timocreon and themistocles

Timocreon and ThemistoclesAuthor(s): Noel RobertsonSource: The American Journal of Philology, Vol. 101, No. 1 (Spring, 1980), pp. 61-78Published by: The Johns Hopkins University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/294176 .

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TIMOCREON AND THEMISTOCLES

Much has been written about the latter days of Themisto- cles, but not so much, proportionately, about our only direct contemporary evidence, the poems of Timocreon quoted by Plutarch, Them. 21.3-7.1 Discussion of the poems, moreover, has not led to agreed or convincing results.2 It seems to me that modern critics have misconceived Timocreon's tone and therefore his meaning, and that, when rightly understood, he yields one or two invaluable certainties about his famous contemporary.3

We shall glance first at the whole surviving oeuvre, which consists of seven lyric fragments-the three quoted by Plutarch (frs. 1-3 Page), another about Themistocles quoted by an unknown writer eriQ at'vov (fr. 4 Page; cf. Pack, Gr. and Lat. Lit. Texts2 no. 2298), and three others appearing in the grammatical tradition (frs. 5, 6, 8 Page)-an iambic line (fr. 7 Page = 7 Bergk/West), and two fragments from his "epigrams" (frs. 9-10 Bergk/West).4 The contents include atvot (fr. 4 Page,

'For recent discussion, which mainly rings the changes on Kirchhoff, Wilamowitz and Beloch, see C. M. Bowra, Greek Lyric Poetry2 (Oxford 1961) 349-56; C. W. Fornara, Historia 15 (1966) 257-61; R. Meiggs, The Athenian Empire (Oxford 1972) 55, 414-15; G. M. Kirkwood, Early Greek Monody (Ithaca 1974) 182-84; A. J. Podlecki, The Life of Themistocles (Montreal 1975) 51-54; and R. J. Lenardon, The Saga of Themistocles (London 1978) 103-4.

2 The first and longest passage, fr. 1 Page, "is surprisingly difficult to inter- pret satisfactorily" (Meiggs, Ath. Emp. 415).

3 Rather than interlard these pages with extensive and repeated quotations, I shall assume that the reader is able to consult the text of Plut. Them. 21.3-7 and also Page's and West's editions of the fragments.

4 The authenticity of fr. 10 Bergk/West, transmitted under Timocreon's name as Anth. Pal. 13.31, has been doubted (Bowra, Gr. Lyr. Poetry 357-58), nor is it clear what Timocreon did with the proverb about the valour of the Milesians (fr. 7 Page = 7 Bergk/West; cf. Anacreon fr. 81 Page); but for our purpose it is enough that these things were associated with Timocreon.

American Journal of Philology Vol. 101 Pp. 61-78 0002-9475/80/1011-0061 $01.00 ? 1980 by The Johns Hopkins University Press



NOEL ROBERTSON

the Cypriot fable about sacrificial doves;5 fr. 8 Page, the Carian fable about the fisherman and the octopus; cf. fr. 3 Page, the jibe at foxy medizers), literaryjeux or parodies (fr. 6 Page, the Sicilian sage talking to his mother;6 fr. 7 Page = 7 Bergk/West, the valour of the Milesians; fr. 10 Bergk/West, "Ceian non- sense"), and satire (fr. 5 Page, money as the root of all evil), and disclose a wry bantering humorist in the mainstream tradition of both iambic and melic verse (Archilochus, Hipponax, Anacreon, et al.).7 Humour is not absent from the self-portrait of an arrant medizer, a "dock-tailed fox,"8 who is comforted to find others of the same stripe (fr. 3 Page, lines 4-5); nor yet from the picture of Themistocles uncongenially feting all com- ers at the Isthmus, so that "while they ate they prayed that Themistocles would not get a joint" (fr. 1 Page, lines 10-12).9 Food and drink must have figured rather largely in Timo- creon's poems, witness the Carian fisherman who debated whether to dive after the octopus and freeze, or to let it go and see his children starve (fr. 8 Page, sounding very much like Hipponax); at any rate he was remembered as a pugilist, rEvra02o;, who "ate and drank his fill," and his bogus epitaph celebrates a life of eating, drinking and cursing (Ath. 10.9, 415F; cf. Aelian, VH 1.27).10 Thrasymachus of Chalcedon im-

5 The beast fable was especially at home in Cyprus (FGrHist 758 no. 11), and a Rhodian's mediation of a Cypriot fable should be added to the Near Eastern links canvassed by M. L. West, HSCP 73 (1969) 113-34.

6 To judge from Plato's parallel mention of a Sicilian or Italian xo/los dvrjo gossiping about the afterlife (Gorg. 493A-B, cited by Page), fr. 6 refers to a

mystic catechism and belongs with the mocking tale of Pythagoras and his mother which has been elucidated by W. Burkert, Lore and Science in Ancient

Pythagoreanism (Cambridge, Mass. 1972) 155-59. 7 Of course Timocreon's humour has not been entirely missed. Bowra, who

called fr. 1 Page a "hymn of hatred' (Gr. LYr. Poetry 351, 354, a label often

repeated or echoed since), noted elements of boisterous slang in the poem (354-55), but thought Timocreon such a clod that he could not maintain the

proper level of language. 8 Cf. A. Hausrath, Corpus Frbullarum Aesopicarum no. 17; B. E. Perry,

Aesopica (Urbana 1952) 328 no. 17: id., Babrius and Phaedrus (Loeb ed.) appendix no. 17.

