mild and honourable nature, and as a statesman cared
nothing for popularity or personal glory, but did what he thought right
with great caution and strict rectitude. He was thus often brought into
collision with Themistokles, who was trying to engage the people in many
new schemes, and to introduce startling reforms, by which he would
himself have gained credit, and which Aristeides steadily opposed.

He is said to have been so recklessly ambitious and so frenziedly eager
to take part in great events, that though he was very young at the time
of the battle of Marathon, when the country rang with the praises of the
generalship of Miltiades, he was often to be seen buried in thought,
passing sleepless nights and refusing invitations to wine-parties, and
that he answered those who asked him the cause of his change of habits,
that the trophies of Miltiades would not let him sleep. Other men
thought that the victory of Marathon had put an end to the war, but
Themistokles saw that it was but the prelude to a greater contest, in
which he prepared himself to stand forth as the champion of Greece, and,
foreseeing long before what was to come, endeavoured to make the city
of Athens ready to meet it.

IV. First of all, he had the courage to propose that the Athenians,
instead of dividing amongst themselves the revenues derived from the
silver mines at Laurium, should construct ships out of this fund for the
war with Aegina. This was then at its height, and the Aeginetans, who
had a large navy, were masters of the sea. By this means Themistokles
was more easily enabled to carry his point, not trying to terrify the
people by alluding to Darius and the Persians, who lived a long way off,
and whom few feared would ever come to attack them, but by cleverly
appealing to their feelings of patriotism against the Aeginetans, to
make them consent to the outlay.

With that money a hundred triremes were built, which were subsequently
used to fight against Xerxes. After this he kept gradually turning the
thoughts of the Athenians in the direction of the sea, because their
land force was unable even to hold its own against the neighbouring
states, while with a powerful fleet they could both beat off the
barbarians and make themselves masters of the whole of Greece. Thus, as
Plato says, instead of stationary soldiers as they were, he made them
roving sailors, and gave rise to the contemptuous remark that
Themistokles took away from the citize