Athens vs Persia: The Legend of Themistocles

in prehistoric island, or what made Alexander truly great.

“With the subscription to History Hit, you can explore our ancient past alongside the world's”

leading historians and archaeologists. You'll also unlock hundreds of hours of original documentaries with a brand new release every single week covering everything from the ancient world to World War II. Visit historyhit.com/subscrib. It was one of the founding fathers of the Athenian Empire, the statesman who rose

from relative obscurity to lead Athens to victory during its war against the mighty Persian Empire. The charismatic leader, who convinced Athens to invest in its ships, has become one of the most prolific sea powers of ancient history, and to which then strengthened his beloved city on land, too, building miles of fortifications that went on to bear his name. The mysticlies.

Those are the achievements many recognize this ancient Athenian for today, but the mysticlies

as reputation wasn't always so pristine. In fact, the real mythiclies was a divisive political

figure who experienced multiple rises and fools, a man who took advantage of a fledgling democracy in Athens at the turn of the 5th century BC to rise high, but then ultimately full. Ending his days condemned as a traitor, and in the service of the Persian king. Yes, that's right, the mysticlies ended his days, working for the super power he is today

most famous for beating in battle. Welcome to the ancients, I'm Tristan Hughes your host, and this is the story the rise and fullness of the mysticlies. Our guest is Dr. Michael Scott, Professor of Classics and Ancient History at Warwick University, and the author of The Mysticlies, the rise and full of Athens's naval mastermind.

Michael, what a pleasure to have you back on the show, it has been too long.

Oh, it's fabulous to be here in the studio, I can't absolutely amazing.

And to talk about this fascinating figure of The Mysticlies, both the hero and a villain and a traitor he has loved, but he's also hated, I mean, this is a guy who failed and succeeded to all of these contrasts, but they define his character so well. Yeah, you know, when Yo University Press came and they said, "Who would you want to write about for this ancient life series that they were constructing?"

And pretty quickly, my mind's sort of focused in on this guy, the Mysticlies, because, you know, I've lost count in a number of times, I'll have mentioned him in lectures and talks over the years, because he is so associated with these one or two really key moments in the story of Athenian and Greek history that are real turning points and real high points, you know, from the Greek perspective for their story.

“But actually, what if you just move the focus away from those moments?”

What else does he get up to? What happens in between those moments, who was he as a person, kind of, what's motivating him, where does he come from? All of these questions are kind of less often asked. And it felt to me really important to actually do a bit of a work to fill in the blanks,

to be able to understand the Mysticlies as a whole, as a character as a life, you know, lived. And I have to say that at the same time, as I started writing this book, my wife and I were expecting for some. And he was born about a week or so after I finished the first draft of the book and the book is dedicated to him, because what became really clear to me is the Mysticlies is famous

infamous for the amazing things, these amazing moments.

“And what we often do, I think, when we look at famous and successful people is we see”

in hindsight, this great successful career. And as a result, every step in that career ends up looking like it was a natural progression to the next successful thing that the rise was assured the success was inevitably going to happen, that they knew exactly what they were doing at every stage of their lives. And what became really clear from really digging into the career of Mysticlies is that his

life was not at all like that. That actually his start was very uncertain, his background no one would have picked him out

And more importantly, every decision he made, he didn't know that it was going to be a success in where it was going to lead to. And more importantly, as many decisions he might have got right, he also got an equal number and absolutely stonkingly wrong. And so what we've got here, I hope, is a portrait of a life as lives are really lived.

“And that's why it was really important to me in the subtitle of the book to make sure”

that it had, you know, the Mysticlies, the rise and fall of Athens's Naval Statesman end. If I'd had my way to be honest, I would have said the rise is in the fall, so the rise and the fall and the rise and the fall is in the fall again, because that is the reality of the Mysticlies' life, and to me that makes him much more interesting, it's more relatable

isn't it? Much more interesting, much more relatable, but also as a reminder to my infant son who at the moment is not reading to Mysticlies, you know, he's very much in Peppa Pig era, age two, but in the future that, you know, when you look around you and you see these people with these great successful careers and brilliant things that they've done, actually digging into

that always reveals a much more uncertain and a much more uneven career, and that is

everyone's life. I feel we should mention though, first of all, those big moments that he is associated with, what are these moments that become almost the gateway drug for people to want to learn more about this figure? Yeah, so there are effectively two, right?

