Themistocles

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.

And Themistocles himself, they say, now become great and courted by many, said to his children, when a splendid table was once set for him: My children, we should now have been undone, had we not been undone before. [*](Thuc. 1.138) Three cities, as most writers say, were given him for bread, wine, and meat, namely: Magnesia, Lampsacus, and Myus; and two others are added by Neanthes of Cyzicus and by Phanias, namely: Percote and Palaescepsis; these for his bedding and raiment.

Now as he was going down to the sea on his commission to deal with Hellenic affairs, a Persian, Epixyes by name, satrap of Upper Phrygia, plotted against his life, having for a long time kept certain Pisidians in readiness to slay him whenever he should reach the village called Lion’s Head, and take up his night’s quarters there. But while Themistocles was asleep at midday before, it is said that the Mother of the Gods[*]( Rhea, or Cybele, Magna Mater, called also Dindymene, from Mount Dindymon, in Phrygia.) appeared to him in a dream and said: O Themistocles, shun a head of lions, that thou mayest not encounter a lion. And for this service to thee, I demand of thee Mnesiptolema to be my handmaid.