embroidered tapestry, because when spread out it shows
all its figures, but when wrapped up it both conceals and spoils them,
wherefore he asked for time. The king was pleased with his simile, and
bade him take what time he chose. He asked for a year, during which he
learned the Persian language sufficiently to talk to the king without an
interpreter. This led the people to imagine that he discoursed about the
affairs of Greece; but many changes were made at that time in the great
officers of the court, and the nobles disliked Themistokles, imagining
that he dared to speak about them to the king. Indeed, he was honoured
as no other foreigner ever was, and went hunting with the king and lived
in his family circle, so that he came into the presence of the king's
mother, and became her intimate friend, and at the king's command was
instructed in the mysteries of the Magi.

When Demaratus the Spartan was bidden to ask for a boon, he asked to be
allowed to drive through Sardis wearing his tiara upright like that of
the king. Mithropaustes, the king's cousin, took hold of Demaratus by
his tiara, saying, "You have no brains for the king's tiara to cover;
do you think you would become Zeus if you were given his thunderbolt to
wield?" The king was very angry with Demaratus because of this request,
but Themistokles by his entreaties restored him to favour. It is also
said that the later Persian kings, whose politics were more mixed up
with those of Greece, used to promise any Greek whom they wished to
desert to them that they would treat him better than Themistokles. We
are told that Themistokles himself, after he became a great man and was
courted by many, was seated one day at a magnificent banquet, and said
to his children, "My sons, we should have been ruined if it had not been
for our ruin." Most writers agree that three cities, Magnesia,
Lampsakus, and Myous, were allotted to him for bread, wine, and meat. To
these Neanthes of Kyzikus and Phanias add two more, Perkote and
Palaiskepsis, which were to supply bedding and clothing respectively.

XXX. On one occasion, when he went down to the seaside on some business
connected with Greece, a Persian named Epixyes, Satrap of Upper Phrygia,
plotted his assassination. He had long kept some Pisidians who were to
kill him when he passed the night in the town of Leontokophalos, which
means 'Lion's Head.' It is said that the mother of the gods appeared to
him while he was sleeping at