And the first is when Thamister Clees is, you know, he's in his 30s, he is now at this point we're talking about the late four nineties and into the four 80s BCE in Athens, and he is clearly

“a powerful and important voice within the Athenian city state at this time, and he's”

got, he's playing important roles within the civic infrastructure and the political system, and he starts saying, we should think about the sea people, we should think about building up not just our natural port, because Paris, which is the modern day port of Athens, was not actually at the time the port that the Athenians used for their fleet, it was just around a bay or two around a place called Falleron, but he's associated with the story

of kind of, right? Let's build up the Paris, it's much better, more defensible, bigger harbour. And then when the Athenians in the middle of the four 80s discovered completely by accident, this big new theme of silver and the place called Laurion and the territory of Attica, the countryside around Athens, and they go, what shall we do with it, you know, and there's

a big debate on the one hand, you know, Athens at this point is a fledgling democracy, and they go, wow, we should divide it up equally, and, you know, each have an equal share, and to Mr. Clease's accredited was saying, ah, now let's use this to absolutely leapfrog all other competitors in the Greek world and build a navy that all, all catapultas into being the most preeminent sea power of the Greek world. And, you know, looking at that, it's a great

tactical decision because they were never going to be able to challenge on land, they were

“already really, really good Greek land armies, I think the Sparks think anyone else, right?”

But on sea, actually, there was a chance for Athens to become preeminent, and so they invest the money in this fleet. Now, that's a good decision in the world of the Greek world, where, as you know, it's not one unified country, it's up to a thousand different city states who are spending their entire time just basically shouting and at war with one another, and within that context, it's a good decision. But it becomes a brilliant decision when just a couple of years

later, the Persians turn up and they turn up with this enormous amounter and land army, and suddenly Athens's navy is absolutely critical in helping to defeat that Persian navy. At the Battle of Salamus, at which the mysticalies is also credited with having a brilliant tactical idea to draw the Athenia, the Persian fleet, I should say, into the narrowstrates of Salamus, between the undesalamus and the territory of Attica, where the Athenian superior naval techniques and tactics

and ships can actually have a chance to defeat the much bigger in terms of numbers, Persian navy. So, that's the kind of moment number one, which is associated with the sea and with command and

mastery of the sea that then becomes critical in the defeat of the Persians. And if there's a second

moment, it's in the mid-470s, when the mysticalies, you know, actually, has had a fall. We think, kind of, here's this great general who has led the Athenians to victory at Salamus. He's been the brilliant architect of this naval kind of Armada. And then he gets completely dropped. You know, the kind of next in the early 470s, you don't hear anything about him. The Athenian people have just shoved him aside and gone, thanks very much and moved on. And he has to reinvent his importance

with a new issue. And that new issue for him is wall building. And so he suddenly becomes the biggest

become the city walls around Athens, city walls around the port of Paris and the walls that link

the two. So Athens is completely, if you like, a protected from land attack and able to sustain long terms, the so-called long walls. There's so-called long walls of Athens. And again, within, you know, five or six decades, these will become absolutely instrumental in helping Athens to survive for as long as it did in the Great Great Civil War, the Peloponician War that will break out. So, you know, building an Armada at sea and focusing on Athenian mastery at sea and then protecting

Athens itself through these city walls are these two big kind of key moments that the mysticalese gets associated with. So that's good to start us off there, but as we're going to explore, there is so much more, it is not just those big moments, but we can still explore them as well.

“To learn more about thermisticallys today, do we have quite a lot of source material?”

We do, and we don't, interesting. So he appears in the great historical narratives of the of the era. So Herodotus, obviously, writing his histories, Rodotus is writing in the four 20s BCs. So sometimes, thermisticallys is died. It's definitely not a kind of, so Herodotus himself is hearing stories from others that have been passed down to him that he's then recording. And he's the so-called father of history. The so-called father of history, you know, kind of

he's there, the guy who is he comes up with the word history, whereas it's a history in the Greek and investigation into why did the Greeks and Persians come to fight together in the Persian war. So obviously, the mysticalese has a role to play in that. He's also mentioned a lot by the next great historian of the Greek world through cidides who's writing at the very end of the fifth century.

“But again, a little bit further away in time and reflecting. And then, you know, he gets picked up”

by different historians over the period, but you dialed through to the sort of the first centuries

AD and you're getting then Plutarch who is writing a whole series of biographers. But specifically of people that he wants you to emulate, you know, Plutarch wrote about lines of people he thought would be good to try and copy. And so you get this biography of the mystically, but it's all the good bits, right? You know, so that's a bit we're talking about where he gets dumped by the Athenian people after 480 and sort of gone, thank you and, you know, now move on.

There's nothing heroic to say about the mysticals during that period. And so Plutarch is absolutely silent about this. Like, let's get over that and, you know, get back to kind of when he rises again.

