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But Themistocles ever turned his face eastward, until men thought he was awaiting some foe in chase, and presently—just as a rower among the zygites fell back with the blood gushing from mouth and nostrils—the admiral pointed his finger toward the sky-line of the morning. “Look! Athena is with us!”
Naxos revolts from the Ionian League. Is besieged by Cimon. Conspiracy and Fate of Pausanias. Flight and Adventures of Themistocles. His Death. I. The military abilities and early habits of Cimon naturally conspired with past success to direct his ambition rather to warlike than to civil distinctions.
Under the battle lantern Themistocles saw a man who was his elder in years, rugged in feature, with massive forehead and wise gray eyes. This was Aristeides the Just, the admiral’s enemy, but their feud had died when Xerxes drew near to Athens. Hands clasped heartily as the twain stood face to face.
Then Themistocles’s brows grew closer than before. He muttered softly in his beard. But still he said nothing aloud. He read the cipher sheet through once, twice; it seemed thrice. Other sheets he fingered delicately, as though he feared the touch of venom. All without haste, but at the end, when Themistocles arose from his seat, the outlaw trembled.
The generous and high-spirited policy that characterized the oriental despotism towards its foes proffered him not only a safe, but a magnificent asylum. The Persian monarchs were ever ready to welcome the exiles of Greece, and to conciliate those whom they had failed to conquer. It was the fate of Themistocles to be saved by the enemies of his country. He had no alternative.
I ask Themistocles, Hermippus, and Glaucon to come to an inner room. I must examine this man. The matter is serious.” “Serious?” echoed the bewildered athlete, “I can vouch for Seuthes—an excellent Corinthian, come to Athens to sell some bales of wool—” “Answer, Glaucon,” Democrates’s voice was stern. “Has he no letters from you for Argos?” “Certainly.” “You admit it?”
She retires to the solitude of her loved chamber window, and reads of Aristides the Just, of Themistocles with his Spartan virtues, of Brutus, and of the mother of the Gracchi. Greece and Rome rise before her in all their ancient renown.
Only a glimpse,—the throng of strangers opened to disclose them closed again; Glaucon leaned on a capstan. All the strength for the moment was gone out of him. “You rowed and wrought too much last night, Critias,” spoke Themistocles, who had eyes for everything. “To the cabin, Sicinnus, bring a cup of Chian.” “No wine, for Athena’s sake!” cried the outlaw, drawing himself together, “it is passed.
Mardonius, then, had escaped the storm. What if the same miracle had saved the outlaw? What if the dead should awake? The chimera haunted Democrates night and day. Still he was beginning to shake off his terrors. He believed he had washed his hands fairly clean of his treason, even if the water had cost his soul. He joined with all his energies in seconding Themistocles.
It was not the just and virtuous Aristides but the bold reckless Themistocles who saved Greece from the Persian invasion. Luther and Shakespeare are brilliant examples of it. Our American poets have all except Poe a high reputation for virtue and good behavior, but I do not find in them the summer climate of Burns or the magnetism of Byron and Heine.
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