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Authors: Victor Davis Hanson
Tags: Non-Fiction
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purportedly barked to detractors, “I may not know how to tune the lyre or play the harp, but I do know how to take a small and unknown city and make it famous and great.” While Themistocles sought out the best tutors—such as Mnesiphilos, the material philosopher who became his lifelong confidant—he still consciously played on his lowly origins to cement his populist credentials among the Athenian
dêmos. 45
Usually Athenian democrats appear in the texts of Aristophanes, Plato, the Old Oligarch, Thucydides, Plutarch, and Xenophon as rabble-rousers. Their radically egalitarian ends were always used to justify their uncouth means. In that context, then, Themistocles frequents Athenian literature as the archetypical
polypragmôn,
the rascally busybody, who rose in Athenian society by his cleverness and limitless troublemaking. He was the antithesis to the more aristocratic and sober Miltiades, Aristides, and Cimon. Those were his chief rivals, and they were all bound by supposed landed reverence and privilege—and, in the case of Aristides, superior character and temperament. In any case, the biographer Plutarch records an entire corpus of popular abuse of Themistocles. In the Greek view, by the time Themistocles died, his deceptions and many ruses had ensured that Athens won the battle of Salamis, split the forces of the retreating Persians, and fortified the victorious city—and yet in retrospect were still seen as proof of his unsavory character. 46
By the mid-470s, postwar Athens was mostly secure and on the rise. The city was well into an initial rebuilding of what had been lost in the burning of 480. Revisionism was the order of the day. The now distant victory at Salamis increasingly had become retroactively reinterpreted in the assembly as a logical manifestation of Athenian naval power, rather than, as was true a decade earlier, the most unlikely victory in thehistory of the Greek people. Some wealthier Athenians even claimed that Themistocles had really done little to ensure the Athenian victory at Salamis. They variously attributed the great victory to either the allies or the sudden arrival of Aristides and his hoplites. Odder still, the radical growth of Athenian influence in the Aegean between 480 and 471 in the public mind was beginning to become more associated with his conservative rivals Aristides and Cimon than with Themistocles. 47
By 459, Themistocles was increasingly politically irrelevant. His reputation was fading among the people and being torn down by his aging rivals who still knew of it. It is indeed likely that Themistocles killed himself, a shameful thing to do in ancient Greek and Roman society—yet often favored by the most honorable figures in antiquity, from the mythical Ajax to the old Roman Cato. But as far as his problems with political rivals go, they were to be expected given Themistocles’ achievements.
How Did Themistocles Do It?
Themistocles’ multifaceted leadership entailed diplomacy, political partisanship, grand strategy, battle tactics, calm in combat, and unabashed cunning. Before the onset of Xerxes, he enacted measures that he believed might check Persian power, and events proved his belief correct. To the historian Thucydides, such “foresight” separated Themistocles from most successful Greek military thinkers of his age, who either had no comprehensive view of strategy or claimed such foreordained knowledge in hindsight. In three precise areas the advice of Themistocles proved critical in saving what had seemed surely lost.
1.
The building of the armada.
Had Themistocles earlier (483) not urged the Athenians to build their fleet with the sudden revenues from the unexpected strike at the silver mines of Laurium, there would probably have been no chance for a Greek defense at Salamis. Themistocles plowed ahead against the advice of most Athenians, quite contrary to the received infantry wisdom from the recent victory at Marathon. That he claimed the ships were
dêmos. 45
Usually Athenian democrats appear in the texts of Aristophanes, Plato, the Old Oligarch, Thucydides, Plutarch, and Xenophon as rabble-rousers. Their radically egalitarian ends were always used to justify their uncouth means. In that context, then, Themistocles frequents Athenian literature as the archetypical
polypragmôn,
the rascally busybody, who rose in Athenian society by his cleverness and limitless troublemaking. He was the antithesis to the more aristocratic and sober Miltiades, Aristides, and Cimon. Those were his chief rivals, and they were all bound by supposed landed reverence and privilege—and, in the case of Aristides, superior character and temperament. In any case, the biographer Plutarch records an entire corpus of popular abuse of Themistocles. In the Greek view, by the time Themistocles died, his deceptions and many ruses had ensured that Athens won the battle of Salamis, split the forces of the retreating Persians, and fortified the victorious city—and yet in retrospect were still seen as proof of his unsavory character. 46
By the mid-470s, postwar Athens was mostly secure and on the rise. The city was well into an initial rebuilding of what had been lost in the burning of 480. Revisionism was the order of the day. The now distant victory at Salamis increasingly had become retroactively reinterpreted in the assembly as a logical manifestation of Athenian naval power, rather than, as was true a decade earlier, the most unlikely victory in thehistory of the Greek people. Some wealthier Athenians even claimed that Themistocles had really done little to ensure the Athenian victory at Salamis. They variously attributed the great victory to either the allies or the sudden arrival of Aristides and his hoplites. Odder still, the radical growth of Athenian influence in the Aegean between 480 and 471 in the public mind was beginning to become more associated with his conservative rivals Aristides and Cimon than with Themistocles. 47
By 459, Themistocles was increasingly politically irrelevant. His reputation was fading among the people and being torn down by his aging rivals who still knew of it. It is indeed likely that Themistocles killed himself, a shameful thing to do in ancient Greek and Roman society—yet often favored by the most honorable figures in antiquity, from the mythical Ajax to the old Roman Cato. But as far as his problems with political rivals go, they were to be expected given Themistocles’ achievements.
How Did Themistocles Do It?
Themistocles’ multifaceted leadership entailed diplomacy, political partisanship, grand strategy, battle tactics, calm in combat, and unabashed cunning. Before the onset of Xerxes, he enacted measures that he believed might check Persian power, and events proved his belief correct. To the historian Thucydides, such “foresight” separated Themistocles from most successful Greek military thinkers of his age, who either had no comprehensive view of strategy or claimed such foreordained knowledge in hindsight. In three precise areas the advice of Themistocles proved critical in saving what had seemed surely lost.
1.
The building of the armada.
Had Themistocles earlier (483) not urged the Athenians to build their fleet with the sudden revenues from the unexpected strike at the silver mines of Laurium, there would probably have been no chance for a Greek defense at Salamis. Themistocles plowed ahead against the advice of most Athenians, quite contrary to the received infantry wisdom from the recent victory at Marathon. That he claimed the ships were
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