9 W. J. Slater has pointed out to me that line 12 may well contain a pun on

portions of sacrifical meat (cf. LSJ9 s. 'gJa or wSa B, a choice joint reserved for the priest in a lex sacra of Miletus).

'1 Whence Bowra, Gr. Lwr. Poetry 349: "There was a Rhodian poet, Timo- creon of Ialysus, a poor enough fellow, part blackguard and part buffoon, famed

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proved on this considerably, recounting how our Greek trencher-man came to the Great King and swilled and gorged at his table until the King asked him to earn his keep, and how he then flattened every Persian in sight and still had so many blows to spare that he began to shadow-box (Ath. 10.9, 416A = Vorsokr. 85 B 4). On the strength of this commentators are solid in believing that Timocreon "pursued his later career" (Fornara) "at the Persian court" (Podlecki, Lenardon) at "Susa," in "the service of King Artaxerxes" (Bowra)."1 But it is greatly to be feared that Thrasymachus according to a usual fashion was merely embroidering the indications (as he conceived them) of Timocreon's poetry; a phrase like Mr6oo0uv 6Qxtarouel, used by Timocreon of himself at fr. 3 Page, line 2, was warrant enough for Thrasymachus or any Greek memorialist to suppose that Timocreon hob-nobbed with the Persian king.'2

How then shall we take the poems about Themistocles? A poet who writes amusingly about conventional subjects may nonetheless have strong individual views about the political scene: if an example is needed, Alcaeus seems apt. But Timo- creon does not write about Themistocles as Alcaeus writes about Myrsilus or Pittacus. The poems are not about Themis- tocles vis-a-vis Timocreon, but about Themistocles' misconduct before the eyes of the world. To say so is to contradict both modern critics and those whom Plutarch followed (Them. 21.7, Aiyerat 6' 6 TtYoxQecov xrA), but we shall do better to rely on the poems themselves. In Plutarch's first poem, which may or may not be complete, Timocreon speaks of himself as a refugee whom Themistocles neglected when others paid him "scampish money"-but this as part of his general practice of taking bribes and settling affairs as he pleased (fr. 1 Page, lines 5-10). In the opening lines of the second poem Timocreon ad- dresses the Greeks at large before attacking Themistocles

for his prowess as an athlete and as a trencher-man." The trouble with this general description of Timocreon is that, if we are to take lyric poets at their word, it is completely undistinctive and would fit (say) W. B. Yeats just as well as Timocreon.

" Fornara, Hi.toria 15 (1966) 261; Podlecki, Life of Them. 54 n. 29; Lenar- don, Saga of Them. 104; Bowra, Gr. Lyr. Poetry 350, 356.

12 In fact Fornara, Historia 15 (1966) 261 n. 17, cites fr. 3 along with Ath. as attesting Timocreon's sojourn in Persia!

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"with far more outrageous and impudent abuse" (Them. 21.5). In the third poem-and again we may have the opening lines-Timocreon comes forward to flaunt his own medism: he is not the only medizer, it appears, others too are rascals and foxes. Is this the personal revelation that explains everything-Timocreon's banishment (if he was banished) and his vendetta with Themistocles (if there was a vendetta)? But the poem said nothing about these things; it was left to ancient critics to deduce them from the poem. "Timocreon is said to have been banished for medism, with Themistocles joining in the vote of condemnation. So when Themistocles was accused of medizing, he wrote these lines against him," etc. (Them. 21.7). Perhaps the critics were right; perhaps Timocreon really was a convicted medizer, and in his banishment turned to self-mockery. But role-playing came easily to a Greek poet,13 and if Hipponax could play a burglar and a rake and a sot, it may be that Timocreon played a medizer with the same flair and as much truth. It is not important to decide. The point of Timocreon's poem was certainly not to justify himself, but to vilify Themistocles; the poet's medism is only a foil to set off Themistocles'. Likewise it is not important to decide whether Timocreon really was a refugee, ~egvov E6vra, at the time of Themistocles' depredations, or whether this most pitiable of roles in early Greek poetry was assumed at the time of writing; in either case the refugee is mentioned only to set off the venal and violent oppressor.

Between Plutarch and the writer r,ci aivov we have three or four different poems about Themistocles.14 Timocreon's scolding of Themistocles became notorious (Ael. Arist. 3 Behr

13 Cf. M. L. West, Studies in Greek Elegy and Iambus (Berlin 1974) 32-33. 14 The second and third passages quoted by Plutarch (frs. 2-3 Page) are

treated by Bowra, Gr. Lyr. Poetry 355-56, as fragments of a single poem; the metre of both he regards as trochaic dimeter, which is certainly the metre of the poem on wealth (fr. 5 Page; but it is hardly useful to debate whether the term ax6otov should be applied to Plutarch's poems as it is by our sources to the poem on wealth; cf. A. E. Harvey, CQ 46 [1955] 162-63). Page however scans fr. 3 as iambic dimeters. In any case Plutarch plainly thought that the two

passages came from different poems written on different occasions; Bowra's

position would only be tenable if (what Bowra did not aver) Plutarch had not Timocreon's poems before him but only some sort of disquisition like his own which quoted passages. Not much is left on the papyrus of the passage quoted by the writer .-relQi C,ol, said to have been written after Themistocles' flight

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De Quattuor 347; Sudas. TtLoxge6wv),15 and so recalls, as Aris- teides says, Archilochus' scolding of Lycambes or Hipponax' of Bupalus. The manner of scolding is the same as ever-rude language (fr. 1 Page, lines 6, 8, 10-12), ridiculous comparisons (fr. 3, Page, the dock-tailed fox and his fellows; fr. 4 Page, the doves that flew out of one pyre into another), and screeching publicity (fr. 1 Page, lines 1-4; fr. 2 Page, lines 1-2). Timocreon has deployed the traditional resources of comic abuse against a leading public figure of the day. This may or may not have been a new departure, for we cannot say whether certain important-sounding targets of earlier poets were real or make- believe (e.g. the Eurymedontiades of Hipponax fr. 128 West).

