Page:History of Greece Vol IV.djvu/354

 3S6 HISTORY OF GREECE. to put them forth, from the personal hostility of Darius towards him ; but he does not peculiarly belong to the democracy of Kleisthenes, like his younger contemporaries Themistokles and Aristeides. The two latter are specimens of a class of men new at Athens since the expulsion of Hippias, and contrasting for- cibly with Peisistratus, Lykurgus, and Megakles, the political leaders of the preceding generation. Themistokles and Aristei- de?. different as they were in disposition, agree in being politi- cians of the democratical stamp, exercising ascendency by and through the people, devoting their time to the discharge of public duties, and to the frequent discussions in the political ai>d judicial meetings of the people, manifesting those combined powers of action, comprehension, and persuasive speech, which gradually accustomed the citizens to look to them as advisers as well as leaders, but always subject to criticism and accusation from unfriendly rivals, and exercising such rivalry towards each other with an asperity constantly increasing. Instead of Attica, disunited and torn into armed factions, as it had been forty years before, the Diakrii under one man, and the Parali and Pedieis under others, we have now Attica one and indivisible ; regi- mented into a body of orderly hearers in the Pnyx, appointing and holding to accountability the magistrates, and open to be ad- dressed by Themistokles, Aristeides, or any other citizen who 'an engage their attention. Neither Themistokles nor Aristeides could boast of a lineage of gods and heroes, like the ./Eakid Miltiades : ' both were of middling station and circumstances. Aristeides, son of Lysim- achus, -was on both sides of pure Athenian blood. But the wife of Jtfeokles, father of Themistokles, was a foreign woman of Thrace or of Karia: and such an alliance is the less surprising, since Themistokles must have been born during the dynasty of the Peisistratids, when the status of an Athenian citizen had not yet acquired its political value. There was a marked contrast bet-ween these two eminent men, those points which stood most conspicuous in the one, being comparatively deficient in the other. Jn the description of Themistokles, which we have the advan- tage of finding briefly sketched by Thucydides, the circumstance 1 Hftrcdot vi. S5