led the people to imagine that he discoursed about the affairs of Greece; but many changes were made at that time in the great officers of the court, and the nobles disliked Themistokles, imagining that he dared to speak about them to the king.  Indeed, he was honoured as no other foreigner ever was, and went hunting with the king and lived in his family circle, so that he came into the presence of the king’s mother, and became her intimate friend, and at the king’s command was instructed in the mysteries of the Magi.

When Demaratus the Spartan was bidden to ask for a boon, he asked to be allowed to drive through Sardis wearing his tiara upright like that of the king.  Mithropaustes, the king’s cousin, took hold of Demaratus by his tiara, saying, “You have no brains for the king’s tiara to cover; do you think you would become Zeus if you were given his thunderbolt to wield?” The king was very angry with Demaratus because of this request, but Themistokles by his entreaties restored him to favour.  It is also said that the later Persian kings, whose politics were more mixed up with those of Greece, used to promise any Greek whom they wished to desert to them that they would treat him better than Themistokles.  We are told that Themistokles himself, after he became a great man and was courted by many, was seated one day at a magnificent banquet, and said to his children, “My sons, we should have been ruined if it had not been for our ruin.”  Most writers agree that three cities, Magnesia, Lampsakus, and Myous, were allotted to him for bread, wine, and meat.  To these Neanthes of Kyzikus and Phanias add two more, Perkote and Palaiskepsis, which were to supply bedding and clothing respectively.

XXX.  On one occasion, when he went down to the seaside on some business connected with Greece, a Persian named Epixyes, Satrap of Upper Phrygia, plotted his assassination.  He had long kept some Pisidians who were to kill him when he passed the night in the town of Leontokophalos, which means ‘Lion’s Head.’  It is said that the mother of the gods appeared to him while he was sleeping at noon and said, “Themistokles, be late at Lion’s Head, lest you fall in with a lion.  As a recompense for this warning, I demand Mnesiptolema for my handmaid.”  Themistokles, disturbed at this, after praying to the goddess, left the highway and made a circuit by another road, avoiding that place; when it was night he encamped in the open country.  As one of the sumpter cattle that carried his tent had fallen into a river, Themistokles’s servants hung up the rich hangings, which were dripping with wet, in order to dry them.  The Pisidians meanwhile came up to the camp with drawn swords, and, not clearly distinguishing in the moonlight the things hung out to dry, thought that they must be the tent of Themistokles, and that they would find him asleep within it.  When they came close to it and raised the hangings, the servants who were on the watch fell upon them and seized them.  Having thus escaped from danger, he built a temple to Dindymene at Magnesia to commemorate the appearance of the goddess, and appointed his daughter Mnesiptolema to be its priestess.