MASTER NEGATIVE NO. 93-81229- MICROFILMED 1993 COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES/NEW YORK as part of the "Foundations of Western Civilization Preservation Project" Funded by the NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES Reproductions may not be made without permission from Columbia University Library COPYRIGHT STATEMENT The copyright law of the United States - Title 17, United States Code - concerns the making of photocopies or other reproductions of copyrighted material. Under certain conditions specified in the law, libraries and archives are authorized to furnish a photocopy or other reproduction. One of these specified conditions is that the photocopy or other reproduction is not to be "used for any purpose other than private study, scholarship, or research.** If a user makes a request for, or later uses, a photocopy or reproduction for purposes in excess of **fair use,** that user may be liable for copyright infringement. This institution reserves the right to refuse to accept a copy order if, in its judgement, fulfillment of the order would involve violation of the copyright law. A UTHOR: PLUTARCH TITLE: PLUTARCH'S THEMISTOCLES AND PLACE: NEW YORK DATE: 1901 80P71 JI COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES PRESERVATION DEPARTMENT BIBLIOGRAPHIC MTCRGFORM TARCFT Master Negative # Original Material as Filmed - Existing Bibliographic Record Vitae. Themistocles . Eng. Plutarchus. ^ Plutarch's Themistocles and Aristidesiiiowlv^^ with 1. Themistocles. 2. Aristides tlip Tnsf t -d • r. O / f^ - X ed. and tr. '''^"^"' the Just. i. Perrin, Bcrnadotte, 1847- d(±b'.}'d:7 (Continued on next card) Library of Congress f ) l-2548lA 888 v_ ^ E-9 Restrictions on Use: 376. 7Y !T8 54 D 8 3r71 - Tfi- . Vitae- Themistocles. Eng. Plutarchus. Plutarch's Themistocles and Aristides ... 1901. (Card 2) Another copy . Copy in Classitjs . 1901 . ■J TECHNICAL MICROFORM DATA REDUCTION RATIO: J/_X. FILM SIZE:__3_£~'A2JVL IMAGE PLACEMENT: lA /ILy IB IIB DATE FILMED:__^._a.^:r2'^ INITIALS__/^^^ . HLMEDBY: RESEARCH PUBLICATIONS. INC WOODRR TnnF CT r Association for Information and Imaga Managemant 1100 Wayne Avenue. Suite 1100 Silver Spring. Maryland 20910 301/587-8202 I M |4 Centimeter 1 2 3 4 5 6 iiiiliiiiliiiiliiiiliiiiliiiiliiiiliiiiliiiiliiiiliiiilinilii I immhml^^ 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 iiiliiiiliiiiliiiiliiiiliiiiliiiiliiiiliiiiliiiiliiiiliiiiliiiiiiiii Inches 1 1.0 I.I 1.25 li 23. 12.5 1^ m itt m ■Ilk Ik 3.2 3.6 4.0 i 2.2 1.4 2.0 1.8 1.6 TTT 14 15 mm iiliiiiliiiil +1 V 6> / 'e. .W^< MflNUFflCTURED TO flllM STRNDRRDS BY APPLIED IMRGE. INC. ^%> > f»CHf• • • • • • • • 9 « • • • • • • • • • • • •• • • • • • • • • • • •• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • . • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • ■ • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • ••• • • • •• • • • •• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • ••• • • • • • • • • • • • • PLUTARCH'S THEMISTOCLES AND ARISTIDES NEWLY TRANSLATED, WITH INTRODUCTION AND NOTES BY BERNADOTTE PERRIN Professor in Yale University Wie schwer sind nicht die Mittel zu erwerben, Durch die man zu den Quellen steigt ! Goethe's Faust, I. i, 209 f. NEW YORK : CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS LONDON: EDWARD ARNOLD • • < • •• •• . • • • • •• • • • •• • • • • • • • • •• • • • ! -• • . "^ : ? \ ■'. * » • - • w » r ' k > ( la • • I »> • • • • • • • • 4 • • • ' • • • • • • • • • • • • • • , • • • • t • • • • < • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •• • • • • # • • • • • • • • • • 3 I. ■J'i i » » • • t • » f » • « « a • • « • • . • • (^ « • • • . . ♦•• • ••• • » t « • • • u • » > » » « 4 M C^ -« ^ Copyright, 1901, By Charles Scribner's Sons Published, September, tgoi. ^'^m ^ TO JOHN HAY FRIEND OF HELLENISM I UNIVERSITY PRESS • JOHN WILSON AND SON • CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A. • * • « ■ .•• • • • • • • • ••• • 4 * fl • t • • • ■ .••. • • •..'. • • • • • « * 4 • • • ■ • » • • • • • • • • • • • • » ■ • t • • PREFACE In writing this book, I have had in mind as possible friends to be won by it, first, all lovers of Plutarch, whose name, it is to be hoped, is still l^ion. Knowing how im- possible it is to reproduce in English the illusive qualities which distinguish one Greek style from another, they will commend my work of translation if it brings out clearly the spirit of Plutarch as a writer of Lives : the easy and com- fortable movements of his thought ; his attitude toward men who are struggling with great problems of life and destiny ; his amiable weaknesses as a judge of historical evidence ; his relish for the personal anecdote and the mot ; his disregard of the logic and chronology of events ; his naive appropriation of the literary product of others ; his consummate art in making deeds and words, whether authentic or not, portray a pre- conceived character, — a more or less idealized character. They will welcome my introductions and explanatory notes also, in so far as these enable the English reader to repro- duce, even though faintly, the atmosphere of bountiful liter- ary tradition which Plutarch amply breathed before and as he wrote. It should be possible, in some degree, at least, for the student of these notes and introductions to penetrate, as it were, into the very studio of the greatest of ethical portrait- painters, and watch hirn mix his colors and apply them to the canvas. I have had in mind, second, all lovers of Greek history, and especially of the story of the Greek Wars of Freedom, wherein Salamis and Platsea must always be the glorious names. Translation and notes together will show how suc- cessive generations of Greeks told and retold the stories of i ^ PREFACE these battles ; how new and civil hates obscured the laurels won against foreign foes ; how genius was discredited and mediocrity rewarded ; and how for six centuries romance and invention went on weaving their unsubstantial robes around the dim figures of the man of genius and the man of medi- ocrity. It may possibly be that some students of Greek his- tory in our high schools, academies, and colleges have come to love it, as their teachers doubtless all do, and that both students and teachers may welcome the opportunity which this book affords them of getting behind the stereotyped phrases of the ordinary manual of Greek history into that stimulating atmosphere of doubt and uncertainty before conflicting testimonies which nourishes the judgment rather than the memory ; where witnesses who desired to tell an attractive story can be confronted with witnesses who desired to tell the same story truly, or perhaps even with the witness of imperishable monuments; where even the earliest oral testimonies show that the story-teUer's delight in the form of the story was apt to affect the matter of the story, in ancient as well as in the latest history. To the professional and learned student of Greek history I should scarcely venture to appeal with this book, unless he might wish to compare with his own opinions on contro- verted points the opinions which I have reached after weigh- ing the same evidence which he has himself weighed. There is always interest, if not profit, in such comparisons. But to the professional and learned student of other history than Greek, and especiaUy of modem history, I do confidently appeal for enough attention to this book to convince himself, if he is not already convinced, of the substantial identity of the problems and methods of historical research in fields so remote from each other as this from his. It is quite as diffi- cult, probably, in 1901 A.D. for an intelligent historian, without recourse to the official documents of the War Office, to get true accounts of the battles at Gettysburg in 1863 as it was for Herodotus in 440-430 B.C. to get true accounts of the battles at Plat»a in 479 ; and even contemporary accounts of im- PREFACE XI portant engagements in the current war in South Africa, given by leading participants, are sharply conflicting. I do not forget Niebuhr's quotation from Wilhelm von Humboldt : ** Es soil mir Alles recht sein, wemi man Plutarch nur nicht als G^schichtsschreiber betrachtet,'' and I neither regard Plutarch as an historian nor would I have others do so. We must admire and love Plutarch for what he is, not rely upon him or criticise him for what he is not and did not try to be. But, in the dearth of testimony for obscure events in ancient history, Plutarch will often be brought to the stand as a witness; in that case only those who know him thor- oughly as the artist in ethical portrait-painting which he tried to be, can judge of the worth of his witness on an historical question. On such hotly controverted points as the authenticity of the tract On the Malignity of Herodotus^ ascribed to Plutarch ; the extent and worth of the biographical tract of Stesimbrotus of Thasos; the date of the archonship of Themistocles, and many others like them, I have, of course, simply taken the position to which my studies have led me, without arguing the questions out fully. The authorities cited in the notes are not always, or often, indeed, the final authorities, but such as my English readers will find most accessible and convenient. Great storehouses of classical scholarship have been opened to the English reader in the translations of Herodotus by Rawlinson, of Thucydides by Jowett, and of Pausanias by Frazer. These I quote, and to these I refer often, in the hope of bringing many a reader under the larger spell of their entire works. But, though I may not profitably cite them much in the current notes, it would be imfair not to express my constant obligation to such works as Busolt*s Griechische GeschicJUe, Wilamowitz- Moellendorff's Aristoteles und Athen, Adolf Schmidt's ec- centric but useful Ferikleische Zeitalter, Eduard Meyer's Forechungen zur alten Geschichte, — particularly the second volume (1899),— Adolf Bauer's ThemistoHes (1881) and Hutarchs Themistokles (1884), and Ivo Bnins' Das literal I PREFACE risehe Fortrdt der Chiechen. While my book was passing through the press I had, through the kindness of Professor Gudeman, the tantalizing pleasure of reading Friedrich Leo's Grieckisch-Bdmische Biographie (1901), a work of which I would gladly have made more use. I am largely indebted to it for one section of my Introduction (Biography before Plutarch). It will be seen at once, then, that I have not tried to write a learned book for the learned, but one which may attract an ordinary English reader of culture and taste toward learning, and Greek learning in particular. From such recruits the Greek scholar of the future may come by promotion. And yet I should like to get the approval of scholars alsa My highest reward would be to have truly said of me, as represented by this book, what Ivo Bruns said of Henri Weil and his last edition of the Medea of Euripides : " £r belehit den AnfKnger, und regt den Kenner an." It is a pleasure to acknowledge the courtesy of Frau Eeimpel, daughter of the late Ptofessor Bhousopoulos, of Athens, in allowing the Magnesian coin which her ^ther had published to be photographed for my use ; of Dr. von Prott» Librarian of the German Institute at Athens, in allowing me the use of the drawing which illustrated the coin of Professor Bhousopoulos, as published in the MittheUungen of the Insti- tute ; of Dr. DOrpfeld, Director of the Institute, in furnish- ing me with a photograph of the Themiatodea-ostrakon ; of my pupil, Mr. Samuel E. Bassett, at present the Soldiers' Memorial Fellow of Yale, at Athens, in assisting me to secure the illustrations mentioned; and of Mons. Babelon» Conservateur du Cabinet des M^dailles in the Biblioth^que Nationale at Paris, in supplying me with impressions of the Magnesian didrachm of Themistodes, K P. Kjbw Haven, June, 1801. '"™ 1 CONTENTS Page Preface ••• •••• ix List and Explanation * op Illustrations and Maps • xv Introduction : I. Plutarch, thb Biographer 1 n. Themistocles, and the Tradiiion of his History IN Plutarch's Life 25 (a) Outline Sketch of the Persian Wars (b) The Sources of Plutarch in his Themistocles (c) Analysis of the ITiemistocles UL AristidesT, and the Tradition of his History in Plutarch's Life 49 (a) Aristides in the Persian Wars (b) The Sources of Plutarch in his Aristides (c) Analysis of the Aristides IV, Biography before Plutarch 64 Alphabetical List op Authorities cited by Plu- tarch IN THE Themistocles 68 Alphabetical List of Authorities cited by Plu- tarch IN the Aristides 69 The themistocles 71 The aristides 121 Notes on the Themistocles 171 Notes on the Aristides 263 Index 833 WGSSSl^S^^ LIST AND EXPLANATION OF ILLUSTRATIONS AND MAPS 1. An Athenian Strateqos Frontispiece A marble herm, the so-called " Themistocles " of the Vatican. It is now generally recognized to be in a style later than the time of Pheidias, as late, perhaps, as the first part of the fourth century b. c. Furtw angler speaks of it (Masterpieces of Greek Sculpture, p. 122, note) as "a copy of a beautiful head by some artist closely akin to Cresilas," who was active at Athens during the age of Pericles. The Corinthian helmet betokens a Strategos, or Athenian Commander-in-chief. The point of the vizor has been restored, and the face shows signs of reworking. Friederichs- Wolters, Bausteine, No. 482 j Helbig, Guide to the Public Collec- tions of Classical Antiquities in Rome, L p. 134* Bemouilli, Griechische Ikonographie, I. pp. 95-100. 2. A Themistocles- O-sra^JTOjf 104 Found in January, 1897, during excavations by the German Archaeological Institute, in a trial-trench dug northwest of the Areiopagus. near the modem carriage-road, on the site, probably, of the ancient agora. It is a fragment of a large crater, with letters carefully incised. It was used to vote for the ostracism of Themistocles either in 483 B.C., when he was successful against Aristides, or in 472 (? ), when he was unsuccessful against Cimon. Athenische Mittheilungen, XXII. (1897), pp. 345-8. 3. (a) A DiDRACHM OP Themistocles 254 Biblioth^ae Nationale, Paris, Cabinet des Me'dailles. A silver didrachm of the Attic standard, the coinage of Themistocles at Magnesia, 464-458 (? ) b. c. Obverse : Apollo, standing toward right, chlamys over shoulders and depending at either side, right hand stemmed against thigh, left supported by long branch of olive ; inscription, 6EMI2TOKAE02. Reverse : incuse, within which raven, or hawk (as bird of augury), in full flight upwards, MA (Magnesia) beneath the wings at either side. Waddington, Revue Numismatinue, 1856, pp. 47 ff., Plate III. 2 ; Baumeister, DenkmSler, III. p. 1762. There is a plated imitation of this coin in the British Museum. Head, Catalogue of Greek Coins, Ionia, p. 158. xvi ILLUSTRATIONS AND MAPS Paor (h) An Attic Didrachm 254 British Museum; period, 527-430 B.C. Obverse: head of Athena, toward right, of archaic style, wearing round ear-ring and close-fitting crested helmet. Reverse : incuse square, within which an owl with closed wings, toward right ; behind owl, an olive spray ; in front, ABE (Athens). Head, Catalogue of Greek Coins t Attica, p. 8, Plate IV. 4. For comparison with (a). (c) Athenian Bronzes op the Roman Imperial Period 254 British Museum. Obverse (not here given): bust of Athena, with Corinthian helmet. Reverse (two types) : (1 ) Themistocles, wearing cuirass and helmet, striding to right on galley, carry- ing wreath and trophy; on prow of galley, owl and serpent. {2} Similar features, turned toward left. '*In Salamis there is a sanctuary of Artemis and a trophy of the victory which The- mistocles, son of Neocles, was instrumental in winning for the Greeks. There is also a sanctuary of Cychreus. It is said that while the Athenians were engaged in the sea-fight with the Medes a serpent appeared among the ships, and God announced to the Athenians that this serpent was the hero, Cychreus " {Pausanias, I. 36, 1). Head, Catalogue of Greek Coins^ Attica, p. 108, Plate XIX. 1 and 2 ; Imhoof-Blumer and Percy Gardner, Numismatic Commentary on Pausanias, Plate EE, xxii., xxi. ILLUSTRATIONS AND MAPS XVll Page 4. A Magnesian Bronze, coinage of Antoninus Pius . In the private collection of the late Professor Rhonsopoulos, Athens. Very much worn, photographs therefore indistinct; cuts from accurate drawings. Obverse : bust of Antoninus Pius, toward right, wearing wreath of laurel, the ends of which hang down into the neck ; mantle (paludamentum) on breast and shoul- ders; inscription, [ ] KAISAPANTANEINGS. Reverse: nude man of stately presence, with short beard, wearing on the head a wreath or fillet, the ends of which fall into the neck. He stands, toward the left, before a blazing circular altar. In his right hand, which is stretched out over the altar, he holds a saucer (patera), from which he makes a libation (of blood). With his left hand he grasps the hilt of a sword, which hangs in a sheath at his left side. At the foot of the altar lies the slain victim of the sacrifice, with outstretched head and open mouth, — an Asiatic bison (zebu). The inscription encircling the field is EniAI02K0TPIA0TrPAT0TMHTPMArNHT, and is found on two other Magnesian coins. The Dioskonrides is other- wise unknown. A second inscription, in the left of the field, above and beloW the outstretched hand, reads eEMISeOKAES. It was held by Rhousoponlos that the monument erected by the Magnesians to Themistocles in the market-place of their city is here copied. It represented Themistocles as Hero of Magnesia, sacrificing. The original monument, judged to have been of bronze, must have been extant in the time of Antoninus Pioa. Atheniache Mittheilungen, XXI. (1896), pp. 18 £f. Maps : (a) Attica and the Saronic Gulf ; (b) The Straits of Salamis 2O6 The upper map is made after Kiepert ; the lower, after the map in Papers of the American School at Athens, I. p. 240. Maps : (a) Boeotia and Confines ; (b) The Battle-field of Platsea 287 The upper map is made after Kiepert ; the lower, after the map in Papers of the American School at Athens, V. p. 256. 258 f INTRODUCTION L PLUTAECH, THE BIOGEAPHEE* Fob the study of human character no true biography can properly come amiss. But for the study of human history, of the great institutions of society, of the sweep and reach of civilization, and especiaUy for the study of the history of a particular people, the biographical method has its disad- vantages and may easily be abused. There is great fascina- tion in the touch of a Uving personaUty with one which is past and gone ; a certain excitement in calling back from death and the grave into life and action before the eyes as It were, the once potent spirits who enriched human life whether by good or evU couraes. The biographical study of history lifts the student into an enjoyment like that of the melancholy Bavarian king, when he sat alone in the opera house and had the musical dramas of Wagner produced before him with all the pomp of royal resource. Tt is pre- c iselv hAP^n«» fh^ k-v^^v::., .^ ^^^ n ^^^^ , ^ t...i'^:7-r^ f ^"'!!!.t'" '^'°^^^"' '^^ '^ °"^^ ^ "««dwith r^nHnn ^ JEe constant corre ctive of tbe W historical critici. n;^:';^^ Wwkle the re ader yields to the cbarm of grg f g ^SljiyjJiua i Ljfuihiu indi . ijum umim,h -g^_^ aware i)9v J , ^jU_ui liuwi mji Hm iiirHrHV'f;.isi Tr,r,-^r,j, hpfnf' him are ; how far lh^TS^TEEegenui ne products of tlielFT^ w^. and how ferffiej_t^ b^ndothed upon by the more )re!S!RJtts*-»f^ -., ^^ teSe iJiediuiror wEicTi thn" origiiidT W ll »' Onll^- ^- ^™®'«°"' Introduction to Plutawh's Morals, edited by W W T^iZ^'J^L^^ t: 9"^^ Wyndham, Introduction to the "Tudor" Edition of North's tranaktion of the Lwes, London. 1895. 1 2 INTRODUCTION The biographical method, then, by its dramatic chann and power, may give unreal and even false ideas of historical processes and evolutions; it may obscure them altogether. The larger personalities who achieve the distinction of biog- raphy often strive against tendencies which are sure to be victorious in the end, and sure to bring the richer blessing on the worid. And yet the keen sympathy aroused by the special study of their personal endeavors may make the reader oblivious to the narrowness and error of such endeav- ors. It may keep him from distinguishing between creative and moulding personalities, who shape the history of their time and of aU times by initiating and guiding torrents of accumulated human desire ; representative personalities, who simply mirror the average desire, or echo the prevalent voices ; and obstructive personalities, who stem and thwart for a while the great currents of human desire, but are finally, after changing somewhat the channel of the stream, swept along with the stream or drowned by it. But the advantages of the biographical method of studying history will always outweigh the disadvantages, if due care is exercised. " There is one mode," says Frederic Harrison {The Meaning of History, p. 22), "in which history may be most easily, perhaps most usefully approached. Let him who desires to find profit in it, be^ by kn owing something of the lives of great men. Not of tLose most talked aPflm, not ' 6i names chosen at hazard; b ut o\ the real great 6fte& whA* can be sh own to hav e left, their mark upon distant apes. Unow their lives, not merely as interesting stu dies of char- acter, or as persons seen m a drama, but as they represe nt mux mnuence tneir a^e." And let us know them, one m ay "^reiy aadl, not merely as ihey represent and influen ceHieir uwu agtj and people, out as they stand related to the history Is harder than for a modem to throw himself into the mental attitude of an ancient. Fortunately for us modems, the great biographer of the ancient Greek and Roman world, while an ancient himself and an "encyclo- PLUTARCH, THE BIOGRAPHER 3 paedia of Greek and Roman antiquity," as Emerson called him, was also a man of the largest possible humanity, and has always appealed with marvellous power to the greatest and best modern minds. From the fifteenth century on, the leading men of the world have been more influenced by Plutarch's Lives than by any book of classical antiquity. These biographies have been "the pasture of great souls," the favorite reading of kings and commanders; but also the delight of simple folk, of plain, "self-made" men, of pure women, of aspiring youth. A tone of affection runs through the appreciations of Plutarch made by such differ- ent types of men as Emerson, Archbishop Trench, and the Honorable George Wyndham; and many an unknown man could speak of Plutarch's Lives as the eccentric Thomas HoUis did: "a work which at school he read avidly at times he might have slept, and to which he afterwards became indebted, for the honestest and fairest dispositions of his mind." When the student disentangles himself from dates and names and minor details, and tries to take into one view the whole sweep of ancient Greek and Roman history, he sees a constant pressure of great streams of humanity conquering from North to South and East, but periodically stayed and even forced back by refluent waves of conquest toward North and West. The eastem world-empire of the Persians is pressed upon too hard by the warlike peoples along its northem boundary, and the Scythian expedition of Darius, and the invasion of Europe by Xerxes, the epic prose tale of which is told us by the Father of History, are refluent waves from the southem sea of accumulated human culture, inundating for a while, but driven slowly back by fresher national vigor under Miltiades, Themistocles, Pausanias, and Cimon. Again the southward-flowing stream gathers head, and, under the Macedonian Alexander, sweeps over the eastem world. Refluent billows from the southem penin- sulas check or reverse the Gallic inroads from the North, and then the Roman flood of conquest in its tum sweeps 4 mXRODUCTION over Greece and the East Refluent billows, again, of Roman legions under Csesar, Agricola, and Trajan, surge over Germany, Gaul, Britain, and Dacia, but the next great southward-heading flood, that of Goths and Visigoths, submerges the Roman Empire. ^ Plutarch lived after the Roman flood of conquest had swept over his native Greece, and while the Roman Empire was making successful headway against the ever accu- mulating streams of vigorous barbarism from the North. He lived, that is, at a period of poise in the vast conflicts between the races of the South and North which constitute ancient history, when the culture and wealth which man had won were still able to defend themselves. He lived to do his best work on the threshold of that fairest of ages since the fabled age of gold, the age of the Antonines. The years 50 — 120 A. D. probably cover his life. As a university student of sixteen at Athens, hft p|^w hlnnHy'Npm wPAr fh|p ^^^p^mJ purple ; as a youjig ma n, the gloomy Domitian : in his mid^^ e ^ age, great Yrajan ; and m liis last days he must have MM •k^MUt>«M*^:MI'IPi>l:Tifd^iTi bi this age'jl'oflne better life which still survived in Greece and the Greek world in this Indian summer of its history, Plutarch is the best spokesman. He tells better than any one else of that last r enascence of alTTliy ^UUd furuua 111 JXff^ ancient wurld Ivhicn toUowed a lo ng carnival of " scarlet*^ "vices" and swift A ecay, and preceded, or even paved the_ way for the gradual and unsuspected assumption of control by'ttJg' h'fiW, l oMy, and therefor^ ffl^ST (iumpipheusliB ryllgt!^ ol'tue (jurist. Wutarcli stows no sign of acquaintance with ChnstShily. Longer residence at Rome, and greater famil- iarity with the many lines of influence diverging from and converging upon that focus of the world, might have brought this gentle, devout pagan, this ''anima naturaliter Christi- ana," into contact with that principle of religious life which absorbed the best of paganism into its vigorous, supplanting growth. He would certainly have brought to the contact a soul readier for reception of the essence of the new world- 1 f ^ It * I PLUTARCH, THE BIOGRAPHER 6 religion than did the brilliant Lucian, who followed him by only a few years. Plutarch was one of those lights of the ancient world whose fate in the hereafter was matter of affectionate concern to kindred spirits of a later time who had accepted the Christian dogmas of the Judgment. " It was his severe fate," says the editor of the Morals in 1718, in a sentence which Emerson is unwilling to have lost, "to flourish in those days of ignorance which, 'tis a favor- able opinion to hope that the Almighty will sometime wink at; that our souls may be with these philosophers together in the same state of bliss." Plutarch was Greek to the core. He gloried in the past Mstog^f^his coTOtry. (md in the, hp.riteffp of hi>^ mm m±n]l Ihe more because of present ^poverty and degradation. He looked upon the Roman conquest much as Polybius SlSttcstT" ^P|^pnppTif. _iieceflflir.y PolyblUS liill'()dU(3ti(l tliyii ' UUiiquBfUl ' H to the Greeks, in the hope that futUe resistance to inevitable conquest might cease. Plutarch introduced the Greeks to their conquerors, when conquest had bred forgetfulness and contempt; when the vast upheavals of the civil wars, and the gigantic figures of Sulla and Marius, of Pompey and Caesar, of Antony and Augustus had dwarfed older protag- onists in the drama of history. But though his relations to Athens and Rome were like those of an Alsatian of to-day to Paris and Berlin, J^here is not t|ie faintest trac^ .