ABSTRACT
The major source for this period is Plutarch’s Lives of Cimon and Themistocles, since Thucydides deals with these events only in a brief, cursory fashion (1.89-102.4) as part of his short digression on the ‘Pentecontaetia’ (‘The Fifty-Years’ – see Chapter 1), and in his digression on the fall of Themistocles (1.135-38), the reliability of which has rightly been called into question (for example, how did Thucydides gain access to Themistocles’ letter to the Persian king?). Diodorus gives some extra information, but his probable source was the fourth-century historian Ephorus who in turn generally relied upon Thucydides. The weaknesses of Plutarch as a historical source are discussed fully in Chapter 1, but it is worth mentioning that his main aim in the Lives was to portray the moral worth (or lack of it) in his subjects so as to inspire later generations (Life of Pericles 1-2). As a consequence, his belief in the heroic qualities of Cimon led him to
write a Life which is fulsome in its praise and permeated with virtually uncritical respect, especially for his conservative political ideology and his gentleness towards Athens’ naval allies. It seems likely that Ion of Chios, a fifth-century playwright, poet and prose writer, and apparently an admirer of Cimon, was a major influence on Plutarch when composing the Life of Cimon. By contrast, Themistocles is portrayed as the clever, devious and unscrupulous politician and general, as characterized in Herodotus in the Persian War; and also as the demagogic champion of the navy and its rowers, the lower-class ‘thetes’, who supported his policies of ‘radical’ democracy and of imperialism over their naval allies, as characterized by later anti-democratic writers. It is clear that these biased stereotypes must lead to a cautious use of Plutarch, whose Lives must be checked where possible with the evidence of Thucydides. However, it is still possible to discern from Plutarch the underlying issues of foreign and domestic policy that divided the factions of Themistocles and Cimon in this period.
