Themistocles

And at last, when even his fellow-citizens were led by their jealousy of his greatness to welcome such slanders against him, he was forced to allude to his own achievements when he addressed the Assembly, till he became tiresome thereby, and he once said to the malcontents: Why are ye vexed that the same men should often benefit you? He offended the multitude also by building the temple of Artemis, whom he surnamed Aristoboule, or Best Counsellor, intimating thus that it was he who had given the best counsel to the city and to the Hellenes.

This temple he established near his house in Melite, where now the public officers cast out the bodies of those who have been put to death, and carry forth the garments and the nooses of those who have dispatched themselves by hanging. A portrait-statue of Themistocles stood in this temple of Aristoboule down to my time, from which he appears to have been a man not only of heroic spirit, but also of heroic presence.

Well then, they visited him with ostracism,[*]( About 472 B.C.) curtailing his dignity and pre-eminence, as they were wont to do in the case of all whom they thought to have oppressive power, and to be incommensurate with true democratic equality. For ostracism was not a penalty, but a way of pacifying and alleviating that jealousy which delights to humble the eminent, breathing out its malice into this disfranchisement.

After he had been thus banished from the city, and while he was sojourning at Argos, circumstances connected with the death of Pausanias gave his enemies at Athens ground for proceeding against him. The one who actually brought in the indictment against him for treason was Leobotes the son of Alcmeon, of the deme Agraule, but the Spartans supported him in the accusation. Pausanias, while engaged in his grand scheme of treachery, at first kept it concealed from Themistocles;

but when he saw him thus banished from his state and in great bitterness of spirit, he made bold to invite him into partnership in his own undertakings, showing him a letter he had received from the king, and inciting him against the Hellenes as a base and thankless people. Themistocles rejected the solicitation of Pausanias, and utterly refused the proffered partnership; and yet he disclosed the propositions to no one, nor did he even give information of the treacherous scheme, because he expected either that Pausanias would give it up of his own accord, or that in some other way he would be found out, since he was so irrationally grasping after such strange and desperate objects.