^ of bitterness, in all that he has written, toward the relentless and masterful policy of Rome. " Atliens was stiH the intel- ^lectbAl centre of the wo 4 4, tKo ug l i m'TriP. Tinr! ^ political centre. To both centres Plutarch was perfectly J ,^.,. I I ___________ Familiar as he was with both, he was born, spent the most of his days, and probably died in a small country town of Boeotia called Chaeroneia. It overlooked a plain on which many armies had fought, so that, even before Philip's victory there in 338 B.C., Epaminondas caUed it the "dancing-floor of Ares ; " but the town itself was of no prominence. Small and humble as it was, Plutarch loved 6 INTRODUCTION it, and even after the years and his philoeophical essays had brought him a modest fame, and his plans for literary labor urgently demanded that he make his home in some literary centre, he would not leave it, lest he diminish its small population by one. ** If any man," he /says, in thy introductio n to his Demosthenes, ** undertake to write a his« 'i6i^, that iiaa_iQ be collected from materials eatherMb] observation and the reading of wo rks not easy to be got| ft ^^ i, nor written alway s in his own language, b ut iHouy of them fOiei^H aiiU^lliy }^ land^ fnr hJau ■'tmQOUlilganyriTis'mtfi e'firet ri^ all things most " iwCIJi?Saiy~to r eside m some city of good note. lititJml arm, ami pop ulous j ^h^y y^ hft Tna,Y havft pip.nty (^| ^1 SOTla uf bOUky, lUid uix)h enquiry may hear and inform him- self 01 such parti culars as, haying escaped the pens o f Imters, are more" faithfully preserve d in the memories of idrEich it can least dispens e with . But as for me, I live iff & little town, tthere I am willing to continue, lest it should grow less" (Dryden-Clough translation). The few facts in the unobtrusive career of this Prince of Biographers which can be gleaned from his own voluminous writings are as follows. He was educated, as we should say, at Athens, — an attractive university-town in his day for both Greeks and Romans. He was once a deputy from his native town to the Roman governor of the province of Greece. He travelled extensively over Greece, visited Asia Minor, Egypt, and Italy, and resided some time at Rome. Here he was in charge of public business, — for the eyes of all Greeks were turned on Rome in political matters, — so that he had not time to learn thoroughly the Latin language, as he himself confesses in the introduction to his Demosthenes. But he did not need it. Greek was the language of literary and polite society at Rome, and cultivated Greeks, especially philosophers, were welcome there. As philosopher, a pop- ularizer of Platonism, Plutarch read and lectured at Rome, much as he did in the small circle of his intimates and PLUTARCH, THE BIOGRAPHER 7 friends at home. He made and retained acquaintance with prominent Romans of his day, although in this regard his good fortune was not so remarkable as that of Polybius, who was the intimate friend and follower of Scipio the Yoimger. After Athenian education, generous travel, mild diplomacy, modest literary celebrity, and considerable residence at Rome, Plutarch seems to have retired to his little country town with his books, notes, lectures, essays, and gentle phil- osophy, and there, in a leisure not greatly encroached upon by local magistracies and certain religious offices at neigh- boring Delphi, to have elaborated the sketches of his lectures and essays, and composed the work on which his fame chiefly rests, — the Parallel Lives of Greeks and Romans. Before speaking of these, however, a word must be said, and, imder the limitations of this brief introduction, hardly more than a word, of that collection of Plutarch's writings which has come down to us under the name of Morals. These are miscellaneous essays, chiefly of an ethical range, on a great variety of topics. In comparison with the Lives, they are now much neglected, and yet one never reads from them without protesting against the neglect. As composed, for the greater part, before the Lives, they are an invaluable prelude to and commentary on them, especially if we would know just what manner of man the author of the Lives was. They tell us, as the Lives do not, " of the points of view, moral and religious, from which he contemplated not this man's life, or the other's, but the whole life of men. Nor is it too much to affirm that of the two halves of Plutarch's writings, of his Lives and his Morals, each constitutes a com- plement of the other ; the one setting forth to us, and, so far as this was possible, from ideal points of view, what the ancient world had accomplished in the world of action, and the other what, in like maimer, it had aimed at and accom- plished in the world of thought" (Trench, Plutarch, p. 90). For fuller description of these essays the reader should go to Emerson or Trench. The sphere in which they move, however, can be shown by citing freely from the titles 8 INTRODUCTION ^ • r^W which they bear. There are some eighty-three in alL It is impossible to classify them accurately. Some are distinctly ethical, some philosophical, some scientific, in our narrower sense of the word, some theological, some social, some aesthetic and literary, — a well-read man's causerieSy some historical and political Many are evidently mere collections of material for subsequent elaboration. The range of subject in them fully justifies Emerson's sum mary : " Whatever ia. em inent in fact or in Sction , in opinion, in character^ in ins titutions, in science — natural, morkl, ^f ;ffiamphyaT?gif| 7<$r in memorable sayings, drew his attention and cfiii^e to b^s pen wi th more or less fulness of record.!! There are essays on 1116 I'rainmg ot L'hildren, Tranquillity of Soul, Brotherly Love, Parental Love, Garrulity, Curiosity, Love of Wealth, Bashfulness, Self-praise, Fortime, Oracles, Delays in the Divine Judgment ; How to know a Flatterer from a Friend, How one can be aided by one's Enemies; Reading, Exile, Old Age and Politics ; Apothegms and Symposia, antiquarian Questions, political, conjugal, and military Precepts ; analyses of mysterious religious cults; a tender letter of consolation to his wife on the death of a child; philosophical treatises against Stoics and Epicureans and in defence of Platonism ; literary critiques on Herodotus and Aristophanes; a collec- tion of love stories ; a tract on the avoidance of debt ; another on the eating of meats; a Discourse to an Un- lettered . Prince ; discussions of questions which might have occupied the attention of old-fashioned debating societies, such as Whether Athens was more distinguished in Letters or in War, Whether Water or Fire be most useful, Whether *t were rightly said : ** Live concealed." The gamut of the Morals is astonishing in its range. But it is with the Lives that we are now chiefly concerned, and even in these, as will be seen, Plutarch is far more moralist than historian. The Greece of whi ch he was so loyal a son, after passing under Koman sway, lost sigiit grad- uauy of her gr^t men otaction, and contented hers elf with thft f[inr^^f> nf lipr tyiati nf fVirMi^>.f Here surcly the dominant # PLUTARCH, THE BIOGRAPHER 9 Romans could not vie with her. With Roman law. Roman armies, Roman statesmanship an d oratory in ^^j^^ uanc^r^A^T^r.^ It 1^013 uf Kum^a^i^^^di, ik?. fid .^mmJM^ TTim M nreadity ITToug ht in Plutarch's time. In order to prove that the more remote past of Greece could show its lawgivers, commanders, statesmen, patriots and orators as well as the nearer and therefore more impressive past of Rome, the Parallel Lives were written. With Scipio Africanus the Elder, the greatest man of Rome, Plutarch matched Epamin- ondas, the greatest man of Greece. This pair, or " book " of lives is unfortunately lost. With Camillus, who saved Rome ^^ QP ^^^ Gauls, he matched TEemistocles, who saved AthenT" f rom the j^ersians. Then followed, as nearly as the order can^De determined,^ — for the order of the Lives in our col- lection is not the original one, — the Cimon and Lucullus, the Lycurgus and Numa, the Demosthenes and Cicero, the Felopidas and Marcellus, the Lysander and Sulla, the Aratm and the lost Scipio Africanus the Younger, the Philopcemen and Flamininus, the Pericles and Fabius Maximus, the Aristides and Cato Major ^ and thirteen other pairs. Eigh- ^teen of the twenty-two pairs w hich have come d ownlTus close with a formal comparison ot the two ca reers and char^ a cters, often fanciful and torced, seldom of any special value '.'" !fliere are also three single Lives in our collection, Artaxerxes, Galha, and Otho, and we get traces of twelve more that are now lost. One of the pairs is a double one, where, to match the two Gracchi, Plutarch selects the two reforming Spartan kings Agis and Cleomenes. How impartially Plutarch holds the scales between Greek and Roman, may be seen from the fact that it is still a dis- puted question whether his object in writing the Parallel Lives was to convince reluctant Greeks that there were Romans who could weU bear comparison with the greatest ^^®®^S' or to remind the too complacent Romans that. t hough the world was now in their strong hands, subj ect 1 See Adolf Schmidt, Das PerUcleische Zeiialter, II. 108 ff. ; Wachsmuth. jiUe OeachichU, pp. 215 f. MhariH 10 INTRODUCTION PLUTARCH, THE BIOGRAPHER 11 Greece coul^ .^Jtpw oi; ^ h ^r r oll ,q1. honor men with whom fEegreatest Romans might be proud to be compared. The larE6rTtewrs~pfoT)a Diy tne correct one. W itn all his friendli- ness to Rome and acquiescence in the great mission which she was performing, Plutarch remained still a Hellenic patriot. Archbishop Trench puts the case none too strongly when he says : ** Plutarch remains ever a Greek, a Theban still more than a Greek, and a Chaeroneian still more than a Theban " (^Plutarch, p. 85). Plutarch was a voluminous writer, an extensive reader, and a good talker, — a conversationalist of the highest rank. His sources were monumental, — the eloquent material struc- tures of the many places which he visited; literary, — the Greek poets, philosophers, orators, biographers, and historians, with whom he was amazingly familiar ; and oral, — the polite gossip of the literary circle, the secrets of familiar intercourse, the oral transmissions of family history not yet recorded for public use. He quotes from some two hundre d and fifty Greek authors, eighty of whom are known to us only by "loameraJQcr many fporfe only^ the CiiailOIlH "trD m Thfifti ^ " ^ich he ' makes. The extracl'Trom the introduction to his "^Uembsthenes made alx)ve (p. 6) shows clearly that in his retire- ment at Chseroneia he lacked library facilities, and was forced to depend on his memory or his note-books for much of the material which he dispenses with so generous a hand. We must expect therefore to find in him, what the investigation of his sources for each particular Life will show in greater or less degree, a tendency to cite at second hand. This practice can be proved in his use of so great an authority as Aristotle, and must not unduly surprise us in his use of Herodotus and Thucydides. Literary property, literary methods, and literary ethics were all in a rudimentary stage of develop- ment in Plutarch's time. But when compared with some of his contemporaries or successors, he is conspicuous for his fidelity and trustworthiness in dealing with his sources. It is true, as Emerson says (Introduction, p. xiii), that ** in his immense quotation and allusion, we quickly cease to dis- criminate between what he quotes and what he invents." And Plutarch does unquestionably invent, even when he would appear to be recounting history. Moreover, it must be frankly admitted that he has little if any scientific method as a historian. He will be foimd preferring an anecdotical history, crammed with the inventions and accretions of cen- turies of transmission from an original source, to the original source itself, even though that be easily accessible. This for detail ; on vital points he will also be found true to the best sources at his command. And he is more particular than almost any other ancient writer to let his reader know what authority he is following. By careful study the l9,ter tradi- tion which he uses can be separated from the earlier, at least in a majority of cases, and his reader thus put in a position to correct undue bias, and eliminate error. How exacting Plutarch can be of others in the matter of giving authority for startling statements, may be seen in his Aristides, xxvL 2. For the story that Aristides died somewhere in Ionia, and under sentence for bribery, Craterus, a Macedonian compiler of legal decrees, who wrote in the third century B.C., is responsible. " But Craterus furnishes no documentary proof of this, — no judgment of the court, no decree of indictment, — although he is wont to record such things with all due ful- ness, and to adduce his authorities." And yet Plutarch is at a lon g remove from dogmatism. On disputed T)oints hp. piY-pq _ ^^ evidence fully, a nd takes Ms stand, as in thft op p.mYy who cannot stand withhiai.--- ^To sum up briefly, then, on this all-important point, Plutarch's sources are manifold, though not always cited directly ; they are frequently to be made out, in one way or another, so that the late and secondary can be separated from the original and primary sources ; and they are not imposed dogmaticaUy on the reader. What is stiU more worthy of note, Plutarch's use of his sources often contributes our only knowledge, or increases our scanty knowledge of them. "He is a direct authority, in his Biographies, for nothing. 12 INTRODUCTION I but the only substitute we can get for a crowd of lost writers of the highest authority " (Freeman, Methods of Historical Study, p. 222). The aims and methods of Plutarch in writing biography may best be learned from his own statements, and from analysis of his Lives. " It was for the sake of others," he says in the introduction to his Timoleon, " that I first com- menced writing biographies; hnt: J finH my^«^^1 f proceeding and attaching myself to it for my own; the virtues of these great men serving me as ft liort of lo6king-gIass, in which I ""mays ee iiow iu'^tdjostr and a dor n my trnn life. Indeed; if ""(SBor be uumpai ' ed t o 'l iu t hlng but dft tty^Vtfiy^nd associatin, "'together ; we~feceive, as it were, in our enquiry, and enteiv tain each successive guest, view ' their stature and their qual- itiea,!_and select from their actions all that is noblest and worthiestTo knOVV." — In the introducti o n t e hia Alexander ' ^ he says : " It must be borne in mind that my design is not to write histories but lives. And the most glorious exploits do not always furnish us with the clearest discoveries of virtue ' o r vlCB in inuil ; ljOh!i6Clh ies a matter of less moment, an expfeaaion ur a jest, Inform us better of tneir c naracters and 'mcliflat lona than th e famous si e ges, thy gie ate st arma - ^ mtjhta, Uf tlH5 '15tooaieSr liattlt?s whataO^V er. xneretore Its portrait-painters are more exact in the lines and features of, theTace, in wliict the character is seen, than in t he other |fentr^tfee-bedy, bo I must bO allowed to giVfe Iny mor e" par - ticular attention to the marks and 4i!wlicatians uf l h6 8oul87)f men, and, while T iendeavorby these to portray their lives, may Te"lreeT6 leave'more weighty matters and g reat battles to be treated^ofl^f Irtters:*^ ~ WK^^ Nicias and finds his CRieTaiithbrity to be the matchless story of Thucydides, he entreats his reader " in all courtesy not to think that I contend with Thucydides in matters so pathetically, vividly, and eloquently, beyond all imitation, and even beyond him- self, expressed by him. Such actions in Nicias* life as Thucydides and Philistus have related, since they cannot be passed by, illustrating as they do most especially his char- i -« ■•^^^ : PLUTARCH, THE BIOGRAPHER 13 acter and temper under his many and great troubles, that I may not seem altogether negligent, I shall briefly run over. And such things as are not commonly known, and lie scattered here and there in other men's writings, or are found among the old monuments and archives, I shall endeavor to bring together, not collecting mere useless pieces of learning, but adducing what may make his disposition and habit of mind imderstood." That Plutarch was kind though not blind to the fa ilings of his heroes, may be seen from the charming confession in the opening 6t hlH Oiiiwii (c: iL). " Aa Wfe would wish ihat ir palnt ef who i o to drow €> b o a ut iful fa ce , in which t h^re " is yet som e imperfection, shoiild neither-^vrht^Byleaw ont,' nor yet too pomtedly express wfiaf is defective, becauseTftis would detorm it, and that would spoil the fi^sembiance; so , since it is so hard, and perhaps imposs ible, to show the life of a man wholly free from blemish, in all that is excellent we must foTTowyuth'^igg t'tly, and glV6 It fu l l y ; and lapS eT '*"ur laulta that occur, t&irough humalipaBaions' or' poUtMII necessities, we may regard rather as the shortcominga- oL ' some particular virtue than as the natural effects of vice^. and may be contetit without"inlroduciQg the m, curiously and ofUciousl)/, into our narralivc, if it be but o ut of tenderness Ibo the weakness of nature^ which has never succeeded in -producing any human character so perfect iiT virtue as to be Tree from all admixture and open to no criticism." Plutarch's Lives, then, are not historical, but eth ical, and to a large extent ideally ethical port.rRits, likft thfr Plnt^"^^ Socrate^.^ !r Jieir author culls from the mass of tradition at his disposition those items which serve him as effective colors for his portraits. For consecutive, consistent narra- tive of events ; for chronology, political evolutions, diplomatic combinations, social problems ; for the processes of history, in a word, Plutarch has no eye. But for the moral products of history he is carefully on the watch. His Lives therefore illustrate his Morals. They are to some extent ethical romances, like Xenophon*s Cyropoedia, If used as historical 14 INTRODUCTION PLUTARCH, THE BIOGRAPHER 15 authority, therefore, it is necessary to sift their fact from their fancy, so far as it is now possible to do it. But the sifting process must not be allowed to mar the work of art It is no surprise to find that the personal anecdote plays a great part in Plutarch's biographies. Indeed, herein lies, in great measure, their imdying charm. But the personal anec- dote, even in our own times, is the most suspicious part of historical tradition. Anecdotes are so readily invented, or transferred from one personality to another with the nec- essary adaptations, or from one purpose in illustration to another, that more than the usual amount of good evidence is demanded to establish their authenticity. Around a great personality, like that of Abraham Lincoln, for instance, per- sonal anecdotes multiply without limit, until it is impossible to separate the true from the fictitious. An eminent person- ality attracts the anecdote. And as eminence usually comes late in life, the invented personal anecdote deals largely with details of the earlier life, before eminence had brought fuller record of the career, and therewith greater possibility of con- futing inventions. The humble acquaintances of the early and obscure days are stimulated by the flattering attentions of eminence-worshippers to tell all, and often more than they know about those early days when future eminence went in and out among them imsuspected. Forgotten or fancied incidents must at all hazards be made early prophecy, late discerned, of future greatness. More doubt still attaches to the personal anecdote about such far-away personalities as Themistocles and Aristides, not simply because they are so much farther away from their biographers than men of later times, but because his- torical interest in the individual as distinguished from the state did not begin until Thucydides, toward the close of the century, and Xenophon, in the following century, and did not flourish until after the state was merged in great personalities, or swayed and dominated by them. Histoiy at last became biography in Suetonius' Lives of the Coesars. The personal anecdote about Themistocles, Aristides, Cimon, Pericles^ Nicias, Alcibiades, not only reached Plutarch through cen- turies of literary tradition ; it was likely, almost always, to have started late on its career, to have been warped from its original form, or invented outright. The lack of personal details for the history of these great personalities was eagerly supplied by the invention, more or less plausible, of later writers. As political activities were denied the Greeks after the Macedonian and Roman conquests, their active minds turned to the fields of speculation, rhetoric, and romanca Old histories like those of Herodotus and Thucydides were rewritten in conformity with later rhetorical tastes. Embellishments of every sort were invented outright, not with intent to deceive, but because embellishment was demanded at any cost Next to the set speech, — a standard literary embellishment in Homer, Herodotus, and Thucydides, the personal anecdote was most cultivated, by historians, rhetoricians, and philosophers. It is a natural impulse to cast aside this element of the personal anecdote, unless its tradition from a contemporary source can be clearly established, as worthless historical material Material of the highest grade it certainly is not; but it is by no means worthless. The better. story, the more it must confor m to the prevailin g^concep;;;^^ tion of the charadtfir UtU^li "^Vhom i L is'lSecL' ^^ this was "^rekily dohe b)' AlUAaudBl," Hiiys Checonsclentlous and criti- cal Arrian {Anabasis, ii 12, 8), " then I commend him for it ; and if it merely seems credible to his biographers that he might have done and said these things, then on this basis too I commend Alexander." ** People who invent a story," says Freeman {Methods of Historical Study, p. 129), " will commonly invent a story that is likely, or at least one which they think is likely, not one which is manifestly unlikely." The personal anecdotes in Plutarch may therefore serve to show what eminent writers of a later day thought was likely in the case of such distant personalities as Themistocles and Aristides. The stories are like garments, — good or bad, likely or unlikely, according as they fit the forms for which they 16 INTRODUCTION I were intended. What those forms were, in the eyes of the story-makers, can be determined, in no small measure, by the stories. It need not therefore be fatal to the usefulness, much less to the enjoyment of Plutarch's stories, if his reader know that they are invented. It is now matter of history that Lincoln, after great travail of spirit, as leader of a people struggling in the agony of a civil war, gave the official death- blow to human slavery in the United States. A ready hear- ing is therefore given to one John Hanks, a companion of Lincoln's early and humble days, when he says that on one of their flat-boat trips to New Orleans, Lincoln was so dis- gusted by the scenes at a slave auction in that city that he said to Hanks with an oath : " If ever I get a chance to hit slavery, I 'U hit it hard." This is a good story, because it is, on the face of it, a likely story. But it is not a true story. It can be proved that Lincoln was never in New Orleans with Hanks. The story was clearly invented after Lincoln had " hit slavery hard." It contains a " vaticinium post eventum." On the other hand, it is not to be denied that authentic personal anecdote may have escaped or been ignored by primary authorities like Herodotus and Thucydides, and made its way essentially unchanged down to so late a writer as Plutarch. An invading Lacedaemonian army imder the command of the youthful Spartan king Pleistoanax, in 445 B.C., apparently had Attica and Pericles at its mercy, but retired mysteriously without effecting anything, and left Pericles' hands free to subject Euboea. In the discreet words of Thucydides (L 114), "they advanced as far as Eleusis and Thria, but no farther, and after ravaging the country, returned home." In Sparta, King Pleistoanax " was thought to have been bribed." So much Thucydides is will- ing to say (ii 21 ; v. 16), and it looks like an apocryphal story which Plutarch tells in his Pericles (c. xxiiL) : " When Pericles, in giving up his accounts of this expedition, stated a disbursement of ten talents, as * laid out for sundry needs,' the people, without any question, nor troubling themselves PLUTARCH, THE BIOGRAPHER 17 to investigate the mystery, freely allowed of it" If true, the story gives us the very phraseology of a great fiscal joke. It seems too good to be true. But it gets striking corrobora- tion in the joke which Aristophanes introduces into his Clouds (v. 859), a comedy brought out only a few years after the death of Pericles. A cynical, spendthrift son asks his dishevelled, half crazy father what has become of his slippers, and the answer is : " As Pericles once, I * laid them out for sundry needs.* " About 423 B. c, therefore, the story told by Plutarch must have been current at Athens. Even in his Greek Lives Plutarch relies much on oral tradition, and when it starts with contemporaries of the men whose biographies he is writing, the testimony is most valu- able. In his Roman Lives, from the nature of the case, he depends yet more on such testimony. In his Antony, a contemporary tradition can be clearly traced down to Plu- tarch himself, and then from Plutarch to Shakespeare. Plu- tarch's grandfather, Lamprias, was the intimate friend of a certain physician, named Philotas. This Philotas, when a young fellow, studied medicine in Alexandria, while Antony was there, under the full witchery of Cleopatra. The young medical student was intimately acquainted both with Antony's son, and with one of Antony's cooks, and dined often at Antony's table. There could be no better authority for the luxury of that table. "I have heard my grandfather report," says Plutarch in his Antony (xxviiL 2, 3, North's version), " that one Philotas, a physician, born in the city of Amphissa, told him that he was at that time in Alexandria, and studied physic ; and that having acquaint- ance with one of Antony's cooks, he took him with him to Antonius' house to show him the wonderful sumptuous charge and preparation of one only supper. When he was in the kitchen, and saw a world of diversities of meats, and amongst others eight wild boars roasted whole, he began to wonder at it, and said : * Sure you have a great number of 18 INTRODUCTION guests to supper; The cook feU a-laughing, and answered him : ' No, not many guests, not above twelve in alL' " This bit of kitchen gossip the young medical student, Philotas, tells his friend Lamprias, on returning to Greece ; Lamprias teUs it to his grandson Plutarch, who records it in his Antony ; Plutarch's Life is translated into Latin in the fifteenth century, this Latin version into the French of Amyot in the sixteenth century, the French of Amyot into the EngUsh of Sir Thomas North, and at last the magician Shakespeare, in his Antony and Cleopatra, seizes upon the kitchen detail and puts it into the mouth of Maecenas, the friend of Octavius : " You stayed weU by \ in Egypt," says Maecenas to Enobarbus (ii 2) ; "Aye, sir, we did sleep day out of countenance, and made the night light with drinking." (M«cenas) " Eight wild boars roasted whole at a break- fast, and but twelve persons there ; is this true ? " (Enobarbus) « This was but as a fly by an eagle ; we had much more monstrous matter of feast, which worthily deserved noting." After such consideration of the sources of Plutarch in writing his Lives, of his aims and methods, and of the nature of the personal anecdote which forms so large a part of his work, the question may be asked. What is the value of Plu- tarch as an historian ? As the best exponent, in his MoraUy of the better side of the rich classical culture which was then approaching or enjoying its Indian summer, he is invaluable and indispens- able to the historian of that time, but as a direct historian of his own or any times, and particularly of times long before his own, he is valuable as a recorder and transinitteo Lt^e j^^^ ^f hf^tr^ ^o^i^^^ tiii^T. of historv itselL We may Sd^from him what men in successive generations have thought and said of Themistocles and Aristides, but not so well what Themistocles and Aristides reaUy were and did and said. To do this, — to get at the real Themistocles and Aristides behind the ideal ethical portraits of them which Plutarch paints, — it is necessary to foUow the stream of his- PLUTARCH, THE BIOGRAPHER 19 torical tradition back to its earliest sources, to determine if possible the nature and peculiarities of those sources, and to reconstruct the later estimates of the men from the testimony of those nearest to them and best qualified to judge them. In this long, laborious, but fascinating process, Plutarch himself will be the best guide, from the very fulness of the material which he has heaped together. His memory teemed with illustrative incidents, and he does not hesitate to digress pleasantly at the slightest suggestion, or even without any apparent suggestion. Speaking of Aspasia, in his Pericles (xxiv. 7), he is jie TninHpiri of Mlltg t i hp "^n"nMnn nf |, 1 m: i younger Cyrus, who was re-named Aspasia. **She was a Piiocoeg by birth, the dau gtiffr nf nriQ TTQ^minfiT^^ip; ^t^ ^'^ whenTlyrur^^ -grettfr"'iHflTiCT[Tfr''ar*w^3-Xll^ memdiy as I am writing^tMs^jtory^iJ Tor me to omit them.",^-.,,^* "^"Tt is clear that even when he is basing his work on stand- ard and easily accessible authorities, like Herodotus, Thu- cydides, or Plato, he sometimes relies upon his memory instead of fresh reading. His formal citations also are often seen to be from memory. It is free-hand drawing in which he delights. No one who comes from reading the Morals can believe in the fixed and arbitrary methods of citation and borrowing which are fastened on Plutarch by much recent criticism of the Lives, The intermediate biographi- cal source so often postulated for the changes in the form of earlier tradition which appear in Plutarch, — a som-ce sometimes known hardly more than by name, sometimes wholly imaginary, — has been credited with much of Plu- tarch's own genial improvement of the generous material stored in his mind from various reading. Such chapters in the Themistocles as viL and xL read like a free combination and blend by Plutarch himself of material from several authors, and not like an excerpt from any single source in which he finds the combining and blending ready to his copying hand. It is true that his method of composition is 20 INTRODUCTION Jt' 4 PLUTARCH, THE BIOGRAPHER 21 different in the Roman and Greek Lives ; that even in the Greek Lives it changes from group to group, and from book to book ; and that in the Aristides, between which and the Themistocles eight Greek Lives were probably composed, he is by no means so generously eclectic as in the Themistocles. But even in the Aristides, where the original sources fur- nished him scant personal material, it can never be granted that he forsook the original sources entirely, — writers like Herodotus and Thucydides, — and copied exclusively a blend of those writers made by Idomeneus, a writer who is little more than a name to us. Such a chapter in the Aristides as xviiL is a composite of Herodotus, Thucydides, Ephorus, and possibly Idomeneus, but the composition is that of Plutarch, and contains much that is original with him. Plutarch's methods are by no means those of Diodorus Siculus. These positions, and others kindred to them, will be constantly illustrated and defended in the current notes. It is in this fulness of material, served up to us with the prodigality of a wealthy and experienced host, that Plutarch differs most strikingly from the only other biographer of antiquity whom we need now compare with him, — Cor- nelius Nepos. Nepos was a Roman, writing brief compends of pragmatic rather than ethical biography for Romans of the first century before Christ. Like Suetonius, his desu-e is to transmit the material, rather than to make that material attractive in its form. He throws no speaking picture on his canvas ; is brief, dry, annalistic, sparing and arbitrary in the citation of his authorities, and shows nothmg like the literary zest which characterizes Plutarch. He is a Latin compiler, from Greek sources rather poorly controlled. At times, however, he will be found to supply items of tradition which would have been lost but for him. Attractive as are the personality and the teachings of Plutarch, voluminous and varied as are his writings, fas- cinating and provocative of analysis as are his manner and his methods of composition, his Greek style in itself is not specially attractive. For this reason, as well as because k't'"vP'. i any popular Greek author must be more widely read in translation than in the original, but above all because the early translations of Plutarch into English, like the trans- lations of the Scriptures, are important literary monuments of the English language, — for all these reasons Plutarch has been mostly read by English-speaking people in Eng- lish translations. Both Morals and Lives were very for- timate in their first introduction to readers of English. The translation of the Morals by Doctor Philemon Holland, pub- lished in London in 1603, and again in 1657, is an English classic, and was of great use to Professor Goodwin in his revision of the translation ** by Several Hands," published in London in successive editions from 1684 to 1718. So the translation of the Lives by Sir Thomas North, which appeared as early as 1579, served as a mine of resource and suggestion to Clough in his revision of the so-called " Dryden " translation, as it has served and always will serve every and any trans- lator of the Lives. It is true that North did not render from the original Greek, but from Amyot's French version, and that he reproduced Amyot's errors, and made errors of his own. But Amyot's version was of the highest order. It is the earliest French classic recognized by the French Academy. And North's English translation of this French classic is a monu- ment of the English language second only in importance to the Authorized Version of the Bible. It is a translation by the earliest master of great English prose from the earliest mas- ter of great French prose. Of it George Wyndham says, at the close of his Introduction to the Tudor edition : ** Of good English prose there is much, but of the world's greatest books in great English prose there are not many. Here is one, worthy to stand with Malory's Morte Darthur on either side of the English Bible." This version by Sir Thomas North was current for nearly a century. It was the Elizabethan Plutarch. But the changed literary tastes of the age of Queen Anne demanded a new version of Plutarch as of Homer. Pope supplied the new version of Homer's Iliad, supplanting Chapman, and lent his n I 22 INTRODUCTION great name to a version of the Odyssey m his style by other Eds Dryden was « prevailed upon by his necess^ies to nanos. i^ryu *■, ^^ „! Plutarch's Xtrw. He hun- head a company of translators oi riuuu J,^^^^.