[Wikipedia, with some appropriate editing] The Decree of Themistocles is an ancient Greek inscription discussing Greek strategy in the Greco-Persian Wars, purported to have been issued by the Athenian assembly under the guidance of Themistocles...
The stone bearing the Themistocles decree (Epigraphical Museum, Athens, EM 13330) was discovered at some point before 1959 by Anargyros Titiris, a local farmer at Troezen, in the northwestern Peloponnese. For some time, he used the inscribed marble slab as a doorstep. In 1959, he donated the stone to a collection of artifacts from Troezen that a local schoolteacher was displaying at a coffeehouse. There, Professor M.H. Jameson of the University of Pennsylvania saw the slab, and, the next year, published its contents along with a translation and commentary.
The inscription begins with a statement that the contents are a resolution of the Athenian assembly, proposed by Themistocles. It then lays out a plan to evacuate the women, children, and elderly of Attica to Troezen and Salamis, while the men board triremes and prepare to defend the city, leaving only the treasurers and priestesses on the acropolis. The majority of the extant text then turns to the specifics of preparing the fleet, with the text on the slab becoming illegible before the end of the decree...
It should be emphasized that nothing in the decree explicitly contradicts the narrative of Herodotus... The historian himself nowhere explicitly ascribes definitive dates or strategic intention to the Greeks or the Athenians. In fact, the narrative of Herodotus at 8.40, often pointed to as a crux of inconsistency between Herodotus and the decree, tends to support the authenticity of the decree... The decree itself is mute as to preparation of fortifications at the Isthmus and so, again, there is no explicit contradiction with the narrative of Herodotus.Decree of Themistocles, National Archaeological Museum of Athens, 13330