And then we have later biographers than Plutarch with Cornelius Nipos. We have third and fourth

century kind of retaritions who write these bizarre sort of fake, he caught speeches of the mystically, he's in his dad who are going against one another. So there's lots of later evidence. The problem is, as ever, we'd love some actually contemporary evidence from the era of the mystically's. And that is, is, is view of opportunities. There's no kind of historical narratives that's surviving. We do have some coins that the mystically's himself issued in the last era of his life that

give us a really good indication of what he's directing what these coins look like. So it tells a little bit about his mindset. We have some archaeological material again really closely associated with the mystically's that we're going to come back to which give us those kind of inns. But otherwise, we are trying to construct an understanding of what this guy was like in a period of time for Athens, which was itself a period of fundamental change and which the Athenians later on

were constantly mythologizing because this is the era of the development of Athens's democracy. And so kind of trying to split apart real history from that mythologizing of the origins of

“something that would go on to become so important for them is a really tough thing. There's very”

much a legend of the mystically's that evolves over the centuries they're following. And he's totally associated it is his legend is totally associated with the legend of the development of democracy. And you can see why. I mean if you dial back to his born 5243 BC, when Athens is under a tyrant ruler, what, democracy hasn't been invented, word doesn't exist no concept of it. When he's 10, there is the murder of the son of that tyrant ruler who had moved to become the tyrant

after death of his father at a big Athenian festival and things start to really shake in the kind of foundations of Athenian society. When he's 16, that's the big revolution moment of 508 BC when the whole of Athens supposedly rose up and threw off the tyrant ruler and decided to throw their lot in with this bizarre system where of equality, right? And it still wasn't called democracy at that moment, they didn't have that word. But you know, the entire political system of Athens

starts to suddenly as a result, many think of this new political system really starts to grow in

influence and power. So kind of key is literally growing up into a world that is itself in absolute tumultuous change and will become the system that everyone knows and talks about of Athenian democracy. And I love to cover those early years because when we often do one of these big figures from ancient history, usually the cases we know next nothing about their early years. But do we do we have any idea about the mysticlyses background and what he would have been up to during those

16 years right at the end of the age of tyranny and Athens? We can guess the picture of kind of of his day-to-day and the kind of education that he might have had and the kind of experience he might

“have had. But I think what is really important to understand from what we know about the mysticlyses”

is that if the system around him had not changed in the direction that it did, it's very unlikely

he would have amounted to anything. Really? Because what we know about him is that he is not from one of the elite aristocratic families of Athenians that hitherto had pretty much governed what Athenians went on to do. But if Athens was a tyranny at that moment, is it even if one of those aristocratic families they're not linked to the tyranny but would they have usually been the big advisors or the significant figures in that tyranny? Yeah absolutely. So you know kind of the

effectively at the period that the mysticlyses born, there are two major rival families, you know the pacesstrittids and kind of all the one hand, the alchemyanids and between them, they're pretty much you know how I share it. I mean it's hard not to draw the same some kind of analogies to the modern worlds, you know, and the kind of dynasties of families that kind of occupy

“political positions. We can do that's what I said. But the mysticlyses when he's born,”

you know he's not from a poor family but what would we call that modern middle class middle marpa maybe but certainly not kind of the elite aristocrats. And his dad is you know operating really on the boundaries, he's in military, he's operating at the boundaries of the Athenian world kind of fighting force. He's nothing in citizen his dad but the sources are really clear that his mum is not an Athenian and then the source is different on quite how non-athenian

she is sometimes you know she's just from another Greek city state, some people say she's from like whoa the far edges of the Greek world, some people say you know she's a complete anata foreigner, some go so far as to say that she's a prostitute. So we've got this odd picture of the mysticlyses when he's born you know he's not from a great family he's got a non-citizen mother and then depending

“on which source you believe like kind of a really non-citizen mother in a kind of a and so he's got a”

very liminal position in Athens when he's born and he sort of comes under this definition of what the Greeks would refer to as a what we translate as a bastard you know effectively but what it means he's only got one citizen parent and that puts him in a very disanferntagious position particularly if the political system had not gone on to change the the way it did but you know so he's growing up we think at some point in his very early years so not first decade he moves back

from from wherever he was stations kind of it was his dad was stationed back to not living in the centre of town in Athens not in the big city but actually in the sleepy countryside of Attica and so but you know again from a point of view of thinking about a political career he's not where the action is right he's in this tiny little town not amounting to a whole habit beans in terms of his parent age and his opportunity enough money in the family to get a good decent education and the

later sources you know talk about him as a pupil as student at school as being really

precocious and really intelligent we're always pushing back against authority are you

all the things that we'd like to see in a child that will go on to do the things that thermistically is well you know do and you know kind of then as we said 16 he's seeing the system starts change and this new kind of system of equality emerging where there is a chance for any voice to emerge if it's strong enough awful enough and convincing enough and some point in the kind of early 20s he comes into the city of Athens and we would love

dearly to know more about how he then goes about climbing the kind of call it a greasy pole if you like of kind of Athenian civic office but he clearly put in the graph and we hear snippet of it like so he occupies the role of water commissioner at some point

person in charge of ensuring those super important water super important and he clearly does a

good enough job all of these roles because when he really comes into focus is at the end of the four nineties and he is Archon he's magistrate he's appointed magistrate of the city and that's at the age of 31 and he had to be a minimum a 30 to occupy the role so he gets there pretty quick after the minimum age so clearly through his 20s he has been building a rep in Athens