^y, but self suppUed merely the Preface and Life of Plutarcn, out Se v3n was call^ by his name. Strange to ^y in^P^ of great inferiority in many ways to the version of North it held its own, aided by two revisions of more or less thorough- ness and even superseded North's. B^ the North and the « Dryden " translations were made eitheTwhoUy or in part, at second hand, and before the Greek S of PluLh had been well edited. The first scholar s S^slliL of the U.es from the original Gi.ek inU, En^sh was published in 1770 by the brothers John and William Langhome, and this was the English version most current i^Aaps. f^m that time down to 1850. The aim of he Jransl'at^rs was rather to be faithful to Uie original G^^k than to write representative and idiomatic Enghsh. Com W with North's spirited version, the Langhome version is dS a^ pedantic, though more accurate. The notes, how- ever, are wholly antiquated. t. t i, ^^ B.t the inheritance of natural, ^^Vresent.ir.e^^^^^^ in so inaccurate a translation as the soK^Ued Diyden wa3 too precious to be lost, and in Boston's noteworthy attempt to f;mish the EngUsh-speaking world w^h a satisfacto^ translation of the entire body of Plutarch's writings, the revised seventeenth-century version of the Morals by Many Hands," wa. given to Professor Goodwin for further revision, and the revised seventeenth-centuiy version of the Zms,- the "Dryden" translation, - to Arthur Clough, that .dnning representative of Oxford's best culture in the days of the great Tractarian controversy. He began the work during the year of his residence in this country, 1852, and completed it after his return to England. It was more or less perfunctory work for him, -a « pot-boiler - but still his letters show that he gradually became interested in the work for its own sake. His revision of the Diyden translation wa^ published in five volumes, by Little, Brown, PLUTARCH, THE BIOGRAPHER 23 and Co., in 1859, and afterwards in one large volume by the same firm in 1876 and 1880. It is no insignificant sign of the earnestness of the yoimg literary life of America in the days of the so-called " transcendentalists," that a Boston house should successfully carry out so large an undertaking as a complete edition in ten octavo volumes of Plutarch's Lives and Morals, — an edition which still remains the best. For the Dryden-Clough version of the Lives is imdoubtedly the best extant English version for all purposes. There is a ver- sion more recently published, that of Stewart and Long, in the Bohn's Classical Library, of four volumes. This incor- porated the scholarly translation of thirteen Roman Lives published by Professor Long in 1844, the notes to which are of great value even now. But the translation of the Greek Lives is distinctly inferior to that of the Dryden- Clough edition. And it is still true, as Professor Goodwin said in his review of the first volume of the Stewart and Long translation (New York Nation, voL xxxL pp. 395 ff.), that we need a translation of the Lives " which, without sacrific- ing the sprightly flavor of the old translations, shall yet answer the demands of modem scholarship more fully than these in accuracy of thought and expression." But Clough's revision of the " Drj^den " translation comes nearer to doing this than any other. The old version of Sir Thomas North, aside from its many intrinsic excellencies, will always have one charm which no other translation can have. It was the version which Shakespeare used. Shakespeare certainly found Plutarch's ethical portraits full of the best dramatic suggestion and material His Coriolanus, Julius Cccsar, and Antony and Cleopatra are largely based on incidents in Plutarch's Lives of these and other Romans, and the very phraseology of the great dramatist shows the influence of the language of North's translations. Mr. Skeat published in 1875 " Shakespeare's Plutarch," a selection from the Lives in North's Plutarch which illustrate Shakespeare's plays. His text of the Lives is based on what he believed to be the very copy of North which 24 INTRODUCTION Shakespeare once owned, and which contains marginal notes in what may well have been Shakespeare's handwriting. Shakespeare took from North's Plutarch not merely iso- lated details, like the detail of kitchen gossip cited above (p 18), but whole pictures, like that voluptuous picture,— perhaps Plutarch's best, — of Cleopatra coming up the Cydnus to meet Antony. Here the dramatist is content merely to put North's prose into metrical form. And this is surpris- ingly different from his treatment of other sources, as Arch- bishop Trench has weU pointed out (Butareh. pp. 65 f.). From others he takes a hint, an outline, a suggestion, a name or two, a situation, an incident. But Plutarch he dramatizes. « What a testimony we have to the artistic sense and skill which with all his occasional childlike simpUcity the old biographer possesses, in the fact that the mightiest and completest artist of all times should be content to resign himself into his hands, and simply to follow where the other leads." Of the popularity and influence of the Parallel Lives, little more need be said. For the last three centuries the current ideas about ancient history among English-speaking folk have been drawn from then)^ and there have been all this whUe, and still are, as Professor Goodwh says, « countless friends of classical learning whose only bond of union with Greece and Rome has been their English Plutarch." For such, Plutarch needs only to be translated. But it will heighten the general enjoyment of such a genial guide if those who have studied his methods and materials more closely will add to their translations of this or that Life some sug- gestions of the boundless wealth of Uterary tradition, out of the confusion of which so shining a precipitate at last emerged, ^nfl ir "^flfl ■^"T '' ^|"^" ^^^ Tf '^^" "' "'' '^ ' ^^^ '^ to study the humanitie s are not choaen.^ rjons " ^ o "^ ; tlie f nends of the old humam tarian culturejaugL-ESL • wtai \M m flOI ll u l ii ^ lin o-'^j hgjlg5g:S£:i^aJ>*»''>^ and the orator in behalf oTIEose institution s^beiabjLUte^ uld^liui e mm nf r g feSlered wise and virtooi^" OUTLINE SKETCH OF THE PERSIAN WARS 25 .«i IL THEMISTOCLES, AND THE TRADITION OF HIS HISTORY IN PLUTARCH'S ZIFK (a) Outline Sketch of the Persian Wars. In the early years of the fifth century B.C., the great eastern empire of the Persians made three unsuccessful attempts to crush the European Hellenes, whom we now call the Greeks. The struggle lasted twenty years, and abounded in contrasts and surprises. The attack was made by a perfectly centralized oriental despotism of the great river- valley type, — such as had flourished for ages independently along the Nile, — upon scattered mountain peoples whose bonds of union were religious and sentimental merely. The conflict was partly between large masses of undisciplined and light-armed infantry, aided by superb cavalry, and small bodies of heavily-armed and well-trained footmen; partly between great numbers of war-ships propelled by fighting oarsmen, and much smaller numbers of similar, but lighter and nimbler ships. Land and sea forces acted in conjimc- tion along a rugged and strongly indented coast. On the side of the East were boundless resources in men, money and equipment, — the accumulated resources of a world- empire imder beneficent sway. The sole limitation here was in the ability to manage resources. On the side of the West were inaccessibility, hardy moimtaineer vigor, and the ardor of souls contending for the most sacred objects in life. The alleged cause of the three invasions was the inter- ference of Athens and Eretria in the struggle between the Ionian Greeks of the west coast of Asia Minor and the imperial government of Darius. But this was only one of many causes, — an occasion rather than a cause. Since the floods of human life kept encroaching from North and West upon South and East, the collision between Europe and Asia was inevitable. It was in this larger sense that the Persian I. ■MBM 26 INTRODUCTION invasions were retaliatory. The surprising result of the col- lision was that the world-empire which stood guard over the accumulated treasures of South and East, not only failed to push its defensive barriers farther to the North and West, but actually lost ground, and left its gates open to the inundating floods of the next century. The first of the three unsuccessful attempts to punish and subdue European Hellas was made by Mardonius, a son-in- law of the Persian king Darius, toward the close of the first decade of the fifth century B.C., in 492. It was a mag- nificent combined movement by land and sea, in the grand manner of Darius himself when he invaded Scythia some twenty years earlier. Fleet and army moved around the northern shore of the iEgean sea, mutually supporting each other. But a disastrous storm off Mount Athos, and the hardy mountain tribes of southern Macedonia, thwarted the attempt Learning wisdom from this failure, the Great King sent a second expedition id 490, this time straight across the ^gean, lessening distance, economizing time, and elimi- nating the complications of the more spectacular combined movement by land and sea, but restricting the number of the forces which could operate on land to the possibilities of transportation by sea. Even thus restricted, however, the numbers of the invaders far surpassed any which Athens and Eretria, the ostensible objects of attack, could put into the field. Eretria was taken and utterly destroyed. Then, under the guidance of Hippias, the expelled tyrant of Athens, whose family had strong adherents still, both in the city of Athens and especially in the district of Marathon, to the northwest of the city, a landing of troops was made in that plain. Here some ten thousand Athenians and Platseans, under the brilliant generalship of Miltiades, defeated the invaders, drove them upon their ships, confronted them boldly after they sailed round and threatened Athens from the South, and so at last forced them to go home with the more important half of their errand unaccomplished. No OUTLINE SKETCH OF THE PERSIAN WARS 27 victory for freedom has produced such a huge sum total of inspiration among men. In the third attempt, the Great King returned to the more spectacular but less manageable combined movement by land and sea. "All Asia thundered for three years," as Herodotus says (viL 1), with his vast preparations, and so the Greeks liked to believe. The punishment of Athens was doubt- less merged in a scheme for establishing a strong European frontier-line for the Persian Empire, siace the iutervening sea invited rather than stayed aggression. But a revolt of Egypt in 486, and the death of Darius in 485, delayed the European expedition. Xerxes received it as part of his heritage, and, after quelling the Egyptian revolt, passed, in the spring and summer of 481, with vast displays of power on land and sea, beyond the point where the first expedition under Mardonius, in 492, had been checked. His multi- tudes, whom certainly no man now can number, whatever may have been the contemporary possibilities, were engiueered past the great barriers of nature, and frightened into submis- sion or neutrality all the larger Greek states except Athens and Sparta. These, with their faithful allies, were crushed back from their heroic stand on land and sea at Thermopylae and Artemisium, and Athens was captured and utterly de- stroyed. But the Persian expedition was stopped from farther and final success by the sea-fight iq the straits of Salamis, just ten years after Marathon. " Ten years later," says Thucydides (i. 18), " the Barbarian returned with the vast armament which was to enslave Hellas." The victory at Salamis saved Hellas, as that at Marathon had saved Athens. The crippled Persian fleet withdrew for the season with the disappointed king, and Mardonius was left with large forces of picked infantry to quarter himself for the winter in that part of Hellas already won, and to resume the ofifensive by land in the spring. But Sparta, Athens, and their allies, under the consummate generalship of Pausanias, crushed Mardonius in the spring of 479, at Plataea ; then the fleet of the Hellenic allies cleared the ^Egean sea of .1 !M 28 INTRODUCTION ) Persian galleys, and Hellas was free to expand into imperial dimensions. With the first of these great Hellenic victories, that of the Athenian and Platsean heavy-armed infantry at Marathon, the name of Miltiades will always be associated above all other names; with the second, that of the aUied fleet at Salamis, the name of Themistocles ; with the third, that of the allied infantry at Platsea, the name of Pausanias. The first died at Athens under the disgrace of a public condem- nation; the third was officially killed at Sparta for the treason in which he had been detected ; the second, Them- istocles, died at Magnesia, in Asia Minor, in the service of the Persian king, and imder condemnation at Athens for treason. He alone of the three was innocent of the charges brought against him by his countrymen. The general outline of the larger events of the Persian invasions, as briefly given above, is assumed by Plutarch to be known to his readers, as well as some prominent details. He selects for his Hfe of Themistocles such additional details from the great story as will specially illustrate the character of that hero. He adds masses of biographical detail, mostly in the shape of personal anecdote, much of which has no certain connection with the great events of the time, much of which bears plainly the marks of later manufacture to suit a certain established type of character. "Eis Life falls naturally into four main divisions : first, the family, educa- tion, and early poUtical Hfe of Themistocles, down to the ostracism of his rival Aristides, — chapters L-v.; second, Themistocles* participation in the war from the ostracism of Aristides through the battle of Salamis and the events immediately f oUowing and dependent upon it, — chapters vL-xviiL ; third, the career of Themistocles from his triumph to his ostracism, some seven years later, — chapters xix-xxu. ; and fourth, his exile for treason, his Persian career, his death and burial, — chapters xxiii.-xxxiL A brief aralysis of these four divisions, with more or less tentative effort to determine the sources from which Plutarch draws his ma- SOURCES OF PLUTARCH'S THEMISTOCLES 29 terial, will show how much less demand upon our belief the first and last divisions are entitled to make than the second and third, and how in all four a large apocryphal element has found a place. This brief analysis will be supplemented by the current notes, in which generous citations from the possible or probable sources of Plutarch will be made, that the reader may judge for himself of the manner and method and spirit of Plutarch's work. (h) The Sources of Plutarch in his Themistocles. But before making this brief preliminary analysis of each division of the Life, it will be necessary to determine the sources of information which were actually open to Plutarch, if he took pains to secure them, and to characterize them briefly ; not only those whom he cites by name as his author- ity, but also those whom he leaves unnamed, in spite of indebtedness to them, and those to whom he probably refers in simdry vague plural terms. Plutarch cites by name in the Themistocles no less than twenty-eight authors. Of these, four were poets contempo- rary with the Persian Wars and with Themistocles : Simon- ides, iEschylus, Pindar, and Timocreon of Rhodes. These four furnish what, with all its paucity, is still the most important evidence, both for Themistocles' achievements, and for the national sentiment toward him while those achievements were fresh in men's minds. Other contempo- rary poets may have furnished evidence too, but what these four furnished has come down to us, in part at least. Simonides of Ceos lived from 556 to 468 b. c, and was an admired and successful lyric poet at Athens for many years, before, during, and after the Persian Wars. He might be called the Hellenic Poet Laureate of the Persian Wars. His verses adorned the memories of those who fell at Marathon, Thermopylae, Artemisium, Salamis, and Plataea, and heralded the praises of the victors, as he had earlier sung the praises of victors in the great games. Eualcidas, an Eretrian cap- tain, slain by the Persians at Ephesus, was a man of note. I 30 INTRODUCTION « who had gained crowns at the games, and received much praise from Simonides of Geos" {Herodotus, v. 102). Simonides was a national, not a local poet, fiUed with the nobler inspirations of a successful national struggle agamst foreign aggression, and he passed away before the bitter sec- tional quarrels were rife which culminated in the Pelopon- nesian War. He has naught but glowing praise for Salamis and Themistocles. ^schylus,the great dramatic poet (525-456 B.c.),m his Persians, an historical drama brought out in 472, does fuU justice to Themistocles as the real author of the victory at Salamis, under the blessing of the gods, although the play was undoubtedly meant to bring into higher appreciation the services of Aristides at Salamis and Plat^. There may be exaltation of Aristides, but there is no depreciation of Themistocles by ^schylus. Pindar too (522-442 B.C.), the greatest lyric rival of Simonides, and like him also a national rather than a sec- tional poet, in a briUiant ode {FytK i 75 ff.) recognizes Athens as most entitled to the glory of Salamis, as Sparta was to that of Plat^a. He is not chary of other praise for Athens, as the citation in chapter viiL of the Themistocles shows. But Athens at Salamis was synonymous with Themistocles. . The three great poets contemporary with the Persian Wars, then, unite in extolling Salamis and ThemistK)cles. We get no breath of malevolence from them. But fame invites detraction. Both Simonides and Themistocles had an ardent hater in the athlete, political refugee, and poet Timocreon of Rhodes. The most we know of his poetry is due to Plutarch's citations from him in chapter xxL of the Themistocles, What Simonides thought of him may be seen from the satiric epitaph which he composed for him : " Here Hes Timocreon of Rhodes, who ate much, drank much, and much abused his fellow men " (Bergk, Poet. Lyr. Graeci, iiL* p. 505). What Themistocles thought of him is plain from the fact that after the HeUenic cause had triumphed, he SOURCES OF PLUTARCH'S THEMISTOCLES 31 refused to intercede with the Rhodians for the recall of Timocreon from banishment, though he had been his friend. Timocreon had " medised," as Herodotus would say, — had favored the Persian cause when things looked darkest for Hellenic freedom, — and his people had therefore cast him out Stung by the refusal of Themistocles to intercede in his behalf, he venomously accused the great hero of venality in the matter, — of having been "bought;" and when the political fortunes of Themistocles were overwhelmed by the invincible coalition of Cimon, Aristides, and Sparta against him, Timocreon exultantly turned upon him the charge of " medising." Nothing could better illustrate the credulity of malice than the fact that the next generation of Athen- ians, the Athenians particularly of the Periclean following, from 450 to 430 B. c, actually believed, or pretended to believe that Themistocles had " medised " in the first flush of his victory at Salamis (see the note on Themistocles^ xvL 1). With Timocreon first appear the charges of venality and treachery which became firmly fixed in the Themistocles tradition from the fact that Herodotus afterwards incorpo- rated them in his immortal story. Three important sources of Plutarch were contemporary with Cimon and Pericles, so far as their literary testimony goes, and represent the generation following Themistocles and the Persian wars, although the actual years of their lives may correspond with those of Themistocles to some extent. These are Ion of Chios, Stesimbrotus of Thasos, and Herodotus. Ion of Chios was a brilliant and popular poet at Athens between 452 and 421 B.C., personally acquainted if not inti- mate with ^schylus, Sophocles, Cimon, and Pericles. Be- sides his lyric and tragic poetry, he composed a prose work entitled Sojourns^ in which he recounted his personal expe- riences at Athens and elsewhere, particularly with famous men of the day. Through this delightful witness several choice bits of authentic contemporary testimony have come down to us. Plutarch evidently made liberal use of him, ( 1- H. 32 INTRODUCTION directly or indirectly, in his Pericles and Cimon, From him, doubtless, comes the glimpse which Plutarch gives (in his De Profectihus in Virtute, 8 = Morals^ p. 79 E) of ^schy- lus and Ion sitting together at the Isthmian games, watching a contest of boxers. Observing that whenever one of the boxers was hit, the audience shouted, iEschylus nudged Ion, saying : ** See what training will do ! The man who is hit, holds his peace; the spectators yelL" When the scholiast on the Persians of ^Eschylus, at v. 429, notes that " Ion, in his SojournSy says that iEschylus was present at the battle of Salamis," it is the best testimony possible to that fact. Through Ion we get authentic testimony to the very looks and words of Cimon and Pericles. In spite of his aristo- cratic sympathies, which made Cimon especially the object of his admiration, it is to be noted that the only testimony concerning Themistocles which reaches us from him indi- cates merely that hero's lack of what passed in those days for higher education. We may be sure that such was the estimate of Themistocles current in the fashionable and aris- tocratic circles in which Ion moved. But the invincible political coalition against Themistocles not only ostracized him about 472 b. c, it also secured bis con- demnation for treason about 471, his permanent exile on pain of death, and the confiscation of his property. The fact that he found asylum at the court of Persia, that common refuge for expatriated Greeks, brought the malevo- lent charges of venality and "medism" which Timocreon seems to have been first to set going, into general accept- ance. A democracy which was led by aristocrats like Cimon and Pericles belittled the services and impugned the motives of their former comparatively plebeian leader. Selfish cunning, rather than the self-sacrificing statesman- ship which really characterized his course, came to be the popular trait in the tradition of his career. All manner of current malevolent stories about Themistocles were col- lected in a political pamphlet by Stesimbrotus of Thasos, a sophist and rhapsodist who achieved some note at Athens SOURCES OF PLUTARCH'S THEMISTOCLES 33 • during the times of Cimon and Pericles. The pamphlet was probably written about the time of the outbreak of the Pelo- ponnesian war (431 B. c), and served up a mass of scandal- ous gossip about Themistocles, the founder of the Athenian navy, and Pericles, the founder of the Athenian empire, both of whom were objects of intense hatred to the oligarchical party, in the interests of which Stesimbrotus evidently com- piled his work. Cimon and Thucydides, son of Melesias, were also treated in a similar way, though the fragments of the work which have reached us make it probable that these, as rivals or opponents of Pericles, were handled with less mal- evolence. The work was not a history of the times, or a biography of the men with whom it dealt, but a defamatory tract full of spicy slander. Its historical worth lies chiefly in the glimpse which it gives into the depths of partisan rancor at the time. Plutarch draws much material from it, but is usually averse to accepting its evidence. He used it more in the Cimon and Pericles than in the Themistocles. It is probably the work which brings from him the bitter com- plaint {Pericles, xiii.): "So very difficult a matter is it to trace and find out the truth of anything by history, when, on the one hand, those who afterwards write it find long periods of time intercepting their view, and, on the other, the con- temporary records of any actions and lives, partly through envy and ill-will, partly through favor and flattery, pervert and distort truth." In this atmosphere Herodotus evidently composed those parts of his great history where Themistocles appears, as the current notes will fully show. He composed them in Athens probably, and for Athenians. He reproduces the beliefs and feelings of the time and place in which he is writing, and herein consists his peculiar worth as an historian. He has given high artistic form to the reigning beliefs of the Peri- clean party at Athens concerning the Persian Wars, one generation of men after the wars were fought and the greatest hero of those wars had died. Meanwhile the oral tradition of those wars, — and the literary tradition of li " t f i 34 INTRODUCTION II- i them by Charon of Lampsacus and Hellanicus of Mitylene was annalistic and meagre, — had suffered the changes to which all oral tradition is naturally liable, and, besides, was directly acted upon by an entirely new set of hates and jealousies, aris- ing from the growth of the Athenian empire. These tended to distort and pervert the stories of services to the national Hel- lenic cause formerly rendered by states now in hostile relations to Athens. The old and the new traditions subsisted side by side, and Herodotus often takes pains to give them both, and sometimes to correct the flagrant wrongs of partisan tradition. For Argos and Corinth and ^gina he insists on correcting the malevolence of Athenian tradition ; but for Boeotia and Thebes he does no such service ; and with all his candor and fidelity he could not avoid tingeing his account of the services and exploits of Themistocles with the prevailingly hostile beliefs of those among whom and for whom he wrote. He was largely dependent on oral tradition, and that which came to his ears, and which we may suppose him to have fairly reproduced, was malevolently hostile to Themistocles. It had not only distorted the really pardonable diplomatic deceptions of Themistocles, but had invented others which were unpar- donable. The shrewdness and cunning which Themistocles had exercised for his country's good, malevolence made him to have exercised for his own good ; and a connection with Persia which no dreamer could possibly have imagined in the days of the glory of Salamis, he was now made not only to have foreseen, but to have carefully planned. But after the death of Cimon in 449 B. c, and the passmg of the glorious policy for which he so long contended of peace and friendship with Sparta, but aggressive war on Persia, a slow change in the popular feeling toward Themistocles can be traced, which culminates in a complete revulsion. The new era favored peace with Persia, and even alliance, but war with Sparta. It was this arch-enemy of the new Peri- clean era which had brought unsubstantiated charges of treachery against Themistocles, and joined his political foes at Athens in hunting him from the country. And SOURCES OF PLUTARCH'S THEMISTOCLES 35 the Athenian navy, on which she placed her main reliance in this new era, especially after her defeat at Coroneia (447), and the Thirty Years' Peace (445), was the creation of Themistocles. No malice had even tried to belittle or besmirch that eminent service. Besides, if^ in making head against the hated domestic rival, Athens came into touch with Greek cities of Asia Minor, she found that among some of them, at least, the memory of Themistocles was honored for beneficent services which bespoke an abiding love of his native country (see the notes on Themistocles, xxxL 4). Pericles and the powerful family of the Alcmaeonidae were only too willing to have the malicious estimates of Themistocles* life and death prevail, and Herodotus was only too w illin g to be their spokesman ; but events worked in favor of a rehabilitation of the career of Themistocles. And when the dominating personality of Pericles was removed (429), and the war with Sparta intensified yet more Athenian hatred of her, and when the successes won against her were seen to be due in the inain to the undis- puted services of the maligned Themistocles, the change in popular sentiment toward his memory became pronounced. The Old Athenian Comedy of the decade 430-420, so far as we can now control its references to him, was friendly, even grateful, and the fiction of his treason slowly died out of popular belief. Writing toward the close of the century, Thucydides boldly controverted many estimates of his more popular predecessor, Herodotus, and none more emphatically than his treatment of Themistocles. Against the misjudgment of Themistocles by the leading minds and the masses of the Periclean age at Athens, and against the perpetuation of this misjudgment in the historical romance of Herodotus, Thucydides, in one of his main and formal digressions, which is our earliest specimen of formal biography in Greek, utters an earnest, dignified protest. And it is greatly to Plutarch's credit, even though he was probably prejudiced against Herodotus from the start, that he puts himself in line with il itU 36 INTRODUCTION t : this protest of Thucydides. It was not alone his humanity and natural kindness of spirit, but his critical preference of Thucydides as a historical authority superior to Herodotus, that led him to give Herodotean details of the events of the Persian Wars with which Themistocles was associated, but in the Thucydidean spirit. The malicious element in the Herodotean material is carefully eliminated, under the influ- ence of the grand protest of Thucydides. Themistocles was not guilty of treason, according to Plutarch, even though he did fly for refuge to the king of Persia. This is the main point, and in the main point Plutarch sides with Thucydides against Herodotus. We can pardon him then, if, when he comes to treat of