Read Online The Savior Generals: How Five Great Commanders Saved Wars That Were Lost—From Ancient Greece to Iraq by Victor Davis Hanson - Free Book Online
Authors: Victor Davis Hanson
Tags: Non-Fiction
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extremist and unsustainable democracy severed from the land. It was Themistocles, Plato also complained, who had first “stripped the citizens of their spear and shield, and brought the Athenian people down to the rowing-pad and oar.” 41
Yet for a decade after the great Athenian victory, the upstart Themistocles lost no occasion to remind the Athenians that he alone had saved them. Only he had ensured them safety from future Persian attack. He continually sought to translate his own military prestige into remakingthe very nature of Athens itself. His aim was to reject the old rural polis of the sixth-century Athenian lawgiver Solon and aspire to a cosmopolitan naval empire that would in time rule the Aegean under Pericles—more powerful and more majestic precisely because it would be more egalitarian. Themistocles had used guile to defeat the Persians at Salamis. But this time he was employing that same base cunning to marginalize Athenians at home.
As was the fate of many Greek visionaries, Themistocles’ novel ideas instantly branded him a dangerous radical and earned him exile, yet within decades would be institutionalized by Pericles and others as official imperial policy. The fleet would only grow larger; even greater walls would connect the city to the port at Piraeus; and the poor would find even more avenues of state support. But that acceptance would come only after Themistocles’ exile, and without full acknowledgment of his role as the creator of maritime empire. Themistocles, Plutarch concluded, “increased the power of the common people against the aristocracy, filling them with recklessness, once the control of the state came into the hands of the sailors, boatswains, and captains.” 42
It did not help the prophet of sea power that in a status-obsessed democracy, Themistocles was of mixed ancestry. While every freeborn Athenian male in theory aspired to an equality of result under Athenian democracy, good lineage, money, and family influence were, at least privately, still highly prized. Rumors claimed the mother of Themistocles could have been Carian or Thracian. Maybe she was even a prostitute or—who knows?—even a slave. His father was “not very well known at Athens.” A Roman-era marble bust, now at the museum in Ostia, Italy, purports to be a copy of an original fifth-century-B.C. bronze sculpture of Themistocles: The face is unlike almost any other idealized portrait of Greek commanders, in showing a rather coarse figure with cropped hair and beard—more akin to a later Roman military emperor from the provinces of North Africa than a classical Greek hero. 43
Apparently the family of Themistocles had little social clout, even if they did have some money. “Too obscure,” Plutarch further sniffed of his father, “to advance his reputation.” Later writers reveled in accounts of his earlier debaucheries and uncouth behavior to prove him an innate boor and profligate upstart. His appetites offered proof that Themistocles would, by virtue of his audacity, “be entirely great—whether for good or evil.” At any rate, the name Themistocles in Greek meant “Famed for Right.” 44
In the traditional ancient Greek city-state, ideas and agendas were rarely judged entirely on their own merits, separate from the character, breeding, and background of the men who advanced them. Most ancient accounts of Themistocles’ youth chronicle how he outsmarted the better-born. Both his intelligence and ruthless energy came naturally to Themistocles, what the historian Thucydides later acknowledged as his “native capacity.” Thucydides, who likewise may have been of mixed Thracian ancestry, also claimed that Themistocles’ talent lay in an inbred good judgment unrefined by experience or education. In truth, like most upstarts, he had to study and prepare far more diligently than did his more advantaged rivals to train his “infinitely mobile and serpentine mind.” So, for example, Themistocles
Yet for a decade after the great Athenian victory, the upstart Themistocles lost no occasion to remind the Athenians that he alone had saved them. Only he had ensured them safety from future Persian attack. He continually sought to translate his own military prestige into remakingthe very nature of Athens itself. His aim was to reject the old rural polis of the sixth-century Athenian lawgiver Solon and aspire to a cosmopolitan naval empire that would in time rule the Aegean under Pericles—more powerful and more majestic precisely because it would be more egalitarian. Themistocles had used guile to defeat the Persians at Salamis. But this time he was employing that same base cunning to marginalize Athenians at home.
As was the fate of many Greek visionaries, Themistocles’ novel ideas instantly branded him a dangerous radical and earned him exile, yet within decades would be institutionalized by Pericles and others as official imperial policy. The fleet would only grow larger; even greater walls would connect the city to the port at Piraeus; and the poor would find even more avenues of state support. But that acceptance would come only after Themistocles’ exile, and without full acknowledgment of his role as the creator of maritime empire. Themistocles, Plutarch concluded, “increased the power of the common people against the aristocracy, filling them with recklessness, once the control of the state came into the hands of the sailors, boatswains, and captains.” 42
It did not help the prophet of sea power that in a status-obsessed democracy, Themistocles was of mixed ancestry. While every freeborn Athenian male in theory aspired to an equality of result under Athenian democracy, good lineage, money, and family influence were, at least privately, still highly prized. Rumors claimed the mother of Themistocles could have been Carian or Thracian. Maybe she was even a prostitute or—who knows?—even a slave. His father was “not very well known at Athens.” A Roman-era marble bust, now at the museum in Ostia, Italy, purports to be a copy of an original fifth-century-B.C. bronze sculpture of Themistocles: The face is unlike almost any other idealized portrait of Greek commanders, in showing a rather coarse figure with cropped hair and beard—more akin to a later Roman military emperor from the provinces of North Africa than a classical Greek hero. 43
Apparently the family of Themistocles had little social clout, even if they did have some money. “Too obscure,” Plutarch further sniffed of his father, “to advance his reputation.” Later writers reveled in accounts of his earlier debaucheries and uncouth behavior to prove him an innate boor and profligate upstart. His appetites offered proof that Themistocles would, by virtue of his audacity, “be entirely great—whether for good or evil.” At any rate, the name Themistocles in Greek meant “Famed for Right.” 44
In the traditional ancient Greek city-state, ideas and agendas were rarely judged entirely on their own merits, separate from the character, breeding, and background of the men who advanced them. Most ancient accounts of Themistocles’ youth chronicle how he outsmarted the better-born. Both his intelligence and ruthless energy came naturally to Themistocles, what the historian Thucydides later acknowledged as his “native capacity.” Thucydides, who likewise may have been of mixed Thracian ancestry, also claimed that Themistocles’ talent lay in an inbred good judgment unrefined by experience or education. In truth, like most upstarts, he had to study and prepare far more diligently than did his more advantaged rivals to train his “infinitely mobile and serpentine mind.” So, for example, Themistocles
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