Themistocles

Themistocles was the Athenian statesman who turned Athens into a naval power and planned the victory over the Persian fleet at Salamis in 480 BCE, the turning point of Xerxes's invasion of Greece. A self-made politician of the young democracy, he later fell from favour, was driven into exile and ended his days as a governor in the service of the Persian king he had once defeated. His life is known mainly from Herodotus, Thucydides and Plutarch, who disagree on many details.

Themistocles was born around 524 BCE in the Attic district of Phrearrhii. His father, Neocles, was a citizen of no special distinction; his mother was probably foreign, and the family seems to have been treated as outsiders. He grew up as Athens threw off its tyrants in 510 BCE and adopted the democratic reforms of Cleisthenes, which opened public life to men without noble backing. Themistocles courted ordinary citizens and became one of the first Athenian politicians to build his career on their support.

Elected chief archon for 493 BCE, he began developing the rocky harbours of Piraeus as the city's port. He fought at Marathon against the first Persian invasion in 490, perhaps as one of the ten generals.

Through the 480s Themistocles pressed for a navy, at odds with the aristocratic Aristides. When a rich new vein of silver was found in the mines of Laurion in 483 BCE, Aristides wanted it shared among the citizens; Themistocles proposed spending it on warships, citing the war with neighbouring Aegina rather than the more distant Persian threat. He won, and in 482 Aristides was ostracised, voted into ten years' exile. The new triremes, eventually some 200, would prove decisive.

When Xerxes invaded in 480, a Spartan, Eurybiades, held formal command of the allied Greek fleet, but Herodotus says Themistocles led it in practice. He persuaded the Athenians to man every ship, which meant abandoning their city; women and children were sent to safety. The fleet held the Persians off Artemisium while Leonidas fought at Thermopylae, then withdrew to the island of Salamis as the Persians burned Athens.

The other allies wanted to fall back to the Isthmus of Corinth. Themistocles insisted on fighting in the narrow straits, reportedly threatening to sail the whole Athenian people off to Sicily if they refused. He then sent a servant to Xerxes with a false message that the Greeks were about to flee. The Persians rowed into the straits, where their larger fleet lost its order and was heavily defeated. The victory saved southern Greece, and the Persian army was finally beaten at Plataea in 479.

After the war Themistocles had the city walls rebuilt, delaying Spartan objections with deliberately slow diplomacy until the work was done, and he linked Athens to Piraeus. His boasting and power made enemies, however, and around 472 or 471 BCE he was ostracised. While he lived at Argos, Sparta accused him of sharing in the treason of its general Pausanias. Rather than stand trial he fled, passing through Molossia and Macedon to Asia Minor, and Athens condemned him as a traitor.

Themistocles offered his services to the new Persian king, Artaxerxes I, asking for a year to learn the language. He was treated with great honour and made governor of Magnesia on the Maeander, with revenues from neighbouring cities. He may have been the first ruler to put his own portrait on coins, though this is disputed. He died at Magnesia in 459 BCE, according to Thucydides of natural causes; a later story claimed he poisoned himself rather than lead a Persian attack on Greece. Thucydides judged him a man of extraordinary natural genius.

Our 500 BCE map shows the Achaemenid Empire of Xerxes I on the eve of the invasions; by the 400 BCE map Magnesia, where he died, lies inside it still. See also the Battle of Marathon, the Battle of Salamis, Leonidas I and modern Greece.