Themistocles' life in Persia, about which only a few salient facts were known, he leaves the safe reticence of Thucydides, and admits into his story the orna- mental, but purely fictitious material with which later writers supplied him. The three allusions to Themistocles in Aristophanes (Knights, 183 f., 812-819, 884) are even affectionate in their tone, and the last two dwell on his benefactions to Athens ; the second actually implies that his exile showed ingratitude on the part of the city. At the Lenaean festival of 424 B. c, therefore, an Athenian audience evidently felt tender toward Themistocles. Perhaps this growing tender- ness toward him on account of the wrongs done him at Spartan instigation called forth the magnificent eulogium which Thucydides bestowed upon him. At any rate, in the early part of the next century his memory is entirely cleared of the stain of treachery. In Plato's GorgiaSy Themistocles is ranked with Miltiades, Cimon, and Pericles. All were good men of virtue, if virtue consist in the satisfaction of our own and other people's desires; and all alike were bad statesmen because they suffered themselves to be * thrown from their chariot," t. e, ostracized. In Themistocles' case the Athenians added exile to ostracism ; but there is not the slightest hint of its justice. And in a still more striking passage of the Meno (pp. 93, 99), •^^k H SOURCES OF PLUTARCH'S THEMISTOCLES 37 Themistocles is called a good man and a good statesman, — a wise and good man, although imable to teach his virtue to his own son, exactly as Aristides, Pericles and Thucydides, son of Melesias, were. Such language could not have been used unless all belief in the treason of Themistocles had vanished from popular belief. Xenophon is like Plato in this regard. In the orators of the closing fifth and of the fourth cen- tury, especially Antiphon, Andocides, Isocrates, ^schines and Demosthenes, whatever opinions may be held about the expediency and advantage of converting Athens into a mari- time power, — and orators as well as philosophers sometimes questioned these, — there is complete unanimity in this, that to Themistocles is always ascribed, in strains which become rather conventional, the glory of Athens' navy, and of the Piraeus ; and that there is no hint of his actual treason, though there are many allusions to his country's ingratitude toward him. But the orators used the history of the fifth century merely as a source for telling illustrations or contrasts. They did not recoimt it at length, and were inaccurate in details. There is little indication in them of any lines of historical tradition which are independent of Herodotus and Thucydides. All the more worthy of notice, then, is their elimination from Herodotus of his hostile treatment of Themistocles. The historical material of Herodotus and Thucydides was worked over into a form which appealed to the rhetorical tastes of the fourth century by Ephorus, a native of the iEolian city of Cyme. Ephorus was a pupil of the great orator Isocrates, and carried into the narration of historical events the principles of formal rhetoric. The form was of more importance than the substance, and freely shaped the substance to its needs. He wrote a universal history of Greeks and Barbarians from the return of the Heracleidae, or the ** Dorian Invasion," down to the year 340 B. c, at which point death interrupted his task. His work became a Vulgate of history, enjoying an immense popularity. It has come down to us only in excerpts and fragments, and is prmcipally known to us through the generous use made of ^rh^it-n () m (Hi 38 INTRODUCTION it by the compiler Diodonis Siculus, who prepared a com- pend of universal history down to Caesar^s GalHc wars, wnt- ^g under Augustus. In the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth books of this compend of Diodonis, we have the periods of the Persian and Peloponnesian wars treated, in the main after Ephorus, and so, ultimately, after Herodotus and Thucydides, though not without important variations on the part both of Ephorus and Diodonis. It is plam that Diodonis excerpts Ephorus in large sections. But it is also probable that he condenses at times, and certain that he adds some matter of his own composition, especiaUy for purposes of juncture. In general, however, we are reason- ably confident that he reproduces Ephonis. Though a diU- gent student and collector of material, Ephonis is not so tnistworthy a guide as Herodotus even, much less Thucyd- ides, since he yields far more than they do to the tempta- tions of his rhetoric His style is artificial in the extreme, diffuse and weak, and yet to his style he clearly sacrifices fideUty to fact and authority. He was an extravagant admirer of Athens and Themistocles, going as far beyond the truth in his praise of them as their enemies did in their detraction. Very different from him in method and purpose, though like him in his formal rhetorical style, and his love of writ- ing for the sake of writing rather than for the sake of truth, was his feUow-pupil under Isocrates, Theopompus of Chios. This stern aristocrat devoted, like Thucydides, the years of his exHe, and his wealth, to securing the most accu- rate knowledge possible of the periods which he chronicled, namely : the years 411 to 339 b. c, in continuation of the history of Thucydides ; and the career of PhiHp of Macedon, from 360 to 336 B. c. The loss of these works, which were storehouses of enidition, is one of the severest that Greek literature has sustained. The tenth book of the second work, the Philippica, was devoted, by way of excursion, to the Attic statesmen of the Persian Wars and later. Here Plutarch evidently found much biographical material VV SOURCES OF PLUTARCH'S THEMISTOCLES 39 for his ThemistocleSy and apparently a spirit of hostility to this hero, as was natural in a writer of Theopompus' politi- cal sympathies. Fragments of his works show also a ten- dency to correct the vainglorious spirit of Athenian traditions. As a man of the national party he has bitter thiugs to say of Demosthenes, as well as of Themistocles. In both Theo- pompus and Ephorus we may assume that some authentic material appeared, — either from the early annalists Charon and Hellanicus, or from private family traditions, — which is not to be found in Herodotus or Thucydides on the same periods ; but by far the largest part of such supplementary matter is suspicious, to say the least. It is more likely to be a rhetorical invention than genuine tradition. Plutarch is much indebted to a group of antiquarian writers who composed the Atthides, or chronological his- tories of the customs, institutions, and monuments of Athens. The oldest of these, if Hellanicus be not included in the group, whose Atthis was of a more general character, was Clidemus, or Clitodemus. The few fragments of his work which have reached us include an item of the year 377 b. c, and make it probable that he flourished during the closing years of the fifth, and in the first half of the fourth century. Plutarch uses him, either directly or indirectly, in his Theseiis, Themistocles, and Aristides. Phanodemus is another writer of the same class, about whom even less is known. Plutarch cites him once in his Themistocles^ and twice in his Cimon. Androtion is another, said by Suidas to have been a pupil of Isocrates. He is one of the authorities from whom Aris- totle drew material for his Constitution of Athens, and is cited once by Plutarch in his Solon. He was active in the year 346 B.C. These were all predecessors of the most important writer of the class, Philochorus, who was slain at Athens by Antigonus Gonatas in 261 b. c. He was a professional seer, and an official interpreter of oracles and portents in 306 B.c. His chief ■T^iSp^l )l (.'i i-il .i Mi VI' \\ I * 111 li >)•■(.. 40 INTRODUCTION work, an Atthis, carried the chronicles of Athens down to the year of his death, and the fragments of it testify to the great learning and wisdom of the author. Plutarch cites him by name frequently in his Hieseus, once in his NiciaSy and probably uses him freely at other times without men- tioning his name, as in chapters x. and xL of the Themis' tocles, where he takes Aristotle's Constitution of Athens as he found it cited in Philochorus, whose enormous literary activ- ity came in the generation following Aristotle, and who cites Aristotle freely, as well as previous Atthides, It may well be, therefore, that Plutarch uses the earlier Atthis-wntevs mainly as he finds them cited in Philochorus. Craterus the Macedonian, half-brother of King Antigonus Gonatas, was a diligent and careful compiler of original his- torical docimients bearing on the history of Athens, such as the popular decrees and other published inscriptions. He apparently wrote a history of the Athenian people based on these invaluable documents. Plutarch speaks of his collec- tions, to which he must have had access, in his Cimonf xiiL, and AristideSy xxvi. Spurious documents may have crept into the collections of Craterus, but in general his work must have been of the greatest value, and late lexicog- raphers and scholiasts cite him with respect and confi- dence, often in the same class with the Atthis-writeTS. Diodorus the Topographer, or Periegete, was a contempo- rary of Theophrastus, toward the close of the fourth century B. c, who wrote works on the monuments and antiquities of Attica. Plutarch cites him in his Themistocles, xxxiL, Tlieseusy xxxvL, and Cimon, xvL •• The Peripatetic school of philosophers, headed by Aristotle, in the historical and biographical work which they incident- ally cultivated, seem to have culled from all sorts of late sources striking anecdotes of great historical personages like Themistocles, without much critical acumen. Their main work was in other fields. And yet, in distinction from the Alexandrian school of biography, which contented itself with complete collection of extant material, the Peripatetic I k SOURCES OF PLUTARCH'S THEMISTOCLES 41 school, especially the later, sought to throw the charm of literary art around its collected materials. In the Constitution of Athens by Aristotle, recently so marvellously restored to us, and fully cited in the current notes of this volume, the sources drawn upon are distinctly anti-democratic, and represent the sentiments of the oligar- chical faction toward the close of the Peloponnesian war. Theophrastus, the most famous pupil, and the successor of Aristotle (ob. 287 B.C.), is cited twice in chapter xxv. of the Uiemistocles for biographical details, which, like those in Aristotle and Theopompus, betray the bias of the oligarchi- cal partisan. His book " On Lives " was a mine of citation for Plutarch in his Zycurgus, Lysander, Pericles, and other Lives. But his principal works, like those of his master, were in the field of natural history. The writer of this school to whom Plutarch is most indebted, especially for piquant stories and tales of dreams and wonders, is Phanias of Eresos, a fellow-citizen and friend of Theophrastus, as well as a disciple of Aristotle, and his most distinguished disciple, after Theophrastus. He too was a prolific writer on logic, physics, literature, and history as welL Plutarch compliments his erudition in chapter yiii. of the Tliemistocles, and borrows gladly and freely from his sensa- tional store, even when he clearly distrusts the truth of what he takes. Among the historical works attributed to Phanias were a chronological history of Greece, arranged by annual ofi&cers of Eresos ; a history of Sicilian tyrants ; and a work on the assassination of tyrants. What the work was which Plutarch uses so freely in the Themistocles, is not known. All the Peripatetics seem to have been collectors rather than sifters of historical material, and Phanias was apparently a historical romancer, in a daring and fascinating vein. Ariston of Ceos, cited both in the Themistocles and Aris- tides for a story of youthful rivalry in love, is said to have become head of the Peripatetic school about 230 B. c. His works are all lost, and the loss is smalL Among his con- temporaries, and in Cicero's eyes, he lacked dignity and Wff a.»jLjj..i-«L.«ji 42 INTRODUCTION SOURCES OF PLUTARCH'S THEMISTOCLES 43 >ii weight. He cultivated seriously what Aristotle and Theo- phrastus and even Phanias did by way of literary recreation. He wrote light character-sketches, after the manner of those which have come down to us from Theophrastus, and a col- lection of such love-stories as that which Plutarch cites from him. Here also may be classed the Heracleides cited by Plutarch in chapter xxviL 1, as having Themistocles come to Xerxes rather than to Artaxerxes. Heracleides Ponticujs is probably meant, a pupil of both Plato and Aristotle, a volimiinous writer on all possible subjects, including historical None of his works have come down to us, and Plutarch probably merely repeats his name as he found it cited, by some writer or commentator, on the Xerxes side of this curiously mooted point. Idomeneus of Lampsacus is an author to whom Plutarch is imder great obligations in his Aristides, and whose pecu- liar material he must have known indirectly at least, if not directly, in his Themistocles. Idomeneus was a pupil and friend of Epicurus (ob, 270), but a degenerate disciple of his great master. Apparently to palliate the wantonness of his own life, he collected alleged instances of wantonness in the great men of the past. The higher the eminence of the man, the more emphatic the lesson of his lapses and falls. Hence the union of adulation and slander in the traces of the biographical work of Idomeneus. He wrote a bio- graphical work on "The Socratics," and another on "The Demagogues." In the latter, of course, Themistocles and Aristides would be treated. Plutarch speaks depreciatingly of him in Pericles, x., and DemostheneSy xxiii; cites him thrice in the Aristides, and undoubtedly takes large material from him in that biography without mentioning him by name. Idomeneus is to Plutarch in the Aristides, what Phanias is in the Themistocles, — a welcome source for much sensa- tional material which his better judgment tells hJTn is of dubious value. Duris, a pupil of Theophrastus, historian and tyrant of Samos, lived from about 350 to about 280 b. c, and wrote a history of Greece from 370 to 281 B. c. Only fragments of his works have reached us, and it is hard to estimate them. Plutarch disparages his style and doubts his veracity, and yet, as in the case of Phanias and Idomeneus, finds wel- come material in his writings. He does not cite him for the Themistocles, though he may use his materials, directly or indirectly, in chapter ii ; he cites him by name in Peri- cles, xxviL, a biography written before the Aristides, and in Alcibiades, xxxiL There remain seven, out of the twenty-eight authors cited by name in the Themistocles, but there is no need here of any- thing more than an alphabetical list of them, with just enough biographical notice to dififerentiate them, since Plutarch uses them for isolated details only, and that too, in some cases, at second hand, as he finds them cited in other authorities on whom he is depending more. The list is as follows : — Acestodorus, cited at xiiL 1. Nothing further is positively known about him. It may be the Acestodorus of Megalop- olis, of unknown date, who is mentioned by Stephanus of Byzantium between Ainesias, a pupil of Theophrastus, and Polybius, as author of a work " On Cities." Charon of Lampsacus, cited at xxviL 1. A " logographer," predecessor of Herodotus, writing Persica, after the manner of annals. Plutarch cites him only here. Clitarchus, cited at xxviL 1. A son of Dinon, author of a history of Alexander which was written while Alexander's career was fresh in men's minds, and which incorporated the most romantic and fanciful conceptions of that career into the historical form which became most popular, and even canonical Plutarch uses him, of course, in his Alexander. Dinon of Colophon, cited at xxviL 1. The father of Clitarchus, author of a standard history of Persia, which was written during the campaigns of Alexander, and brought the history of the empire down to 340 B. c. He is used by Plutarch in the Artaxerxes. Eratosthenes of Cyrene, cited at xxviL 3. Librarian at ( ! i i:. ih \\ i^ (I M I •t : i ) 44 INTRODUCTION Alexandria under Ptolemy Euergetes and his two successors, most distinguished as geographer and chronologist, 275-194 B. c. He wrote also on philosophy and ethics, and the work here cited by Plutarch was of this nature. Neanthes of Cyzicus, cited in L 2, and xxiz. 4. A rhetori- cian of the school of Isocrates, who flourished about 240 b. c, and wrote a book on " Illustrious Men," a History of Greece, and a History of Attains of Pergamum (241-197). The third and fourth books of his Greek History treated of the Persian Wars. Phylarchus, cited in yyyii- 2 with such depreciation of his style and veracity, was an Athenian historian of the period 272-220, a contemporary of Aratus {6b, 213,B.c.), the main authority for Plutarch in his Agis and Cleomenes, and Pyrrhus, His work was after the order of Duris of Samos, and Phanias, whom Plutarch finds so serviceable in spite of their failings. (c) Analysis of the Tuemistocles. The first natiu-al division, chapters i.-v., covers the first period of the hero's life, — his birth, education, and early political career, down to the ostracism of Aristides (483). Themistocles was of obscure birth, plain education, and obliged to struggle for social and political recognition. He was ambitious, clever, impetuous, and in his earlier years dissipated. Fired by the fame of Miltiades, he maps out a naval policy for Athens which shall enable her to cope with Persia on the sea. In carrying out this policy, he in- gratiates himself with the common people, and antagonizes successfully both Miltiades and Aristides, the leaders of the aristocracy. Aristides is at last ostracized. Of the twelve anecdotes which embellish this division, many are loosely used. They sometimes illustrate later periods in the life of Themistocles than the one under con- sideration, and are often inventions of a time after the victory of Salamis. Most of the narrative material also is inferential in its nature. Given a few fundamental facts on ANALYSIS OF THE THEMISTOCLES 45 good authority, such as the lowly birth of Themistocles, his far-seeing naval policy, and his political triumph over Aristides, all of which are clearly brought out in Herodotus and Thucydides, and most of the rest of the material is such as might naturally be invented on the basis of these facts, to give desired but lacking biographical detail Most of it comes, in fact, so far as we can trace it at all, from writers later even than the century in which Themistocles lived. Plutarch seems to write currente calamo, from well-stocked memory and copious notes. The authorities actually men- tioned in this division are Phanias, Neanthes, Simonides, Stesimbrotus (twice), Ariston, and Plato; but there are several vague plural phrases of reference, such as "some," "others," "the story-makers;" and some vague general formuloe like "it is said," "it is thought," "it is agreed," the significance of which can never be satisfactorily deter- mined. It certainly cannot be proved, however, that Plutarch is reproducing some predecessor's blend of biographical material The combination is his own. The second division, chapters vL-irmL, covers the second period in the life of Themistocles, from the ostracism of Aristides (483) through the events immediately following upon the victory at Salamis (480). Familiarity with the greater events of the period is assumed in the reader. The details are, in the main, Herodotean, but the spirit is Thucydidean, and even Ephorean, i. e. not simply favorable, but adulatory. Having achieved the naval supremacy of Athens in spite of the opposition of Miltiades and Aristides, who thought the victory of heavy-armed troops at Marathon glory and prophecy enough, Themistocles inspired the Athenians to defy the Persian King ; united all the southern Greeks by wisely yielding, even in naval matters, to the presumptuous claims of Sparta ; participated in the abortive attempt to block the Persian advance at the Vale of Tempe ; persuaded reluctant allies to unite in the three days' naval struggle ofif Artemisium ; sowed the seeds of disintegration in the King's fleet during the slow retreat down the coast '., I, }l :'• I 46 INTRODUCTION before the victorious enemy ; was foremost in persuading the Athenians to abandon their city and make their fleet their home ; overcame, at last, by a desperate stratagem, the pur- pose of the allies to retire still farther down the coast, and brought on a naval engagement in such narrow quarters that the Greeks, even though disheartened and irresolute, con- tended on favorable terms with the superior numbers of their enemy's ships, and inflicted on hiTn and his invasion a checking blow, — " that fair and notorious victory," as Simon- ides sang, " than which no more brilliant exploit was ever performed upon the sea." I deem it a literary impossibility that Plutarch should have written this division without consulting Herodotus, the famous ultimate authority for the events. But he certainly treats Herodotus with the greatest freedom. He cites him twice by name for startling details merely, and once incorrectly at that ; changes the order of his events and the names of his speakers ; extracts all the venom from his stories about Themistocles ; embellishes with citations from -^schylus, Pindar, Simonides, — most welcome authentic tes- timony, — as well as from the arch romancer Phanias, and the statelier Aristotle, not to mention the antiquarians Clidemus and Phanodemus, and the unknown Acestodorus. Again, as in the first division, the vague general phrases of reference, — as to a "cloud of witnesses," — abound (there are some nine in all) ; again the division is brought to a close by a chapter containing a farrago of stories, good, bad, and indif- ferent, perhaps a page of the commonplace-book copied entire; and again the combination, which is, after all, highly artistic, must be credited to Plutarch himself, and not to any inter- mediate compiler or biographer, except in the way of suggestion. The best tradition, including the testimony of Aristophanes and the Old Comedy, makes the great triumph of Themisto- cles due, not to valor, but to wisdom and adroitness. It was the far-sighted diplomat whom, for a brief space, Pelo- ponnesus and Attica united to honor. And it is the quality ANALYSIS OF THE THEMISTOCLES 47 of diplomatic adroitness which the anecdotical element of this second division most illustrates. The hon-mots are prob- ably rhetorical inventions of the century after Themistocles. They might just as well be ascribed to any one who had achieved eminence and power from lowly origins. The third division, chapters xix.-xxii., covers the career of Themistocles from his marvellous triumph to his ostracism, a period of about seven years. For this period there is little positive evidence of any sort. Herodotus has almost none, Thucydides but little. Plutarch's outline is exceedingly summary, and he fails almost entirely, as usual, to give any clear idea of the political combination in consequence of which Themistocles fell so low from an eminence so high. He tells us of the diplomatic trick by which Themistocles deceived Sparta and secured the rebuilding of the walls of Athens (Thucydides) ; of the building of the walls of the Piraeus, and the emphasis put by Themistocles on his naval policy in opposition to Aristides and the nobles (Thucydides) ; he hints at the growth of Spartan hatred for Themistocles and favor for his young rival Cimon; at the onslaught of angry enemies, like Timocreon of Rhodes; at a growing unpopu- larity of Themistocles which he increases by wearisome references to his own services ; but at last the political crash comes in rather abruptly and Themistocles is ostracized, just about ten years after the ostracism of his rival Aristides. The current notes will supply fuller explanation than Plutarch does of so speedy and so utter a reversal of fortune. The authentic material of this division is based almost entirely on Thucydides, though he is not mentioned by name, and it is reinforced by ornamental citations or rem- iniscences from Aristophanes and Plato; by much curious material from some of the antiquarian writers, — Clidemus, perhaps, or PhUochorus; and by malicious stories of late invention, one or two possibly from Theopompus, who is cited by name for one. Herodotus is used by name for an incident that does not belong in this period at alL ^^.V {•1 I ' i ( ,1 I / i Hi 48 INTRODUCTION Contemporary evidence of the highest value is given in the citations from Timocreon, but side by side with worth- less stories of 1^ manufacture. The phrases of vague plural or general reference are fewer in number, and the blend, or combination is not so successful as in the other divisions. The modern historian also finds little authentic material to serve him in the reconstruction of this particular period of the political activity of Athens. The fourth division, chapters xxiiL-xxxiL, covers the last period of Themistocles' career, — his exile for treason, his Persian adventures and successes, his death and burial The incidents occurring in Hellas are, in the main, well authenticated history, being largely a transcription of Thu- cydides (L 135-7). The adventures in Persia are almost wholly of romantic invention. Plutarch gives a residence in Argos with political moves against Sparta ; Spartan charges that the correspondence of their own traitor, Pausanias, impli- cated Themistocles also ; a summons to appear before a Hel- lenic tribunal and answer to a charge of treason; the flight to Persia by way of Corcyra, Epirus, and Macedonia, — mostly after Thucydides. But here he admits freely into his narra- tive the ornamental but purely fictitious anecdotes with which late authorities supplied him. From the time when the great figure of Themistocles vanished forever from Hellas, Hellenic fancy revelled in picturing to itself the adventures through which this imrivalled diplomat f oiged his way from the position of prime foe to that of prime friend of the Great King. That he did so somehow, his princely residence at Magnesia, with this and other Greek cities tributary to his wants, indisputably showed. But how did he do so? and what price did he pay for the Great King's favor? Such questions Hellenic fancy asked, and, in the absence of other answers, answered them for itself. Through intrigue and mortal peril Themistocles gained access to the royal pres- ence, astonished the Great King by his bold readiness of resource, adopted Persian language and manners so as to out-Persian the Persian courtiers, lived like a royal satrap on ARISTIDES IN THE PERSIAN WARS 49 • the confines of the empire closest to Hellas, under such obli- gations to do anti-Hellenic service to the King that at last he took his own life rather than try to fulfil them. He had splendid burial at Magnesia, though in later times his de- scendants dared to claim a secret burial of his remains in Attic soil, at his own request, and tradition fixed his Attic tomb near the entrance to the Piraeus, his greatest creation. Thucydides' brief and cautious testimony is fully utilized by Plutarch, but is most generously expanded and supple- mented, from Ephorus and Phanias especially. All three authors are cited by name, as well as more than a dozen others. No better example could be given of the wide extent of Plutarch's reading, even though it be granted that a con- siderable group of these authors are cited at second hand. The result is a brilliant literary mosaic, in which fact and fancy are inextricably united to form the ethical pattem. Stesimbrotus, Charon, and Andocides supply items from the fifth century's traditions; Theopompus and Theophrastus are drawn upon for rhetorical and philosophical inventions of the fourth century; Neanthes and Phylarchus are brilliant representatives of the third century's historiography, and there is more than the usual reference to vague aggregates of writers. Most interesting of all, a Themistocles of the century after Christ, lineal descendant of the hero of Salamis, and inheritor of the family traditions and proper- ties, supplies his intimate friend and fellow student, the writer of the Themistocles, with minute details from his family archives. IIL ARISTIDES AND THE TRADITION OF HIS HISTORY IN PLUTARCH'S ZIFK (a) ARISTIDES IN THE PERSIAN WaRS. Plutarch assumes, in his Aristides, the reader's familiarity with the same general outline of events as in the Themis- tocles, It need not therefore be repeated here. There is this striking difference, however, that in the Aristides the 50 INTRODUCTION ' ; 1 t i'' political activity of the two rivals is pushed back into the period before Marathon. There is not the slightest evidence for this except th&t which is drawn from late authorities, as the current notes will fully show (see the note on the Themistocles, iii. 3). Authentic evidence from contemporary or proximate sources knows nothing of either Aristides or- Themistocles imtil after Marathon, nor does Aristotle's Con- stitution of Athens, among later sources. Still later tradition, however, insisted that the two heroes of Salamis should be heroes of Marathon also, and generously invented det^s of their conduct on that field which illustrated the noble rivalry between them and the two types of character long since firmly fixed in men's remembrance of them. More- over, since Aristides was felt to have been the elder of the two, — and probably was, although it cannot be positively proven, — a still earlier political activity was assigned to him as intimate friend of the reformer Cleisthenes (508 B.C.). There is nothing chronologically improbable in this ; there is simply no good evidence for it. But when he wrote his Aristides, Plutarch clearly surrendered himself to the influ- ence of late and largely romantic authorities much more than he had done in the Themistocles. This is not strange. Contemporary and proximate sources, and particularly Herodotus and Thucydides, have almost no details concerning Aristides. His was clearly a co-operative rather than an initiating personality. Two episodes in Herodotus, — the magnanimous offer of his services in aid of his rival at Salamis (viiL 79-82), and his slaughter of the Persians on the islet of Psyttaleia toward the close of the engagement, — exhaust the list; and in Thucydides there are merely two passing allusions to the man ; once (L 91, 3) as colleague of Themistocles in the embassy to Sparta which was part of the great stratagem for securing the rebuilding of the walls of Athens ; and once (v. 18, 5) as the one " in whose time" the contributions