Themistocles in Fifth Century Historiography

Abstract

The inscription of Troizen published by M. H. Jameson x) once more draws attention to the ancient controversy on the Persian Wars, attested in documents both literary and epigraphical : Who saved Greece from the barbarians? One of the few points of agreement between modern scholars, whose opinions differ widely, is that the inscription bears testimony to a tradition according to which Athens and Greece owed their salvation to the great statesman Themistocles, son of Neocles from the deme Phrearrhoi. This tradition was not completely ignored, it is true, by Herodotus and his Athenian friends of the forties 2). Without Thucydides, however, we should have been largely in the dark. This historian with (moderate) oligarchic views and convictions is fair to Themistocles and proves his own greatness by acknowledging the extraordinary talents, diplomatic skill and military insight of the man who started as a democratic party-leader, but who developed into the real national statesman who in his finest hour saved