II

What then does Timocreon tell us about Themistocles? Fr. 1 Page begins in good lyric style: "You may praise X or Y or Z, but I praise Aristeides as the best man to come out of Athens, now that Leto has shown her loathing for Themistocles, liar, cheat and traitor," etc. This form of opening, the "priamel," is conventional in poems which dwell with Archaic naivety upon the poet's own preference (in love, etc.);'6 but here the poet is not concerned to praise Aristeides, but to abuse Themistocles. Therefore the priamel is ironic; Themistocles is doubly damned by the praise of Aristeides; in plain prose, even Aris- teides gains by comparison with Themistocles. This invidious distinction of course implies that Aristeides was generally known and hated as the author of the tribute assessments of

from Greece (fr. 4 Page); it seems to be iambic or possibly trochaic, and so might just come from the same poem as either fr. 2 or fr. 3.

15 After mention of "a certain melic poem" against Themistocles the Suda proceeds, "and he wrote a comedy, xca)w,odav, against both Themistocles and Simonides the melic poet and (he wrote) other things;" Timocreon is initially called "a comic writer," "of the Old Comedy." These confusions arise from the secondary sense of "comedy" as iambic abuse; cf. W. Schmid and 0. Stahlin, Geschichte der Griechischen Literatur 1.1 (Munich 1929) 541 n. 7. Kirkwood, however, Early Gr. Mon. 182, is prepared to re-write the history of Comedy: "Although Timocreon of Rhodes was best known as a writer of comedies, he was also a lyric poet," etc.

16 Cf. H. Frankel, Wege und Formen friihgriechischen Denkens2 (Munich 1960) 68-69, 90-91.

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the Delian League.'7 The three worthies named before Aris- teides are in the same case-Pausanias, Xanthippus, and Leotychidas. Everyone knows that Pausanias and Leotychidas were disgraced in the 470's; and Xanthippus evidently fared no better, for he drops out of sight after the campaign of 479 in which he executed the Persian commander of Sestus with bar- barian cruelty (Hdt. 9.116-20);18 the long and lurid account of Artayctes' impiety purveyed by Herodotus shows that his Alcmaeonid informants had been at pains to contrive an apol- ogy. The disgrace of these three figures provides a terminus post quem, not ante, for Timocreon's poem; they and Aris- teides are mentioned as the most outrageous names Timocreon could think of. Yet they are paragons beside Themistocles!

The middle part of the poem first mentions Themistocles' downfall and then describes events before his downfall. Aris- teides himself appears a marvel of virtue, "now that Leto has shown her loathing for Themistocles, liar, cheat and traitor; who, when Timocreon was a refugee, accepted scampish money and would never bring him home to his fatherland Ialysus; who took three talents of silver and sailed away to the devil, restoring some to their homes, unjustly, driving out others, killing others still." Leto is the Delian League, as others have seen;19 from Timocreon's point of view Athens

17 Traces of contemporary denigration of Aristeides are few but unmistak- able; cf. Meiggs, Ath. Emp. 42.

18 Xanthippus died before 472, when Pericles was head of the household (IG 22 2318, line 9): "very likely killed on active service," says J. K. Davies, Athenian Propertied Families 600-300 B.C. (Oxford 1971) 456; this possibility does not conflict with the interpretation given above.

19 So Bowra, Gr. Lvr. Poetry 354; Fornara, Historia 15 (1966) 359; Meiggs, Ath. Emp. 415; Kirkwood, Early Gr. Mon. 183: Podlecki, Life of Them. 52; Lenardon, Saga of Them. 104. Leto evokes no place so much as Delos, and in the context there is no alternative. The offering to Leto which an epigram credits to Corinthian sailors after the battle of Salamis (Plut. De Her. Mal. 39, 870F; Anth. Pal. 6.215) was more likely made on Delos than at Corinth, as commonly assumed; but even if at Corinth, Leto was no byword for the city, nor yet for the Isthmus. F. Wehrli, RE Suppl. 5 (1931) 557 s. Leto, suggests that Timocreon viewed Leto as "a goddess of vengeance," such as the Lycian Leto appears to be, at least in grave inscriptions. This is a strange recondite allusion, for nowhere else in Greek literature does Leto play the part of Nemesis. And there would still be little point in describing Themistocles as the victim of Leto's anger, unless Leto meant something in Greek terms as well-sc. the Delian League.

