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Updated: May 3, 2025
“You two have seen this,” he announced, seemingly proud of his handiwork; “Leonidas shall see this, then Xerxes, and after that—” he laughed, but not in jest—“men will remember Themistocles, son of Neocles!” The three lapsed into silence for a moment. The skiff was well out upon the sea. The shadows of the hills of Salamis and of Ægelaos, the opposing mountain of Attica, were spreading over them.
“Sleep?” laughed the admiral, as at an excellent jest, “I have forgotten there was such a god as Hypnos.” Then, ignoring Sicinnus, he addressed the outlaw. “I am grateful to you, my friend,” he did not call Glaucon by name before the others, “you have saved me, and I have saved Hellas. You brought me a new plan when I seemed at the last resource. How can the son of Neocles reward you?”
It is not worthwhile taking notice of what Andocides states in his Address to his Friends concerning his remains, how the Athenians robbed his tomb, and threw his ashes into the air; for he feigns this, to exasperate the oligarchical faction against the people; and there is no man living but knows that Phylarchus simply invents in his history, where he all but uses an actual stage machine, and brings in Neocles and Demopolis as the sons of Themistocles, to incite or move compassion, as if he were writing a tragedy.
There were cries for Hermippus, cries even for Glaucon, as if prowess in the pentathlon gave ability to unravel oracles. The athlete sitting beside Democrates merely blushed and drew closer to his friend. Then at last the despairing people turned to their last resource. “Themistocles, son of Neocles, speak to us!”
Neocles had by then lived on his bit of land for thirty years, and was old to begin life again. The ruined family took refuge in Colophon, and there Epicurus joined them. They were now too poor for the boy to go abroad to study philosophy. He could only make the best of a hard time and puzzle alone over the problems of life.
Were we not saved by a miracle from overthrow at Artemisium? Do not the scouts tell us the Persians are advancing beyond Eleusis toward Megara and the Isthmus? Is not our best fighting blood here in the fleet? Then if the Isthmus is threatened, our business is to defend it and save the Peloponnesus, the last remnant of Hellas unconquered. Now then, headstrong son of Neocles, answer that!”
But for a man to be elated by happiness, as Epicurus is, like sailors upon the festivals of Venus, and to vaunt himself that, when he was sick of an ascites, he notwithstanding called his friends together to certain collations and grudged not his dropsy the addition of good liquor, and that, when he called to remembrance the last words of Neocles, he was melted with a peculiar sort of joy intermixed with tears, no man in his right senses would call these true joys or satisfactions.
The son of Neocles never hastened the recital, though once or twice he widened it by an incisive question. At the end he demanded:— “And does Phormio confirm all this?” “All. Question him.” “Humph! He’s a truthful man in everything save the price of fish. Now let us open the packet.” Themistocles was exceeding deliberate.
Plato the philosopher mentions the last as a most excellent horseman, but otherwise insignificant person; of two sons yet older than these, Neocles and Diocles, Neocles died when he was young by the bite of a horse, and Diocles was adopted by his grandfather, Lysander.
I can almost name the princes and great nobles over Hellas who are clutching at Persian money. O Father Zeus,” wound up the Athenian, “if there is not some master-spirit directing all this villany, there is no wisdom in Themistocles, son of Neocles.” “But the coming of Mardonius to Greece?” questioned the younger man; “the peril he runs? the risk of discovery—”
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