“where people have confidence in his ability to then entrust him with this this key”

magistricity of the city you can imagine a young and fiery domestically he's kind of like when that tyranny is overthrown as it going to the big city he's a teenager but he's deciding rights I'm going to make the most of this and as you say we wish we could know more about that

decade or so that first decade it birds seemingly he crime he climbs the new greasy democratic

pole and by the time of his early 30s he's in a really good position yeah you know but it could not have happened if the world around him hadn't changed at the time that it did because he wouldn't have been listened to he wouldn't have been given the chance to put his voice in his view for. The position of Arcon should we see it something like the position of console like

“kind of really high position in the state yeah so there were in Athens there were three kind of”

arcons they divided up kind of responsibilities for different things between so one was a very religious focused arcon making sure that all the religious kind of rights and customs were abide by so the gods were still on side one was much more military focused who would be actually the kind of general you know on the battlefield and then the one in the middle the one that's mystically is occupied if you'd I had a kind of political judicial sort of focus and mandate

and so in that year that he was Arcon we know that the mystically has had to be involved in the trial of the great Athenian general militaries who was put on trial for kind of getting involved in what we know as the Ionian revolt so the very four early four nineties Athens had decided getting a bit you know bit cocky some good victories it decided to send some ships to aid in a rebellion against the Persian king that was happening on the other side of the G in over in Ionia and this

all goes spectacularly wrong and militaries involved and and so he ends up on on trial for treason in Athens during the year that the mystically is kind of Arcon you know so the mystically

is could see at first hand quite how much this this Athenian thing that had been created this

Athenian system of equality that come to be known as democracy in the decades to come

“like pick people up if the hideeas was a famous guy really important you know thing”

and then absolutely flatten them down again and during that trial when he's Arcon my tides is actually acquitted and and and you know he will go on then to play a brilliant role in a couple of years time at the Battle of Marathon which is when the Persians first invade Greece but there were examples in front of the mystically's desires from that very moment onwards of how much the Athenian state like to rise people up raise people up and then chuck them down in a weird

kind of way how fickle the Athenian state could be kind of going on the urges of the public the emotions that were there that you see time and time again in the Athenian democracy from then on yeah it's the scary and not very pleasant underbelly of a direct democratic system that it is about the will of the collective people and and even more scarily within the Athenian case you know this was not a will that was decided you know and views that were decided upon

patient thoughtful reflection and study of documents and evidence and all it effectively was a system that listened to what people had to say and got swayed by how convincing the people were that said it's the rise of the demagogues yes yes you know so so effect if you could swing the people you know if you were a great artist if you were a great persuader and as the misclees you know clearly

but at the same time the Athenian what becomes really crucial in the kind of Athenian self-identity

“is that it's about the collective it's not about the individual and so all of these individuals”

like militaries like a number of others like the misclees eventually if they step over that line and start saying well I did this you know I led you to victory I'm responsible many people were like no no no no no no no no you know it's about us it's our victory and that line was you know really at the core of understanding the Athenian collective identity and the reasons that individuals felt foul of it so it's still for nine four is it that's the time of when he's

Archon yeah and do we know of any other bigger events during this time is there a story with

Persian ambassadors so yeah so you know at this point there had been that Ionian revolt

back in the early four nineties that the Athenians had seen fit to kind of send some ships to support it had gone spectacular wrong the Persian king is going who are these I mean these upstart little kind of

“Greek fleas on the eye of the great Persian empire you know and so you know tough you know and”

had sent ambassadors through Persian going right you know you guys all have to submit to me and the way you do that is you offer me token gifts of earth and water from your land because the Greek cities yeah yeah go right you know come on and the threat was if you don't or rock up in due course with an army and our crush you you know next Greek cities where yep absolutely here's here's the earth and the water the Athenians sit there you know they've got their assembling out and they sit

there and they discuss what to do and then the story goes that on the one hand some are saying no you know let's let's let's not give earth and water right no let's not give earth and water and let's kill those messengers which was a big deal right because they used their sacred they're sacred to the gods you know messengers in that sense you're you're not supposed to harm don't shoot the messenger right kind of thing and they're misically because my father yeah it's kill on man

let's kind of you know kill man a really unpleasant way so so clearly misically is here is is part of a kind of dialogue where he's trying to gain a certain amount of influence credence visibility within the public dialogue and one other ways he can do that is by putting up a more extreme suggestion than anyone else is now kind of what happens is they do you know if famously kill the messengers and of course the Persian king ate too happy about this and so lands

on the planes of of marathon which is in the territory of actor care outside of Athens with a fleet and he also brings with him the old tyrant that the Athenians are chucked out back in 508 BC to reinstate you know kind of as the ruler so this becomes not only a sort of I'm going to teach you Greeks a lesson for I'm particularly Athenians a lesson for refusing me but I'm going to take away the system of equality you've got and I'm going to put you back under the rule of