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and the Delian League are the same, and the aorist ijxOaec means that Themistocles has signally lost favour in these quarters-whether he has been merely ostracized, or condemned and driven to flight. The string of epithets and the relative clause refer to the period before his fall,20 when Themistocles intervened at a number of cities. The phrase daQyvQtotol xotSaXtxolat, "scampish money," shows which side he favoured, for x6oaAoo; and its derivatives are always used of low-brow scamps or tricksters.21 Themistocles in- stalled radical democrats and expelled the opposition, and of course took bribes at the same time: otherwise he would not have been Themistocles. Timocreon represents himself as a typical victim of Themistocles--ov xaTayev imperfect, "would never bring him home" all the while he conducted his dirty business-and so in truth he may have been. But he does not assert any personal tie with Themistocles unless we give to ~ELvov (line 5) its special meaning "guest-friend." Plutarch did so: Timocreon, he says, "assails Themistocles rather bitterly because he had arranged for other exiles to go home in return for payment but had abandoned him, though a guest-friend and a comrade, for money." This is a rendering of lines 5-9 which subserves the theory (inevitable in itself) of a close relationship between Timocreon and Themistocles. Yet the single word

elTvov will hardly bear such emphasis; it is much more naturally taken as "a stranger abroad," i.e. a refugee, since this is what the context requires: Timocreon wants to be restored to "his fatherland Ialysus."22

20 Bowra, Gr. Lyr. Poetry 353, rightly observed that the actions of Themis- tocles in the relative clause must be prior to the action of Leto, ijXOaQe.

21 The original sense of x6oaloc, deducible from certain derivatives attested much later, is "street-porter;" see the entries in LSJ and .uppl., Frisk, Gr. Etym. Worterb., and especially Chantraine, Dict. Etym. de la Langue Gr., who adds ModGr xov/3a)tb "transport." The d proves x6o3dato Doric; like some other Doric words of similar import x6oa).og and derivatives are much favoured in Attic comedy, and xoSpaltx6o comes naturally to Timocreon of Rhodes.

22 The word E'vog together with "three talents" also appears in the iambic poem quoted by the writer :rEQL ai'vov (fr. 4 Page), and doubtless refers to the same occasion; but we learn nothing more from this very fragmentary passage. Timocreon had so much to say of the three talents that he may have worked on Critias, who gave this sum as Themistocles' original fortune, later multiplied by peculation (Ael. VH 10.17 = Vorsokr. 88 B 45; cf. Plut. Them. 25.3).

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The last three lines complete the picture of Themistocles in his heyday. "(And who,) stuffed with money, would absurdly offer entertainment to all at the Isthmus, putting a chill on the meat he served; and people would eat and pray that Themisto- cles might not score a point-or get a joint!"23 Again the im- perfects zav66xevE, oroOtov xrviJovro show a pattern of con- duct; for this reason alone, and apart from the question of date, we may be sure that Themistocles was not canvassing momentarily for the aristeion of the battle of Salamis.24 He was probably conspicuous at more than one Isthmian festival of the 470's. The Isthmian festival was the obvious place for Themistocles to lobby on behalf of democracy, in view of Athens' special standing in the ceremonies (Hellanicus FGrHist 323a F 15; Andron FGrHist 10 F 6)25 and of the at- traction of the Isthmus for maritime states; both factors helped Athenian theoroi to pursue a similar purpose in 411, namely to forestall the intrigues of Chian oligarchs (Thuc. 8.10.1).

According to Plutarch and the writer rTeQi atvov, the other two or three poems about Themistocles were written after his condemnation and flight. Plutarch uses both terms, uera T rv pvyijv avrov axat Tirv xara6txrqv, to situate the poem beginning "Muse, make this song famous among the Greeks, as is proper and just" (fr. 2 Page). This sounds like a thoroughgoing denun- ciation, and leaves little doubt that Plutarch has got it right. So we may also believe the writer :ei l aivov, who cites "Timo- creon in a poem against Themistocles driven out of Greece, rejoicing in his exile" (fr. 4 Page). With the other fragment we have not only Plutarch's comment "so when Themistocles was accused of medizing," etc., but Timocreon's own words against the medizers (fr. 3 Page). Turning back to the poem just discussed (fr. 1 Page), we find that Plutarch introduces Timo- creon after citing Herodotus 8.111.2-3 on Themistocles' efforts to extort money from Andros (Them. 21.1-2: although this

happened in 480, Plutarch has narrated events subsequent to 479 in chs. 19-20 and reaches the ostracism in ch. 22). As

23 For the pun in line 12 see n. 9 above. 24 So Fornara, Historia 15 (1966) 259 n. 9; Kirkwood, Early Gr. Mon. 183;

Podlecki, Life of Them. 53; Lenardon, Saga of Thlem. 104. Otherwise Bowra, Gr. Lyr. Poetry 352-54; Meiggs, Ath. Emp. 415.

25 As Jacoby remarked on FGrHist 323a F 15, Athens' prohedria was an

acknowledged fact, myths of Theseus etc. a contentious explanation.

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Plutarch says, Timocreon too "assails" Themistocles for ve- nality; the further notice of Timocreon's poems follows as a digression. Plutarch then does not imply any sort of date or context for our poem; if there was more to it than the triad we possess, it supplied no indication that Plutarch deemed important. Then what shall we make of lines 4-5, "now that Leto has shown her loathing for Themistocles, liar, cheat and traitor?" It will not do to argue that, if Themistocles had been condemned and pursued, if he had run round Greece and ended up in Persia, or if the chase was still on, then Timocreon must have expressed himself more fully. The poem makes perfect sense as one installment in a series; Timocreon had much to say against Themistocles, and if he chooses here to ridicule a certain stage of his career, a single glance at the end result will suffice; as often jrQo66rav is probably equivalent to "medizer."26 It is simplest to suppose that this poem like the others was written after Themistocles' condemnation, when Timocreon had an eager audience. But since the simplest explanation is not always right, we shall leave open the possibility that the poem belongs to the period between the ostracism and the condemnation.