of the cities to the Delian League were established. Aristides may have been present at Marathon, probably was, we may say, from the evidence ARISTIDES IN THE PERSIAN WARS 51 at our command ; it is possible that Themistocles was present, but neither raised himself above the thousands of other Athe- nians who contributed namelessly to the victory of Miltiades. The naval policy of Themistocles, ostensibly directed against the ^ginetans, but far-sightedly against the Persians, made the victory of Salamis possible. It was so opposed by Aristides that he was removed by ostracism, and he took up his residence while in exile, as we may safely gather' from the first episode in Herodotus wherein he appears, with the bitterest Hellenic enemies of Athens, the ^ginetans. His magnanimity in offering his services in the battle of Salamis was far surpassed by that of Themistocles in ac- cepting them. And even Herodotus, the malignant tra- ducer of Themistocles, and the extravagant admirer of Aristides, wherein he but mirrors Athenian sentiment during the culmination of the Periclean epoch (440—430), can give Aristides but faint gloiy in the great achievement. The name of Aristides never became synonymous with the vic- tory of Salamis, as that of Themistocles did. Nor is it synonymous with the victory of Plataea in the year following Salamis, although here Themistocles played no part at alL In his Themistocles, Plutarch has not a word to say of the victories over the Persians which immediately followed Salamis, — the victories of Plataea and Mycale. But his account of one of them, Plataea, occupies almost half of his Aristides, Late tradition tried to make the name of Aristides synonymous with Plataea. It did this by con- centrating on Aristides the actions attributed by the primary authority, Herodotus, to the Athenians in general, and by inventing fresh personal details. With the departure of Xerxes and his fleet, leaving a picked force of infantry behind in Thessaly and Boeotia, the problem confronting the southern Greeks changed so radi- cally that Themistocles with his naval policy and leadership were suddenly useless, or at least unnecessary. Land forces, not a fleet, must oppose Mardonius. By the following spring (479), Sparta and heavy-armed infantry, rather than Athens > ; 1 I t ; / .' V I / ' . I' * I i f' I I : I I ! I I I I 52 INTRODUCTION and triremes, were in highest demand. Not a word is heard of Themistocles during the great struggle which annihilated the Persian armies left behind in Greece, and swept the iEgean Sea clear of the Persian fleets. To Sparta and Pau- sanias belongs by common consent the glory of Platsea. Even Herodotus here rises high above the seductions of partisan Athenian misrepresentation, forty or fifty years after the events, and pronounces judgment in clear and decisive tones : " Then did Pausanias, the son of Cleombrotus, and grandson of Anaxandridas, win a victory exceedmg in glory all those to which our knowledge extends " (ix. 64). Athenian tradition had warped the facts this way and that, in order to m£^fy the really subordinate part taken by the Athenian contingent at Plataea, and to minify the parts taken by states which had since the events become intensely hate- ful to Athens, and even to cast aspersions on Spartan courage ; but it dared not detract from the solitary pre-emin- ence in glory due to Pausanias for the final victory. So Thucydides has the Plataeans speak of the victory won in their territory as that of Pausanias pre-eminently and almost alone. At least, no other commander's name is associated with the victory (ii 71, 2). Salamis and Themistocles had been, within one short year, obscured by Plataea and Pausanias. There had been no call during that year for the peculiar services which Themistocles could render. The Athenian fleet was foremost, it is true, in the vic- tory at Mycale, but Themistocles was not there; a politi- cal rival of his was in command of the Athenian forces at Mycale as well as at Platsea. Too much honor for Salamis had been heaped upon a man of lowly origin and slender means. But there came a call at once. Again the cunning diplo- mat rather than the blufif and simple warrior was needed. When the Athenians, after fighting the Persians victoriously on sea and land for three years, returned to the site of their city, which had been twice laid waste by the enemy, they set themselves at once to the task of rebuilding and fortify- ARISTIDES IN THE PERSIAN WARS 53 ing it Their greatest rival, Sparta, whose only walls were impenetrable mountains and well-drilled soldiers, and who had no natural connection with the sea, protested. " They would rather themselves have seen neither the Athenians nor any one else protected by a wall ; but their main motive was the importunity of their allies, who dreaded not only the Athenian navy, which had until lately been quite small, but also the spirit which had animated them in the Persian War. So the Lacedaemonians requested them not to restore their walls, but on the contrary to join with them in razing the fortifications of other towns outside the Peloponnesus which had been standing" (^Thtccydides, L 90, 1, 2). If the Persians came again, the Lacedaemonians argued, the Pelo- ponnesus would be a sufficient retreat for all Hellas, and the enemy would have no such strong place for his head- quarters as he had recently found in Thebes. In this hour of diplomatic need, Themistocles comes again to the front. The Lacedaemonians must be outwitted, and Themistocles must outwit thenL The ruse by which he does it is told with unusual detail by Thucydides, and in his best narrative manner. And as the gods, according to ^schylus, had smiled upon the great ruse of Themistocles at Salamis, and Aristides had approved it and co-operated in it, so it was now. Aristides helped his rival in this his crowning strat- agem, playing again a very subordinate r6le. Themistocles deliberately offered up in sacrifice to his country's needs a popularity in Sparta such as no non-Spartan had ever en- joyed. "The friendship of the Lacedaemonian magistrates for Themistocles," says Thucydides, " induced them to believe him" (L 91, 1). But with the success of the ruse and the humiliating defeat of Sparta's representative diplomacy, the popularity of Themistocles in Sparta was succeeded by a relentless hate which pursued him steadily until it succeeded in banishing him from Athens, and at last in exiling him from Hellas under charge of treason. The first step in this policy of hatred toward Themistocles was to throw the whole weight of Spartan influence with the strong political — >*, •dM> ■/ 1 1 ' i ! M^ 54 INTRODUCTION party at Athens opposed to him. This was not an aristo- cratic as opposed to a democratic party, as Plutarch repre- sents it, for Athens was irrevocably democratic ; but rather a democratic party which insisted on aristocratic leadership, as opposed to a democratic party under plebeian leadership ; a party under the lead of Aristides and Cimon, representa- tives of two of the most powerful aristocratic families at Athens, opposed to a party under the lead of a novus homo, with no distinguished ancestors and no fortune, as Herodotus introduces him to us (vii 143, 1). No reversal of national policy ensued when the party of Aristides, Cimon and Sparta secured a preponderance of Athenian democratic votes. They simply appropriated the fruits of a policy which Themistocles had inaugurated and carried to triumphant success, while they supplanted the author of the policy. And the passage of the naval hegemony from Sparta to Athens while Aristides and Cimon were in command of the Athenian fleet, during the years 478-476 B.C., was not due wholly to the at- tractive characters of Aristides and Cimon, as contrasted with that of Pausanias, as Thucydides is careful to point out (l 95 Jin.), but to the Spartan friendliness to- ward Athens imder other leadership than that of the hated Themistocles. In describing this transfer of the naval hegemony, Thu- cydides speaks only of " Athenians " in general, and knows nothing, apparently, of any predominating personal influence, either on the part of Aristides or Cimon. So in his account of the battles of Plataea, Herodotus deals only with the " Athenians " in general, though he notes the fact that Aristides is their commander-in-chief. But the rhetorical historians of the next century, and biographers like Ido- meneus of Lampsacus who follow them, are not content to deal with such general terms. Actions determined by the deliberative agreement of a college of generals, in the absence of any easily predominating personality like those of Miltiades or Themistocles, must be referred to the deci- ARISTIDES IN THE PERSIAN WARS 55 sion of one man, for the greater effect of the story. And so we have in the later versions of the history of Plataea and the transfer of the naval hegemony, ascription of all Athenian action to Aristides, and to Aristides or Cimon. For the flexi- bility of this later version of history is seen in the fact that in his Aristides, Plutarch lays the attraction of the allies from Sparta to Athens to the dominant personal influence of Aristides; but in his Cimon, to that of Cimon. As a biographer, Plutarch naturally falls in with this tendency of later historical tradition, and even improves upon it There is nothing in the best historical evidence to show that Aristides rose far above the Athenian average of ability or probity. He certainly had no genius with which to dazzle friends and foes alike, as Themistocles had. With all the will in the world to do so, Herodotus finds no justification in the popular tradition of his day at Athens for making Aristides play any very distinguished part at Plataea, nor did iEschylus in his Persians (472 B. c), the political purpose of which is so plainly to rescue Aristides from total eclipse by the glory of Themistocles. On the con- trary, the Persian disaster at Plataea, prophesied by the ghost of Darius (w. 816 ff.), is to be caused by "the Dorian spear." With the two greatest stratagems of The- mistocles, Aristides is heartily in accord, and lends his active aid to carry them through. But just as the later romantic tradition insists on emphasizing and multiplying striking illustrations of the cunning and unscrupulous financial suc- cesses of Themistocles, so, and in much the same degree, does it deal with the probity and consequent poverty of Aristides. The more the two characters and careers were contrasted by rhetoricians and philosophers of the fourth and following centuries, the more the piquant illustrative material was multiplied, until it is a grievous task to thread one's way, even in the case of so prosaic a career as that of Aristides, between fact and fiction. There is, however, this notable difference in the two cases : fiction begins to accumu- late around the tradition of Themistocles' career during his ■ um n »_ -y . B M- n.;^^— -, . ■■ , rsss" „>»-. ' -~ 56 INTRODUCTION (, I I life-time, owing to the unsurpassed romance of the actual facts of his life, as in the case of Alexander; whereas the fiction which grew up about the tradition of Aristides' career is almost wholly a product of later centuries. The Confederacy of Delos was undoubtedly formed (477) while Aristides and Cimon were in command of the naval forces which Themistocles had created for them, and the delicate question of the contributions of the allies to the common fund was settled under their general guidance. Later tradition has in this as in other matters concentrated the credit almost wholly, and to an exaggerated degree, upon Aristides. He may have been influential in the matter, but hardly so autocratic as romantic writers represent And the salient personality of the traitor Pausanias, vividly portrayed by the master hand of Thucydides, also tended to evoke, in the tradition of the rhetorical and philosophical schools, con- trasting traits in the fainter portrait of Aristides. After this he falls decidedly into the backgroimd. It was in the inter- ests of Cimon, not Aristides, that Themistocles was ostracized (about 472), and the brilliant successes of Cimon after this seem to have been won independently of his former patron and friend. Nothing but late and uncertain testimony reaches us concerning the remaining years of Aristides* life, which probably closed quietly in 468 B.C., while his more brilliant but unfortunate rival, Themistocles, was a hunted fugitive among the Greek cities of Asia Minor. (J) The Sources of Plutarch in his Aristides, The sources of Plutarch in his Aristides are, as in the Themistocles, Herodotus and Thucydides wherever they afford material ; and since the story of Platsea in Herodotus, and of the fortification of Athens and the Piraeus in Thu- cydides must have been famous specimens of those great historians' method and maimer to Plutarch as well as to us, it cannot be allowed that Plutarch makes no direct use of them. How he uses them, what variations he allows SOURCES OF PLUTARCH IN HIS AMIS TIDES 57 himself from them, what combinations from other sources he makes with them, are questions for the answer to which the current notes will afford material He cites Hero- dotus by name only twice (xvL 1 ; xix. 4) ; Thucydides once (xxiv. 3.). Next to Herodotus and Thucydides, Plutarch seems to be most indebted in this Life to Idomeneus of Lampsacus (see p. 42), who is cited by name thrice (L 5 ; iv. 2 ; x. 5), and to whose work many other portions are, in all probability, largely indebted. It is not necessary, however, to assume that all the departures from Herodotus and Thucydides in Plutarch are due to Idomeneus. Plutarch undoubtedly falls of neces- sity, from sheer lack of biographical material, into the con- structive manner of his later sources. Other sources common to the Aristides and Themistocles, and already sufficiently described in this Introduction, are, in alphabetical order : — iEschylus, from whose Seven against Thebes a passage is cited in iii 3 ; see p. 30. Ariston of Ceos, cited in ii 3 ; see p. 41. Aristotle (Pseudo-), cited in xxviL 2 ; see p. 40. Craterus, cited in xxvi 1, and used several times elsewhere ; see p. 40. Clidemus, cited in xix. 3, and probably used elsewhere ; see p. 39. Plato, cited in xxv. 6 ; see p. 36. Theophrastus, cited in xxv. 2 ; see p. 41. The other sources cited by name in the Aristides, — these also arranged in alphabetical order, — are as follows : — iEschines the Socratic, cited for the long and dramatic story of Aristides and Callias in xxv. 6. ^schines was an ardent disciple of Socrates, and is mentioned by Plato among those present at the Master's condemnation and death. He was author of seven Socratic dialogues which were in great repute. Among them was a Callias, from which the story cited probably came. It is a useful specimen of the illustra- tive personal anecdote as invented by the philosophical schools. It has high rhetorical, but no historical worth. Aristoxenus the Musician, cited in xxvii 2, with three other authorities (namely, Demetrius the Phalerean, Hierony- ( !.^^ if 56 INTRODUCTION life-time, owing to the unsurpassed romance of the actual facts of his life, as in the case of Alexander ; whereas the fiction which grew up about the tradition of Aristides* career is almost wholly a product of later centuries. The Confederacy of Delos was undoubtedly formed (477) while Aristides and Cimon were in command of the naval forces which Themistocles had created for them, and the delicate question of the contributions of the allies to the common fund was settled under their general guidance. Later tradition has in this as in other matters concentrated the credit almost wholly, and to an exaggerated degree, upon Aristides. He may have been influential in the matter, but hardly so autocratic as romantic writers represent. And the salient personality of the traitor Pausanias, vividly portrayed by the master hand of Thucydides, also tended to evoke, in the tradition of the rhetorical and philosophical schools, con- trasting traits in the fainter portrait of Aristides. After this he falls decidedly into the background. It was in the inter- ests of Cimon, not Aristides, that Themistocles was ostracized (about 472), and the brilliant successes of Cimon after this seem to have been won independently of his former patron and friend. Nothing but late and uncertain testimony reaches us concerning the remaining years of Aristides* life, which probably closed quietly in 468 B. c, while his more brilliant but unfortunate rival, Themistocles, was a hunted fugitive among the Greek cities of Asia Minor. (6) The Sources of Plutarch in his Aristides. The sources of Plutarch in his Aristides are, as in the Themistocles, Herodotus and Thucydides wherever they afford material ; and since the story of Plataea in Herodotus, and of the fortification of Athens and the Piraeus in Thu- cydides must have been famous specimens of those great historians' method and manner to Plutarch as well as to us, it cannot be allowed that Plutarch makes no direct use of them. How he uses them, what variations he allows SOURCES OF PLUTARCH IN HIS ARISTIDES 57 himseH from them, what combinations from other sources he makes with them, are questions for the answer to which the current notes will afford material He cites Hero- dotus by name only twice (xvi. 1 ; xix. 4); Thucydides once (xxiv. 3.)- ^, , i i^ Next to Herodotus and Thucydides, Plutarch seems to be most indebted in this Life to Idomeneus of Lampsacus (see p 42) who is cited by name thrice (l 5 ; iv. 2 ; x. 5), and to whose' work many other portions are, in aU probabUity, largely indebted It is not necessary, however, to assume that aU the departures from Herodotus and Thucydides in Plutarch are due to Idomeneus. Plutarch undoubtedly faUs of neces- sity, from sheer lack of biographical material, into the con- structive manner of his later sources. Other sources common to the Aristides and Themutocle*. and already sufficiently described in this Introduction, are, in alphabetical order : — ^schylus, from whose Seven against Thehes a passage is cited in iiL 3; see p. 30. Ariston of Ceos. cited in ii. 3 ; see p 41. Aristotle (Pseudo-), cited in xxvii. 2 ; see p. 40. Craterus. cited in xxvi 1, and used several times elsewhere ; see p. 40. Clidemus, cited in xix. 3, and probably u^ ebewhere; see p. 39. Plato, cited in xxv. 6 ; see i. 36. Theophrastus, cited in xxv. 2 ; see p. 41. The other sources cited by name in the AmT)hal embellishments from late sources have been added, as the current notes fully show. No authority is cited by name in this division, not even Herodotus, because Plutarch evidently assumes the familiarity of his reader with that historian's greater story. Besides, Salamis was the glory of Themistocles, not of Aristides, even with all the accretions of later invention, and had already been fully described by Plutarch in the Themistocles. The third division of the Life, chapters x.-xxi., covers the campaign of 479, ending with the battles of Plataea. This is the main division of the biography. It is practically the story of Platsea by Herodotus, freely adapted and supple- mented by material from Ephorus and later writers, as the current notes show in detail, and above all individualized, so far as Athenian participation allowed at aU, in favor of Aristides. Aristides is made to appear the chief figure, — the real, though not the nominal commander of the Greek forces, without whom Pausanias would have made a disas- trous campaign of it. Herodotus is cited once by name for material differing essentially from that which he really gives, — very likely a citation from memory, confused with other reading ; and once by name in order to protest, — and protest most righteously, — against his partisan Athenian version of the losses in the battles. Idomeneus is cited once by name, with the implication that his version of the matter is exaggerated and untrue ; Craterus is used to refute him. ANALYSIS OF THE ARISTIDES 63 though not mentioned by name (x. 5). The vague plural "some" is used once when the reference is clearly to a definite antiquarian authority, teaching us that other vague plural terms of reference may cover single authorities. The fourth division of the Aristides, chapters xxii., xxiii., covers the diminishing activity of the hero in the years immediately following Plataea, as his light paled before that of Cimon, and especiaUy his part in securing the naval supremacy for Athens, and in regulating the financial affairs of the new Delian League. The probabilities are wrenched to make him survive and even acquiesce in the transfer of the treasury of the League from Delos to Athens. Then noth- ing remains but to revert to the standing themes of his justice and poverty, with which the biography opened, and the stan- dard close, as in the Themistocles, is found in accounts of his death, burial, and posterity. Late personalization of general history, and apocryphal anecdote abound in this portion of the Life, as was to be expected in the absence of authentic material. For the transfer of the naval hegemony, Thu- cydides is, of course, the ultimate authority, though for this part he is not cit^d by name, and his testimony is greatly distorted in the free-hand elaboration of it which either Plutarch himself makes, or adopts from Idomeneus. Thu- cydides is cited by name for the item of the amount of annual income to the Athenian imperial treasury ; Theophrastus, for a paradoxical and improbable stor>^ illustrative of justice yielding to the demands of expediency ; ^schines the Socratic, for a dramatic and purely fictitious story contrasting the poor Aristides with the wealthy Callias ; Plato, for a senti- ment which is a combination of two widely separated utterances quoted freely from memory ; and, regardmg the posterity of the hero, Pansetius the Stoic evidently supplies Plutarch with a group of five authorities whom we need not suppose him to have consulted independently : Aristoxenus, Callisthenes, Demetrius of Phalerum, Hieronymus the Rho- dian, and Pseudo-Aristotle. Craterus again furnishes docu- mentary material without getting explicit credit for it, and I I li u \ 64 INTRODUCTION is once censured by name for not basing his statements on his usual good evidence. In chapter xxii. Plutarch evi- dently uses again his own Themistocles (c. xx.), as in xxiii. 1 he borrows and adapts from his own Cimon {cc. v., vL). The presence and influence of Idomeneus is most strongly felt in such a chapter as xxiv. ; the moulding and blending and generously supplying hand of Plutarch, in such a chapter as XXV. In the opening of chapter xxvi Plutarch seems to divide all the sources whom he has laid under contribution for his Aristides into three classes: Cratems, with his un- substantiated story of the death of Aristides under condem- nation for bribery ; " some," who say he died in Pontus on a commission of state ; " others," who say he died at Athens in age and honor. Altogether, this closing division of the Aristides shows how impossible it is to set boimds to the freely shaping activity of Plutarch upon generously accumu- lated material, even though he may follow more closely than elsewhere, or than usual, some one convenient biographical predecessor. IV. BIOGRAPHY BEFORE PLUTARCH. The survey of authorities thus made merely for two Lives, shows plainly that Plutarch was by no means the originator of artistic biography. He marks rather the culmination of a long process of evolution both in material and form. The main lines of this evolution can be traced, in spite of the enormous losses which Greek literature has sustained. The great intellectual movement at Athens toward the close of the fifth century B.C., which is voiced for us by such exponents as Euripides, Thucydides, and Socrates, directed attention to the individual and the personal as the only true source of any proper conception of the typi- cal, the general, and the universal When Thucydides wrote his elaborate excursus on the end of Pausanias and Themistocles, the greatest Hellenes of their time, he gave us our earliest specimen of Greek biography, — portions of A- BIOGRAPHT BEFORE PLUTARCH 65 Lives with distinct character-sketching. The more corn- er and rounded character.ket.hes ^J^J^^f^^;^ lam written during the second quarter of the fourth c^Sry. show that the hiographical element was findmg Wr^d larger place in distinctly historica composition, SablTowini to the development, as distinct htera^ forms, Ste Eulogylnd the Encomium. The ^^eton^d h«s of the second half of the fourth century, Ephorus and Sieopompus, evidently responded stiU more to the growmg L now Perhaps prevailing tendency to emphasize the toporLce^f the ^dividual man as a shapmg factor m the course of events. It was an era of great, and even CO os^" personalities. Its history had to be largely b,«g; Sy It was therefore natural that, when earlier history Z '..written to serve as introduction and background for Tnew, its meagre traditions should be generously indmd- Mso that.'^Eor instance, what had ^een a.cn^d to Athenians or Laced^Emonians in general, should now be made the personal achievement of a Themistocles. an Ans- '^'S:yi'^lTs of philosophy, too. the Academic and the PerStetic, studiously fostered an interest in the greater *^rs!n;iLs,-at first the men of thought, the thmk^s and Sichers, then the men of action, statesmen and commanders. S ai^d Xenophon had realized to themselves and trans- STedTothers'intensely vivid conceptions of the chs^cte^ and life of Socrates their Master. Successors to Plato m ^e line of Academic teaching elaborated lovmgly their tlJZ of the Great Disciple as well as of the Founder ^d rival teachers in the rival school, like Aristo.enus STarentum, wrote Li.cs of Socrates and PJ^to/hi* were not lo4g, but malicious. Aristoxenus, the founder Ta s'LlTperipatetic biographers, had none too much love for his own Master, Aristotle. It was Aristotle who, by his general teachings and methods, initiated the greatest activity in the collection and presenta- S;ririiL?i;>rm of biographical details. It was on the 6 66 INTRODUCTION broadest collections and the most detailed study of individual cases that he based his theories of Politics and Poetry. Such an historical and antiquarian treatise as his Constitution of Athens has a large biographical element, and gives us strong character-sketches of Solon, Pisistratus, Themistocles, Aris- tides, Theramenes, and others. Between one hundred and three hundred similar Polities preceded and formed the basis for his Politics. So an indefinitely large number of biographical sketches of individual Poets preceded and formed the basis for his Poetics. These Lives of Poets are lost, though much of the material which composed them has undoubtedly come down to us in later compilations based upon them. The followers and disciples of Aristotle, beginning with Theophrastus, and continuing through Aristoienus, Phanias, and Neanthes, who are most important for the historical tra- dition at present under study, not only used the personal anecdote freely as the basis for philosophical discussion, — where the philosophical discussion was the main thing, rather than the truth of the personal anecdote, — but ex- tended the literary form of the independent Life to all " Illustrious Men," as well as philosophers and poets. This biography of the Peripatetic school had certain character- istic features which stand out distinctly, even though their work is known only in fragments. It did not hesitate to bring under its general method the lives of men of such early periods that there could be no authentic personal detail about them ; in lieu of authentic detail, it was prone to accept as authentic all sorts of legend and invention without any critical sifting whatever ; it even indulged freely in the invention of detail for the illustration of general traits of character assumed, and often descended to the invention of slanderous detail in the case of characters which were out of the range of its particular political or philosophical sympathies. Besides these philosophical schools of biography, and largely indebted to their activity, there arose at Alexandria, especially during the third and second centuries B. c, a learned BIOGRAPHY BEFORE PLUTARCH 67 or philological school of biography, whose Lives were based :; material laboriously collected from the unWed resour^ of the great Alexandrian library. The material thus col- M fas used chiefly to furnish compact introductions to litemrv works, and reappears in later and sometimes anony- 'Z:iZ,.U in suc^ compilations as ^hose of Di^nes Laertius, and Suidas. The chronological histories of Eratos tes for instance,must have contained generous biographical m^rid Uter Pe^ic phaosophers also, like He-ppus and Satyrus, and historians like Idomeneus and Phylarchus Hiled themselves of the biographical material collected by rLrned grammarians of the Alexandrian sch^. m the composition of their Uves of illustrious men. They added rembellishments in which their school deUghted, and gave attractive literary form to learned matter All this long succession of biographical work lay ready tor the use of such late biographers as Nepos and Hutocl. Jt was the literary deposit of generations of artistic and lean^ed labor Not only had such biographical material as the older htt'rians fumiLd been cuUed out and arranged m an order aiapted to the limited Lives of particular men but well- deS types of character had been established for most o the illTtrious men whose Lives might be desired, and even the general form and structure of a by aphy had became established. There was a recognized techmque o rUhy long before Plutarch, to the general features o which^t cal be seen that he conforms, at least m many of ITlvvcs. Both the Tymistocles and Ari^tides have this con- ventional form, which was, in most respects, a j^rfectly nat- rSopment. First comes Birth. FamUy and Education ; then tie T^ of Character; then such Deeds and Achieve- ment as bSt illustrate that type of character^ the ch^- X dominating the selection of deeds- and lastly the Seath Burial. Posterity, and Subsequent Influence. Even fhe rhetorical device of « comparison" between two chara.> ti s aTSras Isocrates; Polybius and Posidonius compared Ti rn rasted Greeks and Romans, though not in technical '! •!