a friendly tyrant now the misically is there fighting at the battle of course we know he was you know he was there kind of you know he's one of the soldiers could have been in charge of his contingent from his kind of group as well but the the big lead on the day the big general on the day is that same guy mil tides who kind of was acquitted from trees and went to misically as with our conf and it's mil tides that sort of is is is held responsible for the victory but of course

he's not allowed to be held responsible for the victory because it's an Athenian collective you know and amazingly the Athenians are victorious over the Persians at marathon and the Persians depart again

and so the misically is is at the forefront of that first Persian engagement with Athenians

and you know that will be something that the later biographers like to kind of point to going you know it was the misically who saw that this was not over Persian's left that he knew you know and this is the kind of vision of the brilliant tactician and the brilliant foresightedness and the kind of thing that they would be back as opposed to the rest of the Athenians who thought

“"yeah job done" threat over let's go back to life is normal and do they like these biographers later”

who are trying to lord the misically is the man who can read the future who knows what's going to happen next do they like portraying the other argument few well through one particular problem of voice in the assembly that idea that there's this big rival back in Athens who is supporting the other that the other idea what they should do with the money and so on and so forth yeah so there is a guy that will be the sort of long-term rival yeah the counterparts the

guy could have Aristidees and you know Pluto also liked him there's a life of Aristidees as well you know there's good things to say about him as well and but between the two of them they are set up

the impossible idea when everyone thought there was lost kind of guy and Aristidees is the

slow but sure sensible trustworthy thoughtful individuals so post marathon Aristidees and the misclies were both fighting there at the battle it's Aristidees who is given the honour of standing guard over all the loot that the Greeks and particularly the Athenians have captured off the Persians after the battle while everyone else has to run off back to Athens the marathon race back to Athens to kind of help defending case the Persians would come back and you know

the misclies in the sources at later sources is kind of like the cheesest off that Aristidees gets this honour and you know you can see these cheesest off because some of the sources talk about

“the fact that he goes well you know I mean if you want to be a banker kind of sort of thing”

and try to rubbish the honour that Aristidees has been given but throughout their lives throughout the next decade so particularly the four eighties and the four seventies Aristidees and the misclies become these big union-yang kind of voices within the Athenian assemblies that are batting heads on most of the key decision moments and offering up two to views and two ways to go and does it ever get so far as that one might want to try and get the other one executed or is there

a certain limit to their political rival? No I mean it's gloves off I mean it's definitely gloves off so in the four eighties we you know we've had the invasion of of marathon great into the four eighties that's the the decade when domestically is convincing the Athenian assembly to spend that that money the silver mine the silver mine money and the four eighties on building the big fleet so clearly he's having some success you know persuading them what to do and during that point

“in time you know Aristidees ends up sort of losing that debate and what happens in the four”

eighties in particular is the Athenian people in that kind of again the power of the collective is rising the the power of the individual they they like listening to the individual the individual can have influence but it can't be about the individual a new system of political expulsion is invented called ostracism right okay now ostracism we call it ostracism today because what the Greeks did the Athenians did was they would write the name of a particular individual

on a little piece of broken pottery that an ancient Greek was called an ostracon and so ostracon the thing you voted on for the exile voters given as our word ostracism and the things were turned up and basically they would write the name of the person who they thought really needs to be kicked out of the city and the person with the most votes got kicked out for ten years and so there are ten years yeah so and it's clear that the four eighties is the moment when the

“Athenians kind of grasped this hour that they have so ostracism probably existed in the system”

theoretically from from before that but they've never used it and then suddenly in the four eighties

half of the known cases of ostracism from the entirety of the fifth century BCE happened in the four eighties so clearly the Athenians in this moment just go right you know kind of like we've got this power to exercise over individuals who are getting too big for their boots who are perhaps too associated with tyranny or kind of you know we just we just want to get rid of them and ostracism very quickly becomes one of those political weapons whereby the different voices

you know I mean it's doggy it here it's hunger games it's you know beast games or whatever you want on the analogy to be because we know that all of them being voted for domestically this name appear as on those ostracers through the four eighties but he's just not the guy with the most votes

if it's one of those amazing bits of archaeological evidence of the occident earlier yeah so his name

or one of those things so these ostracers five because after the vote they're just discarded you know kind of and then we dig them up and and we can they they basically end up being buried in sort of particular caches that we can then date to particular votes but Aristides his rival does end up getting ostracized as part of that towards the end of the four eighties and so you can see that this is a this is a highly dynamic system in which these individuals who are rising to prominence and are

wanting to put forward their views and they're wanting to convince the people of a tickler course of action it was not without the danger of ending up becoming the butt of the Athenians going you're out it's one of those fun what if moments isn't it if the mystically is having ostracized in the four eighties rather than his rival Aristides quite literally the course of history could have changed completely because the mystically hangs in there and then when

the Persians come back you know at the end of the in four eighty with a much bigger land army and fleet than ever before and this is the moment when you know the land army will be held by the 300 Spartans at the mopoli and the fleet will be sort of held including by by sort of Greek fleet

is the kind of commander of the Athenian fleet at this time you know they're held

