Themistocles: How Athens Took to the Sea
Historical Lives · Classical Greece · Edition 2026-10-09
Silver, ships, and a difficult choice of battlefield: the Athenian statesman behind a maritime transformation.
Themistocles was born around 525 BC in Athens, a city in the Greek region of Attica, close to the Aegean Sea. There was no united Greek state. Cities such as Athens and Sparta governed themselves and pursued their own interests. Athens, Sparta, and the island city of Aegina could cooperate, compete, or fight. Across the sea, the Persian Empire already ruled Greek communities on the coast of Asia Minor, in what is now western Turkey. The conflict that would make Themistocles famous began in that divided world. [1, 2, 3, 4]
Who’s who
Greek leaders and allies
– Themistocles: Athenian politician and naval strategist.
– Eurybiades: Spartan commander of the allied fleet; Sicinnus: Themistocles’ household tutor and messenger.
– Pausanias: Spartan commander later investigated for dealings with Persia. [5, 6, 7]
Persian kings
– Darius the First: king behind the earlier invasion; Xerxes: his son, who invaded in 480 BC.
– Artaxerxes the First: Xerxes’ son, who later sheltered Themistocles in Thucydides’ account. [8, 9, 7]
Historians and sources
– Herodotus: fifth-century BC Greek historian of the Persian Wars.
– Thucydides: Athenian historian born after Salamis, who recounts Themistocles’ later career.
– Plutarch: Greek biographer of the first–second centuries AD, writing roughly six centuries later; Aeschylus: Greek playwright whose The Persians appeared in 472 BC. [10, 11, 12, 13]
How Athens became Persia’s enemy
In 499 BC, Greek cities in Ionia, on the Asian shore of the Aegean, rebelled against Persian rule. Athens and Eretria, another Greek city, sent help. This brought Athens into a struggle with a vastly larger power. Herodotus, the Greek historian whose Histories supplies much of this story, says Athens contributed twenty ships. Writing decades later, he traced the widening conflict partly to that decision. [2, 3, 10]
For Darius the First, the Persian king, the expedition against Athens and Eretria offered both punishment for their intervention and an opportunity to subdue more Greek communities. Athens’ immediate stake was its independence. Its recently established democracy depended on citizens continuing to govern their own affairs, though political rights were restricted to men who held citizenship. [8, 2, 14]
Meanwhile, Themistocles was building a political career at home. Around 493/492 BC, while serving as archon, a senior civic official, he began developing Piraeus as Athens’ harbor. Its three natural harbors offered a base for naval power. This was an early commitment to the sea, before the emergency that would make his policy indispensable. [1, 7]
In 490 BC, a Persian force landed at Marathon, northeast of Athens. Athenian troops and their allies from Plataea defeated it. Athens had survived, but Persia’s resources remained enormous. Darius prepared another expedition; after his death, his son Xerxes took up the invasion. The next attack would come with a major army and fleet together. [15, 16, 9]
The silver that became ships
Themistocles’ opportunity came in 483/482 BC, when a rich silver discovery at Laurium, in southern Attica, produced a windfall. Citizens expected a share of the money. He persuaded them to spend it on warships. His immediate argument, Herodotus explains, concerned Athens’ war with nearby Aegina. A familiar local rival helped him win support for a fleet that would soon face a much larger enemy. [17, 4]
The naval expansion eventually gave Athens about two hundred ships. The Greek Ministry of Culture describes an initial program of one hundred followed by further construction; Herodotus links the proposal to two hundred. Either way, the decision transformed public revenue into a force that required thousands of trained men. A trireme, the principal warship, carried approximately 170 rowers in three levels. Their coordinated strokes drove a narrow hull with a bronze-covered ram. [17, 4, 18]
As the Persian invasion approached, the Athenians consulted the oracle at Delphi, a religious sanctuary whose prophecies carried great authority. Its promise of a “wooden wall” prompted argument. Themistocles interpreted the words as ships and the reference to Salamis as an encouraging sign. He was asking citizens to believe that the fleet could preserve their community even if they could no longer hold its buildings. [19]
The invasion reaches Athens
In 480 BC, Xerxes advanced into Greece. Athens, Sparta, Aegina, and other city-states joined in resistance. Their alliance had to combine separate forces and accommodate competing priorities. The allied fleet served under Eurybiades, a Spartan, although Athens supplied its largest contingent. Themistocles therefore had to persuade fellow commanders as well as his own citizens. [2, 5, 20]
The Greeks first tried to stop the invaders at Thermopylae, a narrow land passage to the north, while their fleet fought nearby at Artemisium. Herodotus describes Themistocles there using payments to keep commanders from withdrawing and retaining some money himself. His resourcefulness could serve the common defense while also bringing private advantage. Then the Persian army broke through at Thermopylae, and the fleet withdrew south. The route toward Athens was open. [21, 22, 23]
