Themistocles   

The birth of Themistocles was somewhat too obscure to do him honour.
His father, Neocles, was not of the distinguished people of Athens,
but of the township Phrearrhi, and of the tribe Leontis; and by his
mother's side, as it is reported, he was base-born-
"I am not of the noble Grecian race,
I'm poor Abrotonon, and born in Thrace;
Let the Greek women scorn me, if they please,
I was the mother of Themistocles."
Yet Phanias writes that the mother of Themistocles was not of Thrace,
but of Caria, and that her name was not Abrotonon, but Euterpe; and
Neanthes adds farther that she was of Halicarnassus in Caria. And,
as illegitimate children, including those that were of half-blood
or had but one parent an Athenian, had to attend at the Cynosarges
(a wrestling-place outside the gates, dedicated to Hercules, who was
also of half-blood amongst the gods, having had a mortal woman for
his mother), Themistocles persuaded several of the young men of high
birth to accompany him to anoint and exercise themselves together
at Cynosarges; an ingenious device for destroying the distinction
between the noble and the base-born, and between those of the whole
and those of the half-blood of Athens. However, it is certain that
he was related to the house of Lycomedae; for Simonides records that
he rebuilt the chapel of Phlya, belonging to that family, and beautified
it with pictures and other ornaments, after it had been burnt by the
Persians.
It is confessed by all that from his youth he was of a vehement and
impetuous nature, of a quick apprehension, and a strong and aspiring
bent for action and great affairs. The holidays and intervals in his
studies he did not spend in play or idleness, as other children, but
would be always inventing or arranging some oration or declamation
to himself, the subject of which was generally the excusing or accusing
his companions, so that his master would often say to him, "You, my
boy, will be nothing small, but great one way or other, for good or
else for bad." He received reluctantly and carelessly instructions
given him to improve his manners and behaviour, or to teach him any
pleasing or graceful accomplishment, but whatever was said to improve
him in sagacity, or in management of affairs, he would give attention
to, beyond one of his years, from confidence in his natural capacities
for such things. And thus afterwards, when in company where people
engaged themselves in what are commonly thought the liberal and elegant
amusements, he was obliged to defend himself against the observations
of those who considered themselves highly accomplished, by the somewhat
arrogant retort, that he certainly could not make use of any stringed
instrument, could only, were a small and obscure city put into his
hands, make it great and glorious. Notwithstanding this, Stesimbrotus
says that Themistocles was a hearer of Anaxagoras, and that he studied
natural philosophy under Melissus, contrary to chronology; Melissus
commanded the Samians in the siege by Pericles, who was much Themistocles's
junior; and with Pericles, also, Anaxagoras was intimate. They, therefore,
might rather be credited who report, that Themistocles was an admirer
of Mnesiphilus the Phrearrhian, who was neither rhetorican nor natural
philosopher, but a professor of that which was then called wisdom,
consisting in a sort of political shrewdness and practical sagacity,
which had begun and continued, almost like a sect of philosophy, from
Solon: but those who came afterwards, and mixed it with pleadings
and legal artifices, and transformed the practical part of it into
a mere art of speaking and an exercise of words, were generally called
sophists. Themistocles resorted to Mnesiphilus when he had already
embarked in politics.
In the first essays of his youth he was not regular nor happily balanced;
he allowed himself to follow mere natural character, which, without
the control of reason and instruction, is apt to hurry, upon either
side, into sudden and violent courses, and very often to break away
and determine upon the worst; as he afterwards owned himself, saying,