Themistocles

Phanias, however, writes that the mother of Themistocles 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 certain well-born youths 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 distinction between aliens and legitimates.

However, it is clear that he was connected with the family of the Lycomidae, for he caused the chapel shrine at Phlya, which belonged to the Lycomidae, and had been burned by the Barbarians, to be restored at his own costs and adorned with frescoes, as Simonides has stated.

However lowly his birth, it is agreed on all hands that while yet a boy he was impetuous, by nature sagacious, and by election enterprising and prone to public life. In times of relaxation 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 composing and rehearsing to himself mock speeches. These speeches would be

in accusation or defence of some boy or other. 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 evil. 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 liberal sort, he would learn reluctantly and sluggishly; and to all that was said for the cultivation of sagacity or practical efficiency, he clearly showed an indifference far beyond his years, as though he put his confidence in his natural gifts alone.

Thus it came about that, in after life, at entertainments 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 accomplishments of his, but rather taking in hand a city that was 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,[*]( 440 B.C.) and with whom Anaxagoras was intimate.

Rather, then, might one side with those who say that Themistocles was a disciple of Mnesiphilus the Phrearrhian, a man who was neither a rhetorician nor one of the so-called physical philosophers, 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 received 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.