Themistocles   

their differences, and persuaded them to lay aside all enmity during
the war with the Persians; and in this great work, Chileus the Arcadian
was, it is said, of great assistance to him.
Having taken upon himself the command of the Athenian forces, he immediately
endeavoured to persuade the citizens to leave the city, and to embark
upon their galleys, and meet with the Persians at a great distance
from Greece; but many being against this, he led a large force, together
with the Lacedaemonians, into Tempe, that in this pass they might
maintain the safety of Thessaly, which had not as yet declared for
the king; but when they returned without performing anything, and
it was known that not only the Thessalians, but all as far as Boeotia,
was going over to Xerxes, then the Athenians more willingly hearkened
to the advice of Themistocles to fight by sea, and sent him with a
fleet to guard the straits of Artemisium.
When the contingents met here, the Greeks would have the Lacedaemonians
to command, and Eurybiades to be their admiral; but the Athenians,
who surpassed all the rest together in number of vessels, would not
submit to come after any other, till Themistocles, perceiving the
danger of the contest, yielded his own command to Eurybiades, and
got the Athenians to submit, extenuating the loss by persuading them,
that if in this war they behaved themselves like men, he would answer
for it after that, that the Greeks, of their own will, would submit
to their command. And by this moderation of his, it is evident that
he was the chief means of the deliverance of Greece, and gained the
Athenians the glory of alike surpassing their enemies in valour, and
their confederates in wisdom.
As soon as the Persian armada arrived at Aphetae, Eurybiades was astonished
to see such a vast number of vessels before him, and being informed
that two hundred more were sailing around behind the island of Sciathus,
he immediately determined to retire farther into Greece, and to sail
back into some part of Peloponnesus, where their land army and their
fleet might join, for he looked upon the Persian forces to be altogether
unassailable by sea. But the Euboeans, fearing that the Greeks would
forsake them, and leave them to the mercy of the enemy, sent Pelagon
to confer privately with Themistocles, taking with him a good sum
of money, which, as Herodotus reports, he accepted and gave to Eurybiades.
In this affair none of his own countrymen opposed him so much as Architeles,
captain of the sacred galley, who, having no money to supply his seamen,
was eager to go home; but Themistocles so incensed the Athenians against
them, that they set upon him and left him not so much as his supper,
at which Architeles was much surprised, and took it very ill; but
Themistocles immediately sent him in a chest a service of provisions,
and at the bottom of it a talent of silver, desiring him to sup tonight,
and to-morrow provide for his seamen; if not, he would report it among
the Athenians that he had received money from the enemy. So Phanias
the Lesbian tells the story.
Though the fights between the Greeks and Persians in the straits of
Euboea were not so important as to make any final decision of the
war, yet the experience which the Greeks obtained in them was of great
advantage; for thus, by actual trial and in real danger, they found
out that neither number of ships, nor riches and ornaments, nor boasting
shouts, nor barbarous songs of victory, were any way terrible to men
that knew how to fight, and were resolved to come hand to hand with
their enemies; these things they were to despise, and to come up close
and grapple with their foes. This Pindar appears to have seen, and
says justly enough of the fight at Artemisium, that-
"There the sons of Athens set
The stone that freedom stands on yet." For the first step towards
victory undoubtedly is to gain courage, Artemisium is in Euboea, beyond
the city of Histiaea, a sea-beach open to the north; most nearly opposite
to it stands Olizon, in the country which formally was under Philoctetes;
there is a small temple there, dedicated to Diana, surnamed of the
Dawn, and trees about it, around which again stand pillars of white
marble; and if you rub them with your hand, they send forth both the