Page:History of Greece Vol IV.djvu/355

 THEMISTOKLES AND ARISTEIDES. 887 most emphatically brought out is, his immense force of sponta- neous invention and apprehension, without any previous aid either from teaching or gradual practice. The might of unas- sisted nature l was never so strikingly exhibited as in him : he conceived the complications of a present embarrassment, and divined the chances of a mysterious future, with equal sagacity and equal quickness : the right expedient seemed to flash upon his mind extempore, even in the most perplexing contingences, without the least necessity for premeditation. Nor was he less distinguished for daring and resource in action. When engaged on any joint affairs, his superior competence marked him out as the leader for others to follow, and no business, however foreign to his experience, ever took him by surprise, or came wholly amiss to him. Such is the remarkable picture which Thucyd- ides draws of a countryman whose death nearly coincided in time with his own birth : the untutored readiness and univer- sality of Themistokles probably formed in his mind a contrast to the more elaborate discipline, and careful preliminary study, with which the statesmen of his own day and Perikles es pecially, the greatest of them approached the consideration and discussion of public affairs. Themistokles had received no teaching from philosophers, sophists, and rhetors, who were the instructors of well-born youth in the days of Thucydides, and whom Aristophanes, the contemporary of the latter, so unmerci- fully derides, treating such instruction as worse than nothing, and extolling, in comparison with it, the unlettered courage, with mere gymnastic accomplishments, of the victors at Marathon. a 1 Thucyd. i, 138. ijv yap 6 9e/icrro/cA^f jBefiaioTara 6% Qiiaeuf la^vv drjAuaaf Kal diatyepovruf TI if avrb fiuTCkov irepuv u^tof fiavfiaaai oiKeia yap avveaet xal ovre irpojicf&uv ef OVTT/V ov6ev ovr 1 tTrtfia- v, ruv TE irapaxprjiJLa 61? eAa^iar^f flouA^f KpaTurrof yvufiuv, Kal ruv tv enl nfaiaTov TOV yevijao/tivov upiarof eiKaarijf. Kal u PEV peril xot, Kal e^rj-y^oatr&ai olof re uv Je uneipof elij, Kpivai iKavuf oiiK To. To re u/ieivov f) ^fipov kv ry uQavel tri TtpoeiJpa fiu^iara' Kal rb ^vfiirav e'nrelv, 0t)(reuf JIEV dvvuftei jLE~kt.T7is <5 0pa%VT?]Ti t cparturof 6rj ovrof aiiroir^edta^eiv TU Seovra iyeveTO. 8 See the contrast of the old and new education, as set forth in Aris- tophanes, Nubes, 957-1003 ; also Ranae, 1067. About the training of Themistokles, compared with that of the contera poraries of PeriklOr, see also Plutarch, Theniistokl. c. 2. VOL. IV. 15 22oc,