“parallel with mopoli on land there's a battle of the political art museum on sea and then they”

have to all fall back 300's you know Spartans die the fleet retreat and you get to a point where the Greek fleet is in constant possibility of falling completely apart you know all the Greek city states that are coming together are going you know what there's no way we can take on this Persian the Persian fleet we might as well just sail for our hometowns and scatter and every man from themselves kind of mentality and the mystically is the sort of one voice really that's

trying to hold this fleet together and it ends up sheltering on the island of Salamis which is just off the coast of Atka at this point you know actually the mystically has been instrumental we think in getting the Athenians to evacuate their city so they've all fled out of Athens the Persian king has come down through the whole of mainland Greece occupied the city of Athens the Athenians are sitting on the island of Salamis they're seeing Athens burn and smoke

hillong up in the sky the fleet's there and it is on the us of just disintegrating and is this but we get that story you also do a lot of work on Delphi and the prophecies from the Oracle at Delphi this idea of trusting in their wooden wall yeah and the mystically is like that wooden wall it's the ships it's not actually a physical wall yeah so the the Athenians go to consult the great Oracle at Delphi because why wouldn't you say in such a kind of crisis existential moment

and and the story is hilarious and that the Athenian ambassadors who go the first time apparently

they speak to the the pithian priestess the irregular priestess at Delphi she just goes run away run away and they go you know we can't take that answer back you know give us another answer and so you get this answer this kind of prophetic sort of ambiguous phrase you trust in your wooden walls and they have to take that back to Athens and they have to decide what that is and some people think it's the the old wooden wall that runs around the the Acropolis the great rock at the centre of Athens on

which the great sanctuary at the centre of Athens is and so they think right everyone should run up to the Acropolis and and you can understand that because actually in previous times and moments

“that's what the Athenians have done you know and it's a pretty pretty well defendable kind of rock”

brag ancient volcanic plugged thing you know kind of that that could be could be the answer but the misclees is the one saying no no it's the wooden holes of our ships of our fleet you know we need to get out of Athens and we need to put our fate in the fact that we can actually use this fleet to turn the course of this war but all of this fails right you know you appeal to the irregular kind of pronouncements that's not going to hold the Greek fleet together then the

misclees turns to basically threats and he says right if you don't all stay here I'm going to

take the Athenian fleet we're going to sell to the other side of the Mediterranean and you guys are going to be toast because without us you really don't have a chance and that works for a little bit but then even that doesn't start working then he goes right okay what about if I kind of call on all the gods to come and support us and there's these brilliant things that he does like sends a ship off to a nearby island that has supposedly is the end that the mythical home of a particular

god and there's a couch put on the sort of deck of the ship you know and the god is invited to come off the island and sit on the couch and be transported back to fighting the line of the Greek fleet it's all of these kind of really kind of mythological but but inspiring sort of motivational sort of start kind of things but even that doesn't work you know to hold it together and so we get to this infamous moment where around about the 25th of September for ATPC

thermisticallys comes up with a plan which effectively is this he sends his slave secretly at night across the Greek lines to the Persian camp who are now occupying Athens and the fleet's all there to get a message to the Persian king to say thermistically is the Athenian commander wants to defect and as a sign of this affection I'm going to tell you that the Greek fleet it all wants to

“escape and run away so the best thing you can do is send your Persian fleet right now into the”

straits of salamists to stop them getting away and then you can crush the wants and for all you know signed your best friend you know thermisticallys now you know people look at this and go okay with the benefit of line sign that this turns out to be a brilliant tactical move and the Greeks win at salamists and defeat the Persian region you see this as thermisticallys the brilliant tactician tricking the Persian king into coming into the straits of salamists

but you could also see it as thermisticallys really wanting to make sure he had options because if the Persian king had defeated the Greeks that kind of sign would have helped

so was this a moment in which the misclease was reading the tea leaves and going

“this could go either way I'm going to make sure that both routes for me are open um or was this”

thermisticallys you know brilliantly trapping the Persian king and assuring Greek victory well over to you guys to decide I mean whichever way he was thinking it is pretty clever but at the same time I guess even though he is I mean today he seen as the man who wins the bast of salamists does it smear his reputation in the immediate years following well this is the curious thing so the battle of salamists turns out to be this great tactical victory because

the Persian fleet bought the trick and sailed into the straits of salamists suddenly in these narrow straits then numbers count if nothing and the Greek fleet could pick them off you know and so there's this great moment where the Greek fleet defeats the Persian fleet and that turns the tide of the entire war the Persian king leaves Greece almost immediately and the following year there's a great lamb-battle at Platia in 479 when the land army of the Persians is defeated

because the Greeks have got momentum now you know kind of and then the Persian threat dissipates thermistically plays no role in the battle of Platia and this is this curious kind of rise in

form moment the first rise in fall if you like but he's so instrumental at salamists and yet

he's then given nothing he's silent for the first half really of the 470s he's kind of just absolutely gosh and do we know why did he just get one skin two big for his boots and then one just hit right okay well done you won the big battle now remember it's a democracy

