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and powerful command he was to have in this war; on the contrary, judging perhaps, that the object would not be obtained, the Greeks having at that time, beside other great commanders, Cimon in particular, who was gaining wonderful military successes, but chiefly, being ashamed to sully the glory of his former great actions, and of his famous victories and trophies, he most wisely determined to put a conclusion to his life agreeable to its previous course: he sacrificed to the gods, and invited his friends; and having entertained them, and shaken hands with them, drank bull's blood, as is the usual story; as others state, a poison producing instant death; and ended his days in the city of Magnesia, having lived sixty-five years, most of which he had spent in politics and in the wars, in government and command. The king being informed of the cause and manner of his death, admired him, they say, more than ever, and continued to show kindness to his friends and relations.

Themistocles left three sons by Archippe, daughter to Lysander of Alopece; Archeptolis, Polyeuctus, and Cleophantus. Plato the philosopher mentions the last*

* How strange it is, says Plato, that none of the great statesmen have been able to teach their sons to be statesmen after them. "You have often heard it said, that Themistocles taught his son Cleophantus to be such an excellent rider, that he could stand upright on horseback, and throw a javelin thus standing upright, the son obviously was not without ability,—but did you ever hear it said by any one that Cleophantus showed any virtue, skill, or wisdom in the same sort of things as did his father? Yet he, undoubtedly, had virtue been a thing to be taught, would have taught his son the virtue and wisdom in which he himself excelled." Is virtue, he asks, a thing that cannot be taught, and can only be received by the gift of God?

as a most excellent horseman but otherwise insignificant person. Of two sons yet older than these, Neocles and Diocles, Neocles died when he was young by the bite of a horse, and Diocles was adopted by his grandfather, Lysander. He had many daughters, of whom Mnesiptolema, whom he had by his second marriage, was wife to Archeptolis, her brother by another mother; Italia was married to Panthoides, of the island of Chios; Sybaris to Nicomedes, an Athenian. After the death of Themistocles, his nephew, Phrasicles, went to Magnesia, and married, with her brothers' consent, another daughter, Nicomache, and took charge of her sister Asia, the youngest of all the children. The Magnesians possess a splendid sepulchre of Themistocles, which stands in their market-place. Concerning his remains, it is not worth while taking notice of what Andocides states in his Address to the Companions*; how the Athenians robbed his tomb, and threw his ashes into the air; for he feigns this to exasperate the oligarchical faction against the people; and there is no man living but can see that Phylarchus simply invents in his history, where he all but uses an actual stage machine, and brings in a Neocles and a Demopolis, as the sons of Themistocles, to create interest and emotion, as if it were a play. Diodorus the geographer says in his work on Tombs, but by conjecture rather than of certain knowledge, that near the port of Piræus, where the land runs out like an elbow from the pro

Towards the end of the Peloponnesian war, when party feeling ran highest, clubs were formed for political purposes, and this Address was, no doubt, to the Members or Associates of one

montory of Alcimus, when you have doubled the cape and passed inward, where the sea is always calm, there is a large piece of masonry, and upon this the tomb of Themistocles, in the shape of an altar; and Plato, the comedian, confirms this, he believes, in these verses,—

Thy tomb is fairly placed upon the strand,
Where merchants still shall greet it with the land;
Still in and out 'twill see them come and go,
And watch the galleys as they race below.

Various honours also and privileges were granted to the kindred of Themistocles at Magnesia, which were observed down to our times; and were enjoyed by another Themistocles of Athens, with whom I had an intimate acquaintance and friendship in the house of Ammonius the philosopher.

PERICLES.

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