is means he
transferred power from the nobles to the people, because sailors and
pilots became the real strength of the State. For this reason the thirty
tyrants destroyed the bema, or tribune on the place of public assembly,
which was built looking towards the sea, and built another which looked
inland, because they thought that the naval supremacy of Athens had been
the origin of its democratic constitution, and that an oligarchy had
less to fear from men who cultivated the land.

XX. Themistokles had even more extended views than these about making
the Athenians supreme at sea. When Xerxes was gone, the whole Greek
fleet was drawn up on shore for the winter at Pagasae. Themistokles then
publicly told the Athenians that he had a plan which would save and
benefit them all, but which must not be divulged. The Athenians bade him
tell Aristeides only, and to execute his designs if he approved.

Themistokles then told Aristeides that his design was to burn the whole
Greek fleet as they lay on the beach. But Aristeides came forward and
told the people that no proposal could be more advantageous or more
villainous; so that the Athenians forbade Themistokles to proceed with
it. On another occasion the Lacedaemonians proposed, in a meeting of the
Amphiktyonic council, that all States that had taken no part in the
Persian war should be excluded from that council; Themistokles, fearing
that if the Lacedaemonians should exclude Thessaly, Argos, and Thebes,
they would have complete control over the votes, and be able to carry
what measures they pleased, made representations to the various States,
and influenced the votes of their deputies at the meeting, pointing out
to them that there were only thirty-one States which took any part in
the war, and that most of these were very small ones, so that it would
be unreasonable for one or two powerful States to pronounce the rest of
Greece outlawed, and be supreme in the council. After this he generally
opposed the Lacedaemonians; wherefore they paid special court to Kimon,
in order to establish him as a political rival to Themistokles.

XXI. Moreover, he made himself odious to the allies by sailing about the
islands and wringing money from them. A case in point is the
conversation which Herodotus tells us he held with the people of Andros,
when trying to get money from them. He said that he was come, bringing
with him two gods, Persuasion and Necessity; but they replied that they
also