“you didn't win it actually we won the battle you know I think there's definitely an element of that”

we won the battle I think by this time everyone kind of is really kind of frustrated with him as a character because he's been sitting there lambasting everyone shouting at everyone trying to convince everyone pushing everyone to stay together so frankly I think people are quite happy not to be listening to him but also because there's a complete change of direction the sea is no longer

the key thing they've won the battle let's see now it's about battle at land and he's not the

premier land general you know they've got others that they listen to and do listen to for the battle ability so kind of you can see how the spotlight the kind of Athenian spotlight very quickly shifts off him because the need shifts off him and he's left there for 70s having to kind of reinvent and find another issue to reclaim the spotlight and that's when he gets on his city walls good nah no no Flenefirssochengende Besuch the road kept channeletness wild and frieber

with euren mellets de oma or the channeler typen von neben an ingen all a jaggänge and decked our interactive exhibition by the elite tour with audio guide and a classic and the next parvillion the whole world from road kept channeletness wild but only a setlanger entfernt shall we go to that final act that final fool of domestically's in Athens because I love this

part of the story it's not he was always against the Persians and actually what you mentioned about

Salamis that kind of actually look at the two sides of the coin for him going to the Persian King he isn't always an enemy how does he actually end up in favor with Persia it's one of those great sort of three to four 70s so no role post Salamis find finds his city wall kind of gig everyone kind of he's at the top of his game again but clearly by the end of the four 70s he's

“forgotten that crucial lesson about don't get too big for you but it's about the collective”

not the individual and you know one of the best moments which is confirmed by the archaeology you know we found this particular temple that he sets up in his kind of home little area of the centre of Athens he sets up a temple to Artemis right Artemis with an epithet so a particular emphasis on Artemis being worshiped to that temple Artemis Aristobula Artemis the good councillor fine except he goes and puts a bust of himself in the temple precinct you know it's not subtle

and in a system whereby it's not about you hits of how the collective that goes down like a lead balloon putting yourself as a statue yeah right next to a god says it's my great council that has saved you you know the Athenian and so in 471 there is an ostracism vote guess who gets the most votes is the mystically says out of Athens but you know he's not out and out for the count for forever because exile the ostracism exile was supposed to be which is why you out and gone for a while but

after that you can come back and it will be fine contemplate you know if you're just reflecting

really hate him in Athens actually get him in involved with a treason plot against the Greeks that

that also involves a Spartan general and suddenly he finds himself on trial for treason in Athens and he doesn't go back he's in exile he doesn't go back to Athens to stand trial and he's therefore then tried in absentia found guilty and thus sentenced to death might so suddenly things have changed pretty quick and he is now you know no way back for him in Athens and in fact that actually those people really and the Athenian people sort of so fed up with him and so kind of

their blood is heated if you like for them to please at this point that he tries to find a somebody in Greece that will give him safe you know safe home safe to secure kind of lodging

and no one will touch him so he's you know sitting there going how to say I was the

savior of Greece and I'm now no longer safe in Greece at all and he looks at it until his credit

“he goes I'll get on a ship for Persia then he's these 50s at this point you know so I think a”

50 year old man sales across the cease to Persia he has to somehow make his ways safely across the Persian Empire into the the court of the Persian king and he somehow measures to do this and he stands if I'm the Persian king and it could be the same guy that he tricked at Salamis or if there's a there's a change over a Persian king so he could be Xerxes could be his son right kind of what but one is either I tricked your dad or I tricked you right you know the

Persian king whoever he is knows the mystically is by name right it's that kind of like there's a bounty on his head kind of thing and his fans only goes give me a year to learn Persian so I can speak to you in your own language and talk to you about this but I can be of use to you and the Persian king gives in that year and to his credit it is said that no Greek had ever learned Persian

“as good as the mystically is and as a result the mystically is when Tom to have a closer relationship”

with the Persian king than any Greek had hit the two you know before him was in his inner circle etc he's given a living he's given some towns to sort of you know mini rule over that's when he

issues his queenage you know that we have kind of surviving so so kind of this third act as you say

we've had this initial rise in fall Salamis and then Plotia silence second rise in fall come city walls and then exile out of Greece and and and and treason and he's you know kind of sentenced to death and then this third rise where he becomes this trusted advisor of the Persian king and the final fall is sort of into the the whole 50s and the mystically is it basically eventually the Persian king turns around from him goes right I'm now ready to attack Greece again

time for you to make good on your promise to advise me how to do it properly and the mystically is at that point sees no way forward in that he so the sources tellers doesn't want to actually betray Greece to that degree despite everything Greece has done to him and so commit suicide right has the the honourable way out and so you know the odd thing is that at the end of the mystically is his life when he dies he's you know he's honored by the