Timocreon twits Themistocles as a medizer in fr. 3 Page. "Well then, Timocreon was not the only man to swear an oath with the Medes;27 no, there are other rascals too, and I am not the only dock-tailed creature; there are other foxes too."28 "Rascals" and "foxes" plural intimate that more than one medizer has been unmasked; Themistocles has an associate, or associates. Is Pausanias in view? Or accomplices at Athens or at Argos? We may also wonder whether the duplicity of Themistocles and the furtiveness of medizers fully account for the image of foxes. If not, Timocreon may intend the shifty

26 In later sources (Thuc. 1.138.6, etc.) jrQosoaia is the standard term for Themistocles' offence; and the ostracon denouncing [KaAA]i[Xovoc [ho rnQ]o66TrE (G. E. Stamires and E. Vanderpool, Hesperia 19 [1950] 378-79, 389-90) suggests that the usage already prevailed in the 480's.

27 I translate Bergk's 6oQxaroTLOl, the imperfect of surprised recollection, which is particularly suitable to the opening of a poem; cf. M. L. West on Hes. Op. 11.

28 xiAat '. b?rExcEg says Timocreon, with the normal Greek preference for the female of the species (so too u6va x6oovQtg); "other vixens," the custom- ary English rendering since Bowra, seems misleading.

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politicians of Alopece (Ar. Wasps 1241),29 who include such reputed medizers as the Alcmaeonids and Aristeides.30

III

So much for the interpretation of Timocreon. Two certainties emerge, which will guide our understanding of all the other evidence, mostly quite inferior, concerning the latter days of Themistocles. 1) For some time before his downfall Themisto- cles was active and prominent in establishing democratic re- gimes in Greek cities. 2) When he fell he was widely de- nounced as a medizer. Both points go against the usual emphasis of ancient and modern writing on Themistocles.

From Thucydides onward our sources mention no achieve- ments of Themistocles after the Persian Wars, apart from such as belong to the immediate sequel (the rebuilding of Athens' walls, the completion of the Peiraeus facilities, diplomatic manoeuvring in the Delphic Amphictyony, a temple for Ar- temis Aristobule). In contrast to Aristeides and Cimon, Themistocles is given no role in the Delian League, in either recruiting or financing or campaigning, even though these things remained topical for the next hundred years, as domes- tic developments did not. For once an argument from silence carries weight; it cannot be without significance that Athens' greatest naval hero is never connected with the post-war rise of Athens' naval empire. Most likely Themistocles was not in

sympathy with the purpose of the League; but since its purpose remains controversial,31 no more will be said about it here. We now learn from Timocreon that Themistocles was

29 Cf. D. M. Lewis, Historia 12 (1963) 23. 30 Of Aristeides Callaeschrus said that he was 'Atw:rexlOHv more by nature

than by deme (Them. Ep. 4, p. 743 Hercher). For his medism see A. E. Raubitschek in Charites: Studien E. Langlotz (Bonn 1957) 234-42; Meiggs and Lewis, GHI vol. I p. 42.

31 For a recent discussion see A. French, Phoenix 33 (1979) 134-41. It seems to me that the purpose of the League, as intimated by accounts of its founding and as fully disclosed by its subsequent record, was to harry not Medes but medizers-a practice which Themistocles is said to have opposed in another

quarter (Plut. Them. 20.3-4)-and to extort tribute from many subjugated members on behalf of a few predatory members.

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busy exporting democracy, a large and risky enterprise in which he will have needed money and auctoritas, but no offi- cial power or title; if it is true that he was similarly engaged at Argos after his ostracism (more of this below), he did not even need a base in Athens. There is however some indirect evidence that at Athens too Themistocles stood forward as a champion of radical democracy in the years after the Persian Wars.

Craterus of Macedon as cited by Plutarch described an out- burst of popular resentment at Athens which followed the condemnation of Themistocles and led to a wave of prosecutions of the better sort, including Aristeides, by "sycophants" (Arist. 26.1-3 = FGrHist 342 F 12). Craterus' account of these matters was not so aberrant as Plutarch supposed (relying mainly on the rhetorical tradition of Aristeides' death and hon- ours).32 Idomeneus as cited by Plutarch elsewhere knew of a prosecution of Aristeides in similar circumstances, although he makes Themistocles himself the leading prosecutor (Arist. 4.3-8 = FGrHist 338 F 7); and Nepos like Craterus fixes the death of Aristeides with reference to Themistocles' "expulsion"-"in the fourth year after" (Arist. 3.3).33 If the expulsion was thought to have occurred not too long before Themistocles' arrival in Asia Minor (cf. Nepos, Them. 9.1), the wave of prosecutions together with the death of Aristeides belongs in the late 460's.34 According to the Aristotelian Con-

32 This has been recognized by Jacoby on FGrHist 342 F 12 and by I. Calabi Limentani, Plutarchi Vita Aristidis (Florence 1964) xxiii, xxxvii.

33 Decessit autemfere post annum quartum quam Themistocles Athenis erat expulsus. Commentators take this to mean the ostracism, not the condemnation, as a strict reading requires, and deduce a date of c. 467 for the death of Aristeides. But then Nepos will not square with Craterus, Idomeneus, and the Constitution of Athens (discussed below), and there are other grounds for thinking that the late 460's saw the close of Aristeides' career (n. 34 below). It is easy to suppose that Nepos has inadvertently misrepresented a Greek phrase like Plutarch's, pETr& ... r0v OcUataroxiovg pvyrjv (Arist. 26.2).

