Figure

Themistocles

also answers to Themistocles of Athens — catalog apparatus · kind: person
280 mentions across 129 episodes of the record — counted by the house’s first pass receipt — the figure shelf, first pass receipt — the curator’s pass

The regnal line — the editor’s table of years, never the record’s voice

The editor’s table of years hangs in this house, but this life is not yet pinned to it. Until it is, the when is a label, not a shelf.

··

The life on our shelf — told from the witnesses; every quotation is the record’s own · not yet read back at the desk

He talked a city onto the sea. With Xerxes bearing down on Attica, Themistocles argued that the oracle's wooden wall meant nothing but a fleet, embarked her men on the triremes, and won the sea-fight in the narrows at Salamis, partly by handing the enemy a lie. Yet the record opens on a blank. Plutarch, the biographer whose Themistocles (c. 100 CE, imperial Greek written under Trajan; Bernadotte Perrin's 1914–1926 translation) is the fullest witness, begins from a family too obscure to help him: a father who was "no very conspicuous man at Athens", an alien mother whose epitaph reads "Abrotonon was I, and a woman of Thrace" — though Phanias makes her a Carian named Euterpe, and Neanthes adds her city, Halicarnassus. The record cannot settle his mother's name.

On the councils before the battle the two chief witnesses carry different furniture. In Plutarch the drama is verbal: when Eurybiades lifted his staff, Themistocles answered "Smite, but hear me"; when persuasion failed, he sent Sicinnus — a Persian-born prisoner of war, tutor of his children — secretly to Xerxes with word that the Hellenes (the Greeks) were slipping away, so the King's own blockade penned them into the strait. Herodotus, whose Histories (c. 430 BC, classical Ionian Greek; A. D. Godley's 1920–25 translation) stands five centuries nearer, counts coins: at Artemisium, Euboean money held the fleet, five talents passing to Eurybiades as though from his own purse, and "No one knew that he had kept the rest of the money". Plutarch tells the same story, names Herodotus for it, then folds the talents into a chapter on the salvation of Hellas.

The avarice follows him to the islands. Herodotus is blunt — "There was no end to Themistocles' avarice" — and the theatre is his own as well, retold by Plutarch: two gods, Persuasion and Compulsion, answered by the Andrians' Penury and Powerlessness. Exiled and condemned, he crossed to the court he had beaten, and there the record disputes its own dates: Thucydides and Charon of Lampsacus make the king Artaxerxes, Xerxes being dead; Ephorus, Dinon, Clitarchus, and Heracleides say Xerxes himself; Plutarch leans to Thucydides, granting nothing is securely established. The King credited him two hundred talents, the reward once proclaimed for his capture, and gave three cities for bread, wine, and meat. At a splendid table he told his children, "we should now have been undone, had we not been undone before". Even the tomb is contested: the Magnesians show a splendid one in their market place; Diodorus the Topographer, by conjecture, an altar-like structure by the Piraeus. Which shore held the better claim — the city he saved, or the empire that fed him?

Sources: Plut. Themistocles 1 · Plut. Themistocles 10 · Plut. Themistocles 11 · Plut. Themistocles 12 · Plut. Themistocles 7 · Hdt. 8.5 · Hdt. 8.112 · Plut. Themistocles 21 · Plut. Themistocles 27 · Plut. Themistocles 29 · Plut. Themistocles 32

cast from the served record · every quoted span verified against it receipt

The witnesses — who says so

Plutarch · the biographer's shelf

Plut. Themistocles 11 named 9 times in this episode — as “Themistocles” Themistocles · Bernadotte Perrin, 1914–1926

Plut. Themistocles 29 named 8 times in this episode — as “Themistocles” Themistocles · Bernadotte Perrin, 1914–1926

Plut. Themistocles 12 named 7 times in this episode — as “Themistocles” Themistocles · Bernadotte Perrin, 1914–1926

Plut. Aristides 8 named 6 times in this episode — as “Themistocles” Aristides · Bernadotte Perrin, 1914–1926

Plut. Themistocles 21 named 6 times in this episode — as “Themistocles” Themistocles · Bernadotte Perrin, 1914–1926

Plut. Themistocles 30 named 6 times in this episode — as “Themistocles” Themistocles · Bernadotte Perrin, 1914–1926

Plut. Themistocles 32 named 6 times in this episode — as “Themistocles” Themistocles · Bernadotte Perrin, 1914–1926

Plut. Aristides 3 named 5 times in this episode — as “Themistocles” Aristides · Bernadotte Perrin, 1914–1926

Plut. Themistocles 7 named 5 times in this episode — as “Themistocles” Themistocles · Bernadotte Perrin, 1914–1926

Plut. Themistocles 16 named 5 times in this episode — as “Themistocles” Themistocles · Bernadotte Perrin, 1914–1926

Plut. Themistocles 20 named 5 times in this episode — as “Themistocles” Themistocles · Bernadotte Perrin, 1914–1926

Plut. Themistocles 27 named 5 times in this episode — as “Themistocles” Themistocles · Bernadotte Perrin, 1914–1926

…and 117 more episodes attest — counted by the house’s first pass.

Deeds this life stands in — standing in the same episodes; counted by the house’s first pass

sea-fight at Salamis — 18 episodes attest siege of Athens — a candidate entry battle of Marathon — 10 episodes attest battle of Artemisium — 5 episodes attest battle of Salamis — a candidate entry battle of Plataea — 5 episodes attest battle of Lacedaemon — a candidate entry battle of Mantinea — a candidate entry

Who is inside this name — the drawer files by name; the person layer keeps the men apart

Themistocles son of Neocles — c. 524–459 BCE

One identity is discriminated behind this drawer — each room states which bearer of the name it is, on what ground, and with what confidence.

Doors to the sister houses

logoi — the words

No door is cut to the word-house from this room yet. Doors are cut from the record itself, never guessed; logoi.health keeps the words meanwhile.

mythoi — the stories

No door is cut to the story-house from this room yet. mythoi.health keeps the stories meanwhile.

The record here: The Histories, Herodotus — Godley, 1920–25 · Parallel Lives, Plutarch — Perrin, 1914–26 · 166 works · 12,119 episodes served

lives · deeds · times · the shelf