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When Was Themistocles Last in Athens? Author(s): P. N. Ure Source: The Journal of Hellenic Studies, Vol. 41, Part 2 (1921), pp. 165-178 Published by: The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/625492 . Accessed: 04/01/2015 18:51 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Journal of Hellenic Studies. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 128.235.251.160 on Sun, 4 Jan 2015 18:51:24 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions WHEN WAS THEMISTOCLES LAST IN ATHENS ? THEtwenty-fifth chapter of the Aristotelian Constitutionof Athens contains a circumstantial account of the overthrow of the Areopagus, which differs from the accepted version of the same affair in ascribing an important, though not the foremost, part in the attack to Themistocles. The newly discovered version does not, it is true, stand entirely by itself. But it is found elsewhere only in an argument to the Areopagiticus of Isocrates,' written probably by a sixth-century Christian.2 As between the argument and the papyrus, it is the latter that alone can give any serious historical value to the former. But what is the historical value of the account in the Constitution? If it is true, then, as was recognised at once by Kenyon in his editio princeps, it revolutionises the history of the later part of Themistocles' career.3 But it was at once recognised also that the version of the Constitution was difficult to reconcile with the accounts of Themistocles to be found in Thucydides, Plutarch, and other writers.4 These all say that the trial that drove Themis- tocles to Persia took place while he was living ostracised from Athens at Argos. The ostracism of Themistocles took place before the condemnation and death of Pausanias, with whom the Athenian statesman was accused of having intrigued during his period of ostracism. As the downfall and death of Pausanias have generally and with good reason been dated about 468 B.c., it has been inferred that Themistocles cannot have been in Athens after about 469 B.c.5 This reckoning, again, has been thought to be confirmed by the accounts. of the flight to Persia. Themistocles is said by Thucydides to have reached Persia when Artaxerxes was 'newly' on the throne: Artaxerxes succeeded his father Xerxes in the year 465 B.c. Even on the loosest interpretation of 'newly,' 6 it is hard to see how even a Themistocles can have got through all the adventures that befell him between his ostracism and his arrival at the Persian court if the former event took place during or after the attack of Ephialtes on the Areopagus and the latter shortly after the accession of Artaxerxes. Furthermore, Themistocles is said by Thucydides to have fallen 'Epldzr-'s TlS KialeaEL-7roKICXfs XPEro-0T'VTS 3 Kenyon, ad loc. " r n7rO'- XIp" ara Kai EiSdr Oi" Ia'O-WO-V Thuc. i. 135-8; Plut. Them. 22 f.; ot 'ApoowayyTrat,rvrws a7ro5cO-OOv, KaraAoi'ai Diod. xi. 54-59 (Ephorus); Corn. Nep. aurous E7rtorav 7vy dAty ... 6 y'p 'ApworoT'rN7's Them. 8-10 (mainly Thucydides). 5 ALyL EEv 7r 7oALrELN TnV 'AJvalwYv b'rI Ki 6 E.g. Holm Hist. Gr. ii. p. 94; E. Meyer, OeqToroKXis a ,7LAos 7v 11 Vrad Ka KcEL- rov s Ges. d. Alt. III. i. p. 519. 'ApeowayiLas. 6 See Lelow, p. 171, n. 27. 2 Rose, Ath. Pol. p. 423, accepted by Sandys, Ath. Po12. p. 107. J.H.S.-VOL. XLI. 165 N This content downloaded from 128.235.251.160 on Sun, 4 Jan 2015 18:51:24 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 166 P. N. URE in on the way to Persia with the Athenian fleet blockading Naxos. The date of this blockade is not quite certain; but it preceded the battle of Eurymedon, which in turn preceded the siege of Thasos, which last event can be dated with some certainty as having begun in 465 B.c., or, at the latest, early in 464. If Themistocles was on the way to Persia at the time of the siege of Naxos, he cannot have been in Athens in 462 B.c. The effect of all these considerations has been to discredit very seriously the narrative which states that he was in Athens at the later date. It has been commonly assumed that there is a flat contradiction between the writer of the Constitutionand Thucydides, and that the earlier authority must be accepted. The narrative of Chapter XXV. of the Constitution is stated by two English scholars to reach the acme of absurdity. To take it seriously, so we are told by a leading German scholar, is a 'Zeichen philologischer Unmiindigkeit.' 