Themistocles

However, when he had come into the King’s presence, and had once more paid him obeisance, the King welcomed him and spake him kindly, and said he already owed him two hundred talents, for since he had delivered himself up it was only just that he himself should receive the reward proclaimed for his captor. And he promised him much more besides, and bade him take heart, and gave him leave to say whatever he wished concerning the affairs of Hellas, with all frankness of speech.

But Themistocles made answer that the speech of man was like embroidered tapestries, since like them this too had to be extended in order to display its patterns, but when it was rolled up it concealed and distorted them. Wherefore he had need of time. The King at once showed his pleasure at this comparison by bidding him take time, and so Themistocles asked for a year, and in that time he learned the Persian language sufficiently to have interviews with the King by himself without interpreters.

Outsiders thought these conferences concerned Hellenic matters merely; but since about that time many innovations were introduced by the King at court and among his favorites, the magnates became jealous of Themistocles, on the ground that he had made bold to use his freedom of speech with the King to their harm. For the honors he enjoyed were far beyond those paid to other foreigners; nay, he actually took part in the King’s hunts and in his household diversions, so far that he even had access to the queen-mother and became intimate with her, and at the King’s bidding heard expositions also of the Magian lore.

And when Demaratus the Spartan, being bidden to ask a gift, asked that he might ride in state through Sardis, wearing his tiara upright after the manner of the Persian kings, Mithropaustes the King’s cousin said, touching the tiara of Demaratus: This tiara of thine hath no brains to cover; indeed thou wilt not be Zeus merely because thou graspest the thunderbolt.

The King also repulsed Demaratus in anger at his request, and was minded to be inexorable towards him, and yet Themistocles begged and obtained a reconciliation with him. And it is said that later kings also, in whose reigns Persia and Hellas came into closer relations, as often as they asked for a Hellene to advise them, promised him in writing, every one, that he should be more influential at court than Themistocles.