Page:History of Greece Vol V.djvu/307

 GRECIAN AFFAIRS AFTER THE PERSIAN INVASION. 283 though owing gratitude to him and favorably disposed, could not venture to protect him against the two most powerful states in Greece, but sent him to the neighboring continent. Here, how- ever, being still tracked and followed by the envoys, he was obliged to seek protection from a man whom he had formerly thwarted in a demand at Athens, and who had become his per- sonal enemy, — Admetus, king of the Molossians. Fortunately for him, at the moment when he arrived, Admetus was not at home ; and Themistokles, becoming a suppliant to his wife, con- ciliated her sympathy so entirely, that she placed her child in his arms and planted him at the hearth in the fuU solemnity of supplication to soften her husband. As soon as Admetus re- turned, Themistokles revealed his name, his pursuers, and his danger, — entreating protection as a helpless suppliant in the last extremity. He appealed to the generosity of the Epii'otic prince not to take revenge on a man now defenceless, for offence given under such very different circumstances ; and for an offence too, after all, not of capital moment, while the protection now en- treated was to the suppliant a matter of life or death. Admetus raised him up from the hearth with the chUd in his arms, — an evidence that he accepted the appeal and engaged to protect him ; refusing to give him up to the envoys, and at last only sending him away on the expression of his own wish to visit the king of Persia. Two Macedonian guides conducted him across the mountains to Pydna, in the Thermaic gulf, where he found a merchant-ship about to set sail for the coast of Asia Minor, and took a passage on board ; neither the master nor the crew know- ing his name. An untoward storm drove the vessel to the island of Naxos, at that moment besieged by an Athenian armament : had he been forced to land there, he would of course have been recognized and seized, but his wonted subtlety did not desert him. Having communicated both his name and the peril which awaited him, he conjured the master of the ship to assist in saving him, and not to suffer any one of the crew to land ; men- acing that if by any accident he were discovered, he would bring the master to ruin along with himself, by representing him as an accomplice induced by money to facilitate the escape of Themis- tokles : on the other hand, in case of safety, he promised a large reward. Such promises and threats weighed with the master,