34 Aristeides, said Theophrastus or another (according as we read cfroiv or (paolv at Plut. Arist. 25.3), commented shrewdly on the Samians' proposal to transfer the League treasury from Delos to Athens. The actual transfer, if that is in view, was dated by Ephorus to the late 460's (Justin 3.6.4-Diod. 11.70. 3-5-12.38.2: Justin expressly situates the transfer near the end of the Messe- nian War and near the beginning of the Egyptian expedition; Diodorus, under the year 464/3 and between the operations against Thasos and Aegina and the

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stitution of Athens, 25.2, just such a wave of prosecutions -for malversation of public funds, as in Craterus and Idomeneus-was a prelude to Ephialtes' reform of the Areopagus in 462/1. It is true that in this fourth-century version Themistocles himself, in defiance of chronology, is the in- stigator of the reform: fearing to be tried by the Areopagus for medism, he used a trick to embroil Ephialtes with the Areopagus (Const. Ath. 25.2-4)-quite superfluously, in view of the judicial attacks which Ephialtes had already conducted against "many of the Areopagites!" Themistocles' role in this version is merely the latest wrinkle in a lively controversy about radicals versus conservatives on the eve of Ephialtes' reform. It was apparently common ground that the radicals, through the agency of "sycophants" or in the person of Ephialtes, launched a series of prosecutions against the better sort, and that Themistocles' downfall had something to do with this. Craterus' version, whether true or not, is plausible, and is likely presupposed by Idomeneus and the source of Nepos. The Aristotelian version is more venomous and irresponsible. It is hard to be sure of its importance: is the connexion between Themistocles' medism and radical agitation a late em- broidery or an original element?

This brings us to the second point, that Themistocles was tarred with medism. Thucydides, who is so full and firm about the medism of Pausanias, treats the medism of Themistocles as a mere allegation urged by Sparta for whatever reason, and accepted by Athens for whatever reason (1.135.2-3). He im-

settlement of Amphipolis, speaks of Athens' efforts to consolidate her power at sea and of the allies' resistance, then abruptly tires of the subject and goes on to acknowledge Athens' "mastery of the sea;" Diodorus again, in rehearsing Ephorus' "causes" of the Peloponnesian War, ascribes the transfer to the time when Athens was ' striving for mastery of the sea." These passages are the only direct evidence for the transfer of the treasury, and, I venture to say, there is no evidence of any kind pointing to either the period of the Eurymedon campaign or the year 454). In any case the author of the anecdote will have looked to the admitted facts of Aristeides' career (and his life and deserts were

already well aired before the mid fourth century, witness Dem. 20 Lept. 115); when was he known to be in Delos' Presumably OTE T0'1; p6poovI; E'rQaTTe (safe against the arbitrary correction 'TraTTE as the lectio difficilior in this context), as Craterus said; he and Idomeneus may have thought of Aristeides as a Hellenotamias ("a supervisor of the public revenues" is Idomeneus' term, or Plutarch's).

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plicitly rejects the substance of the charge; moreover, a reader of Thucydides might be pardoned for inferring from this very cursory notice, which contrasts with the steady focus on detail elsewhere in the excursus (1.128.2-138.6), that the charge had no currency apart from the exchange between Sparta and Athens. Ancient writers after Thucydides depended on him here as so often elsewhere, and have remarkably little to add about Themistocles' medism, saying at most that Pausanias approached him but was rebuffed, and such stuff (Diod. 11.54.2-55.8; Plut. Them. 23.1-5).35 Modern critics have taken their cue from Thucydides' reserve and the transparency of his successors. But Thucydides was not yet born when Themisto- cles fell and Timocreon sang. It is acknowledged on all sides that the excursus on Pausanias and Themistocles is not up to Thucydides' usual standard of critical reporting;36 the scant measure given to Themistocles' medism need be no more reli- able than the large measure given to Pausanias'.

What did it mean to be called a medizer in the 460's? We are sometimes told, apropos of Pausanias and Themistocles and others, that the imputation was only a bugbear, with so little substance that it could be used indiscriminately or as an after- thought.37 Or at worst it was political cant; you were a medizer if you were not hot enough against the Medes; cf. "communist."38 All this sounds logical and may be true in part, although there is perhaps no single case of which we know enough to exclude the gravamen absolutely. Yet however tame particular medizers may have been, the word was abhorrent, and there was surely an abhorrent reality; a communist, after all, was sometimes one who passed secrets to Russia. And if Themistocles of all men was called a medizer, the reality must have been at least suspected. In later days, when the word "medism" had largely dropped out of use, democratic leaders were often accused of taking money from Persia-as at the

35 The Epistles of Themistocles do not even trouble to refute the charge of medism, but show Themistocles admonishing Pausanias and deploring his subversion (Ep. 14 and 16, pp. 754-56 Hercher).

36 Cf. H. D. Westlake, CQ 68 (1977) 95-110, who detects the hand of an Ionian logographer.

37 So e.g. J. Wolski, Historia 22 (1973) 3-15. 38 So G. L. Cawkwell in Auckland Classical Essays pres. to E. M. Blaik-

lock (Auckland/Oxford 1970) 39-58.

