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Updated: May 6, 2025
After Themistokles went into exile the common people grew insolent and produced a numerous brood of informers, who constantly assailed the noblest and most powerful citizens through envy of their prosperity and influence. One of these men, Diophantus of Amphitrope by name, obtained a verdict against Aristeides on a charge of receiving bribes.
“What do you mean?” demanded the potter. “Glaucon the Alcmæonid, to be sure. I cried ‘Io, pæan!’ as loud as the others when he came back; still I weary of having a man always so fortunate.” “Even as you voted to banish Aristeides, Themistocles’s rival, because you were tired of hearing him called ‘the Just.’ ” “There’s much in that.
Ostracism in the case of men like Thucydides and Aristeides, was a punishment, but when applied to men like Hyperbolus, it became an honour and mark of distinction, as though his crimes had put him on a par with the leading spirits of the age. Plato, the comic poet, wrote of him "Full worthy to be punished though he be, Yet ostracism's not for such as he."
There Themistocles was long in conference with Aristeides and Pausanias. After midnight he left Aristeides’s tent. “Where is the prisoner?” he asked of the sentinel before the headquarters. “Your Excellency means the traitor?” “I do.” “I will guide you.” The soldier took a torch and led the way.
The money which Aristeides proposed to raise amounted to four hundred and sixty talents; to which Perikles added nearly a third part, for Thucydides tells us that at the commencement of the Peloponnesian war, the Athenians received six hundred talents a year from their allies. After the death of Perikles, the popular orators gradually raised the sum total to thirteen hundred talents.
XXV. Aristeides, moreover, bound all the Greeks by an oath to keep the league against the Persians, and himself swore on behalf of Athens, throwing wedges of red hot iron into the sea after the oath was taken, and praying that the gods might so deal with those that broke their faith.
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.
There are various reports current about his property, some saying that he lived in poverty, and that on his death he left two daughters, who remained a long while unmarried because of their poverty; while this general opinion is contradicted by Demetrius of Phalerum in his book on Sokrates, where he mentions an estate at Phalerum which he knew had belonged to Aristeides, in which he was buried, and also adduces other grounds for supposing him to have been a wealthy man.
Next he mixes a large bowl of wine and water, pours out a cup for himself, and says, "I drink to those who died in defence of the freedom of Greece." This custom is observed even to this day by the Platæans. XXII. After the return of the Athenians to their own city, Aristeides observed that they desired to adopt a democratic form of government.
Two of these, who would have been the first to be put on their trial, Æschines of Lampra, and Agesias of Acharna, made their escape out of the camp, and Aristeides pardoned the others, as he wished to give an opportunity to those who believed themselves unsuspected, to take courage and repent.
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