, Neokles, was a middle-class Athenian citizen,
of the township of Phrearri and the tribe Leontis. He was base born on
his mother's side, as the epigram tells us:

"My name's Abrotonon from Thrace,
I boast not old Athenian race;
Yet, humble though my lineage be,
Themistokles was born of me."

Phanias, however, says that the mother of Themistokles was a Carian, not
a Thracian, and that her name was not Abrotonon but Euterpe. Manthes
even tells us that she came from the city of Halikarnassus in Caria. All
base-born Athenians were made to assemble at Kynosarges, a gymnasium
outside the walls sacred to Herakles, who was regarded as base born
among the gods because his mother was a mortal; and Themistokles induced
several youths of noble birth to come to Kynosarges with him and join in
the wrestling there, an ingenious device for destroying the exclusive
privileges of birth. But, for all that, he evidently was of the blood of
Lykomedes; for when the barbarians burned down the temple of the
Initiation at Phlya, which belonged to the whole race of the descendants
of Lykomedes, it was restored by Themistokles, as we are told by
Simonides.

II. He is agreed by all to have been a child of vigorous impulses,
naturally clever, and inclined to take an interest in important affairs
and questions of statesmanship. During his holidays and times of leisure
he did not play and trifle as other children do, but was always found
arranging some speech by himself and thinking it over. The speech was
always an attack on, or a defence of, some one of his playfellows. His
schoolmaster was wont to say, "You will be nothing petty, my boy; you
will be either a very good or a very bad man."

In his learning, he cared nothing for the exercises intended to form the
character, and mere showy accomplishments and graces, but eagerly
applied himself to all real knowledge, trusting to his natural gifts to
enable him to master what was thought to be too abstruse for his time of
life. In consequence of this, when in society he was ridiculed by those
who thought themselves well mannered and well educated, he was obliged
to make the somewhat vulgar retort that he could not tune a lute or play
upon the harp, but he could make a small and obscure state great and
glorious.

In spite of all this, Stesimbrotus says that Themistokles was a pupil of
Anaxagoras, and attended the lectures of Melissus the physicist; but
here he is wrong as to date