all along the coast many
laid in wait for him (the king of Persia having offered by public
proclamation two hundred talents to him that should take him), he fled
to Aegae, a small city of the Aeolians, where no one knew him but only
his host Nicogenes, who was the richest man in Aeolia, and well known to
the great men of Inner Asia. There Themistocles, going to bed, dreamed
that he saw a snake coil itself up upon his belly, and so creep to his
neck; then, as soon as it touched his face, it turned into an eagle,
which spread its wings over him, and took him up and flew away with him
a great distance; then there appeared a herald's golden wand, and
upon this at last it set him down securely, after infinite terror and
disturbance.

His departure was effected by Nicogenes by the following artifice: the
barbarous nations, and among them the Persians especially, are extremely
jealous, severe, and suspicious about their wives, whom they keep so
strictly that no one ever sees them abroad; they spend their lives shut
up within doors, and, when they take a journey, are carried in close
tenets, curtained in on all sides, and set upon a wagon. Such a
traveling carriage being prepared for Themistocles, they hid him in it,
and carried him on his journey, and told those whom they met or spoke
with upon the road that they were conveying a young Greek woman out of
Ionia to a nobleman at court.

When he was introduced to the king, and had paid his reverence to him,
he stood silent, till the king commanding the interpreter to ask him who
he was, he replied: "O king, I am Themistocles the Athenian, driven
into banishment by the Greeks. The evils I have done to the Persians are
numerous; but my benefits to them yet greater, in withholding the Greeks
from pursuit, so soon as the deliverance of my own country allowed me
to show kindness also to you. I come with a mind suited to my present
calamities; prepared alike for favors and for anger; to welcome your
gracious reconciliation, and to deprecate your wrath. Take my own
countrymen for witnesses of the services I have done for Persia, and
make use of this occasion to show the world your virtue, rather than to
satisfy your indignation. If you save me, you will save your suppliant;
if otherwise, you will destroy an enemy of the Greeks."

In the morning, calling together the chief of his court, he had
Themistocles brought before him, who expected no good of it. Yet, when
he came into the pre