previous next
1

While Xanthippus was archon in Athens, the Romans elected as consuls Quintus Fabius Silvanus and Servius Cornelius Tricostus.2 At this time the Persian fleet, with the exception of the Phoenician contingent, after its defeat in the sea-battle of Salamis lay at Cyme. Here it passed the winter, and at the coming of summer it sailed down the coast to Samos to keep watch on Ionia; and the total number of the ships in Samos exceeded four hundred. Now they were keeping watch upon the cities of the Ionians who were suspected of hostile sentiments. [2]

Throughout Greece, after the battle of Salamis, since the Athenians were generally believed to have been responsible for the victory, and on this account were themselves exultant, it became manifest to all that they were intending to dispute with the Lacedaemonians for the leadership on the sea; consequently the Lacedaemonians, foreseeing what was going to happen, did all they could to humble the pride of the Athenians. When, therefore, a judgement was proposed to determine the prizes to be awarded for valour, through the superior favour they enjoyed they caused the decision to be that of states Aegina had won the prize, and of men Ameinias of Athens, the brother of Aeschylus the poet; for Ameinias, while commanding a trireme, had been the first to ram the flagship of the Persians, sinking it and killing the admiral. [3] And when the Athenians showed their anger at this undeserved humiliation, the Lacedaemonians, fearful lest Themistocles should be displeased at the outcome and should devise some great evil against them and the Greeks, honoured him with double the number of gifts awarded to those who had received the prize of valour. And when Themistocles accepted the gifts, the Athenians in assembly removed him from the generalship and bestowed the office upon Xanthippus the son of Ariphron.

1 479 B.C.

2 Silvanus is an error for Vibulanus and Tricostus for Cossus.

Diodorus Siculus. Diodorus of Sicily in Twelve Volumes with an English Translation by C. H. Oldfather. Vol. 4-8. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press; London: William Heinemann, Ltd. 1989.

The Annenberg CPB/Project provided support for entering this text.

Purchase a copy of this text (not necessarily the same edition) from Amazon.com

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.

load focus Greek (1989)
hide Places (automatically extracted)

View a map of the most frequently mentioned places in this document.

Sort places alphabetically, as they appear on the page, by frequency
Click on a place to search for it in this document.
Athens (Greece) (2)
Ionia (1)
Greece (Greece) (1)
Aegina (Greece) (1)

Download Pleiades ancient places geospacial dataset for this text.

hide Dates (automatically extracted)
Sort dates alphabetically, as they appear on the page, by frequency
Click on a date to search for it in this document.
479 BC (1)
hide References (2 total)
  • Cross-references to this page (1):
  • Cross-references in general dictionaries to this page (1):
hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: