Page:Thucydides, translated into English Vol 1.djvu/210

 94 CHARACTER OF THEMISTOCLES [l natural force was unmistakeable ; this was the quality for which he was distinguished above all other men ; from his own native acuteness, and without any study either before or at the time, he was the ablest judge of the course to be pursued in a sudden emergency, and could best divine what was likely to happen in the remotest future. Whatever he had in hand he had the power of explaining to others, and even where he had no experience he was quite competent to form a sufficient judgment; no one could foresee with equal clearness the good or evil event which was hidden in the future. In a word, Themistocles, by natural power of mind and with the least preparation, was of all men the best able to extemporise the right thing to be done. A sickness put an end to his life, although some say that he poisoned himself because he felt that he could not accomplish what he had promised to the King. There is a monument of him in the agora of the Asiatic Magnesia, where he was governor — the King assigning to him, for bread, Magnesia, which produced a revenue of fifty talents ^ in the year ; for wine, Lampsa- cus, which was considered to be the richest in wine of any district then known ; and Myus for meat. His family say that his remains were carried home at his own request and buried in Attica, but secretly ; for he had been accused of treason and had fled from his country, and he could not lawfully be interred there. Such was the end of Pausanias the Lacedaemonian, and Themistocles the Athenian, the two most famous Hellenes of their day. 139 Thus the demand for the banishment of the accursed 01 87^^ The Lacedaemonians made by the Lacedaemonians on the make a final demand occasion of their first embassy was met for the restoration of .1 j ^i ^ r independence to the ^^ ^ Counter demand on the part of Hellenes. Speech of Athens. They came again and again, Pericles. and told the Athenians that they must raise the siege of Potidaea and restore Aegina to indepen-
 * About /C 1 0,000