[War & Business] The Final Days of Themistocles

Bust of Themistocles [Image source= National Historical Museum of Athens website/www.nhmuseum.gr]

[Asia Economy Reporter Hyunwoo Lee] Themistocles, the greatest naval commander of ancient Greece who annihilated the Persian army in the Battle of Salamis in 480 BC, is hailed as a national hero in Greece. However, it is not well known to the public that he ended his life as a provincial governor for Persia, his lifelong adversary, in his later years.

Ten years after the Battle of Salamis, in 470 BC, Themistocles abandoned his hometown Athens and sought refuge with Persia. He was appointed governor of the Magnesia region in eastern Greece, which was occupied by Persia, and died of natural causes there. While he was a hero of the Greek people in the first half of his life, in the latter half he was condemned throughout Greece as a traitor who betrayed his nation.

What made him a hero with two faces was the realpolitik of ancient Greece. Immediately after the Battle of Salamis, he advocated for the establishment of the Delian League, a military alliance of Greek city-states, with Athens as its leader. He argued that Athens should expand its influence throughout Greece to build the power to prevent Persia’s re-invasion. His plan was also an effective measure to check Sparta, which would later become Athens’ rival.

However, aristocratic forces including his political rival Aristeides persuaded the Athenian assembly that if Athens became the hegemonic power of the Greek city-states as Themistocles proposed, Themistocles, who held military power in Athens, might become a dictator and threaten democracy. They succeeded in exiling him from Athens.

His opponents even spread rumors that he was a traitor colluding with Persia. They emphasized that Themistocles’ mother was from the Thracian region of Persia, arguing that he was not a pure Athenian. Additionally, Athenian aristocrats attacked him by claiming that his wealth had increased more than thirtyfold compared to before the Persian Wars, accusing him of embezzling taxes collected under the pretext of Persian defense. The citizens of Athens, already dissatisfied with the defense taxes, easily turned against him. Ultimately, he became a traitor unacceptable to any Greek city-state and had no choice but to flee to Persia.

Later Greeks sympathized with his life story and tried to absolve him as much as possible. Plutarch, the Greek philosopher who wrote the "Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans," could not bring himself to write that Themistocles died as a Persian official, so he glorified his death. He recorded that when the Persian emperor appointed him as the vanguard of the invasion of Greece, Themistocles committed suicide by poison, dying as a hero who never forgot his nation until the end. They wanted to protect the honor of a hero ruined by realpolitik to the very last.