c. 495–429 BCAthens
The leading statesman of Athens in its Golden Age, who championed democracy, rebuilt the Acropolis and led the city into the Peloponnesian War.
Read the profile“Strike, but hear me.”
Life
Themistocles did not come from the old Athenian aristocracy, and he rose by sheer ability and ambition. As archon in 493 BC he began fortifying the harbour of Piraeus. When a rich new vein of silver was found at the mines of Laurion around 483 BC, he persuaded the Athenians not to share out the money but to spend it on a fleet of some 200 triremes.
Salamis
When Xerxes invaded in 480 BC, the oracle at Delphi told the Athenians to trust in their wooden walls. Themistocles argued that this meant their ships. Athens was evacuated, and he persuaded the allied commanders to fight in the narrow straits of Salamis, even sending a secret message to Xerxes to lure the Persian fleet in. In the cramped waters the Persian ships could not manoeuvre, and the Greeks won a crushing victory.
Exile
His cleverness and arrogance made enemies. Around 471 BC he was ostracised, and later, accused of collaborating with Persia, he fled to the court of the Persian king Artaxerxes I, who made him governor of Magnesia in Asia Minor, where he died. Thucydides praised him as a man of extraordinary natural genius.
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