This is an illustration of Themistocles, an Athenian political hero from the Persian War (~480 BCE), taken out of the (a?) Nuremberg Chronicle. I could have posted a Greek bust, I guess, but the ones of Themistocles are super ugly, and I’ve always liked the anachronistic depictions of Ancient Greeks in renaissance literature and art.

Themistocles was one of Athens’ greatest politicians, and, it could be argued, saved Hellas from the Persians’ conquest. After the Persians had broken through Thermopylae (which only actually took them 3 days of fighting) and invaded Attica, the Athenians used their significant naval forces to evacuate the city’s women and children to Troezen on the Peloponnese. What remained to be done, to safeguard Greece and the evacuated people, was defeat the much larger Persian fleet made up of famously skilled seamen, like the Phoenicians. The combined Greek fleet was anchored at the island of Salamis, awaiting their Spartan commander’s orders as to whether they should retreat to the Corinthian isthmus or engage the Persian forces in the strait between the island and the Attic coast.

Themistocles tried to reason with the Spartan commander (but he was Spartan and therefore exceptionally stupid). They needed to press the Persians to a naval conflict in a narrow strait where the Persians’ numbers would do them less good. Retreating to the isthmus would not only place the inevitable battle in more open water, but would allow the Persians to ignore the Greek fleet and transfer troops to the Peloponnese (where the Athenian women and children were, remember) without difficulty. The commander didn’t care for these pesky facts and ordered the fleet to retreat from Salamis to the isthmus anyway, so Themistocles threatened the Spartan, saying the Athenians would withdraw their navy and leave the rest of the allied Greeks to fate. This bought him a little bit of time, but the Spartan’s heart was still set on retreat.

Themistocles, being sort of clever, sent a messenger to Xerxes, the Persian king, pretending to be a defector trying to further the Persian cause (to be fair, lots of Greeks were defecting, all of Thebes for example, so this isn’t as crazy as it sounds). The messenger told Xerxes where the Greek fleet was stationed and assured him that if the Persian fleet sailed through the night, they could catch the ships still anchored in Salamis’ harbour. Xerxes ordered the fleet to do just that, and the Persian ships surrounded the island.

Themistocles then got to walk into the war room and say, “Hey, looks like we’re going to have to fight here anyway. What a crazy random happenstance!” Xerxes set up a throne on a cliff to watch the conflict as the Greek forces were forced to engage the Persians in the narrow strait between Salamis and the mainland. The Persians weren’t properly rested, as they’d sailed through the night, and Greeks proved to be able sailors, handing the Persians a sound, legendary defeat.

Themistocles then played the exact same trick on Xerxes, sending a messenger to him to deceive the king into thinking that the Greek fleet was now going to sail to the Hellespont and destroy the bridges the Persians had built there. This would have effectively trapped the war host in Greece, separated from their supply line and without a fleet that could be trusted to carry the necessary supplies to them by sea. Xerxes panicked and left a smaller force in charge of, basically, covering his retreat, and the Greeks pressed the Persians out of Greece for the next hundred or so years.

So yeah, Themistocles: true life hero.