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In the morning, calling together the chief of his court, he had Themistocles brought before him, who expected no good of it.
Even under these circumstances, however, the guest of the evening occupied an inconspicuous place at the reporters' table, while he was represented on the chairman's right by the bust of Poseidon, hastily modelled for the occasion by Praxiteles, and dedicated to Themistocles, who was a plain man, but whose portrait, even if he had been handsome, it was thought would not have looked well in such a position at a time when portrait-statuary was unknown.
To build a name was the earliest dream of Themistocles, if we are to accept the anecdote that makes him say, 'The trophies of Miltiades would not suffer him to sleep, To build a name, or to create a fortune, are but varying applications of one human passion.
Cimon had risen now. In a momentary lull he trumpeted through his hands across the arena. “Wake, Glaucon; quit your golden thoughts of Eleusis; Lycon is filching the crown.” Themistocles, seated near Cimon’s side, was staring hard, elbows on knees and head on hands.
This passage of history is furnished by the same authors, who tell us, that Sophocles was a genius; that nothing could withstand the eloquence of Demosthenes; that Themistocles was a hero; that Socrates was the wisest of men; and it was in the time of the most famous of the Greeks that even upon those highly privileged souls, in sight of irreproachable witnesses, the art of dancing produced such great effects.
It was only a late posterity that perceived the meaning of those expeditions to England and Germany, so inconsiderate in a military point of view, and so barren of immediate result.... That there is a bridge connecting the past glory of Hellas and Rome with the prouder fabric of modern history; that western Europe is Romanic, and Germanic Europe classic; that the names of Themistocles and Scipio have to us a very different sound from those of Asoka and Salmanassar; that Homer and Sophocles are not merely like the Vedas and Kalidasa, attractive to the literary botanist, but bloom for us in our own garden, all this is the work of Cæsar."
"Even so," he said, "if Themistocles had not come before, where had you been now?" Laughing at his own son, who got his mother, and, by his mother's means, his father also, to indulge him, he told him that he had the most power of any one in Greece: "For the Athenians command the rest of Greece, I command the Athenians, your mother commands me, and you command your mother."
Well, to this result we contributed three very useful elements, viz., the largest number of ships, the ablest commander, and the most unhesitating patriotism. Our contingent of ships was little less than two-thirds of the whole four hundred; the commander was Themistocles, through whom chiefly it was that the battle took place in the straits, the acknowledged salvation of our cause.
It was the very crisis in which a new direction might be given to the habits and the character of a whole people; and to seize all the advantages of that crisis, fate, in Themistocles, had allotted to Athens a man whose qualities were not only pre-eminently great in themselves, but peculiarly adapted to the circumstances of the time.
"Was it his organ of acquisitiveness that moved Themistocles to boast that 'he could make a small state great'?" "Well remembered, ingeniously quoted," returned Darrell, with the polite bend of his stately head. "Yes, I suspect that the coveting organ had much to do with the boast.
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