XII. The character of Themistocles has already in these pages unfolded itself--profound, yet tortuous in policy--vast in conception --subtle, patient, yet prompt in action; affable in manner, but boastful, ostentatious, and disdaining to conceal his consciousness of merit; not brilliant in accomplishment, yet master not more of the Greek wiles than the Attic wit; sufficiently eloquent, but greater in deeds than words, and penetrating, by an almost preternatural insight, at once the characters of men and the sequences of events. Incomparably the greatest of his own times, and certainly not surpassed by those who came after him. Pisistratus, Cimon, Pericles, Aristides himself, were of noble and privileged birth. Themistocles was the first, and, except Demosthenes, the greatest of those who rose from the ranks of the people, and he drew the people upward in his rise. His fame was the creation of his genius only. "What other man" (to paraphrase the unusual eloquence of Diodorus) "could in the same time have placed Greece at the head of nations, Athens at the head of Greece, himself at the head of Athens?--in the most illustrious age the most illustrious man. Conducting to war the citizens of a state in ruins, he defeated all the arms of Asia. He alone had the power to unite the most discordant materials, and to render danger itself salutary to his designs. Not more remarkable in war than peace--in the one he saved the liberties of Greece, in the other he created the eminence of Athens." After him, the light of the heroic age seems to glimmer and to fade, and even Pericles himself appears dwarfed and artificial beside that masculine and colossal intellect which broke into fragments the might of Persia, and baffled with a vigorous ease the gloomy sagacity of Sparta. The statue of Themistocles, existent six hundred years after his decease, exhibited to his countrymen an aspect as heroical as his deeds. [171] We return to Cimon CHAPTER III. Reduction of Naxos.--Actions off Cyprus.--Manners of Cimon.-- Improvements in Athens.--Colony at the Nine Ways.--Siege of Thasos.-- Earthquake in Sparta.--Revolt of Helots, Occupation of Ithome, and Third Messenian War.--Rise and Character of Pericles.--Prosecution and Acquittal of Cimon.--The Athenians assist the Spartans at Ithome.-- Thasos Surrenders.--Breach between the Athenians and Spartans.-- Constitutional Innovations at Athens.--Ostracism of Cimon.