said Themistokles, “it has taken some time, but we have at length both regained our right minds.”  He used to say that the Athenians neither admired nor respected him, but used him like a plane-tree under which they took shelter in storm, but which in fair weather they lopped and stripped of its leaves.  Once when a citizen of Seriphos said to him that he owed his glory, not to himself but to his city, he answered, “Very true; I should not have become a great man if I had been a Seriphian, nor would you if you had been an Athenian.”  When one of his fellow-generals, who thought that he had done the state good service, was taking a haughty tone, and comparing his exploits with those of Themistokles, he said, “The day after a feast, once upon a time, boasted that it was better than the feast-day itself, because on that day all men are full of anxiety and trouble, while upon the next day every one enjoys what has been prepared at his leisure.  But the feast-day answered, ’Very true, only but for me you never would have been at all.’  So now,” said he, “if I had not come first, where would you all have been now?” His son, who was spoiled by his mother, and by himself to please her, he said was the most powerful person in Greece; for the Athenians ruled the Greeks, he ruled the Athenians, his wife ruled him, and his son ruled his wife.  Wishing to be singular in all things, when he put up a plot of ground for sale, he ordered the crier to announce that there were good neighbours next to it.  When two men paid their addresses to his daughter, he chose the more agreeable instead of the richer of the two, saying that he preferred a man without money to money without a man.  Such was his character, as shown in his talk.

XIX.  Immediately after the great war, he began to rebuild and fortify the city.  In order to succeed in this, Theopompus says that he bribed the Spartan ephors into laying aside opposition, but most writers say that he outwitted them by proceeding to Sparta nominally on an embassy.  Then when the Spartans complained to him that Athens was being fortified, and when Poliarchus came expressly from Aegina to charge him with it, he denied it, and bade them send commissioners to Athens to see whether it was true, wishing both to obtain time for the fortifications to be built, and also to place these commissioners in the hands of the Athenians, as hostages for his own safety.  His expectations were realised; for the Lacedaemonians, on discovering the truth, did him no harm, but dissembled their anger and sent him away.  After this he built Peiraeus, as he perceived the excellence of its harbours, and was desirous to turn the whole attention of the Athenians to naval pursuits.  In this he pursued a policy exactly the opposite to that of the ancient kings of Attica; for they are said to have endeavoured to keep their subjects away from the sea, and to accustom them to till the ground instead of going on board ships, quoting the legend that Athene and Poseidon