noon and said, "Themistokles, be late at
Lion's Head, lest you fall in with a lion. As a recompense for this
warning, I demand Mnesiptolema for my handmaid." Themistokles, disturbed
at this, after praying to the goddess, left the highway and made a
circuit by another road, avoiding that place; when it was night he
encamped in the open country. As one of the sumpter cattle that carried
his tent had fallen into a river, Themistokles's servants hung up the
rich hangings, which were dripping with wet, in order to dry them. The
Pisidians meanwhile came up to the camp with drawn swords, and, not
clearly distinguishing in the moonlight the things hung out to dry,
thought that they must be the tent of Themistokles, and that they would
find him asleep within it. When they came close to it and raised the
hangings, the servants who were on the watch fell upon them and seized
them. Having thus escaped from danger, he built a temple to Dindymene at
Magnesia to commemorate the appearance of the goddess, and appointed
his daughter Mnesiptolema to be its priestess.

XXXI. When he came to Sardis, he leisurely examined the temples and the
offerings which they contained, and in the temple of the mother of the
gods, he found a bronze female figure called the Water-carrier, about
two cubits high, which he himself, when overseer of the water supply of
Athens, had made out of the fines imposed upon those who took water
illegally.

Either feeling touched at the statue being a captive, or else willing to
show the Athenians how much power he possessed in Persia, he proposed to
the Satrap of Lydia to send it back to Athens. This man became angry at
his demand, and said that he should write to the king, and tell him of
it. Themistokles in terror applied himself to the harem of the Satrap,
and by bribing the ladies there induced them to pacify him, while he
himself took care to be more cautious in future, as he saw that he had
to fear the enmity of the native Persians. For this reason, Theopompus
tells us, he ceased to wander about Asia, but resided at Magnesia,
where, receiving rich presents and honoured equally with the greatest
Persian nobles, he lived for a long time in tranquillity; for the king's
attention was so entirely directed to the affairs of the provinces of
the interior that he had no leisure for operations against Greece. But
when Egypt revolted, and the Athenians assisted it, and Greek triremes
sailed as far as Cyprus and Cilicia,