(^ ) ■ f « '^ !l Ki 68 INTRODUCTION biographies ; Plutarch lifts the casual comparison into the dignity of an almost constant Epilogue. His "famous sayings," too, are not all of his own gathering. They were a standing feature of technical biography before he wrote. In the cases of Themistocles and Aristides, Plutarch prob- ably had accessible for his use a long line of biographies of these particular men, and especially a biography of The- mistocles by Phanias, and one of Aristides by Idomeneus, in which much labor of compilation was spared him, but to which he adds generously from his own stores, and imparts — what is of the highest importance — his own spirit, so that though he follows their form and uses their material, he gives his own independent interpretation to the characters imder study, often reverting, in support of his own interpre- tation, to earlier and more authoritative evidence than that furnished him by the biographies on which he chiefly relies. Malice and envy certainly have no place in his reconstruc- tion of biographical material, however tolerant his attitude may be toward sensational or picturesque invention; and however unscientific his reconstruction of given material may be, it is often in the highest degree artistic Alphabetical List of Authorities cited by Plutarch in the Themistocles, Acestodorus XITI. 1 iEschylus XIV. 1 Andocides XXXII. 2 AristonofCeos III. 2 Aristophanes Comicus . . XIX. 3 Aristotle X. 3 Charon of Lampsacus . XXVII. 1 Clideraiis X. 4 Clitarchus XXVII. 1 Dinon of Colophon . . XXVII. 1 Diodoms the Topographer XXXII. 3 Ephorus XXVII. 1 Eratosthenes .... XXVII. 3 Heracleides XXVII. 1 Herodotus VII. 3 ; XVII. 1 ; XXI. 1 Neanthes . . . .1.2; XXIX. 4 Phanias . . I. 2 ; VII. 4 ; XIII. 2 ; XXVII. 8 ; XXIX. 4 Phanodemus XIII. 1 Phylarchus XXXII. 2 Pindar VIII. 2 Plato IV. 3 ; XXXII. 1 Plato Comicus .... XXXII. 3 Siraonides .... I. 3 ; XV. 2 Stesimbrotus II. 8 ; IV. 3 ; XXIV. 3 Theophrastus .... XXV. 1, 3 Theopompos . XIX. 1 ; XXV. 3 ; XXXI. 2 Thacydides . . XXV. 1 ; XXVII. 1 Timocreon of Rhodes . . . XXI. u 1' BIOGRAPHY BEFORE PLUTARCH 69 Alphabetical List of Authorities cited by Plutarch in the Aristides. — . . o^i- a *.:- YYV fi Demetrius the Phalerean . 1. 1, 5 ; j:sclime8 the Socratac . . XXV. 8 Uemeu ^ ^ _ ^^^^^ _^ ^ f'^^^oiC^ ■■■;■. II.' 3 Herodotus. . . XVI. 1 ; XIX. 4 iroUeP^tdoi): : XXV.I.2 Hierony^ustheKhoaian XXVU.2 ,H,to..ustheMusicUnXXVa. Mo»^ • • -Ij^^^, Callistheues .... -a.-^. f j.i. -« yyv 6 Clidemu* XIX. 3 Plato • XXV. 6 Craurus XXVI. 1 Theophrartua . . . . . XXV. 2 Thucydides aaiv. j> li^l { i i I 1 If » i THEMISTOCLES !S it! t, • * V 'it THEMISTOCLES I. . . . But in the case of Themistocles, his family was too obscure to further his reputation. His father was Neocles, — no very conspicuous man at His famUy. Athens,— a Phrearrhian by deme, of the tribe Leontis; and on his mother's side he was an alien, as her epitaph testifies : — " Abrotonon was I, and a woman of Thrace, yet I brought forth That great light of the Greeks, —know ! 't was ThemUtocles." Phanias, however, writes that the mother of The- 2 mistocles was not a Thracian, but a Carian woman, and that her name was not Abrotonon, but Euterpe. And Neanthes actually adds the name of her city in Caria, — Halicarnassus. It was for the reason given, and because the aliens were wont to frequent Cynosarges, — this is a place outside the gates, a gymnasium of Heracles ; for he too was not a legitimate god, but had something alien about him, from the fact that his mother was a mortal, — that Themistocles sought to induce cer- tain well bom youth to go out to Cynosarges and exercise with him ; and by his success in this bit of cunning he is thought to have removed the distinc- tion between aliens and legitimates. However, it is clear that he was connected with* the family of the Lycomidae, for he caused the 1, 1.1 ! I II il • m I V 74 THEMISTOCLES chapel-shrine at Phlya, which belonged to the Lyco- midse and had been burned by the Barbarians, to be restored at his own costs and adorned with frescoes, as Simonides has stated. II. However lowly his birth, it is agreed on all hands that while yet a boy he was impetuous, by nature sagacious, and by election enterpris- yo°uth^d ing and prone to public life. In times of education, pgig^xation and leisure, when absolved from his lessons, he would not play nor indulge his ease, as the rest of the boys did, but would be found com- posing and rehearsing to himself mock speeches. These speeches would be in accusation or defence of some boy or other, t Wherefore his teacher was wont to say to him: "My boy, thou wilt be nothing insignificant, but something great, of a surety, either for good or evD." Moreover, when he was set to study, those branches which aimed at the formation of character, or ministered to any gratification or grace of a lib- eral sort, he would learn reluctantly and sluggishly ; and to all that was said for the cultivation of sagacity or practical efficiency he showed an indifference far beyond his years, as though he put his confidence in his natural gifts alone. 8 Thus it came about that, in after life, at entertain- ments of a so-called liberal and polite nature, when he was taunted by men of reputed culture, he was forced to defend himself rather rudely, saying that tuning the lyre and handling the harp were no accom- plishments of his, but rather taking a city that was YOUTH AND EDUCATION 75 ]\ small and inglorious and making it glorious and great. And yet Stesimbrotus says that Themistocles was a pupil of Anaxagoras, and a disciple of Melissus the physicist ; but he is careless in his chronology. It was Pericles, a much younger man than Themistocles, whom Melissus opposed at the siege of Samos, and with whom Anaxagoras was intimate. Rather, then, might one side with those who say 4 that Themistocles was a devotee of Mnesiphilus the Phrearrhian, a man who was neither a rhetorician nor one of the so-called physical phUosophers, but a cultivator of what was then called sophia, or wisdom, although it was really nothing more than cleverness in politics and practical sagacity. Mnesiphilus re- ceived this sophia, and handed it down, as though it were the doctrine of a sect, in unbroken tradition from Solon. His successors blended it with forensic arts, and shifted its application from public affairs to language, and were dubbed " sophists." It was this man, then, to whom Themistocles resorted at the very beginning of his public life. But in the first essays of his youth he was uneven 6 and unstable, since he gave his natural impulses free course, which, without due address and training, rush to violent extremes in the objects of their pursuit, and often degenerate ; as he himself in later life con- f essed, when he said that the wildest colts too made very good horses if only they got the proper breaking and training. What some story-makers add to this, however, toe , t« i % I it ^(i ^ 76 THEMISTOCLES . fi^^"-" ^ 'J '^ the effect that his father disinherited him, and his mother took her own life for very grief at her son's ill-fame, this I think is false. And, in just the opposite vein, there are some who say that his father fondly tried to divert him from public life, pointing out to him old triremes on the sea-shore, all wrecked and neglected, and claiming that the people treated their leaders in like fashion when these were past service. III. Speedily, however, as it seems, and while he was still in all the ardor of youth, did public affairs Entrance lay their grasp upon Themistocles, and ex- riv^^ with cessively did his impulse to win reputation Aristides; ^^^ ^j^g masterv over him. Wherefore, the "trophy » , . • • i.- j • x ofMiitiades." from the very begmnmg, m his desire to be first, he boldly encountered the enmity of men who had power and were already first in the city, especially that of Aristides the son of Lysimachus, who was always his opponent. And yet it is thought that his enmity with this man had an altogether puerile beginning. They were both lovers of the beautiful Stesilaiis, a native of Ceos, as Ariston the philosopher has recorded, and thenceforward they continued to be rivals in public life also. However, the dissimilarity in their lives and char- acters is likely to have increased then* variance. Aris- tides was gentle by nature, and a conservative in character. He engaged in public life, not to win favor or reputation, but to secure the best results consistent with safety and righteousness, and so he MARITIME POLICY 77 ill \ was compelled, since Themistocles stirred the people ? up to many novel enterprises and introduced great innovations, to oppose him often, and to take a firm^ stand against his increasing influence. It is said, indeed, that Themistocles was so carried 8 away by his desire for reputation, and such an am- bitious lover of great deeds, that, though he was still a young man when the battle with the Barbarians at Marathon was fought and the generalship of Mil- tiades was in everybody's mouth, he was seen there- after to be wrapped in his own thoughts for the most part, and was sleepless^o' nights, and refused invitar tions to his customary drinking parties, and said to those who put wondering questions to him concern- ing his change of life that the trophy of Miltiades would not suffer him to sleep. Now the rest of his countrymen thought that the 4 ^^^ li^ defeat of the Barbarians at Marathon was the end / .y^I^ rj^ % '<" of the war; but Themistocles thought it to be only the beginning of greater contests, and for these he anointed himself, as it were, to be the champion of all Hellas, and put his city into training, because, whUe it was yet afar off, he expected the evil that ^ was to come. ^^ IV. And so, in the first place, whereas the Athe- nians were wont to divide up among themselves the revenue coming from the silver mines at He^^"™^ Laureium, he, and he alone, dared to come , maritime before the people with a motion that this p"""- division be given up, and that with these moneys triremes be constructed for the war against ^gma. 7 / I 78 THEMISTOCLES 8 This was the greatest war then raging in Hellas, and the islanders controlled the sea, owing to the number of their ships. Wherefore all the more easily did Themistoeles carry his point, not by trymg to terrify the citizens with dreadful pictures of Darius or the Persians, — these were too far away and inspired no / very serious fear of their coming, — but by making opportune use of the bitter jealousy which they cher- ished toward iEgina in order to secure the armament ( he "desired. The result was that with those moneys - they built an hundred triremes, which actually fought at Salamis against Xerxes. 8 And after this, by luring the city on gradually and turning its progress toward the sea, claiming that with their infantry they were no match even for their nearest neighbors, but that with the power they would get from their ships they could not only repel the Barbarians but also take the lead in Hellas, he made them, instead of " steadfast hoplites," — to quote ^Plato's words, — sea-tossed mariners, and brought down upon himself this accusation: "Themistoeles, forsooth, robbed his fellow-citizens of spear and shield, and degraded the people of Athens to the rowing-pad and the oar." And this he accomplished in triumph over the public opposition of Miltiades, as Stesimbrotus relates. 4 Now, whether by accomplishing this he did injury to the integrity and purity of public life or not, let the philosopher rather investigate. But that the sal- vation which the Hellenes achieved at that time came (from the sea, and that it was those very triremes > !1 CHARACTER AND POWER 79 which restored again the fallen city of Athens, Xerxes himself bore witness, not to speak of other proofs.^ For though his infantry remained intact, he took to flight after the defeat of his ships, because he thought he was not a match for the Hellenes, and he left Mardonius behind, as it seems to me, rather to obstruct their pursuit than to subdue them. V. Some say that Themistoeles was an eager money-maker because of his liberality ; for since he was fond of entertaining, and lavished Anecdotes money splendidly on his guests, he required '""^l^^^ a generous budget. Others, on the con- acterand o , . T power. trary, denounce his great stmgmess ana parsimony, claiming that he used to sell the very food sent in to him as a gift. When Philides the horse-breeder was asked by hun for a colt and would n t give it, Themistoeles threat- ened speedily to make his house a wooden horse; thereby darkly intimating that he would stir up ac- cusations against him in his own family, and lawsuits between the man and those of his own household. In his ambition he surpassed all men. For instance, 2 while he was still young and obscure, he prevailed upon Epicles of Hermione, a harpist who was eagerly sought after by the Athenians, to practise at his house, because he was ambitious that many should seek out his dwelling and come often to see him. Again, on going to Olympia, he tried to rivals Cimon in his banquets and booths and other brilliant appointments, so that he displeased the Hellenes. For Cimon was young and of a great house, and they it!i I! 80 THEMISTOCLES n (■ thought they must allow him in such extravagances ; but Themistocles had not yet become famous, and was thought to be seeking to elevate himself unduly without adequate means, and so got the credit of ostentation. 4 And still again, as Choregus, or theatrical manager, he won a victory with tragedies, although even at that early time this contest was conducted with great eagerness and ambition, and set up a tablet com- memorating his victory with the following inscrip- tion : " Themistocles the Phrearrhian was Choregus ; Phrynichus was Poet; Adeimantus was Archon." However, he was on good terms with the common folk, partly because he could call ofE-hand the name of every citizen, and partly because he rendered the \ service of a safe and impartial arbitrator in cases 5 of private obligation and settlement out of court ; and so he once said to Simonides of Ceos, who had made an improper request from him when he was magistrate : " You would not be a good poet if you should sing contrary to the measure ; nor I a clever magistrate if I should show favor contrary to the ^ law/' • And once again he banteringly said to Simonides that it was nonsense for him to abuse the Corinthians, who dwelt in a great and fair city, while he had portrait figures made of himself, who was of such an "Ugly countenance. And so he grew in power, and pleased the common ^ folk, and finally headed a successful faction and got Aristides removed by ostracism. I I ATTITUDE TOWARD PERSIA 81 VI. At last, when the Mede was descending upon Hellas and the Athenians were deliberating who should be their general, all the rest, they His conduct say, voluntarily renounced their claims to approach of the'generalship, so panic-stricken were they the Persian., at the danger ; but Epicydes, the son of Euphemides, a popular leader who was powerful in speech but effeminate in spirit and susceptible to bribes, set out to get the office, and was likely to prevaU in the election ; so Themistocles, fearing lest matters should go to utter ruin m case the leadership fell to such a man, bribed and bought off the ambition of Epicydes. Praise is given his treatment of the linguist in the 2 company of those who were sent by the King to demand earth and water as tokens of submission: this interpreter he caused to be arrested, and had him put to death by special decree, because he dared to prostitute the speech of Hellas to barbarian stipulations. Also to his treatment of Arthmius of Zeleia : on s motion of Themistocles this man was entered on the list of the proscribed, with his children and his family, because he brought the gold of the Medes and offered it to the Hellenes. But the greatest of all his achievements was his 4 putting a stop to Hellenic wars, and reconciling Hellenic cities with one another, persuading them to postpone their mutual hatreds because of the foreign war. To which end, they say, Cheileos the Arcadian most seconded his efforts. i1 1 .! li 6 i1 /I ll 82 THEMISTOCLES VII. On assuming the command, he straightway went to work to embark the citizens on their tri- remes, and tried to persuade them to leave Themisto- .^leiT citv behind them and go as far as cles at •' t. T> Tempe;aDd possible away from Hellas to meet the Bar- rium Wore bariau by sea. But many opposed this the battles. ^^^^^ ^^^ ^^ j^^ j^j {^^.^1^ ^ large army to the vale of Tempe, along with the Lacedaemonians, in order to make a stand there in defence of Thessaly, whicli was not yet at that time supposed to be medis- ing. But soon the anny came back from this posi- tion without accomplishing anything, the Thessalians went over to the side of the Kmg, and everything was medising as far as Boeotia, so that at last the Athenians were more kindly disposed to the naval policy of Themistocles, and he was sent with a fleet to Artemisium, to watch the narrows, t It was at this place that the Hellenes urged Eury- biades and the Lacedaemonians to take the lead, but the Athenians, since in the number of their ships they surpassed all the rest put together, disdained to follow others, — a peril which Themistocles at once comprehended. He surrendered his own command to Eurybiades, and tried to mollify the Athenians with the promise that if they would show themselves brave men in the war, he would induce the Hellenes to yield a willing obedience to them thereafter. Wherefore he is thought to have been the man most instrumental in achieving the salvation of Hellas, and foremost in lead- ing the Athenians up to the high repute of surpassing their foes in valor and their allies in magnanimity. ARTEMISIUM 83 Now Eurybiades, on the arrival of the barbarian s armament at Aphet^, was terrified at the number of ships that faced him, and, learning that two hundred ships more were sailing around above Sciathus to cut off his retreat, desired to proceed by the shortest route down into Hellas, to get into touch with Pelopon- nesus and encompass his fleet with his infantry forces there, because he thought the power of the Kmg altogether invincible by sea. Therefore the Euboeans, fearing lest the Hellenes abandon them to theu: fate, held secret conference with Themistocles, and sent Pelacron to him with large sums of money. This money he took, as Herodotus relates, and gave to Eurybiades. , . r n Meeting with most opposition among his fellow- 4 citizens from Architeles, who was captain on the sa^^red state-galley, and who, because he had no money to pay the wages of his sailors, was eager to sail off home, Themistocles incited his crew all the more against him, so that they made a rush upon him and snatched away his dinner. Then, while Architeles was feeling dejected and indignant over this, Themistocles sent him a dinner of bread and meat in a box at the bottom of which he had put a talent of silver, and bade him dine without delay, and on the morrow satisfy his crew ; otherwise he said he would denounce him publicly as the receiver of money from the enemy. At any rate, such is the story of Phanias the Lesbian. VIII. The battles which were fought at that time with the ships of the Barbarians in the narrows li y 84 THEMISTOCLES I.. were not decisive of the main issue, it is true, but they were of the greatest service to the Hellenes in The sear giving them experience, since they were fights off ^ij^g taught by actual achievements in the Artemi- ■ium; their facc of danger that neither multitudes of ^na; their ships uor brilliantly decorated figure-heads monuments, ^^j. boastful shouts or barbarous battle- hymns have any terror for men who know how to come to close quarters and dare to fight there ; but that they must despise all such things, rush upon the very persons of their foes, grapple with them, and fight it out to the bitter end. % Of this Pindar seems to have been well aware when he said of the battle of Artemisium : " Where Athenians' valiant sons set in radiance eternal Liberty's comer-stone." For verily the foundation of victory is courage. Artemisium is a part of Euboea above Hestiaea, — a sea-beach stretching away to the north, — and just about opposite to it lies Olizon, in the territory once subject to Philoctetes. It has a small temple of Artemis surnamed Prosecea, which is surrounded by trees and enclosed by upright slabs of white mar- ble. This stone, when you rub it with your hand, gives off the color and the odor of saffron, t On one of these slabs the following elegy was inscribed : " Nations of all sorts of men from Asia's boundaries coming, Sons of the Athenians once, here on this arm of the sea, Whelmed in a battle of ships, and the host of the Medes was destroyed ; These are the tokens thereof, built for the Maid Artemis." :lf APPEAL TO THE lONIANS 85 And a place is pointed out on the shore, with sea sand all about it, which supplies from its depths a dark ashen powder, apparently the product of fire, and here they are thought to have burned their wrecks and dead bodies. IX However, when they learned by messenger from Thermopylse to Artemisium that '^'''^^^^ slain and that Xerxes was master of the ^^^^. pass, they withdrew further down into Hel- «^d^ las. the Athenians bringing up the extreme ^istodesto - ■% rtQ-fliT detaching rear because of their valor, and greauy ^^^ j„„i^ • elated by their achievements. th?PersS As Themistocles sailed along the coasts, despondency wherever he saw places at which the enemy ^j^^, ^t the must necessarily put in for shelter and ^-aon- supplies, he inscribed conspicuous writings Attica. on stones, some of which he found to his hand there by chance, and some he himself caused to be set near the inviting anchorages and watering places. In these writings he solemnly enjoined upon the lonians, if it were possible, to come over to the side of the Hellenes, who were their ancestors, and who were risking all in behalf of their freedom ; but if they could not do this, to damage the barbarian cause in battle, and institute confusion among them. By this means he hoped either to fetch the lonians over to his side, or to confound them by bringing the Bar- barians into suspicion of them. Although Xerxes had made a raid up through 2 Doris into Phocis, and was burning the cities of the Phocians, the Hellenes gave them no succor. The II 1^ !■• I 86 THEMISTOCLES ABANDONMENT OF ATHENS 87 Athenians, it is true, begged them to go up into Boeotia against the enemy, and make a stand there in defence of Attica, as they themselves had gone up by sea to Artemisium in defence of others. But no one listened to their appeals. All clung fast to the Peloponnesus, and were eager to collect all the forces inside the Isthmus, and went to running a wall through the Isthmus from sea to sea. Then the Athenians were seized alike with rage at this betrayal, and with sullen dejection at their utter iso- 8 lation. Of fighting alone with an army of so many myriads they could not seriously think ; and as for the only thing left them to do in their emergency, namely, to give up their city and stick to their ships, most of them were distressed at the thought, saying that they neither wanted victory nor understood what safety could mean if they abandoned to the enemy the shrines of their gods and the sepulchres of their fathers. X. Then indeed it was that Themistocles, despair- ing of bringing the multitude over to his views by Themisto- any humau reasonings, set up machinery, tZn7hf' as it were, to introduce the gods to them, as a theatrical manager would for a tragedy, and brought to bear upon them signs from heaven and oracles. As a sign from heaven he took the behavior of the serpent, which is held to have disappeared about that time from the sacred enclosure on the Acropolis. When the priests found that the daily offerings made to it were left whole and untouched, they proclaimed to the multitude, — upon Athenians to abandon their city and take to their ships. Themistocles putting the story into their mouths, — that the goddess had abandoned her city and was showing them their way to the sea. Moreover, with the well known oracle he tried 8' again to win the people over to his views, saying that its " wooden wall " meant nothing else than their I fleet ; and that the god in this oracle called Salamis > A. « divine," not « dreadful " nor « cruel," for the very I reason that the island would sometime give its name j ixy a great piece of good fortune for the Hellenes. At last his opinion prevaUed, and so he introduced as bUl providing that the city be intrusted for ^ safe keeping " to Athena the patroness of Athens," but that all the men of military age embark on the triremes, after finding for their children, wives and servants such safety as each best could. On the passage of this bill, most of the Athenians bestowed their children and wives in Troezen, where the Trce- zenians very eagerly welcomed them. They actually voted to support them at the public cost, allowmg two obols daily to each family, and to permit the boys to pluck of the vintage fruit everywhere, and besides to hire teachers for them. The bill was mtroduced by a man whose name was Nicagoras. Since the Athenians had no public moneys on hand, according to Aristotle it was the senate of Areiopagus which provided each of the men who embarked with eight drachmas, and so was most instrumental m manning the triremes ; but Clidemus represents this 4 too as the result of an artifice of Themistocles. He says that when the Athenians were going down to 1^ li ■« li m THEMISTOCLES the Piraeus and abandoning their city, the Gorgon's head was lost from the image of the goddess ; and then Themistocles, pretending to search for it, and ransacking everything, thereby discovered an abun- dance of money hidden away in the baggage, which had only to be confiscated, and the crews of the ships were well provided with rations and wages. • When the entire city was thus putting out to sea, the sight provoked pity in some, and in others aston- ishment at the hardihood of the step ; for they were sending o£E their families in one direction, while they themselves, unmoved by the lamentations and tears and embraces of their loved ones, were crossing over to the island where the enemy was to be fought. Besides, those who were left behind on account of their great age provoked much pity too, and much affecting fondness was shown by the tame domestic animals, which ran along with yearning cries of dis- tress by the side of their masters as they embarked. A story is told of one of these, the dog of Xan- thippus the father of Pericles, how he could not en- dure to be abandoned by his master, and so sprang into the sea, swam across the strait by the side of his master s trireme, and staggered out on Salamis, only to faint and die straightway. They say that the spot which is pointed out to this day as "Dog's Mound" is his tomb. XI. These were surely great achievements of Themistocles, but there was a greater still to come. When he saw that the citizens yearned for Aristides, and feared lest out of wrath he join himself to the MEMORABLE SAYINGS 89 Barbarian and so subvert the cause of Hellas, — he had been ostracized before the war and Heeffect.^^ suffered political defeat at the hands of Aristides; Themistocles, — he introduced a bill pro- ^^'^bTeTay- viding that those who had been removed ings^inthe for a time be permitted to return home war. and devote their best powers to the service of Hellas along with the other citizens. When Eurybiades, who had the command of the 2 fleet on account of the superior claims of Sparta, but who was faint-hearted in time of danger, wished to hoist sail and make for the Isthmus, where the in- fantry also of the Peloponnesians had been assembled, it was Themistocles who spoke against it, and it was then, they say, that those memorable sayings of his were uttered. When Eurybiades said to him, "Themistocles, at the games those who make false starts get a caning," « Yes," said Themistocles, " but those who lag behind get no crown." And when Eurybiades lifted up his staff as though 3 to smite him, Themistocles said : " Smite, but hear me." Then Eurybiades was struck with admiration at his calmness, and bade him speak, and Themistocles tried to bring him back to his own position. But on a certain one saying that a man without a city had no business to advise men who still had ancestral cities to abandon and betray them, Themis- tocles addressed his speech with emphasis to him, say- ing : " It is true, thou wretch, that we have left behind us our houses and our city walls, not deeming it meet 90 THEMISTOCLES for the sake of such soulless things to be in subjection ; but we still have a city, the greatest in Hellas, our two 4 hundred triremes, which now are ready to aid you if you choose to be saved by them ; but if you go off and betray us for the second time, straightway many a Hellene will learn that the Athenians have won for themselves a city that is free and a territory that is far better than the one they cast aside." When The- mistocles said this, Eurybiades saw its drift, and was seized with fear lest the Athenians go away and abandon him. And again, when the Eretrian tried to argue some- what against him, " Aha 1 " said he, " what argument can ye make about war, who, like the cuttle-fish, have a long pouch in the place where your heart ought to be?" XII. Some tell the story that while Themistocles was thus speaking from off the deck of his ship, an The strata- ^^^ ^as sccu to fly through the fleet from gem by the right, and alight in his rigging ; where- ^ItZs^ fore his hearers espoused his opinion right makes the eaffcrlv and prepared to do battle with their Greeks fight . r r at Salamis ; shipS. ^peSa But soon the enemy's armament beset the of Aristides. ^Qj^gi- Qf A.ttica down to the haven of Pha- lerum, so as to hide from view the neighboring shores ; then the King in person with his infantry came down to the sea, so that he could be seen with all his hosts ; and presently, in view of this junction of hostile forces, the words of Themistocles ebbed out of the minds of the Hellenes, and the Peloponnesians again STRATAGEM AT SALAMIS 91 turned their eyes wistfully toward the Isthmus and were vexed if any one spoke of any other course ; nay they actually decided to withdraw from their position in the night, and orders for the voyage were issued to the pilots. Such was the crisis when The- mistocles, distressed to thmk that the Hellenes should abandon the advantages to be had from the narrow- ness of the straits where they lay united, and break up into detachments by cities, planned and concocted the famous Sicinnus-affair. This Sicinnus was of Persian stock, a prisoner 2 of war, but devoted to Themistocles, and the paeda- gocme of his children. This man was sent to Xerxes secretly with orders to say : " Themistocles the Athe- nian general elects the King's cause, and is the first one to announce to him that the Hellenes are trymg to slip away, and urgently bids him not to suffer them to escape, but, while they are in confusion and separated from their infantry, to set upon them and destroy their naval power." Xerxes received this as the message of one who wished him well, and was de- lighted, and at once issued positive orders to the captains of his ships to man the main body of the fleet at their leisure, but with two hundred ships to put out to sea at once, and encompass the strait round about on every side, including the islands in their line of blockade, that not one of the enemy might escape. While this was going on, Aristides the son of Lysi-s ma«hus, who was the first to perceive it, came to the tent of Themistocles, who was no friend of his, nay, through whom he had even been ostracized, as I have it ! I I t ,, 92 THEMISTOCLES said; and when Themistocles came forth from the tent, he told him how the enemy surrounded them. Themistocles, knowing the tried nobility of the man, and filled with admiration for his coming at that time, told him all about the Sicinnus-matter, and besought him to join in this desperate attempt to keep the Hellenes where they were, — admitting that he had the greater influence with them, — in order that they might make their sea-fight in the narrows. Aristides, accordingly, after bestowing praise upon Themisto- cles for his stratagem, went round to the other gen- erals and trierarchs inciting them on to battle. And while they were still incredulous in spite of all, a Tenian trireme appeared, a deserter from the enemy, in command of Panoetius, and told how the enemy surrounded them, so that with a courage born of necessity the Hellenes set out to confront the danger. XIII. At break of day Xerxes was seated on a high place, and overlooking the disposition of his arma- ment. This place was, according to Phano- The throne , „ i . i of Xerxes; dcmus, abovc the Heraclemm, where oniy of Vhemfstl a narrow passage separates the island from '^^' Attica; but according to Acestodorus, it was in the border land of Megara, above the so-called " Horns." Here a gilded throne had been set for him at his command, and many secretaries stationed near at hand, whose task it was to make due record of all that was done in the battle. 