7 Of those who hold such views as have just been quoted, it is not surprising that some have proceeded to excise the offending passage, partly as being inherently improbable, partly because it is not reproduced in Plutarch's life of Themistocles.8 Most scholars do not go so far as this. They regard the narrative as genuine but unauthentic, and quote other cases where our author makes mistakes in his history.9 But if these other mistakes are compared with those that are alleged to occur in Chapter XXV., we shall find that they are of a quite different order; either slips in points of fact or chronology that have no important bearing on the narrative, or mistakes on difficult questions of ancient con- stitutional history (of which the most noticeable is the much disputed fourth chapter on the Draconian constitution), or lapses into partisanship, as when 7 Mitchell and Caspari in their edition of stance of this paper will make it unnecessary Grote, p. 283, n. 1; F. Cauer, Deutsch. to revert to them in detail. Literaturzeit. 1894, p. 942. Cp. also (inter 9 See the list given by Th. Reinach, Rep. alios) Berard, Rev. Hist. xlix. (1892) p. 296; Ath. pp. xxvi-xxvii (Cimon 'youngish' in Botsford, Cornell Stud. Class. Phil. 1893, 462 B.c., c. 26; Spartan peace proposals p. 220, n. 2; Busolt, Gr. 02. III. i. p. 29; put after Arginusae instead of Cyzicus, c. Costanzi, Rivista di Fil. 1892, pp. 353-5; 34, cp. Philoc. F.H.G. i. fr. U17-8; all the Dufour, Const. d'Ath. p. 113; Giles, Eng. generals put to death after Arginusae Hist. Rev. 1892, pp. 332-3; E. Meyer, Ges. instead of all who were put on trial and d. Alt. III. i. p. 519; Niese in Sybels Hist. appeared before the court, c. 34; confu- Zeits. xxxiii. (1892), p. 43; Th. Reinach, sions or contradictions in the accounts of Rev. Et. Gr. 1891, pp. 149-151; Ruehl the -E~ol-c0XEa, c. 6, and Aoyp-TraL, c. 54, Rhein. Mus. 1891, p. 431; De Sanctis, cp. c. 48). For the Ath. Pol. drawing Stud. Costituz. d'Atene, pp. 4-6, and Rivista inferences, sometimes wrong, as to early di Fil. 1892, pp. 108 f.; Sandys, Const. of constitution-usages, see Swoboda, Arch. Ath2. p. lxix.; Walker, C.R. vi. pp. 95-99; Epig. Mitt. xvi. pp. 57 f. on Ath Pol. 16. 10. Wilamowitz, Aristot. u. Athen. i. pp. It is, of course, easy to find in the Con- 140 f. stitution's account of the fifth century 8 Th. Reinach, C.R. Acad. Inscr. June much that is 'palpably legendary,' De 1891, and Rev. Et. Gr. 1891, pp. 149-151, Sanctis, Studi Cost. Aten. p. 11, if we regard ep. Repub. Athe'nienne, p. 46; Buseskul, as such any new information that disagrees Aristot. Ath. Pol. Their arguments are with our preconceived conceptions of the answered by Politis, Parnassos, 1893, pp. period. For a good protest against this 95-6, and Schoeffer, Jahresber. Fortschr. cl. attitude, see Politis, Aristot. Ath. Pol. in Alt. lxxxiii. (1895), pp. 220-1. The sub- Parnassos, 1893, p. 13. This content downloaded from 128.235.251.160 on Sun, 4 Jan 2015 18:51:24 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions WHEN WAS THEMISTOCLES LAST IN ATHENS ? 167 Themistocles is described as merely a soldier 10as contrasted with the statesman Aristides. Mistakes and slips of these kinds are inevitable in any historical writing, ancient or modern. The mistakes laid to the charge of the writer of Chapter XXV. of the Constitution are of a different and much more damning order. It is one thing to sum up the Duke of Wellington as a distinguished statesman, or George Washington as an eminent soldier. It would be an entirely different thing if a modern historian should be found assigning, let us say, a prominent and circumstantial part to John Hampden in the trial of Charles I.- This latter is the sort of mistake that is alleged to occur in Chapter XXV. of the Constitution, but nowhere else in the whole work. The prevalent attitude that has just been described seems, therefore, on the whole, less tenable than that of the extremists who resort to excision or abuse.
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