Themistocles

Plutarch

Plutarch. Plutarch's Lives, Vol. II. Perrin, Bernadotte, translator. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1914.

The battles which were fought at that time with the ships of the Barbarians in the narrows were not decisive of the main issue, it is true, but they were of the greatest service to the Hellenes in giving them experience, since they were thus taught by actual achievements in the face of danger that neither multitudes of ships nor brilliantly decorated figure-heads nor boastful shouts or barbarous battle-hymns have any terror for men who know how to come to close quarters and dare to fight there; but that they must despise all such things, rush upon the very persons of their foes, grapple with them, and fight it out to the bitter end.

Of this Pindar seems to have been well aware when he said of the battle of Artemisium:—

  1. Where Athenians’ valiant sons set in radiance eternal
  2. Liberty’s corner-stone.
[*](Bergk, Frag. 77.) For verily the foundation of victory is courage. Artemisium is a part of Euboea above Hestiaea,—a sea-beach stretching away to the north,—and just about opposite to it lies Olizon, in the territory once subject to Philoctetes. It has a small temple of Artemis surnamed Proseoea, which is surrounded by trees and enclosed by upright slabs of white marble. This stone, when you rub it with your hand, gives off the color and the odor of saffron.

On one of these slabs the following elegy was inscribed:—

  1. Nations of all sorts of men from Asia’s boundaries coming,
  2. Sons of the Athenians once, here on this arm of the sea,
  3. Whelmed in a battle of ships, and the host of the Medes was destroyed;
  4. These are the tokens thereof, built for the Maid Artemis.
[*](Bergk, Poet. Lyr. Graeci, iii.4 p. 480.) And a place is pointed out on the shore, with sea sand all about it, which supplies from its depths a dark ashen powder, apparently the product of fire, and here they are thought to have burned their wrecks and dead bodies.

However, when they learned by messengers from Thermopylae to Artemisium that Leonidas was slain and that Xerxes was master of the pass, they withdrew further down into Hellas, the Athenians bringing up the extreme rear because of their valor, and greatly elated by their achievements. As Themistocles sailed along the coasts, wherever he saw places at which the enemy must necessarily put in for shelter and supplies, be inscribed conspicuous writings on stones,

some of which he found to his hand there by chance, and some he himself caused to be set near the inviting anchorages and watering places. In these writings he solemnly enjoined upon the Ionians, if it were possible, to come over to the side of the Athenians, who were their ancestors, and who were risking all in behalf of their freedom; but if they could not do this, to damage the Barbarian cause in battle, and bring confusion among them. By this means he hoped either to fetch the Ionians over to his side, or to confound them by bringing the Barbarians into suspicion of them.

Although Xerxes had made a raid up through Doris into Phocis, and was burning the cities of the Phocians, the Hellenes gave them no succour. The Athenians, it is true, begged them to go up into Boeotia against the enemy, and make a stand there in defence of Attica, as they themselves had gone up by sea to Artemisium in defence of others. But no one listened to their appeals. All clung fast to the Peloponnesus, and were eager to collect all the forces inside the Isthmus, and were building a rampart across the Isthmus from sea to sea.