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 286 fflSTORY OF GREECE. endangered. Reward is yet owing to me for my past sei'viee • moreover, I am now here, chased away by the Greeks, in conse- quence of my attachment to thee,^ but able still to serve thee with great effect. I wish to wait a year, and then to come before thee in person to explain my views." Whether the Persian interpreters, who read this letter to Ar- taxerxes Longimanus, exactly rendered its brief and direct expression, we cannot say. But it made a strong impression upon him, combined with the previous reputation of the writer, and he willingly granted the prayer for delay : though we shall not readily believe that he was so transported as to show his joy by immediate sacrifice to the gods, by an unusual measure of convivial indulgence, and by crying out thrice in his sleep, "I have got Themistokles the Athenian," — as some of Plutarch's authors informed him.^ In the course of the year granted, The- mistokles had learned so much of the Persian language and cus- toms as to be able to communicate personally with the king, and acquire his confidence : no Greek, says Thucydides, had ever before attained such a commanding influence and position at the Persian court. His ingenuity was now displayed in laying out schemes for the subjugation of Greece to Persia, which were emi- nently captivating to the monarch, who rewarded him with a Persian wife and large presents, sending him down to Magnesia, on the Mfeander, not far from the coast of Ionia. The revenues of the district round that town, amounting to the large sum of fifty talents yearly, were assigned to him for bread : those of the neighboring seaport of Myus, for articles of condiment to his bread, which was always accounted the main nourishment : those of Lampsakus on the Hellespont, for wine.3 Not knowing the amount of these two latter items, we cannot determine how much ' " Proditionem ultrd imputabant (says Tacitus, Hist, ii, 60, respecting Paullinus and Proculus, the generals of the army of Otho, when they sur- rendered to Vitellius after the defeat at Bebriacum), spatium longi ante proelium itineris, fatigationem Othonianorum, permixtum vehiculis agmen, ac phraque fottuita fraudi suce assignantes. — Et Vitellius credidit de perfidiS, et fraudem absolvit." ^ Plutarch, Themist. c. 28. ' Thucyd. i, 138 ; Diodor. xi, 57. Besides the three above-named places, Neanlhes and Phanias described the grant as being still fuller and moro