He describes the panic, as he asserts it to have been, caused by the fall of Athens, and the consequent decision to withdraw the fleet to the Isthmus, and implies that Themistocles was a consenting party to the withdrawal. ◆H. viii. 57.◆ “On Themistocles coming on board his ship, Mnesiphilos, an Athenian, asked him what had been decided by the council.” On learning from him that it had been decided to put out to the Isthmus and fight for the Peloponnese, he prophesied that the whole force would break up, and Greece come to ruin. He also advised Themistocles to do all he could to dissuade Eurybiades from a design so disastrous. The animus of the story is shown by the assertion that Themistocles went on board the commander’s vessel, and used these arguments as his own. Of this Mnesiphilos more is told in Plutarch. ◆Plut. Them.◆ He represents him to have been the political tutor of Themistocles, and says that some people attributed to Mnesiphilos much for which Themistocles got credit with the general public. It may be surmised that the people who took this view were not unconnected with the various other stories current in later times to Themistocles’ discredit. The story in Herodotus is in itself not free from improbability, and is inconsistent with what the author’s own account of the battle shows to have been the reason for fighting in the strait, namely, the desire to engage the numerically superior fleet in a channel where its greater numbers would be of but little avail. The last fight at Artemisium had probably taught the Greeks a lesson to whose significance they could not shut their eyes; at any rate, in the then state of feeling, it must have been a very powerful and compelling motive which induced the Peloponnesian contingents to abide at Salamis. The tale of Mnesiphilos supplies none such. The argument as to the break-up of the defence is palpably weak. There would be infinitely more fear of a dissolution of the naval force in case Salamis were chosen as the scene of battle, than if it were determined to fight in the immediate neighbourhood of the Isthmus, the very determination for which the Peloponnesian party had been intriguing ever since the war began. This tale of Mnesiphilos is so suspicious that it cannot be regarded as reliable history. Herodotus seems himself to have been aware that it would convey an impression of improbability when read beside the other tale of the motive which Themistocles urged for fighting in the strait; for he attempts to reconcile the truth of the two stories.