Themistocles

Athenian general, visionary politician, and hero of Salamis. By persuading the Athenians to develop Piraeus as a port (493 BC), and to use their rich silver deposits to build a fleet (483 BC), he not only made possible their great naval victory at Salamis (480 BC), but also laid the foundations of their maritime empire. He fell from favour c.470 BC, and was ostracized. After many adventures, he served the Persian king in Asia Minor as the Governor of Magnesia.

Themistocles (Greek: Θεμιστοκλῆς; 525–460 BC) was a leader in the Athenian democracy during the Persian Wars. He favored the expansion of the navy to meet the Persian threat and persuaded the Athenians to spend the surplus generated by their silver mines on building new ships - the Athenian navy grew from 70 to 200 ships.

Themistocles was the son of Neocles, an Athenian of no distinction and moderate means, his mother being a Carian or a Thracian.

The death of Miltiades left the stage to Aristides and Themistocles. Their rivalry, terminated in 483-82 by the ostracism of Aristides, was largely due to the fact that Themistocles was the advocate of a policy of naval expansion. This policy was of the highest importance to Athens, and indeed, Greece. Athens faced the equal if not superior power of Aegina, while the danger of a renewed Persian invasion loomed. Themistocles persuaded his countrymen to build 200 triremes with the money (100 talents) from a newly-discovered rich vein of silver at Laureion, and to continue his work of fortifying the harbours of Piraeus in place of the open roadstead of Phalerum.

Themistocles may have been archon in 483-82 at the time when this naval programme began. In any case, at the year prior to the invasion of Xerxes Themistocles was the most influential politician in Athens, if not in Greece. Though the Greek fleet was nominally under the control of the Spartan Eurybiades, Themistocles caused the Greeks to fight the indecisive Battle of Artemisium, and more, it was he who brought about the Battle of Salamis, by his threat that he would lead the Athenian army to found a new home in the West, and by his seemingly treacherous message to Xerxes, whose fleet was lured into the channel between Salamis and the mainland, and crushed.

This left the Athenians free to restore their ruined city. Sparta, on the ground that it was dangerous to Greece that there should be any citadel north of the Isthmus of Corinth which an invader might hold, urged against this, but Themistocles by means of diplomatic delays and subterfuges enabled the work to be carried sufficiently near to completion to make the walls defensible. He also carried out his original plan of making Piraeus a real harbour and fortress for Athens. Athens thus became the finest trade centre in Greece, and this, along with Themistocles' remission of the alien's tax, induced many foreign business men to settle in Athens.

After the crisis of the Persian invasion Themistocles and Aristides appear to have made up their differences. But Themistocles soon began to lose the confidence of the people, partly due to his arrogance (it is said that he built near his own house a sanctuary to Artemis Aristoboulë ["of good counsel"]) and partly due to his alleged readiness to take bribes. He was proclaimed a traitor at Athens and his property was confiscated, though his friends saved him some portion of it.

He was well received by the Persians and was allowed to settle in Magnesia on the Maeander River.

Though his end was discreditable, and his great wealth can hardly have been obtained by loyal public service, there is no doubt that his services to Athens and to Greece were great. He created the Athenian fleet and with it the possibility of the Delian League, which became the Athenian empire, and there are indications (e.g.