His brilliant services were duly acknowledged. At the first Olympic festival celebrated after the defeat of Xerxes, he occupied more attention than the contending champions; and even the Spartans, while they gave the prize of valour to their own admiral Eurybiades, awarded to him that of wisdom, and though generally little gratified by the visits of strangers, invited him to Lacedæmon, and appointed a guard of honour of three hundred citizens to attend him. Continuing in command of the Athenian squadron when the allied fleet began to exact satisfaction from those islanders who, probably against their will, had followed the Persian standard, he abused his high character and station by extorting large sums as the price of his protection from those islands or persons who were obnoxious to the charge of Medism, or having favoured the Persian cause. “Let others extol Pausanias, or Xanthippus, or Leotychides; my praise shall be for Aristides, the best man of sacred Athens. For Latona detests Themistocles, the false, the unjust, the traitor; who for paltry pelf deserted the interest of Timocreon, his friend and host, and refused to restore him to his native Ialysus. Money guided the destructive course of the fleet; while the corrupt commander, restoring unjustly, persecuting unjustly, some into banishment, some to death, as the larger bribe persuaded, filled his coffers.”[73] Such were the charges brought against him by Timocreon, a Rhodian, who had been guilty of apostacy from the Grecian cause, and depended on Themistocles’ friendship to restore him to his country. In this particular case there seems to have been nothing to blame, and indeed the accusation is, that Themistocles did not pervert his power to gratify private ends: but the concurrent testimony of antiquity leads us to conclude that these charges of unjust and interested dealing rest upon a solid foundation.