Persian king they respect he respects the decision he gets a nice tomb built in in the Persian Empire near that that the townsway he was living but in Greece he is still the exiled condemned greater and no friend of Greece well so the question is how do we go from that yes to by the end of the fifth century through ciddies and his great history calling thermisticallys the most illustrious Greek of his generation how now you know how can you completely

retell history and it comes back again to that changing Athenian political system and you know

“the other lesson I think kind of this really come out for me from thermistically is in this book”

you know thinking again for myself or others my son will but you know kind of growing up it kind of is that reputations are an odd thing and actually they're made for you by others not you know you making them for yourself in many ways so thermistically at his death is absolutely persona on grotto in Greece but you get into the 450s so the decade after you know kind of thermistically is death and then into the 440s the decade after that's the era when Athens is

democracy becomes the democracy ruling an Athenian empire the duty in league to delineately turn to empire it's the building of the path and on moments you know it's Athens at the top of its game and it's an Athens that realizes it's at the top of its game because of what oh it's fleet right which is able to have that imperial power extending across the

that this guy who you know committed treason apparently an exile from Athens was the one

“seemingly responsible for putting Athens on this course and so very quickly 450s into the 440s”

his reputation is completely rehabilitation an Athens whitewashing forget the bit about in a him heading off to Persia this is the guy who helped Athens become the supreme empire that she is today a portrait of thermistically is hung inside the path and on and it's still there for centuries so Paul Sanyas the great tour guide of the 2nd century AD says he sees the kind of portrait thermistically his sons are invited back to live in Athens and all splendor you know kind of

his risen up as this hero tomb is built for him kind of in the pariers and then of course

in the next decade the 430s through to the end of the 5th century that will be when Athens is suddenly

fighting the great Peloponnesian you know Greek civil war and what's going to become really helpful so the the Athenians at that point is their city walls oh who was was not oh it was the

“mystically yeah I want a great guy he was you know so suddenly the two the two moments that he”

then gets so well associated with the fleet and the city walls become these mythological kind of reasons for Athens's supremacy and survival and so by the end of the 5th century he is completely rehabilitated as a hero and then that is reconfirmed if you like in the following century in the 4th century when all the Athenians are lost to empires it lost the walls it lost everything and they aren't back to these glory days of you know great heroes like thermistically's

and there we have him and that positive legacy of thermistically's as I mean by and large existed and drew down to the present day yeah I guess it's no surprise then that when someone says the mystically he will think immediately of salamists of being a hero of Athens and actually the story of him going to Peloponnesia it's much less well known or you know making the absolutely obvious mistake of setting up a temple to his own brilliance and doing all sorts of

things where you know quite when you look at it closely he gets the decisions wrong as much as he gets the decisions right and yet we've got this story that is so kind of preeminent of him and it's not like so Cicero right great Roman or it's a kind of thing but when he's looking at history he actually talks about the fact that he's really puzzled by why thermistically has the reputation that he does because you know why are the Athenians sort of honoring this guy who did two things

in two moments more than they're honoring people who created entire systems that benefited Athenians for decades you know so so there are people who look at us and go this is a bit odd in a kind of a but it is it is an oddity that is explained by understanding what happens post the misclothes is death and what the Athenians need and the heroes they need in the decades after he's died Ashthak justice for Aristides not some reason like Michael this has been

“absolutely brilliant I'm guessing that's that's what you'd want to leave the reader of your book”

thinking about the kind of the rises and the falls and like there is so much more to this figures character yeah I think you know particularly to this character absolutely seeing him in the round scene was an individual understanding the world that changed around him as he grew up which actually made so much of what he did possible alongside the extraordinary tricks of good luck he had and the fact that even then at the end of the day his life when it ends

increases his persona on grata and it's that story afterwards that kind of reevaluation and retelling of history that rises him up to becoming the great hero we know today and as a result to be both reassured that life is full of ups and downs everyone's is and reputations are a very odd and tricky thing indeed wise words to end the son Michael last but certainly not least your book all about the life and legend of the mystic least it is called the mystic least the

rise and fall rise and falls rise and falls of Athens's naval statement is out now with the

early university press Michael always a pleasure thank you so much for coming back on the show

it's a big great to be thanks so much Justin well there you go there was Professor Michael Scott's talking through the story of the mystic least his rises and falls what a fascinating figure thank you so much for listening to the episode Michael will be back in due course for a follow-up episode on another great story a place in ancient Greece one of the most fascinating sanctuaries ever built in antiquity that is to come in the near future come way to share about

episode with you but in the meantime once again thank you so much for listening to this episode if you've been enjoying the ancients then please make sure you're following the show once

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