Athenians sent their households chiefly to Troezen, across the water in the Peloponnese, and also to Aegina and Salamis. Salamis was an island just off the coast near Athens and Piraeus. The evacuation put the navy’s purpose to its severest test: could it keep the people safe when the army could not protect their city? Persian forces entered Athens, and the Acropolis, its fortified sacred hill, suffered burning and destruction. Damaged sculpture and sanctuary remains still bear witness to the attack. [24, 25, 26]
Why Salamis mattered
The allied fleet gathered at Salamis, but its commanders disagreed about staying. Some preferred to withdraw toward the Isthmus of Corinth, the narrow neck of land connecting the Peloponnese with the rest of mainland Greece. That would bring them closer to the defense of their own region. Themistocles wanted battle in the passage between Salamis and the mainland. In confined water, the larger Persian fleet would have less room to use its numbers. Staying also protected the refugees on the island. [27]
Themistocles then took a dangerous step. According to Herodotus, he secretly sent Sicinnus, the tutor of his children, to the Persian commanders. Sicinnus carried a false message claiming that Themistocles favored Xerxes and that the Greeks were preparing to escape. It invited the Persians to close the exits and catch their opponents before they could get away. [6]
Persian ships moved to block the routes. The deception, if Herodotus’ account is accepted, served two purposes at once: it drew the enemy toward Themistocles’ chosen battlefield and made withdrawal harder for his own allies. A disagreement among commanders became a battle they could no longer easily avoid. Themistocles had moved beyond persuasion to manipulating the choices available to both sides. [28]
In the fighting that followed, the Greek fleet prevailed. Herodotus credits the Athenians and Aeginetans with destroying many enemy ships, describing the Greeks maintaining order while the Persian formation became confused. Themistocles’ achievement combined years of preparation with the choice of a place where the fleet could fight effectively. The silver vote, the ships, the rowers, and the argument over geography had become parts of the same victory. [29, 4, 27]
Xerxes now feared that the Greeks might threaten the bridges across the Hellespont, the strait on his route back to Asia. He withdrew from Greece, though Persian forces remained and the war continued. Greek victories the following year, including Plataea in 479 BC, secured the defeat of the invasion. Salamis had been a decisive turning point within a larger campaign. [30, 31, 32, 2]
Only eight years after Salamis, the playwright Aeschylus made Persian defeat the subject of The Persians. His drama includes the deceptive message and gives the defeated side a voice through mourning. It shows how quickly the battle entered public memory, while reminding us that the outcome celebrated in Athens was a catastrophe for other families. [13]
The hero and his city part ways
After the invasion, Athens needed walls as well as ships. Sparta objected to rebuilding its defenses. Thucydides, an Athenian historian writing later in the fifth century BC, describes Themistocles going to Sparta as an envoy and delaying negotiations while work continued at home. Men, women, and children helped rebuild. By the time he spoke plainly, the walls were high enough to change the discussion. [7, 11]
The navy also changed Athens itself. Poorer citizens who served as rowers gained political weight because the city depended on their labor. Abroad, Athenian naval strength became the foundation of an empire over other Greek communities. The power that had helped defend independence could also restrict the independence of others. [33, 7]
Themistocles’ prestige did not keep him secure. Around 471 BC, Athenians ostracized him, using a vote that could banish a prominent citizen for ten years. A surviving pottery fragment bears his name and his father’s, Neocles. Someone had scratched them into a broken vessel to vote him out. His success at Salamis had not removed the city’s willingness to send him away. [1, 34]
A more serious danger followed. Pausanias, a Spartan commander, came under investigation for dealings with Persia. Thucydides says evidence uncovered in that inquiry implicated Themistocles. Athens and Sparta sought his arrest while he was already living in exile. This accusation was separate from the earlier ostracism. Flight eventually took him into the Persian Empire. [7]
There, in the most startling reversal of his life, the man who had helped defeat Xerxes sought protection from Xerxes’ son, Artaxerxes the First. Plutarch, a Greek biographer writing roughly six centuries later, records disagreement over which king received him, but favors Artaxerxes, as Thucydides does. [35, 12, 7]
Thucydides says Themistocles spent a year learning Persian language and customs, then won exceptional standing at court. The king supported him with revenues associated with Magnesia for bread, Lampsacus for wine, and Myus for other food. He died around 459 BC at Magnesia in Asia Minor. Thucydides reports illness, while acknowledging a competing story of suicide; the dramatic alternative cannot be treated as certain. [36, 1]
His story ends far from the city he had persuaded to take to the sea. Athens kept the naval power he had helped build, even after it rejected him. That is what makes his career more than a tale of one clever maneuver: he changed what his community could do, helped it survive an invasion, and then discovered how little control a celebrated leader might have over his own place within it.
Three dates to keep
483/482 BC: The silver windfall helps launch Athens’ major naval expansion.
