39.7
When the man from Seriphus said to him that it was not because of himself but because of his country that he was famous, Themistocles remarked, What you say is true enough; but if I were from Seriphus, I should not have become famous, nor would you if you were from Athens. In almost the same words in Plutarch’s Life of Themistocles, chap. xviii. (121 B), but the story goes back to Herodotus, viii. 125, where Timodemus is the speaker, and Themistocles names the island of Belbina. The man from Seriphus is found first in Plato, Republic, 329 E and persists thereafter, as in Plutarch and in Cicero, De senectute, 3 (8), and in Origen, Against Celsus, i. 29 (347 E).
39.8
Antiphates, the handsome youth of whom Themistocles was enamoured, avoided him in the earlier days, and looked down upon him, but, after Themistocles had acquired great repute and power, kept coming to him and trying to flatter him. My boy, said Themistocles, it has taken time, but now we have both come to have sense. Cf. Plutarch’s Life of Themistocles, chap. xviii. (121 A).
39.9
To Simonides, who petitioned for a legal decision which was not just, he said that Simonides would not be a good poet if he sang out of tune, nor should he himself be a useful official if he gave a decision out of tune with the law. Cf. Moralia, 534 E and 807 B.
39.10
Of his son, who was pert towards his mother, he said that the boy wielded more power than anybody else in Greece; for the Athenians ruled the Greeks, he himself ruled the Athenians, the boy’s mother ruled himself, and the boy ruled the mother. Cf. Moralia, 1 C; Plutarch’s Life of Themistocles, chap. xviii. (121 B); and Life of Cato Major, chap. viii. (340 B).
