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Updated: June 10, 2025
Consequently, when in the assembly of the generals Kleokritus the Corinthian attacked Themistokles, and said that even Aristeides did not approve of his plans, because he was present and said nothing, Aristeides answered that he would not have been silent if Themistokles had not spoken to the purpose, but that as it was he held his peace, not for any love he bore him, but because his counsel was the best.
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."
He thought it better that he should occasionally do the people some slight wrong than that Themistokles should obtain unlimited power. At last, when Themistokles even proposed some useful measure, he opposed it and threw it out.
When, however, the armies were forced to retire from thence, and all Greece, up to Boeotia, declared for the Persians, the Athenians became more willing to listen to Themistokles about fighting by sea, and he was sent with a fleet to guard the straits at Artemisium.
He joined Aristeides in opposing Themistokles when the latter courted the mob to an unseemly extent, opposed Ephialtes when, to please the populace, he dissolved the senate of the Areopagus, and, at a time when all other men except Aristeides and Ephialtes were gorged with the plunder of the public treasury, kept his own hands clean, and always maintained the reputation of an incorruptible and impartial statesman.
Among these were the three children of Sandauke the sister of the Persian king, whom he at once sent to Themistokles, and it is said that in accordance with some oracle they were sacrificed to Dionysus Omestes, at the instance of the prophet Euphrantides.
Though this man was his enemy throughout, and was the cause of his banishment by ostracism, yet when Themistokles gave him an opportunity of revenging himself in a similar manner he never remembered the injuries which he had received at his hands, but while Kimon, and Alkmæon, and many others, were endeavouring to drive him into exile and bringing all kinds of accusations against him, Aristeides alone never did or said anything against him, and did not rejoice over the spectacle of his enemy's ruin, just as he never envied his previous prosperity.
Plato considers that this man alone, of all the great men of Athens, is worthy of mention by him. Themistokles, and Kimon, and Perikles, did indeed fill the city with public buildings, and money, and folly, but Aristeides in his political acts cared for nothing but virtue. One great proof of this is his kindly treatment of Themistokles.
Neither of them were ever defeated in battle, but in political matters Aristeides was overcome by his rival Themistokles, who drove him into exile by ostracism, while Cato held his own against all the greatest and most influential men in Rome to the end of his life without once being overthrown by them.
He was thus often brought into collision with Themistokles, who was trying to engage the people in many new schemes, and to introduce startling reforms, by which he would himself have gained credit, and which Aristeides steadily opposed.
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