Themistocles

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.