evacuate women and children to the Peloponnese and, in the last resort, to retire to Salamis. If the Persians attacked that island citadel, a battle in the narrow sound might yet give a chance to the Greeks, with their armoured marines and heavier ships, against the better sailing ships commanded by the Persians. Persuading the Peloponnesians to join the Athenian fleet, Themistocles then lured Xerxes by a false message, suggesting that he himself was ready to change sides, into ordering an all-out attack. The Greeks enveloped the head of the Phoenician column as it emerged from the narrowest part of the strait and destroyed it, and, though most of the other Asian contingents in the rear escaped, Xerxes had lost for good the command of the sea.

Sparta honoured Themistocles with a great ovation, but Athens, led during the crisis by the Areopagus, or council of nobles, gave the chief commands in 479 to the recalled exiles, Aristides and Xanthippus, and Themistocles’ postwar history was a sad one. He outwitted the Spartans when they attempted to prevent Athens from rebuilding its defensive walls, but he failed to induce the people either to transfer their capital to Piraeus or, at that time, to reduce the powers of the Areopagus. The people, after their tremendous war effort, were in a mood of reaction. Though praised (not by name) in Aeschylus’s Persians (472), Themistocles was at last ostracized. He lived at Argos for some years, during which democracy made headway in some parts of the Peloponnese. Sparta then accused him of complicity in alleged intrigues with Persia. He escaped and, until his death about 460, served as governor of some Asian Greek cities that were still subject to the son of Xerxes.

Legacy

Themistocles was often viewed unfavourably by early writers. Admittedly a master strategist, he is often depicted as a slick politician, bent on enriching himself even in the crisis of the great war. The reason for this bias is perhaps that he was a strong democrat, hated by the Athenian upper classes, and their views, passed on to their friend the historian Herodotus and to Plato, himself an aristocrat, colour the whole tradition. Herodotus introduces him only at the onset of the crisis as “newly come to the front” (which is incorrect) and drops him from his story at the end of 480. Only the historian Thucydides does him justice and calls the darkest charges against him “alleged.”