der obligations to him. For once, when Korkyra was at
variance with Corinth, he had been chosen to arbitrate between them, and
had reconciled them, giving as his award that the Corinthians were to
pay down twenty talents, and each State to have an equal share in the
city and island of Leucas, as being a colony from both of them. From
thence he fled to Epirus; but, being still pursued by the Athenians and
Lacedaemonians, he adopted a desperate resolution. Admetus, the king of
the Molossians, had once made some request to the Athenians, which
Themistokles, who was then in the height of his power, insultingly
refused to grant. Admetus was deeply incensed, and eager for vengeance;
but now Themistokles feared the fresh fury of his countrymen more than
this old grudge of the king's, put himself at his mercy, and became a
suppliant to Admetus in a novel and strange fashion; for he lay down at
the hearth of Admetus, holding that prince's infant son, which is
considered among the Molossians to be the most solemn manner of becoming
a suppliant, and one which cannot be refused. Some say that Phthia, the
king's wife, suggested this posture to Themistokles, and placed her
infant on the hearth with him; while others say that Admetus, in order
to be able to allege religious reasons for his refusal to give up
Themistokles to his pursuers, himself arranged the scene with him. After
this, Epikrates, of the township of Acharnai, managed to convey his wife
and children out of Athens to join him, for which, we are told by
Stesimbrotus, Kimon subsequently had him condemned and executed. But,
singularly enough, afterwards Stesimbrotus either forgets his wife and
children, or makes Themistokles forget them, when he says that he sailed
to Sicily and demanded the daughter of the despot Hiero in marriage,
promising that he would make all Greece obey him. As Hiero rejected his
proposals, he then went to Asia.

XXV. Now it is not probable that this ever took place. Theophrastus, in
his treatise on monarchy, relates that when Hiero sent race-horses to
Olympia and pitched a costly tent there, Themistokles said to the
assembled Greeks that they ought to destroy the despot's tent, and not
permit his horses to run. Thucydides too informs us that he crossed to
the Aegean sea, and set sail from Pydna, none of his fellow-travellers
knowing who he was until the ship was driven by contrary winds to Naxos,
which was then being besieged by the Athenians. Then h