Themistocles (ca. 528-462 BC), an Athenian political leader, was a brilliant commander and statesman who defeated Persia at sea and made Athens a great power.

Themistocles was the son of a middle-class Athenian father and a non-Athenian mother. Ability alone made him influential. He advocated resistance to Persia when some wanted appeasement, and he urged the development of Athens's navy when most trusted in its army. When elected chief magistrate in 493 B.C., he developed Piraeus for the first time as a naval base, and 10 years later, when his rivals had been eliminated by a series of ostracisms, he persuaded Athens to build a hundred warships from the profits of state-owned mines. When Persia invaded in 480 B.C., Athens had the largest navy in Greece. Themistocles insisted on using it fully at Artemisium and at Salamis, although his naval policy meant evacuating Athens and trusting in the "wooden...