480 BC: Themistocles helps secure the Greek naval victory at Salamis.
Around 471 BC: Athens ostracizes him. [17, 1]
Map and evidence
Open the Salamis map to locate Athens, Piraeus, the island, and the constricted waters between them. This modern reconstruction helps explain the geography; its battle arrows are an interpretation. Herodotus and Thucydides wrote much closer to the events than Plutarch. Their accounts, the surviving objects, and the archaeological remains supply different pieces of the story. [26, 10, 11, 12, 34, 25]
Sources
[1] University of Göttingen: Themistocles: https://viamus2.gbv.de/themistokles/
[2] Greek Ministry of Culture: The Persian Wars: https://2500years.culture.gov.gr/en/chapters/persiki-polemi
[3] Herodotus, Histories 5.97: Athens helps the Ionians: https://lexundria.com/hdt/5.97/mcly
[4] Herodotus, Histories 7.144: silver and ships: https://lexundria.com/hdt/7.144/mcly
[5] Herodotus, Histories 8.2: Eurybiades and allied command: https://lexundria.com/hdt/8.2/mcly
[6] Herodotus, Histories 8.75: Sicinnus’ message: https://lexundria.com/hdt/8.75/mcly
[7] Thucydides, Book One, sections 89–104 and 126–138, at York University: https://www.yorku.ca/pswarney/Texts/thuc-1-89-138.htm
[8] Herodotus, Histories 6.94: the Persian expedition’s aims: https://lexundria.com/hdt/6.94/mcly
[9] Herodotus, Histories 7.8: Xerxes’ invasion: https://lexundria.com/hdt/7.8/mcly
[10] Loeb Classical Library: introduction to Herodotus: https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Herodotus/Introduction%2A.html
[11] University of Bristol: Thucydides: https://www.bristol.ac.uk/classics/research/thucydides/
[12] Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Plutarch: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/plutarch/
[13] Aeschylus, The Persians, translated by Robert Potter: https://classics.mit.edu/Aeschylus/persians.html
[14] Metropolitan Museum of Art: Theseus, Hero of Athens: https://www.metmuseum.org/essays/theseus-hero-of-athens
[15] Greek Ministry of Culture: The Battle of Marathon: https://2500years.culture.gov.gr/en/chapters/i-machi-tou-marathona
[16] Herodotus, Histories 7.1: preparations after Marathon: https://lexundria.com/hdt/7.1/mcly
[17] Greek Ministry of Culture: The Birth of Naval Power: https://2500years.culture.gov.gr/en/chapters/i-gennisi-tis-nautikis-dinamis
[18] Greek Ministry of Culture: Shipbuilding: https://2500years.culture.gov.gr/en/chapters/naupigiki
[19] Herodotus, Histories 7.143: the wooden wall: https://lexundria.com/hdt/7.143/mcly
[20] Herodotus, Histories 8.1: allied fleet contingents: https://lexundria.com/hdt/8.1/mcly
[21] Greek Ministry of Culture: The Battle of Thermopylae: https://2500years.culture.gov.gr/en/chapters/i-machi-ton-thermopilon
[22] Herodotus, Histories 8.5: payments at Artemisium: https://lexundria.com/hdt/8.5/mcly
[23] Herodotus, Histories 8.21: withdrawal from Artemisium: https://lexundria.com/hdt/8.21/mcly
[24] Herodotus, Histories 8.41: evacuation: https://lexundria.com/hdt/8.41/mcly
[25] Greek Ministry of Culture: The Destruction and Rebirth of the City: https://2500years.culture.gov.gr/en/chapters/katastrofi-kai-anagennisi-tis-polis
[26] Salamis map, United States Military Academy, via Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Battle_of_Salamis,_480_BC.png
[27] Herodotus, Histories 8.60: the choice of battlefield: https://lexundria.com/hdt/8.60/mcly
[28] Herodotus, Histories 8.76: Persian movements: https://lexundria.com/hdt/8.76/mcly
[29] Herodotus, Histories 8.86: the battle: https://lexundria.com/hdt/8.86/mcly
[30] Herodotus, Histories 8.97: Xerxes’ fears after defeat: https://lexundria.com/hdt/8.97/mcly
[31] Herodotus, Histories 8.113 and 8.117: Xerxes withdraws: https://lexundria.com/hdt/8.113/mcly
[32] Herodotus, Histories 8.117: the return to Asia: https://lexundria.com/hdt/8.117/mcly
[33] Greek Ministry of Culture: The Consolidation of Democracy: https://2500years.culture.gov.gr/en/chapters/i-edraiosi-tis-dimokratias/ostrako-ostrakismou-tou-themistokli
[34] Canellopoulos Museum: Ostrakon Naming Themistocles: https://camu.gr/en/item/pilino-ostrako-thrafsma-angeiou-pou-ferei-to-onoma-tou-themistokli/
[35] Plutarch, Life of Themistocles, sections 27–31: https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Lives/Themistocles%2A.html
[36] Thucydides, Book One, section 138, at Perseus: https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Thuc.+1.138
