Whilst these things had been taking place in Sparta, Themistocles had been at the head of affairs in Athens. He had many enemies amongst the Athenians, and they accused him of many wrong acts. These were never definitely proved against him, and the records of the end of his career are so scanty that it is difficult to know how much truth there was in the accusations, but there were undoubtedly a number of suspicious facts of which his enemies made use. Amongst other things he was accused of taking bribes. He denied it, yet when he left Athens, he possessed a strangely large fortune, the sources of which were never explained. Themistocles had a very biting tongue, and when his enemies attacked him, he would remind them, much oftener than was necessary, of the great services he had performed for Greece and for Athens in particular, and this arrogant boasting made him hated by many people who might otherwise have been his friends. A last serious accusation brought against him was that he was in communication with the Persians and was about to play the traitor. There was no proof of this, but Themistocles believed in the policy of making peace with the Persians. There was no fear that they would again attack the Greeks, and Themistocles saw that wealth and prosperity would most surely come to Athens through her trade, and so he advocated peaceful relations with {177} the great empire of the East, in order that Athenian merchants might go safely in and out of her trading ports, and so add to the wealth and importance of Athens. But this was a very unpopular policy to hold in Athens, and feeling grew more and more bitter against Themistocles, until at last he was ostracized. He left Athens and wandered from place to place. No city would give him a welcome, partly because he was feared, and partly because Athens was now a powerful state, and no one wanted to offend her by giving shelter to one of her exiles. Sometimes he was forced to flee for his life, and once the only way in which he could safely be sent out of a city was to hide him in a litter which was placed in a closed carriage in the manner in which ladies usually travelled, and so "he was carried on his journey, and those who met or spoke with the driver upon the road were told that he was conveying a young Greek woman out of Ionia to a nobleman at court."[4] After this and similar adventures, homeless, a wanderer from city to city, Themistocles the man who had saved Greece, who had laid the foundations of the greatness of Athens, who had been the bitterest and most relentless enemy of the Persians, this man came to Susa, and prostrating himself before Artaxerxes, who had succeeded Xerxes as King, he said to him: