Greece -- Biography -- Early works to 1800; Rome -- Biography -- Early works to 1800
XXX. On one occasion, when he went down to the seaside on some business
connected with Greece, a Persian named Epixyes, Satrap of Upper Phrygia,
plotted his assassination. He had long kept some Pisidians who were to
kill him when he passed the night in the town of Leontokophalos, which
means 'Lion's Head.' It is said that the mother of the gods appeared to
him while he was sleeping at noon and said, "Themistokles, be late at
Lion's Head, lest you fall in with a lion. As a recompense for this
warning, I demand Mnesiptolema for my handmaid." Themistokles, disturbed
at this, after praying to the goddess, left the highway and made a
circuit by another road, avoiding that place; when it was night he
encamped in the open country. As one of the sumpter cattle that carried
his tent had fallen into a river, Themistokles's servants hung up the
rich hangings, which were dripping with wet, in order to dry them. The
Pisidians meanwhile came up to the camp with drawn swords, and, not
clearly distinguishing in the moonlight the things hung out to dry,
thought that they must be the tent of Themistokles, and that they would
find him asleep within it. When they came close to it and raised the
hangings, the servants who were on the watch fell upon them and seized
them. Having thus escaped from danger, he built a temple to Dindymene at
Magnesia to commemorate the appearance of the goddess, and appointed
his daughter Mnesiptolema to be its priestess.
XXXI. When he came to Sardis, he leisurely examined the temples and the
offerings which they contained, and in the temple of the mother of the
gods, he found a bronze female figure called the Water-carrier, about
two cubits high, which he himself, when overseer of the water supply of
Athens, had made out of the fines imposed upon those who took water
illegally.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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