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The Death of Themistocles

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 September 2009

John Marr
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Extract

Our sources present us with three different versions of Themistocles' death. The purpose of this article is to examine these different versions, explain how and why they developed in the form they did, and show which version is most likely to be correct.

Type
Research Article
Information
Greece & Rome , Volume 42 , Issue 2 , October 1995 , pp. 159 - 167
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1995

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References

NOTES

1. It is generally agreed that Diodorus' main source for his account Themistocles' career in Book 11 was the fourth-century B.C. ‘universal’ historian, Ephorus of Cyme: see e.g. Podlecki, A. J., The Life of Themistocles (1975), p. 92Google Scholar.

2. There seem to have been two different chronologies of Themistocles' life in antiquity, with a discrepancy of about ten years between them: see Frost, F. J., Plutarch's Themistocles. A Historical Commentary (1980), pp. 70–1Google Scholar; Podlecki, , Life, pp. 195–9Google Scholar. However, even on the early chronology his death cannot be dated before 459.

3. ‘A Themistoclean Myth’, CR 12 (1898), 21–3Google Scholar. For the coin see e.g. Podlecki, , Life, plate 3c, facing p. 176Google Scholar; Hill, G. F., Sources for Greek History (2nd. ed., revised by Meiggs, R. and Andrewes, A., 1951), C10(b), p. 332Google Scholar. Magnesia on the Maeander was given to Themistocles by Artaxerxes (Thuc. 1.138.5).

4. Cf. Nepos, , Themistocles 9.1, where he sets out his reasons for a similar preference for the version of Thucydides over that of his other sourcesGoogle Scholar.

5. In this account Themistocles is invited by the King, who is eager to send a second expedition against Greece, to take command of the war, and he agrees to do so, having received sworn guarantees that the King will not march against the Greeks without Themistocles. He then sacrifices a bull and, filling a cup with its blood, drinks it down and dies immediately (parachrēma teleutēsai). Xerxes (the Persian King in this version) thereupon gives up his plan.

6. The evidence is summarized by Podlecki, , Life, pp. 197–8Google Scholar. According to Thucydides 1.137.3, Themistocles, after crossing the Aegean to Asia, wrote a letter to King Artaxerxes, ‘who had recently come to the throne’. This accession can be dated, on independent evidence, to late 465. See White, M. E., ‘Some Agiad dates: Pausanias and his sons’, JHS 84 (1964), 142 and n. 13CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

Diodorus 11.55.4–8, dates his flight from Argos (and, by implication, his condemnation for treason) to the archonship of Praxiergus, i.e. 471/0 (11.54.1). However, Diodorus assigns a large number of events of Themistocles' later life to this year, including his ostracism, flight from Argos, sojourn with Admetus of the Molossians, journey across to Asia, and reception by the King. Clearly this is a chronological impossibility. These events cannot all have occurred in the same year.

All our accounts agree that Themistocles was first ostracized, as a result of which he went to live in Argos, and was subsequently threatened with prosecution for treason, as a result of which he fled to north-west Greece. He was eventually given protection by Admetus, the king of the Molossians.

Certainty is not possible, but the most likely chronology, in my view, is ostracism in spring 470, trial and condemnation for treason in absentia in 468 or 467.

7. We are not told this explicitly by the main literary sources, but we are by Idomeneus of Lampsacus, (FGH 338 Fl = schol. Ar. Wasps 947)Google Scholar, Cicero, Ep.ad Brut. 1.15.11Google Scholar, and the Suda s.v. Themistokleous paides.

Atimiafor one's sons seems to have been a normal part of the penalty imposed on anyone convicted of treason in fifth-century Athens. Rhodes, P. J., A Commentary on the Aristotelian Athenaion Politeia (1981), p. 222Google Scholar, has argued that atimia in this context means ‘outlawry’ rather than ‘disfranchisement’. But in either case it would in practice have entailed exile. We may compare the decree recording the conviction for treason of Antiphon and Archeptolemus in 410 (Ps-Plutarch, XOr. [Moralia], 834 A-B), which imposed the death penalty on them, and atimia on both them and genos to ek toutōn, kai nothous kai gnēsious, ‘their issue, both legitimate and illegitimate sons’. Also revelant is the Athenian decree against Arthmius of Zeleia, probably passed in the 460s, and mentioned by a number of fourth-century orators (Dem. 9.41–3, 19.271; Aeschines 3.258; Dinarchus 2.24–25), in which, according to Plutarch, , Themistocks 6.4Google Scholar, ‘they inscribed his name on the list of the atimoi, together with his sons and family, because he had brought the Persians' gold and offered it to the Greeks’.

8. See the inscription dated c. 200 B.C. in Hill, , Sources, B122, p. 234Google Scholar. Now lost, it was originally published by Lolling, H., Ath. Mitt. 6 (1881), 103–5Google Scholar. It shows that Cleophantus' descendants were still receiving honours at Lampsacus at that time.

9. For Themistocks’ close connection with Artemis cf. Plut, . Them. 8.4, 22.2–3Google Scholar.

10. Athenian Propertied Families, 600–300 B.C. (1971), 6669 VI, p. 218Google Scholar.

11. See e.g. Rhodes, , Commentary, p. 320Google Scholar.

12. Herodotus 3.15 reports that the young Egyptian King, Psammenitus (=Psamtik), the son of Amasis, committed suicide by drinking bull's blood (he died immediately, apethane parachrēma), after the failure of his revolt against the Persian King, Cambyses. Herodotus' narrative suggests this took place very soon after Cambyses' conquest of Egypt in 525. It is extremely likely that Psammenitus' name was invoked by the Libyan and Egyptian kings, Inarus and Amyrtaeus, at the time of their nationalist revolt against Persia in the 450s (Thuc. 1.104,109–10). It is surely no accident that in this same chapter (3.15) Herodotus makes a forward reference to both Inarus and Amyrtaeus, which strongly suggests that his sources had mentioned Psammenitus, Inarus, and Amyrtaeus in the same breath.

This Egyptian revolt, which lasted for six years, was heavily supported by Athens and her allies, and Athenian public opinion at the time was doubtless both familiar with Psammenitus' name, and susceptible to an appeal to his memory and example.

13. See e.g. Stockton, D., ‘The death of Ephialtes’, CQ 32 (1982), 227–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14. For the chronology cf. Gomme, A. W., A Historical Commentary on Thucydides I (1945), p. 410Google Scholar.