s. Melissus was the general who was opposed
to Perikles, a much younger man than Themistokles, when he was besieging
Samos, and Anaxagoras was one of Perikles's friends. One is more
inclined to believe those who tell us that Themistokles was a follower
and admirer of Mnesiphilus of Phrearri, who was neither an orator nor a
natural philosopher, but a man who had deeply studied what went by the
name of wisdom, but was really political sharp practice and expedients
of statesmanship, which he had, as it were, inherited as a legacy from
Solon. Those who in later times mixed up this science with forensic
devices, and used it, not to deal with the facts of politics, but the
abstract ideas of speculative philosophy, were named Sophists.
Themistokles used to converse with this man when he had already begun
his political career. In his childhood he was capricious and unsteady,
his genius, as yet untempered by reason and experience, showing great
capacities both for good and evil, and after breaking out into vice, as
he himself used afterwards to admit, saying that the colts which are the
hardest to break in usually make the most valuable horses when properly
taught. But as for the stories which some have fabricated out of this,
about his being disinherited by his father, and about his mother
committing suicide through grief at her son's disgrace, they seem to be
untrue. On the other hand, some writers tell us that his father, wishing
to dissuade him from taking part in politics, pointed out to him the old
triremes lying abandoned on the beach, and told him that politicians,
when the people had no farther use for them, were cast aside in like
manner.

III. Very early in life Themistokles took a vigorous part in public
affairs, possessed by vehement ambition. Determined from the very outset
that he would become the leading man in the state, he eagerly entered
into all the schemes for displacing those who where then at the head of
affairs, especially attacking Aristeides, the son of Lysimachus, whose
policy he opposed on every occasion. Yet his enmity with this man seems
to have had a very boyish commencement; for they both entertained a
passion for the beautiful Stesilaus, who, we are told by Ariston the
philosopher, was descended from a family residing in the island of Keos.
After this difference they espoused different parties in the state, and
their different temper and habits widened the breach between them.
Aristeides was of a