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outbreak of the Corinthian War (Hell. Oxyr. 7.2-5 Bartoletti, etc.) and thereafter at many junctures down to the time of Alexander. The medizers of the Persian Wars did not typically take money, so far as we know,39 but the practice or at least the opportunity had arisen before the mid fifth century. In c. 460 or shortly after, while the Athenians controlled Egypt, the Persian Megabyzus came to Sparta to purchase a Pelopon- nesian invasion of Attica, but "his money was spent to no purpose" (Thuc. 1.109.2-3; cf. Diod. 11.74.5-6). It rather appears from Thucydides that Megabyzus concentrated on Sparta to the exclusion of other Peloponnesian states and so was not engaged in suborning democratic politicians. We might think otherwise of another Persian bagman, Arthmius of Zeleia, if we entertain the story of his mission to the Pelopon- nesus as recounted by the orators and still later writers (Dem. 9 Phil. 3.41-44, 19 Embassy 271-72; Aeschin. 3 Ctes. 258; Dein. 2 Aristog. 24-25; Plut. Them. 6.4; Arist. 3 BehrDe Quattuor 334; schol. ad loc. = Craterus FGrHist 342 F 14). Arthmius' mission has been variously situated within the period 480-450, and quite recently in the early 460's as a liaison with our very medizers, Pausanias and Themistocles.40 But all such dates depend on the ascription of Athens' decree of outlawry to either Themistocles (so Plut. and Ael. Arist.) or Cimon (so schol. Ael. Arist., adducing Craterus),41 and neither of these

39 Timotheus' Persians alludes to the threat of Persian wealth and so

perhaps of bribes (fr. 14 Page: 'Ares is king, and Greece has no fear of gold"), but Timotheus was prone to anachronism: his poem was probably as late as the Decelean War and Persia's subsidies to Sparta, perhaps even as late as

Agesilaus' campaign in Asia, which gave Plutarch occasion to quote fr. 14

(Ages. 14.4). 40 About 450: H. T. Wade-Gery, Hesperia 14 (1945) 222 n. 22; ATL 3.171 n.

42. Mid 450's: Gomme, HCT 1.327 n. 1. Early 460's: Jacoby on FGrHist 342 F 14; Meiggs, Ath. Emp. 73, 511-12. 480: M. B. Wallace, Phoenix 24 (1970) 200-2. Older opinion, which also looked to the late 470's, is reviewed by Jacoby.

41 The ascription to Themistocles probably rests on nothing more than a misuse of Aeschin. 3 Ctes. 258-59, who first compares Arthmius and Demos- thenes and then imagines Themistocles crying out in his tomb against the

latter-day villain; cf. Meiggs, Ath. Emp. 510. Wallace, Phoenix 24 (1970) 200 n. 15, thinks that Aeschines implicitly ascribes the decree to Themistocles; but Themistocles figures rather as a stock hero, who has been contrasted already with Demosthenes at ?181. Most critics hold with the ascription to Cimon, because it is cited from Craterus' repertory of documents. But it is so cited by

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sensational ascriptions can be maintained against the silence of the orators.42 Without them Arthmius' mission might come at any time during Athens' hegemony (for Arthmius was banished from the empire) but before Persia openly supported Sparta, i.e. in the period 478-407. This is not the end of our uncertainty. Although the decree, inscribed on a bronze stele, was prominently displayed on the Acropolis in Demosthenes' day, a point of language proves that it was either composed or refurbished no earlier than the late fifth century.43 If the decree cannot be relied on, the whole story of the mission comes into question:44 the only means of vindicating both the decree and the mission is to date them near 407. So we are left without any sure indications that Persia tampered with democratic leaders in the time of Themistocles, but in view of our general ignor- ance of the period this is hardly surprising.

Argos, where Themistocles resided while ostracized (Thuc. 1.135.3, etc.), provides an obvious setting for both medism and neoterism. The evidence is familiar though disputed, and needs only the briefest mention. Perhaps the most straightforward is Aeschylus' Suppliants, which shows us an Argive demos as robust and capable as the Athenian, and ready to succour supplicants no less controversial than was Themistocles him-

a scholiast on Aelius Aristeides, not the best authority, especially in his manner of citation: "There was a certain Craterus, who collected all the decrees that were recorded in Greece; and this one recorded on the stele is by Cimon. But Aristeides says it is by Themistocles." H. Berve, SBBayrAk 1961, no. 3 p. 9 n. 15, treats this description of Craterus' work as a useful corrective to Jacoby. To my mind it reveals a Byzantine scribbler conjuring with a name and impro- vising erudition; another scholiast on another passage of Aristeides (3.327 Dindorf) offers a completely different rigmarole about Arthmius which scarcely anyone has taken seriously.

42 Jacoby and others, however, would partially explain the omission of the mover's name, assumed to be Cimon, by supposing that Demosthenes is the only direct witness, Aeschines having cribbed from Demosthenes, and Deinar- chus from Demosthenes and Aeschines together.

43 I.e. :TOito roi TOV 6rjIov xri.: see C. Habicht, Hermes 89 (1961) 24, fol- lowing Kolbe. Meiggs, Ath. Emp. 510-11, who undertakes to refute Habicht, does not even notice this point, on which Habicht laid most weight.

44 Habicht, Hermes 89 (1961) 25, while dismissing the decree, professed belief in "the undoubtedly historical affair." This appears to disarm A. R. Burn's rejoinder (Persia and the Greeks [London 1962] 376 n. 29), that Arth- mius as "an otherwise obscure person" would not have been invented along with the decree.