8 But Themistocles was sacrificing alongside the admiral's trireme. There three prisoners of war NUMBERS OF THE FLEETS 93 were brought to him, of visage most beautiful to behold, conspicuously adorned with raiment and with gold. They were said to be the sons of Sandauc6, the King's sister, and Artayctus. When Euphrantides the seer caught sight of them, since at one and that same moment a great and glaring flame shot up from the sacrificial victims and a sneeze gave forth its good omen on the right, he clasped Themistocles by the hand and bade him consecrate the youths, and sacrifice them all to Dionysus Carnivorous, with prayers of supplication ; for on this wise would the Hellenes have a saving victory. Themistocles was terrified, feeling that the word of the seer was mon- strous and shocking ; but the multitude, who, as is wont to be the case in great struggles and severe crises, looked for safety rather from unreasonable than from reasonable measures, invoked the god with one voice, dragged the prisoners to the altar, and compelled the fulfilment of the sacrifice as the seer commanded. At any rate, this is what Phanias the Lesbian says, and he was a philosopher, and well acquainted with historical literature. XIV. As regards the number of the barbarian ships, iEschylus the poet, in his tragedy of ^^^^^^ ^f « The Persians," as though from personal t^e^^^^;^ and positive knowledge, says this : the battle. « But Xerxes, and I surely know, had a thousand ships • In number under him ; those of surpassing speed Were twice five score beside and seven ; so stands the count. Though the Attic ships were only one hundred and eighty m number, still each had eighteen men to 94 THEMISTOCLES ■> i ^ It fight upon the decks, of whom four were archers and the rest men-at-arms. 8 Themistocles is thought to have divined the best time for fighting with no less success than the best place, inasmuch as he took care not to send his tri- remes bow on against the barbarian vessels until the hour of the day had come which always brought the breeze fresh from the sea and a current rolling through the strait. This breeze wrought no harm to the'' Hellenic ships, since they lay low in the water and were rather small ; but for the barbarian ships, with their towering stems and lofty decks and slug- gish movements in getting under way, it was fatal, since it smote them and slewed them round broad- side to the Hellenes, who set upon them sharply, keeping their eyes on Themistocles, because they thought he saw best what was to be done, and be- cause confronting him was the admiral of Xerxes, Ariamenes, with a great ship, and just as if he were on a city-wall he kept shooting arrows and javelins, — brave man that he was, by far the strongest and justest of the King's brothers. 8 It was against him that Ameinias the Deceleian and Socles the Pseanian bore down, — they being together on one ship, — and as the two ships struck each other bow on, crashed together, and hung fast by their bronze beaks, he tried to board their trireme ; but they faced him, smote him with their spears, and hurled him into the sea. His body, as it drifted about with other wreckage, was recognized by Arte- misia, and she had it carried to Xerxes. VICTORY OF SALA3IIS 95 XV. At this stage of the struggle they say that a great light flamed out from Eleusis, and an echoing crv filled the Thriasian plain down to the Divine por- *' tents * vio* sea, as of multitudes of men together con- ^^^^ ^^ ^^^ ducting the mystic lacchus m procession. Greeks. Then from the shouting throng a cloud seemed to lift itself slowly from the earth, pass out seawards, and settle down upon the triremes. Others fancied they saw apparitions and shapes of armed men from ^gina with their hands stretched out to protect the Hellenic triremes. These, they conjectured, were the ^Eacidae, who had been prayer- fully invoked before the battle to come to their aid. Now the first man to capture an enemy's ship was a Lycomedes, an Athenian captain, who cut off its figure-head and dedicated it to Apollo Daphnephoros at Phlya. Then the rest, put on an equality in numbers with their foes, because the Barbarians had to attack them by detachments in the narrow strait and so ran foul of one another, routed them, though they resisted till the evening drew on, and thus "bore away,'' as Simonides says, "that fair and notorious victory, than which no more brilliant ex- ploit was ever performed upon the sea, either by Hellenes or Barbarians, through the manly valor and common ardor of all who fought their ships, but through the clever judgment of Themistocles." XVI. After the searfight, Xerxes, still furious at his failure, undertook to carry moles out into the sea on which he could lead his infantry across to Salamis against the Hellenes, damming up the in- !J H » I I 'i ... i V i 96 THEMISTOCLES PUBLIC HONORS AFTER SALAMIS 97 His strata- gem for securing the retreat of Xerxes after Sal- amis. tervening strait. But Themistocles, merely by way of sounding Aristides, proposed, as though he were in earnest, to sail with the fleet to the Hellespont and break the span of boats there, " in order," said he, " that we may capture Asia in Europe." Aristides, how- ever, was displeased with the scheme and said : " Now indeed the Barbarian with whom we have fought consults his ease and pleasure, but should we shut up in Hellas and bring under fearful compul- sion a man who is lord of such vast forces, he will «no longer sit under a golden parasol to view the spec- tacle of the battle at his ease, but he will dare all things, and, superintending everything in person, be- cause of his peril, will rectify his previous remissness and take better counsel for the highest issues thus at stake. We must not, then," said he, " tear down the bridge that is already there, Themistocles, nay rather we must build another alongside it, if that were pos- sible, and cast the fellow out of Europe in a hurry." " Well, then," said Themistocles, " if that is what is thought for the best, it is high time for us all to be studying and inventing a way to get him out of Hellas by the speediest route." As soon as this policy had been adopted, he sent a certain royal eunuch whom he discovered among the prisoners of war, by name Arnaces, with orders to tell the King that the Hellenes had decided, since their fleet now controlled the sea, to sail up into the Hellespont, where the shores were spanned, and 8 destroy the bridge; but that Themistocles, out of regard for the King, urged him to hasten into home waters and fetch his forces across ; he himself, he said, would cause the allies all sorts of delays and postponements in their pursuit. No sooner did the Barbarian hear this than he was seized with exceed- ing fear and speedily began his retreat. This thought- ful prudence on the part of Themistocles and Aristides was afterwards justified by the campaign with Mar- donius, since, although they fought at Plataea with the merest fraction of the armies of Xerxes, they yet staked their all upon the issue. XVII. Among the cities, now, Herodotus says that iEgina bore away the prize of valor ; but among individuals, all virtually awarded the first p^^^^ ^^^_ place to Themistocles, though their envy ors^P^^j^^ made them imwilling to do this directly, cies after For when the generals withdrew to the Isthmus and solemnly voted on this question, tak- ing their ballots from the very altar of the god there, each one declared for himself as first in valor, but for Themistocles as second after himself. Then the Lacedasmonians brought him down to 2 Sparta, and while they gave Eurybiades the prize for valor, to him they gave one for wisdom, — a crown of olive in each case, — and they presented him with the best chariot there was in the city, and sent three hundred picked youth along with him to serve as his escort to the boimdary. And it is said that when the next Olympic festival s was celebrated, and Themistocles entered the stadium, the audience neglected the contestants all day long 98 THEMISTOCLES 1 i to gaze on him, and pointed him out with admiring applause to visiting strangers, so that he too was delighted, and confessed to his friends that he was now reaping in full measure the harvest of his toils in behalf of Hellas. XVIII. And indeed he was by nature very fond of honor, if we may judge from his memorable say- ings and doings. When, for example, the His menaor- o ^ t • i r ij able sayings city had choseu him to be admiral, he would and doings. ^^^ perform a bit of public or private busi- ness at its proper time, but would postpone every current duty to the day on which he was to set sail, in order that then, because he did many things all at once and had meetings with all sorts of men, he might be thought to be some great per- sonage and very powerful. Surveying once the dead bodies of the Barbarians which had been cast up along the sea, he saw that they were decked with golden bracelets and collars, and yet passed on by them himself, but to a friend who followed he pointed them out and said : " Help thyself, thou art not Themistocles." t Again, to one who had once been a beauty, Anti- phates, and who had at that time treated him dis- dainfully, but afterwards courted him because of the reputation he had got, " Young man," said he, " *t is late, 'tis true, but both of us have come to our senses." Also he used to say of the Athenians that they did not really honor and admire him for himself, but treated him for all the world like a plane-tree, run- U MEMORABLE SAYINGS 99 ning under his branches for shelter when it stormed, but when they had fair weather all about them, plucking and docking him. And when he was told by the Seriphian that its was not due to himself that he had got reputation, but to his city, " True," said he, " but neither should I, had I been a Seriphian, have achieved reputation, nor wouldst thou, hadst thou been an Athenian." Again, when one of his fellow-generals who thought he had done some vast service to the city, grew bold with Themistocles, and went to comparing his own services with his, '' With the Festival-day," said he, " the Day After once began a contention, saying : *Thou art full of occupations and wearisome, but when I come, all enjoy at their leisure what has been richly provided beforehand ' ; to which the Festival- day replied : ' True, but had I not come first, thou hadst not come at all.' So now," said he, " had I not come at that day of Salamis, where wouldst thou and thy colleagues be now?" Of his son, who lorded it over his mother, and* through her over himself, he said, jestingly, that the boy was the most powerful of all the Hellenes ; for the Hellenes were commanded by the Athenians, the Athenians by himself, himself by the boy's mother, and the mother by her boy. Again, with the desire to be rather different from everybody else, when he offered a certain estate for sale, he bade proclamation to be made that it had an excellent neighbor into the bargain. Of two suitors for his daughter's hand he chose the P 100 THEMISTOCLES AN INCENDIARY STRATAGEM 101 i likely man in preference to the rich man, saying that he wanted a man without money rather than money without a man. Such were his striking sayings. XIX. After the great achievements now described, he straightway undertook to rebuild and fortify the city,— as Theopompus relates, by bribing the St wai^' Spartan Ephors not to oppose the project ; ^nfi^teof but as the majority say, by hoodwinking Spartan them. Hc camc with this object to Sparta, fon?fie?the ostensibly on an embassy, and when the ^^'*^- Spartans brought up the charge that the Athenians were fortifying their city, and Polyarchus was sent expressly from iEgina with the same accu- sation, he denied that it was so, and bade them send men to Athens to see for themselves, not only be- cause this delay would secure time for the building of the wall, but also because he wished the Athenians to hold these envoys as hostages for his own person. And this was what actually happened. When the Lacedaemonians found out the truth they did him no harm, but concealed their displeasure and sent him away, t After this he equipped the Piraeus, because he had noticed the favorable shape of its harbors, and wished to attach the whole city to the sea ; thus in a certain manner counteracting the policies of the ancient Athenian kings. For they, as it is said, in their efforts to draw the citizens away from the sea and accustom them to live not by navigation but by agriculture, disseminated the story about Athena, how when Poseidon was contending with her for possession of the country, she displayed the sacred olive-tree of the Acropolis to the judges and so won the day. But Themistocles did not, as Aristophanes thes comic poet says, " knead the Piraeus on to the city," nay, he suspended the city from the Piraeus, and the land from the sea. And so it was that he increased the privileges of the common people as against the nobles, and filled them with boldness, since the con- trolling power came now into the hands of skippers and boatswains and pilots. Therefore it was, too, that the bema in Pnyx, which had stood so as to look off toward the sea, was afterwards turned by the thirty tyrants so as to look in-land, because they thought maritime empire was the mother of democ- racy, and that oligarchy was less distasteful to tillers of the soil. XX. But Themistocles cherished yet greater de- signs even for securing the naval supremacy. When the squadron of the Hellenes, after the uisincen- departure of Xerxes, had put in at Par f^^^J'^ gasae and was wintering there, he made a national harangue before the Athenians, in which ^'^''^' he said that he had a certain scheme in mind which would be useful and salutary for them, but which could not be broached in public. So the Athenians bade him impart it to Aristides alone, and if he should approve of it, to put it into execution. Themistocles accordingly told Aristides that he pur- posed to bum the fleet of the Hellenes where it lay j 102 THEMISTOCLES t I but Aristides addressed the people, and said of the scheme which Themistocles purposed to carry out, that none could be either more advantageous or more iniquitous. The Athenians therefore ordered Themis- tocles to give it up. 8 At the Amphictyonic or Holy Alliance conven- tions, the Lacedaemonians introduced motions that all cities be excluded from the Alliance which had not taken part in fighting against the Mede. So The- mistocles, fearing lest, if they should succeed in excluding the Thessalians and the Argives and the Thebans too from the convention, they would control the votes completely and carry through their own wishes, spoke in behalf of the protesting cities, and changed the sentiments of the delegates by showing that only thirty-one cities had taken part in the war, and that the most of these were altogether small ; it would be intolerable then if the rest of Hellas should be excluded and the convention be at the mercy of the two or three largest cities. It was for this reason particularly that he became obnoxious to the Lacedaemonians, and they therefore tried to advance Cimon in public favor, making him the political rival of Themistocles. XXL He made himself hateful to the allies also, by sailing round to the islands and trying to exact His extor. moucy from them. When, for instance, he tions; Timo- demanded money of the Andrians, Hero- creon's ven- "^ v i J oraous songs, dotus says he made a speech to them and got reply as follows: he said he came escorting two gods, Persuasion and Compulsion ; and they re- TIMOCREON*S VENOMOUS SONGS 103 plied that they already had two great gods, Penury and Powerlessness, who hindered them from giving him money. Timocreon, the lyric poet of Rhodes, assailed The- a mistocles very bitterly in a song, to the effect that for bribes he had secured the restoration of other exiles, but had abandoned him, though a host and a friend, and aU for money. The song runs thus : *' Come, if thou praisest Pausanias, or thou Xanthippus, Or thou Leutichidas, then I shall praise Aristides, The one best man of all To come from sacred Athens ; since Leto loathes Themistocles, «* The liar, cheat, and traitor, who, though Timocreon was his host. By knavish moneys was induced not to bring him back Into his native lalysos, But took three talents of silver and went cruising off, — to perdition ! « Restoring some exiles unjustly, chasing some away, and slaying some. Gorged with moneys ; yet at the Isthmus he played ridiculous host with the stale meats set before his guests; Who ate thereof and prayed heaven * no happy return of the day for Themistocles!'" Much more wanton and extravagant was the rail- 3 lery which Timocreon indulged in against Themisto- cles after the latter's own exile and condemnation. Then he composed the song beginning: ** Muse, grant that this song Be famed throughout all Hellas, As it is meet and just." It is said that Timocreon was sent into exile on a charge of medising, and that Themistocles concurred in the vote of condemnation. Accordingly, when 104 THEMISTOCLES Themistocles also was accused of medising, Timo- creon composed these lines upon him : " Not Timocreon alone, then, made compacts with the Medes, But there are other wretches too; not I alone am brushless, , There are other foxes too." XXII. And at last, when even his fellow-citizens were led by their jealousy of his greatness to welcome His growing such slaudcrs against him, he was forced to ^^^jfig^^JJ^ alhide to his own achievements when he cisra. addressed the assembly, till he became tire- some thereby, and he once said to the malcontents : *^Why are ye vexed that the same men should often benefit you ? " He offended the multitude also by building the temple of Artemis, whom he surnamed Aristoboulej or Best Counsellor, intimating thus that it was he who had given the best counsel to the city and to the Hellenes. This temple he established near his house in Melite, where now the public officers cast out the bodies of those who have been put to death, and carry forth the garments and the nooses of those who have 2 despatched themselves by hanging. A small portrait statue of Themistocles stood in this temple of Aristo- houle down to my time, from which he appears to have been a man not only of heroic spirit, but also of heroic presence. Well, then, they visited him with ostracism, curtail- ing his dignity and pre-eminence, as they were wont to do in the case of all whom they thought to have oppressive power, and to be incommensurate with true democratic equality. For ostracism was not a O I W O o H t— ( H 104 THEMISTOCLES Themistocles also was accused of medising, Timo- creon composed these lines upon him : " Not Timocreon alone, tlien, made compacts with the Medes, But there are other wretches too; not I alone am brushless, There are other foxes too." XXII. And at last, when even his fellow-citizens were led by their jealousy of his greatness to welcome His growing such shuidcrs against him, he was forced to 3Ti" oltra' ^^^^'^^^^^ to his own achievements when he cisiu. addressed the assembly, till he became tire- some thereby, and he once said to the malcontents : ^•Why are ye vexed that the same men should often benefit you ? " He offended the multitude also by building the temple of Artemis, whom he surnamed Aristobotile, or Best Counsellor, intimating thus that it was he who had given the best counsel to the city and to the Hellenes. This temple he established near his house in ^lelite, where now the public officers cast out the bodies of those who have been put to death, and carry forth the garments and the nooses of those who have 2 despatched themselves by hanging. A small portrait statue of Themistocles stood in this temple of Aristo- houle down to my time, from which he appears to have been a man not only of heroic spirit, but also of heroic presence. Well, then, they visited him ^vith ostracism, curtail- ing his dignity and pre-eminence, as they were wont to do in the case of all whom they thought to have oppressive power, and to be incommensurate with true democratic equality. For ostracism was not a > C I I— I O H ACCUSATION OF HIGH TREASON 105 penalty, but a way of expression and a means of alleviation for that jealousy which delights to humble the eminent, breathing out its malice into this dis- franchisement. XXIII. After he had been thus banished from the city, and while he was sojourning at Argos, circum- stances connected with the death of Pau- while at 1 • ' J. K J.1 J Areos he is sanias gave his enemies at Athens ground accused of for proceeding against him. The one who high treason, actually brought in the indictment against him for treason was Leobotes the son of Alcmeon, of the deme Agraule, but the Spartans supported him in the accusation. Pausanias, while engaged in his grand 2 scheme of treachery, at first kept it concealed from Themistocles ; but when he saw him thus banished from his state and in great bitterness of spirit, he made bold to invite him into partnership in his own undertakings, showing him a letter he had received from the King, and inciting him against the Hellenes as a base and thankless people. Themistocles re- jected the solicitation of Pausanias, and utterly re- fused the proffered partnership ; and yet he disclosed the propositions to no one, nor did he even give information of the treacherous scheme, because he expected either that Pausanias would give it up of his own accord, or that in some other way he would be found out, since he was so irrationally grasping after such strange and desperate objects. And so it was that, when Pausanias had been puts to death, certain letters and documents regarding these matters were discovered which cast suspicion on The- 106 THEMISTOCLES mistocles. Both the Lacedaemonians cried him down, and his envious fellow-citizens denounced him, though he was not present to plead his cause, but defended himself in writing, making particular use of earlier accusations brought against him. Since he was once slanderously accused by his enemies before his fellow- citizens,— so he wrote, — as one who ever sought to rule, but had no natural bent nor even the desire to be ruled, he could never have sold himself with Hellas to Barbarians and foemen. The people, however, were overpersuaded by his accusers, and sent men with orders to arrest him and bring him up in custody to stand trial before the Congress of Hellenes. XXIV. But he heard of this in advance, and crossed over to Corcyra, where he had been recog- nized as public benefactor of the city. For cl^y^ he had served as arbiter in a dispute be- andEpirus. ^^^^ ^-^^^ ^^^ ^'^Q Corinthians, and set- tled the quarrel by deciding that the Corinthians should pay an indemnity of twenty talents, and administer Leucas as a common colony of both CltlGS* 8 Thence he fled to Epirus, and being pursued by the Athenians and Lacedsemonians, he threw himself upon grievous and desperate chances of escape by taking refuge with Admetus, who was king of the Molossians, and who, since he had once asked some favor of the Athenians and had been insultmgly refused it by Themistocles, then at the height of his political influence, was angry with him ever after, SUPPLICATION OF ADMETUS 107 and made it plain that he would take vengeance on him if he caught him. But in the desperate fortune of that time Themistocles was more afraid of kindred and recent jealousy than of an anger that was of long standing and royal, and promptly cast himself upon the king's mercy, making himself the suppliant of Admetus in a way quite peculiar and extraordinary. That is to say, he took the young son of the king in his arms and threw himself down at the hearth ; a form of supplication which the Molossians regarded as most sacred, and as almost the only one that might not be refused. Some, it is true, say that it was Phthia, the wife 3 of the king, who suggested this form of supplication to Themistocles, and that she seated her son on the hearth with him; and certain others that Admetus himself, in order that he might give a religious sanc- tion to the necessity that was upon him of not sur- rendering the man, arranged beforehand and solemnly rehearsed with him the supplication scene. Thither his wife and children were privily removed from Athens and sent to him by Epicrates of the deme AcharnsB, who, for this deed, was afterwards convicted by Cimon and put to death, as Stesimbro- tus relates. Then, some how or other, Stesimbrotus forgets this, or makes Themistocles forget it, and says he sailed to Sicily and demanded from Hiero the tyrant the hand of his daughter in marriage, promis- ing as an incentive that he would make the Hellenes subject to his sway; but that Hiero repulsed him, and so he set sail for Asia. liteMMtttftfiliMMli s 108 THEMISTOCLES r. XXV. But it is not likely that this was so. For Theophrastus, m his work " On Royalty," tells how, Esca to when Hiero sent horses to compete at Olym- Asia- pia, and set up a sort of booth there with very costly decorations, Themistocles made a speech among the assembled Hellenes, urging them to tear down the booth of the tyrant and prevent his horses from competing. 2 Thucydides says that he made his way across the country to the sea, and set sail from Pydna, no one of the passengers knowing who he was until, when the vessel had been carried by a storm to Naxos, to which the Athenians at that time were laying siege, he was terrified, and disclosed himself to the master and the captain of the ship, and partly by entreaties, partly by threats, actually declaring that he would denounce and vilify them to the Athenians as hav- ing taken him on board at the start in no ignorance but under bribes, — in this way compelled them to sail by and make the coast of Asia. i Of his property, much was secretly abstracted for him by his friends and sent across the sea to Asia ; but the sum total of that which was brought to light and confiscated amounted to one hundred talents, according to Theopompus, —Theophrastus says to eighty, — and yet Themistocles did not possess the worth' of three talents before he entered political life. XXVI. After landing at Cym^, and learning that many people on the coast were watching to seize him, and especially Ergoteles and Pythodorus, — JOURNEY TO THE PERSIAN COURT 109 for the chase was a lucrative one to such as were fond of getting gain from any and every source, since two hundred talents had been publicly ^^^^ j^.^.