Themistocles
Yet another Athenian hero screwed over by his country was Themistocles (524 – 460 BC). He was a brilliant politician and admiral, whose strategy saved Athens and Greece from Persian subjugation with a victory at the Battle of Salamis in 480 BC. Born to an aristocratic father and a non Greek concubine, Themistocles was ineligible for Athenian citizenship, until democratic reforms made citizens of all free men in Athens. That made him a lifelong champion of democracy.
After the Athenian victory over the Persians at Marathon in 490 BC, most Athenians thought the danger had passed, but not Themistocles. In the 480s BC, Athens’ state-owned silver mines struck a rich vein, and many Athenians called for dividing the windfall among the citizens. Themistocles, convinced that the Persians would return, called for investing the new riches on warships.
There was strong opposition: a strong navy would entail higher taxes borne by the rich. Simultaneously, it would enhance the political clout of the poorer classes who would row those ships. A land strategy based on hoplites, such as those who had won at Marathon, would cost less. It also would not erode the monopoly of the middle and upper classes – the only ones who could afford to equip themselves as hoplites – on the prestige of being the city’s sole armed protectors.
Themistocles engineered the ostracism and banishment of his opponents from Athens, then won the Athenian Assembly’s approval for his ship building program. By 480 BC, when the Persians launched a massive invasion of Greece, Athens had over 200 triremes – as many as the rest of Greece combined. The city also had a booming ship building industry, and her shipyards were kept constantly busy, churning out new warships.
After overcoming a Spartan force at Thermopylae, the Persians advanced on Athens. Many Athenians wanted to fight the Persian army, but Themistocles convinced them it would be futile. Supported by a vague prophecy from the Oracle of Delphi, whom Themistocles might have bribed, he argued instead that Athenians should put their faith not on Athens’ city walls, but on her “wooden walls – her ships. As a result, when the Persians arrived, they encountered a nearly deserted Athens, whose citizens had been evacuated to the nearby island of Salamis. Seizing Athens, the Persians razed the city’s walls, and put the city to the torch.
Off Salamis, the decisive battle of the war was fought. Athens’ Greek allies wavered and were on the verge of taking their ships and going home, when Themistocles forced a battle by tricking the Persian king into believing he had changed sides. He convinced Persia’s king to attack the Greek ships in restricted waters, which had tricky tides and wind patterns with which the Greeks were familiar, but the Persians were not. The Persians were crushed, and the Greeks won a decisive victory.
When the Athenians returned to their destroyed city, their Spartan allies asked them not to rebuild the city’s walls as a sign of good faith. Themistocles led a delegation to Sparta to negotiate, and dragged out the negotiations while the Athenians feverishly rebuilt the city walls. By the time the Spartans caught on, the walls had already been erected.
In subsequent years, Themistocles’ political fortunes declined, and despite his heroics in saving Athens, his city screwed him over. Not given to gratitude for long, the Athenians ostracized and exiled him some years after Salamis. Nimbly, he went to Persia, and ended his days governing some Greek cities in Asia minor on behalf of the Persian king.