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self;45 as the Suppliants may have been produced in any year of Aeschylus' lifetime from 467 onward (except of course 458),46 it was conceivably written during Themistocles' sojourn at Argos, and was certainly written while Themistocles was in everyone's mind. From Argos, says Thucydides, Themistocles made frequent visits to other parts of the Peloponnesus; this ominous activity has been connected by commentators with the synoecisms of Elis and Mantineia, even though these things are not demonstrably democratic or, in the case of Mantineia, of this period.47 As for medism, Herodotus 7.151-52.1 will not vouch for the story that Argos renewed with Artaxerxes the ties which she had formed with Xerxes; nonetheless the story is generally taken to be true, and the likely occasion for the renewal of ties is the beginning of Artaxerxes' reign (when Themistocles himself appealed to the King), especially as Argos had less need of these ties sub- sequently. The Argives, moreover, could justify themselves on historical grounds, for the Persians reputedly acknowledged descent from the Argive hero Perseus (Hdt. 7.150.2; cf. 6.54, where the Persians contest Perseus' ascending line, and 7.220.4, where the oracle about the Perseidae as enemies of Sparta is applied to Persia). In view of such talk we must attach a political significance to Aeschylus' portrayal of early Argos as the cradle of civilization, western and eastern alike: in Pelasgus' day Argos was the capital of a realm as wide as the Balkan peninsula, inhabited by primordial Pelasgians (Suppl. 250-70, etc.), and she welcomed back a reflux of still earlier Argive stock in the persons of the Danaids, whose Oriental blood and aspect are emphasized. Aeschylus supplies the ideology of Argive medism.

At Athens, however, a direct connexion between medism and radical democracy still eludes us, unless we rely on the

45 See A. J. Podlecki, The Political Background of Aeschylean Tragedy (Ann Arbor 1966) 42-62; A. F. Garvie, Aeschylus' Siipplices (Cambridge 1969) 141-62, who is perhaps unduly cautious.

46 B. Snell, TrGF 1 pp. 44-45, makes it clear that 463 has no better claim than any other year.

47 Cf. A. Andrewes, Phoenix 6 (1952) 2-3; W. G. Forrest, CQ 51 (1960) 221-41, who also makes play with the servile generation at Argos and al-

together goes well beyond the evidence, though perhaps not quite beyond belief.

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anecdote about Themistocles and the Areopagus. It is arguable that the career of the elder Callias son of Hipponicus (PA 7825) shows the connexion. According to Herodotus 7.151 the Ar- give ambassadors approached Artaxerxes at the same time as "Callias son of Hipponicus" and others unnamed came from Athens "on other business;" the phrase only means that the Athenian and the Argive embassies were quite separate. Herodotus could not allude so offhandedly to a final com- prehensive settlement between Greece and Persia, the putative "Peace of Callias,"48 and whatever business Callias transacted with Artaxerxes in the late 460's was abortive, to judge from the Egyptian expedition. Now although the proud terms which Athens supposedly dictated to Persia are bandied by the orators from c. 380 onward (Isocr. 4 Paneg. 120, etc.), Callias is never mentioned as the ambassador before 343, when De- mosthenes says of him that "because he was thought to have taken bribes on his embassy, they almost executed him and actually did fine him fifty talents at his accounting" (19 Em- bassy 273).49 This assertion presupposes an acknowledged trial and condemnation for misconduct of an embassy; such a trial, or at least a capital charge which Callias narrowly escaped, was known to Aeschines of Sphettus fifty years before the speech of Demosthenes (Plut. Arist. 25.4-8 = fr. 36 Dittmar). Aeschines used the occasion to contrast the rich and arrogant Callias with the poor and honourable Aristeides, said to be a

48 Many exponents of the Peace of Callias lump Herodotus' notice with all the others, but Meiggs, Ath. Emp. 92-93, more wisely treats it as distinct. The mind reels before the notion that Herodotus, rehearsing the struggle between Greece and Persia, chose never to speak of a Peace that promised an end of strife forever-except to describe it, in a pregnant context, as "other business!" On the other hand Athenian publicists of the fourth century were bound to find Herodotus' mention of Callias extremely suggestive, inasmuch as this worthy was authentically famous for arranging the Thirty Years' Peace of 446, and as his like-named grandson was also eminent as a peace-maker.

49 Otherwise the earliest mention of Callias as the author of the Peace is by Ephorus (Diod. 12.4.5). Since the worship of Eirene which commemorated the Peace of 375/4 was linked with the fifth-century Peace by the source of Plut. Cim. 13.5, we may suspect that the statue of Callias nearby, supposedly the fifth-century peace-maker (Plut. loc. cit.; Paus. 1.8.2), actually portrayed the younger Callias son of Hipponicus, who lived at a time when the Athenians were fast erecting portrait statues of contemporary statesmen in this part of the Agora (Conon, Timotheus, Evagoras, etc.).

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cousin; if Aeschines took any care with verisimilitude, the trial occurred during Aristeides' lifetime, i.e. before c. 460. The invidious wealth of Aeschines' anecdote consorts with the charge of bribery in Demosthenes, and recurs in some accounts of the triumphant embassy to Persia (Aristodemus FGrHist 104 F 1 ch. 13.2; Suda s. KaAWtas). It seems not unlikely then that Callias actually was prosecuted for his deal- ings with Artaxerxes, and that the prosecution belongs to the struggle between radicals and conservatives in the late 460's. There can be no doubt where Callias stood, since about this time or a little later his son Hipponicus agreed to marry the unwanted wife of Pericles.50 Was Callias among the "friends" of Themistocles who arranged to forward the exile's money from Athens and Argos (Thuc. 1.137.3)?

Such is the scattered evidence which assumes new significance in the light of Timocreon's testimony. It is not much, for later generations did not care to remember Themistocles' medism or even his propagation of democracy. Timocreon stands as the chief witness to these things-fittingly enough, since it was Themistocles who made Timocreon's reputation, and no doubt his livelihood as well.

NOEL ROBERTSON BROCK UNIVERSITY

ONTARIO, CANADA

50 For the rather tangled evidence see Davies, Ath. Prop. Fam. 262-63.

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timocreon and themistocles

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