The near approach of the crisis in the war brings into peculiar prominence the man who was destined to play the greatest part in it. It cannot be accounted otherwise than strange that a historian so fair-minded as Herodotus should up to this point in his narrative have minimized the share which this remarkable man must have taken in determining the course of the Greek operations previous to Salamis. And yet, even from his account of the war, it is evident that Themistocles had been most prominent in whatever part of the Greek strategy had been due to Athenian initiative. He had commanded the contingent sent to Thessaly; he had commanded the Athenian fleet at Artemisium. In both cases the adoption of a line of defence so far north of Peloponnesus must have been due to Athenian influence; and it may be regarded as certain that Themistocles was mainly, if not entirely, responsible for the direction in which that influence made itself felt. In Thessaly there had indeed been a passive failure, and Artemisium had not been a success. It is clear, however, that in the latter case the Athenians did not attribute the lack of success to Themistocles, otherwise they could not have been expected to place themselves so entirely in his hands as they did at the time of Salamis. Probably the true significance of Thermopylæ was already surmised, if not understood, at Athens, soon after the fleet returned from Artemisium. Herodotus seems never to have succeeded in getting the character of Themistocles into its true perspective. It is possible that the tales told in after-time of his financial trickeries prejudiced the honest old historian against him. Throughout his history he shows himself an admirer of moral rather than intellectual greatness; and this disposition on his part would inevitably tend to obscure his appreciation of the great qualities of one whom tradition represented to him as guilty of a most serious form of moral weakness. Whence he drew the tradition he followed is another question. It may be that during his sojourn in Athens he was associated with the political heirs of the party opposed to Themistocles, and, if so, it may be certain that he would hear little to Themistocles’ credit, and much that was false to his discredit Still the tradition as to this peculiarly bad characteristic of the man was very prevalent; and it is hardly conceivable that the unanimity of the testimony of after-time was founded on no sounder basis than inimical party tradition. It is, then, possible that there was a real groundwork of truth in the accusations which Herodotus brings against Themistocles, though the undue emphasis which the historian lays on this side of the man’s character renders it also probable that, if true, the accusations are not unexaggerated.