No, I wasn’t thinking. Themistocles fought at Marathon then later commanded the Greek fleet which had the Spartan’s back at Thermopylae. He defeated the far larger Persian fleet then more than held his own until the Spartans were all dead.
He later gave the Persians a backbreaking defeat at Salamis from which Xerxes never completely recovered. He was later ostracized tho I can’t recall why. In an ironic development, he lived his last years as governor of a Persian region under the Persian King.
Whoops, you said Themistocles, I was thinking Thucydides. [blush]
The practice of ostracism was one of the stupid ideas that persisted for a long time in Athenian mobocracy. In the case of Themistocles, it was partly a matter of ballot box stuffing — a pile of ostraca with his name scratched in each one was found in an ancient drain, where they’d been dumped after the vote count began. Who do you want to ostracize? Bob? Sure, his name is written right on this one (all of them said Themistocles, not everyone could read).
The allegation was that Themistocles had embezzled some funds — and like those three hired guns in “High Plains Drifter”, it sounds like a frame-up, he’d supposedly hidden the cash in the thatch of his house. Amazing that someone just happened to find it, huh?
So, he was exiled for ten years, but never went back after he got the gig with the Persians. He was fabulously popular in Anatolia, among the occupied Ionian Greek cities, and he sold the Persians on the idea of giving him a job.
Contrast this with the Age of Pericles — Pericles was a classic New Dealer, and demagogue, who lived with and had actual discussions with a courtesan/geisha/hooker. It took twenty years to build the Parthenon, and plenty of Athenians hated the garishly painted grandiose structure. Most however had participated in some way in its construction, or didn’t remember the earlier skyline because they were new in town themselves.
Pericles began the Peloponnesian War, died in the plague (probably typhus) that resulted in the crowding in of Athenians from the outskirts of town (beyond the Piraeus wall), and the Athenians also didn’t have the brains to use the truce that followed their victory at Pylos to wall off the Spartan territory and start asymmetrical warfare using recruits from the Spartans’ massive pool of slave labor.
And of course, they were jackasses to launch the impressive but disastrous Syracuse campaign.