Themistocles

Again, when one of his fellow-generals who thought he had done some vast service to the city, grew bold with Themistocles, and began to compare his own services with his, With the Festival-day, said he, the Day After once began a contention, saying: Thou art full of occupations and wearisome, but when I come, all enjoy at their leisure what has been richly provided beforehand; to which the Festival-day replied: True, but had I not come first, thou hadst not come at all. So now, said he, had I not come at that day of Salamis, where would thou and thy colleagues be now?

Of his son, who lorded it over his mother, and through her over himself, he said, jestingly, that the boy was the most powerful of all the Hellenes; for the Hellenes were commanded by the Athenians, the Athenians by himself, himself by the boy’s mother, and the mother by her boy. Again, with the desire to be somewhat peculiar in all that he did, when he offered a certain estate for sale, he bade proclamation to be made that it had an excellent neighbor into the bargain. Of two suitors for his daughter’s hand, he chose the likely man in preference to the rich man, saying that he wanted a man without money rather than money without a man. Such were his striking sayings.

After the great achievements now described, he straightway undertook to rebuild and fortify the city,—as Theopompus relates, by bribing the Spartan Ephors not to oppose the project; but as the majority say, by hoodwinking them. He came with this object to Sparta, ostensibly on an embassy, and when the Spartans brought up the charge that the Athenians were fortifying their city, and Polyarchus was sent expressly from Aegina with the same accusation,

he denied that it was so, and bade them send men to Athens to see for themselves, not only because this delay would secure time for the building of the wall, but also because he wished the Athenians to hold these envoys as hostages for his own person. And this was what actually happened. When the Lacedaemonians found out the truth they did him no harm, but concealed their displeasure and sent him away. After this he equipped the Piraeus, because he had noticed the favorable shape of its harbors, and wished to attach the whole city to the sea; thus in a certain manner counteracting the policies of the ancient Athenian kings.

For they, as it is said, in their efforts to draw the citizens away from the sea and accustom them to live not by navigation but by agriculture, disseminated the story about Athena, how when Poseidon was contending with her for possession of the country, she displayed the sacred olive-tree of the Acropolis to the judges, and so won the day. But Themistocles did not, as Aristophanes[*](Aristoph. Kn. 815) the comic poet says,

knead the Piraeus on to the city,