^^ set upon his head by the King, — he fled to at ^g*. and ^ ^ o ^^jjg ]ourney jEgce, a little ^olic citadel, where no one to the Per- knew him except his host Nicogenes, the ^'^^"^^ • wealthiest man in iEolia, and well acquainted with the magnates of the interior. With him he remained in hiding for a few days. During this time, after the dinner which followed 2 a certain sacrifice, Olbius, the paedagogue of the children of Nicogenes, becoming rapt and inspired, lifted up his voice and cried the following verse : " Night shall speak, and night instruct thee, night shall give thee victory." And in the night that followed, Themistocles, as he lay in bed, thought he saw in a dream that a serpent wound itself along over his body and crept up to his neck, then became an eagle, as soon as it touched his face, enveloped him with its wings and lifted him on high and bore him a long distance, when there appeared as it were a golden herald's wand, on which it set him securely down, freed from helpless terror and distress. However that may be, he was sent on his way by 3 Nicogenes, who devised the following scheme for his safety. Most barbarous nations, and the Persians in particular, are savage and harsh in their jealous watchfulness over their women. Not only their wedded wives, but also their boughten slaves and concubines are strictly guarded, so that they are 110 THEMISTOCLES seen by no outsiders, but live at home in complete seclusion, and even on their journeys are carried in tents closely hung round about with curtains and set upon four-wheeled waggons. Such a vehicle was made ready for Themistocles, and safely ensconced in this he made his journey, while his attendants replied in every case to those who met them with enquiries, that they were conducting a Hellenic woman, fair but frail, to one of the King s courtiers. XXVII. Now Thucydides and Charon of Lamp- sacus relate that Xerxes was dead, and that it was Requisites his SOU Artaxcrxcs with whom Themisto- for an an- ^jgg jj^^j his interview; but Ephorus and thrKiJ^'.' Dinon and Clitarchus and Heracleides and yet more besides have it that it was Xerxes to whom he came. With the chronological data Thu- cydides seems to me more in accord, although these are not securely established. Be that as it may, Themistocles, thus at the thresh- old of the dreadful ordeal, had audience first with Artabanus the Chiliarch, or Grand Vizier, and said that he was a Hellene, and that he desired to have an audience with the King on matters which were of the highest importance and for which the mon- 2 arch entertained the liveliest concern. Whereupon the Chiliarch replied : " Stranger, men's customs differ ; different people honor different practices ; but all honor the exaltation and maintenance of their own peculiar ways. Now you Hellenes are said to admire liberty and equality above all things ; but in our eyes, among many fair customs, this is the fairest AUDIENCE WITH THE KING 111 of all, to honor the King, and to pay obeisance to him as the image of that god who is the preserver of all things. If, then, thou approvest our practice and wilt pay obeisance, it is in thy power to behold and address the King; but if thou art otherwise minded, it will be needful for thee to employ mes- sengers to liim in thy stead, for it is not a custom of this country that the King give ear to a man who has not paid him obeisance." When Themistocles heard this, he said to him : " Nay, but I am come, Artabanus, to augment the King s fame and power, and I will not only myself observe your customs, since such is the pleasure of the god who exalts the Persians, but I will induce more men than do so now to pay obeisance to the King. Therefore let this matter by no means stand in the way of the words I wish to speak to him." " And what Hellene," said 8 Artabanus, " shall I say thou art who hast thus come ? Verily, thou dost not seem to be a man of ordinary understanding." And Themistocles said: "This, Artabanus, no one may learn before the King." So indeed Phanias says, and Eratosthenes, in his book " On Wealth," adds the statement that it was through a woman of Eretria, whom the Chiliarch had to wife, that Themistocles obtained interview and conference with him. XXVIII. That may or may not be so. But when he was led into the presence of the King ^j^^^^^.. and had made him obeisance, and was stand- ence with ing in silence, the King ordered the inter- preter to ask him who he was, and, on the interpre- _j_^ 112 THElvnSTOCLES ter s asking, he said : " I who thus come to thee, King, am Themistocles the Athenian, an exile, pur- sued by the Hellenes ; and to me the Persians are indebted for many ills, but for more blessings, since I hindered the pursuit of the Hellenes, at a tmie when Hellas was brought into safety, and the salvar tion of my own home gave me an opportunity for showing some favor also to you. Now, therefore, I am in all things adjusted to my present calamities, and I come prepared to receive the favor of one who benevolently offers reconciliation, or to deprecate the anger of one who cherishes the remembrance of inju- sries. But do thou t^ke my foes to witness the good I wrought the Persians, and now use my misfortunes for the display of thy \^rtue rather than for the satis- faction of thine anger. For it is a suppliant of thine whom thou wilt save, but an enemy of the Hellenes whom thou wilt destroy/' After these words The- mistocles spoke of divine portents in his favor, enlarg- ing upon the vision which he saw at the house of Nicogenes, and the oracle of Dodonoean Zeus, how when he was bidden by it to proceed to the namesake of the god, he had concluded that he was thereby sent to him, since both were actually "Great Kings," and were so addressed. • i On hearing this the Persian made no direct reply to him, although struck with admiration at the bold- ness of his spirit ; but in converse with his friends it is said that he congratulated himself over what he caUed the greatest good fortune, and prayed Arima- nius ever to give his enemies such minds as to drive SECOND AUDIENCE 113 their best men away from them ; and then sacrificed to the gods, and straightway betook himself to his cups ; and in the night, in the midst of his slumbers, for very joy called out thrice : " I have Themistocles the Athenian." XXIX. At daybreak he called his friends to- gether and had Themistocles to be introduced, who expected no favorable outcome, because he saw that the guards at the gates, when recehred'an^ they learned the name of him who was ^»g^iy ^^n- •^ ored at the going in, were bitterly disposed and spoke Persian insultingly to him. And besides, Rhox- anes the Chiliarch, when Themistocles came along opposite him, — the King being seated and the rest hushed in silence, — said in an angry imdertone: ^*Thou subtle serpent of Hellas, the King's good genius hath brought thee hither." However, when he had come into the King's presence, and had once more paid him obeisance, the King welcomed him and spake him kindly, and said he now owed him two hundred talents, for since he had delivered himself up it was only just that he himself should receive the reward proclaimed for his captor. Much more than this he promised him, and bade him take heart, and gave him leave to say whatever he wished concerning the affairs of Hellas, with all frankness of speech. But Themistocles made answer that the speech of a man was like embroidered tapestries, since like them this too had to be extended in order to display its patterns, but when it was rolled up it concealed and distorted them. Wherefore he had need of time. 8 114 THEMISTOCLES The King at once showed his pleasure in this com- parison by bidding him take time, and so Themistocles asked for a year, and in that time he learned the Persian language sufficiently to have interviews with 8 the King by himself without interpreters. Outsiders thought these conferences concerned Hellenic mat-* ters merely; but since about that time many innova- tions were introduced by the King at court and among his favorites, the magnates became jealous of The- mistocles, on the ground that he had made bold to use his freedom of speech with the King to their harm. For the honors he enjoyed were far beyond those paid to other foreigners ; nay, he actually took part in the King's hunts and in his household diver- sions, so far that he even had access to the queen- mother and became intimate with her, and at the King's bidding heard expositions also of the Magian lore. And when Demaratus the Spartan, being bidden to ask a gift, asked that he. might ride in state through Sardis, wearing his tiara upright after the manner of the Persian kings, Mithraustes the King's cousin said, touching the tiara of Demaratus : " This tiara of thine hath no brains to cover; indeed thou wilt not be Zeus merely because thou graspest the thunderbolt." 4 The King also repulsed Demaratus in anger at his request, and was minded to be inexorable towards him, and yet Themistocles begged and obtained a reconciliation with him. And it is said that later kings also, in whose reigns Persia and Hellas came into closer relations, as often WARNED BY CYBELE 115 as they asked for a Hellene to advise them, promised him in writing, every one, that he should be more influential at court than Themistocles. And The- mistocles himself, they say, now become great and courted by many, said to his children, when a splen- did table was once set for them : " My children, we should now have been undone, had we not been un- done before." Three cities, as most writers say, were* given him for bread, wine, and meat, namely : Mag- nesia, Lampsacus, and Myus; and two others are added by Neanthes of Cyzicus and by Phanias, namely : Percot^ and Palaescepsis ; these for his bed- ding and raiment. XXX. Now as he was going down to the sea on his commission to deal with Hellenic affairs, a Per- sian, Epixyes by name, satrap of Upper ^^^^^ ^^ Phrygia, plotted against his life, having Cybeieina drestm, ho for a long time kept certain Pisidians in escapes readiness to slay him whenever he should ^®**^' reach the city called Lion's Head, and take up his night's quarters there. But while Themistocles was asleep at midday before, it is said that the Mother of the Gods appeared to him in a dream and said : "0 Themistocles, avoid a head of lions, that thou mayest not encoimter a lion. And for this service to thee, I demand of thee Mnesiptolema to be my handmaid." Much disturbed, of course, Themisto- cles, with a prayer of acknowledgment to the god- dess, forsook the highway, made a circuit by another route, and passing by that place, at last, as night came on, took up his quarters. --*'"- 116 THEMISTOCLES 2 Now, since one of the beasts of burden which car- ried the equipage of his tent had fallen into the river, the servants of Themistocles spread out the hangings which had got wet and were drying them out. The Pisidians, at this juncture, sword in hand, made their approach, and since they could not see distinctly by the light of the moon what it was that was being dried, they thought it was the tent of Themistocles, and that they would find him reposing inside. But when they drew near and lifted up the hanging, they were fallen upon by the guards and apprehended. Thus Themistocles escaped the peril, and because he was amazed at the epiphany of the goddess, he built a temple m Magnesia in honor of Dindymen^, and made his daughter Mnesiptolema her priestess. XXXI. When he had come to Sardis and was viewing at his leisure the temples built there and the multitude of their dedicatory offerings, and fJathinMag- saw in the temple of the Mother the so-called nesia. Watcr-carrier, — a maid in bronze, two cubits high, which he himself when he was water commissioner at Athens had caused to be made and dedicated from the fines he exacted of those whom he convicted of stealing and tapping the public water, — whether it was because he felt some chagrin at the capture of the offering, or because he wished to show the Athenians what honor and power he had in the King's service, he addressed a proposition to the Lydian satrap and asked him to restore the maid to Athens. 2 But the Barbarian was incensed and threatened to IN MAGNESIA 117 write a letter to the King about it ; whereat Themis- tocles was afraid, and so had recourse to the women's chambers, and, by winning the favor of the satrap's concubines with money, succeeded in assuaging his anger. Thereafter he behaved more circumspectly, fearing now even the jealousy of the Barbarians. For ^ he did not wander about over Asia, as Theopompus says, but had a house in Magnesia, and gathered in large gifts, and was honored like the noblest Persians, and so lived on for a long time without concern, be- cause the King paid no heed at all to Hellenic affairs, owing to his occupation with the state of the interior. But when Egypt revolted with Athenian aid, and 3 Hellenic triremes sailed up as far as Cyprus and Cilicia, and Cimon's mastery of the sea forced the King to resist the efforts of the Hellenes and to hinder their hostile growth ; and when at last forces began to be moved, and generals were despatched hither and thither, and messages came to Themistocles in Mag- nesia saying that the King commanded him to make good his promises by applying himself to the Hellenic problem, then, neither embittered by anything like anger against his former fellow-citizens, nor lifted up by the great honor and power he was to have in the 4 war, but possibly thinking his task an unapproachable one, both because Hellas had other great generals at the time, and especially because Cimon was so mar- vellously successful in his campaigns ; yet most of all out of regard for the reputation of his own achieve- ments and the trophies of those early days ; having decided that his best course was to put a fitting end 118 THEMISTOCLES to his life, he made a sacrifice to the gods, then called his friends together, gave them a farewell clasp of his hand, and, as the current story goes, drank bull's blood, or as some say, took a quick poison, and so died in Magnesia, in the sixty-fifth year of his life, most of which had been spent in political leadership. They say that the King, on learning the cause and the manner of his death, admired the man yet more, and continued to treat his friends and kindred with kindness. XXXII. Themistocles left three sons by Archippe, the daughter of Lysander, of the deme Alopece, namely : Archeptolis, Polyeuctus and Cleo- and hiTpo^ phantus, the last of whom Plato the philo- ^"^^- sopher mentions as a capital horseman, but good for nothing else. Of his two oldest sons, Neocles died in boyhood from the bite of a horse, and Diodes was adopted by his grandfather Lysander. He had several daughters, of whom Mnesiptolema, born of his second wife, became the wife of Archeptolis her half- brother, and Italia of Panthoides the Chian, and Sybaris of Nicomedes the Athenian. Nicomache was given in marriage by her brothers to Phrasicles, the nephew of Themistocles, who sailed to Magnesia after his uncle's death, and who also took charge of Asia, the youngest of all the children, s The Magnesians have a splendid tomb of Themisto- cles in their market place ; and with regard to his remains, Andocides is worthy of no attention when he says, in his Address to his Associates, that the Athe- nians stole away those remains and scattered them HIS TOMB 119 abroad; for he is trying by his lies to incite the oligarchs against the people; and Phylarchus, too, when, as if in a tragedy, he all but erects a theatrical machine for this story, and brings into the action a certain Neocles, forsooth, and Demopolis, sons of - Themistocles, wishes merely to stir up tumultuous emotion ; his tale even an ordinary person must know is fabricated. Diodorus the Topographer, in his work " On Tombs," 3 says, by conjecture rather than from actual knowledge, that near the large harbor of the Piraeus a sort of elbow juts out from the promontory opposite Alcimus, and that as you round this and come inside where the water of the sea is still, there is a basement of gener- ous size, and that the altar-like structure upon this is the tomb of Themistocles. And he thinks that the comic poet Plato is a witness in favor of his view when he says : " Thy tomb is mounded in a fair and sightly place ; The merchantmen shall greet it from on every side ; It shall behold those outward, and those inward bound, And view the emulous rivalry of racing ships." For the lineal descendants of Themistocles there* were also certain dignities maintained in Magnesia down to my time, and the revenues of these were enjoyed by a Themistocles of Athens, who was my intimate and friend in the school of Ammonius the philosopher. i I ) I ;. ARISTIDES ', ARISTIDES I. Aristides, the son of Lysimachus, belonged to the tribe Antiochis, and to the deme Alopece. As regards his substance, stories differ, some Birth and having it that he passed all the days of his s'^^s**"*^- life in severe poverty, and that at his death he left behmd him two daughters who for a long time were not sought in marriage because of their indigence. But in contradiction of this story which so many writ- ers give, Demetrius of Phalerum, in his " Socrates," says he knows of an estate in Phalerum which be- 3 longed to Aristides, — the one in which he lies buried, — and regards as proofs of his opulent cir- cumstances, first, his office of Archon Eponymous^ which only he could hold who obtained it by lot from among the families carrying the highest property- assessments (these were called Pentacosiomedimnij or Five-hundred-bushelers) ; second, his banishment in ostracism, for no poor man, but only men from great houses which incurred envy because of their family influence were liable to ostracism ; third, and last, the fact that he left in the precinct of Dionysus as offerings for victory in choral contests some tripods, which, even in our day, were pointed out as still bearing the inscription: "The tribe Antiochis was victorious ; Aristides was Choregus ; Archestratus was Poet." X 124 ARISTIDES t Now this last argument, though it seems very strong, is really very weak. For both Epaminondas, who, as all men know, was reared and always lived in great poverty, and Plato the philosopher, took it upon themselves to furnish munificent public perfor- mances, the first, of men trained to play the flute, the second, of boys trained to sing and dance ; but Plato received the money that he spent thereon from Dion of Syracuse, and Epaminondas from Pelopidas. Good men wage no savage and relentless war against the gifts of friends, but while they look upon gifts taken to be stored away and increase the receiver's wealth as ignoble and mean, they refuse none which promote an unselfish and splendid munificence. 4 However, as regards the tripods, Panaetius tries to show that Demetrius was deceived by identity of name. From the Persian wars, he says, down to the end of the Peloponnesian war, only two Aristides are recorded as victorious chcyregi, and neither of them is identical with the son of Lysimachus. One was the son of Xenophilus, and the other lived long after- wards, as is proved by the inscription itself, which is written in the character used after Eucleides, as well as by the last name, Archestratus, of whom there is no record during the Persian wars, while durmg the time of the Peloponnesian war his name often appears as that of a choral poet, i This argument of Panaetius should be more closely examined as to its validity ; but to banishment in ostracism every one was liable who was superior to the common run of men in reputation, or lineage, or RIVALRY WITH THEMISTOCLES 125 eloquence. And so it was that Damon, the teacher of Pericles, was ostracized because he was thought to be rather extraordinary in his wisdom. Furthermore, Idomeneus says that Aristides ob- tained the office of archon, not by lot, but by the election of the Athenians. And if he was made archon after the battle of Plataea, as Demetrius him- self has written, it is certainly very credible that in view of such a reputation and such successes as he there won, he should be deemed worthy, for his valor, of an oflice which men who drew lots for it obtained for their wealth. Demetrius is clearly ambitious to rescue not only , Aristides, but also Socrates from what he deems the * great evil of poverty, for he says that Socrates owned not only his house, but also seventy mince out at interest with Crito. II. Aristides was an intimate friend of that Cleis- thenes who set the state in order after the expulsion of the tyrants. He also admired and emu- Aristides lated, above all other statesmen, Lycurgus ^°th^he- the Lacedaemonian. He therefore favored mistocies. an aristocratic form of government, and ever had opposed to him, as champion of the people, Themis- tocles the son of Neocles. Some say that even as boys and fellow-pupils, a from the outset, in every word and deed, whether serious or trivial, they were at variance with one another, and that by this very rivalry their natures were straightway made manifest, the one as dex- trous, reckless, and imscrupulous, easily carried with 126 AMSTIDES II' impetuosity into any and every undertaking; the other as established on a character which was firm, and intent on justice, and which admitted no falsity or vulgarity or deceit, not even in any sport whatsoever, s But Ariston of Ceos says that this enmity of theirs, which came to be so intense, had its origin in a love affair. They were both enamoured of Stesilaiis, who was of Ceian birth, and in beauty of person the most brilliant of youths ; and they cherished their passion so immoderately, that not even after the boy's beauty had faded did they lay aside their rivalry, but, as though they had merely taken preliminary practice and exercise in that, they presently engaged in mat- ters of state also with passionate heat and opposing 4 Themistocles joined a society of political friends, and so secured no inconsiderable support and power. Hence when some one told him that he would be a good ruler over the Athenians if he would only be fair and impartial to all, he replied : « Never may I sit on a tribunal where my friends are to get no more advantage from me than strangers." But Aristides walked the way of statesmanship by himself, on a private path of his own, as it were, because, in the first place, he was unwilling to join with any comrades in wrong-doing, or to vex them by withholding favors ; and, in the second place, he saw that power derived from friends incited many to do wrong, and so was on his guard against it, deem- ing it right that the good citizen should base his confidence only on serviceable and just conduct. UNSELFISH PATRIOTISM 127 ni. However, since Themistocles was a reckless agitator, and opposed and thwarted him in every measure of state, Aristides was almost com- pou^icai pelled, for his own part also, partly in self- opposition of Themis* defence, and partly to curtail his adversary's tocies ; un- power, which was increasing through the otismof*'" favor of the many, to set himself, even -^"stides. against his real convictions, in opposition to what Themistocles was trying to do, thinking it better that some advantages should escape the people than that his adversary, by prevailing everywhere, should become too strong. Finally there came a time when he opposed and 2 defeated Themistocles in an attempt to carry some really necessary measure. Then he could no longer hold his peace, but declared, as he left the assembly, that ^there was no safety for the Athenian stated unless they threw both Themistocles and himself^ into the barathrum. On another occasion he him- self introduced a certain measure to the people, and was carrying it through successfully, in spite of the attacks of the opposition upon it, but just as the presiding officer was to put it to the final vote, per- ceiving, from the very speeches that had been made in opposition to it, the inexpediency of his measure, he refrained from having it enacted. And often- times he would introduce his measures through other men, that Themistocles might not be driven by the spirit of rivalry with him to oppose what was expedient for the state. Altogether admirable was his steadfast constancy 3 128 AEISTIDES amid the revulsions of poUtical feeling. He was not xinduly lifted up by his honors, and faced adversity with a calm gentleness, while in all cases alike he considered it his duty to give his services to his country freely and without any reward, either in money, or, what meant far more, in reputation. And so it befell, as the story goes, that when the verses composed by ^Ischylus upon Amphiaraus were recited in the theatre: — « He wishes not to seem, but rather just to be, And reap a harvest from deep furrows in a mind From which there spring up honorable counseUings," all the specUtors turned their eyes on Aristides, feel- ing that he, above all men, was possessed of such excellence. , IV. It was not only against the inclmations of his good-will and personal favor that he was a most strenuous champion of justice, but also oftoT against those of his anger and hatred. At «"• any rate a story is told, how he was once prosecuting an enemy in court, and after he had made his accusation the judges were loath to hear the de- f endant at all, and demanded that their vote be taken against him straightway ; but Aristides sprang to his feet and seconded the culprit's plea for a hearmg and the usual legal procedure. And again, when he was serving as private arbi- trator between two men, on one of them saying tha,t his opponent had done Aristides much injury, " TeU me rather," he said, « whether he has done thee any TREASURER OF STATE 129 wrong; it is for thee, not for myself, that I am seeking justice." When he was elected overseer of the public rev- a enues, he proved clearly that large sums had been embezzled, not only by his fellow-oflScials, but also by those of former years, and particularly by The- mistocles : — " The man was clever, but of his hand had no control." For this cause Themistocles banded many together against Aristides, prosecuted him for theft at the auditing of his accounts, and actually got a verdict against him, according to Idomeneus. But the firsts and best men of the city were incensed at this, and he was not only exempted from his fine, but even appointed to administer the same charge again. Then he pretended to repent him of his former course, and made himself more pliable, thus giving pleasure to those who were stealing the common funds by not examining them or holding them to strict account, so that they gorged themselves with the public mon- eys, and then lauded Aristides to the skies, and pleaded with the people in his behalf, eagerly desirous that he be once more elected to his office. But just 4 as they were about to vote, Aristides rebuked the Athenians. " Verily," said he, " when I served you in office with fidelity and honor, I was reviled and persecuted ; but now that I am flinging away much of the common fund to thieves, I am thought to be an admirable citizen. For my part, I am more ashamed of my present honor than I was of my li 130 ARISTIDES 4i' former condemnation, and I am sore distressed for you, because it is more honorable in your eyes to please base men than to guard the public moneys." By these words, as well as by exposing their thefts, he did indeed stop the mouths of the men who were then testifying loudly in his favor, but he won genu- ine and just praise from the best citizens. V. Now when Datis, on being sent by Darius ostensibly to punish the Athenians for burning Sardis, . . .. , .but really to subdue all the Hellenes, put Anstules at *'""»/ Marathon, j^ at Marathou with all his armament and went to ravaging the country, then, of the ten gen- erals appointed by the Athenians for the conduct of the war, it was Miltiades who enjoyed the greatest consideration, but in reputation and influence Aris- tides was second only to him. By adopting at that time the opinion of Miltiades about the battle to be * fought, he did much to turn the scale in its favor.. And since each general held the chief authority for a single day in turn, when the command came round to him, he handed it over to Miltiades, thereby teach- . ing his fellow-officers that to obey and follow men * of ° wisdom is not disgraceful, but dignified and sal-, utary. By thus appeasing the jealousy of his col- leagues and inducing them to be cheerfully contented in the adoption of a single opinion (and that the ' best), he confirmed Miltiades in the strength which .comes from an unrestricted power. For each of the other generals at once relinquished his own right to command for a day in turn, and put himself at the orders of Miltiades. AT MARATHON 131 In the battle the Athenian centre was the hardest 2 pressed, and it was there that the Barbarians held their ground the longest, over against the tribes *Leontis and Antiochis. There, then, Themistocles ^and Aristides fought brilliantly, ranged side by side; -for one was a Leontid, the other an Antiochid. When the Athenians had routed the Barbarians and driven them aboard their ships and saw that they were sailing away, not toward the islands, but into the gulf toward Attica under compulsion of wind and wave, then they were afraid lest the enemy find Athens empty of defenders, and so they hastened homeward with nine tribes, and reached the city that very day. •But Aristides was left behind at Marathon withs his own tribe, to guard the captives and the booty. Nor did he belie his reputation, but though silver and gold lay about in heaps, and though there were all sorts of raiment and untold wealth besides in the tents and captured utensils, he neither desired to meddle with it himself, nor would he suffer any one else to do so, except as certain ones helped themselves without his knowledge. Among these was Callias the Torch-bearer. Some* Barbarian, it seems, rushed up to this man, supposing him to be a king from his long hair and the head- band that he wore, made obeisance to him, and tak- ing him by the hand in suppliant fashion, showed him a great mass of gold buried up in a sort of pit. Callias, most savage and lawless of men, took up the gold ; but the man, to prevent his betraying the I IH 132 ARISTIDES JUSTICE AND OSTRACISM 133 M matter to others, he slew. From this circumstance, they say, his descendants are called by the comic poets " Laccopluti." or " Pit-wealthies," in sly aUusion to the place where Callias found his gold. 5 Aristides at once received the office of Archon Eponymous. And yet Demetrius of Phalerum says that it was a little while before his death, and after the battle of Plataea, that the man held this office. But in the official records, after Xanthippides, in whose year of office Mardonius was defeated at Platsea, you cannot find, long as the list is, so much as the name Aristides; whereas immediately after Phanippus, in whose year of office the victory at Marathon was won, an Aristides is recorded as archon. VI. Of all his virtues it was his justice that most impressed the multitude, because of its most contin- Aristides ual and most general exercise. Wherefore, "TheJast;"^^^^^^ ^^j. ^nd a man of the people, he philosophy or , . , i jvi of justice. acquired that most kmgly and godlike sur- name of " The Just." This no kings or tyrants ever coveted, nay, they rejoiced to be surnamed "Be- siegers," or " Thunderbolts," or '' Conquerors," and some *' Eagles," or "Hawks," cultivating the repu- tation which is based on violence and power, as it seems, rather than on virtue. % And yet divinity, to which such men are eager to adapt and conform themselves, is believed to have three elements of superiority, — incorruption, power, and virtue ; and the most reverend, the divinest of these, is virtue. For vacuum and the ultimate ele- ments partake of incorruption; and great power is * exhibited by earthquakes and thunderbolts, and rush- ing tornadoes, and invading floods; but in funda- mental justice nothing participates except through the exercise of intelligent reasoning powers. Therefore, considering the three feelings which ares generally entertained towards divinity, — envy, fear, and honorable regard, — men seem to envy and felici- tate the deities for their incorruption and perpetuity ; to dread and fear them for their sovereignty and power ; but to love and honor and revere them for their justice. And yet,' although men are thus dis- posed, it is immortality, of which our nature is not capable, and power, the chief disposal of which is in the hands of fortune, that they eagerly desire ; while as for virtue, the only divine excellence within our reach, they put it at the bottom of the list, unwisely too, since a life passed in power and great fortune and authority needs justice to make it divine ; by in- justice it is made bestial. VII. Now, to resume, it befell Aristides to be loved at first because of this surname, but afterwards to be jealously hated, especially when The- His ostra- mistocles set the story going among the ^^^too multitude that Aristides had done away J*^**- with the public courts of justice by his determining and judging everything in private, and that, without any one perceiving it, he had established for himself a monarchy, saving only the armed body-guard. And besides, the people too must by this time have become greatly elated over their victory; they thought nothing too good for themselves, and so were vexed with A-^ X'". .^' '? •A.v i>^ i> >^ \w So