Transcript At some point in this struggle, the Athenians decided to

At some point in this struggle, the Athenians decided to resort to ostracism – a
method of reducing political tension in which citizens voted to expel a senior
political figure by writing his name on an ostrakon (small piece of pottery). The
leader with the most votes against him, had to leave the city for ten years.
Aristides lost and the illustration shows one of the ostraka with his name on it.
It was discovered in the agora (public forum) of Athens in 1932.
According to Nepos, Aristides spoke that day, without being recognised, to a man he saw
writing down a vote against him. In the better known version of the story given by the
Greek writer Plutarch, the man was illiterate and the statesman himself wrote `Aristides’
on the ostrakon for him when asked to do so.
When a much larger Persian force, under Darius’s son King Xerxes, attacked in 480, the
Greek cities combined against them. They attempted to hold back the invading army at the
narrow pass of Thermopylae on the eastern coast but their position was turned when a Greek
traitor showed the Persians a path through the mountains. King Leonidas of Sparta and his
famous 300 died in a last stand at the summit of the pass.
O zein’angellein Lakedaimoniois hoti tede
keimetha tois rhemasi keinon peithomenoi
O stranger, tell the Spartans that here
we lie obedient to their commands
Themistocles, who had already persuaded the Athenians to evacuate their city so that every
adult male could man the ships, now persuaded the other Greek states to station all of their
naval forces between the small island of Salamis and the coast of Attica.
Pretending that he wanted to go over to Xerxes’ side. Themistocles sent a
message to the king claiming that the Greeks were demoralized and preparing to
flee. The Persian king fell into the trap and sent his own ships into the narrow
channel where their greater numbers had no advantage.
The Greeks were waiting for the attack and won a decisive victory. Xerxes was not now in
a position to attack the Peloponnese (the portion of Greece south of the narrow isthmus
of Corinth), and he returned to Persia, leaving his general Mardonius in charge of a land
force in the north.
‘ὦ παῖδες Ἑλλήνων ἴτε,
ἐλευθεροῦτε πατρίδ᾽, ἐλευθεροῦτε δὲ
παῖδας, γυναῖκας, θεῶν τέ πατρῴων ἕδη,
θήκας τε προγόνων: νῦν ὑπὲρ πάντων ἀγών.’
•
O paides Hellenon ite
eleutheroute patrid’, eleutheroute de,
paidas, gunaikas, theon te patroon hede,
pathekas te progonon:nun huper panton agon
•
Onwards, sons of Greece free
•
your country, free your children, your
wives, the shrines of your fathers’ gods, and
the tombs of your ancestors: now all is at stake
The Greek battle cry at Salamis, from The Persians, a play by Aeschylus,
who had himself been one of the combatants.
Aristides, like other exiles, had been recalled to Athens when the
Persian attack was imminent. He was elected as one of the ten
Athenian strategoi and fought under a Spartan supreme commander.
Pausanias, in the land battle of Platea in 479. The Persian general,
Mardonius, was killed and his army put to flight.
The high-handed behavior of Pausanias, the Spartan general who was in overall
command of the Greek forces together with the integrity shown by Aristides, led to many
Greek states preferring to accept Athenian leadership in the continuing struggle against
Persia. Aristides was entrusted with organising a common defence fund, to be kept at
Delos in the centre of the Aegean. In 454 B.C., however, the Athenians transferred this
treasury to Athens itself and the Delian League became in effect an Athenian empire.
Aristides remained a leading figure at Athens until his death in 468. In contrast,
Themistocles lost popularity because of his arrogance and was ostracised in
471. He went to live in the Greek city of Argos but was then accused by the
Spartans, probably unfairly, of assisting Pausanias, who had gone over to the
Persian side. Themistocles did then offer his services to Artaxerxes, the son of
King Xerxes. He was made governor of Magnesia in western Asia Minior where
he died in about 459 B.C.