Plutarch: Lives of the noble Grecians and RomansPlutarch
PhilosophyPhilosophy
Plutarch: Lives of the noble Grecians and Romans
Plutarch
Greece -- Biography -- Early works to 1800; Rome -- Biography -- Early works to 1800
and manner of his death, admired him more than ever, and continued to
show kindness to his friends and relations.
Themistocles left three sons by Archippe, daughter to Lysander of
Alopece, -- Archeptolis, Polyeuctus, and Cleophantus. Plato the
philosopher mentions the last as a most excellent horseman, but
otherwise insignificant person; of two sons yet older than these,
Neocles and Diocles, Neocles died when he was young by the bite of a
horse, and Diocles was adopted by his grandfather, Lysander. He had
many daughters, of whom Mnesiptolema, whom he had by a second marriage,
was wife to Archeptolis, her brother by another mother; Italia was
married to Panthoides, of the island of Chios; Sybaris to Nicomedes the
Athenian. After the death of Themistocles, his nephew, Phrasicles, went
to Magnesia, and married, with her brothers' consent, another daughter,
Nicomache, and took charge of her sister Asia, the youngest of all the
children.
The Magnesians possess a splendid sepulchre of Themistocles, placed in
the middle of their market-place. It is not worthwhile taking notice
of what Andocides states in his Address to his Friends concerning his
remains, how the Athenians robbed his tomb, and threw his ashes into the
air; for he feigns this, to exasperate the oligarchical faction against
the people; and there is no man living but knows that Phylarchus simply
invents in his history, where he all but uses an actual stage machine,
and brings in Neocles and Demopolis as the sons of Themistocles, to
incite or move compassion, as if he were writing a tragedy. Diodorus
the cosmographer says, in his work on Tombs, but by conjecture rather
than of certain knowledge, that near to the haven of Piraeus, where the
land runs out like an elbow from the promontory of Alcimus, when you
have doubled the cape and passed inward where the sea is always calm,
there is a large piece of masonry, and upon this the tomb of
Themistocles, in the shape of an altar; and Plato the comedian confirms
this, he believes, in these verses,--
Thy tomb is fairly placed upon the strand,
Where merchants still shall greet it with the land;
Still in and out 'twill see them come and go,
And watch the galleys as they race below.
Various honors also and privileges were granted to the kindred of
Themistocles at Magnesia, which were observed down to our times, and
were enjoyed by another Themistocles of Athens, with whom I had an
intimate acquaintance and friendship in the house of Ammonius the
philosopher.
CAMILLUS
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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