had a contest for the possession of the land, and that she gained a decision in her favour by the production of the sacred olive.  Themistokles, on the other hand, did not so much “stick Peiraeus on to Athens,” as Aristophanes the comic poet said, as make the city dependent upon Peiraeus, and the land dependent on the sea.  By this means he transferred power from the nobles to the people, because sailors and pilots became the real strength of the State.  For this reason the thirty tyrants destroyed the bema, or tribune on the place of public assembly, which was built looking towards the sea, and built another which looked inland, because they thought that the naval supremacy of Athens had been the origin of its democratic constitution, and that an oligarchy had less to fear from men who cultivated the land.

XX.  Themistokles had even more extended views than these about making the Athenians supreme at sea.  When Xerxes was gone, the whole Greek fleet was drawn up on shore for the winter at Pagasae.  Themistokles then publicly told the Athenians that he had a plan which would save and benefit them all, but which must not be divulged.  The Athenians bade him tell Aristeides only, and to execute his designs if he approved.

Themistokles then told Aristeides that his design was to burn the whole Greek fleet as they lay on the beach.  But Aristeides came forward and told the people that no proposal could be more advantageous or more villainous; so that the Athenians forbade Themistokles to proceed with it.  On another occasion the Lacedaemonians proposed, in a meeting of the Amphiktyonic council, that all States that had taken no part in the Persian war should be excluded from that council; Themistokles, fearing that if the Lacedaemonians should exclude Thessaly, Argos, and Thebes, they would have complete control over the votes, and be able to carry what measures they pleased, made representations to the various States, and influenced the votes of their deputies at the meeting, pointing out to them that there were only thirty-one States which took any part in the war, and that most of these were very small ones, so that it would be unreasonable for one or two powerful States to pronounce the rest of Greece outlawed, and be supreme in the council.  After this he generally opposed the Lacedaemonians; wherefore they paid special court to Kimon, in order to establish him as a political rival to Themistokles.

XXI.  Moreover, he made himself odious to the allies by sailing about the islands and wringing money from them.  A case in point is the conversation which Herodotus tells us he held with the people of Andros, when trying to get money from them.  He said that he was come, bringing with him two gods, Persuasion and Necessity; but they replied that they also possessed two equally powerful ones, Poverty and Helplessness, by whom they were prevented from supplying him with money.  The poet, Timokreon of Rhodes, in one of his songs, writes bitterly of Themistokles, saying that he was prevailed upon by the bribes which he received from exiles to restore them to their native country, but abandoned himself, who was his guest and friend.  The song runs as follows: