137.
Not long after came the Lacedaemonians and the Athenians;
and though they alleged much to have him, yet he delivered him not but sent him away by land to Pydna upon the other sea (a city belonging to Alexander) because his purpose was to go to the king, where finding a ship bound for Ionia, he embarked and was carried by foul weather upon the fleet of the Athenians that besieged Naxos.
[2]
Being afraid, he discovered to the master (for he was unknown) who he was and for what he fled, and said that unless he would save him, he meant to say that he had hired him to carry him away for money;
and that to save him, there needed no more but this, to let none go out of the ship till the weather served to be gone;
to which if he consented, he would not forget to requite him according to his merit.
The master did so;
and having lain a day and a night at sea upon the fleet of the Athenians, he arrived afterward at Ephesus.
[3]
And Themistocles having liberally rewarded him with money (for he received there both what was sent him from his friends at Athens and also what he had put out at Argos), he took his journey upwards in company of a certain Persian of the low countries and sent letters to the king Artaxerxes, the son of Xerxes, newly come to the kingdom, wherein was written to this purpose:
[4]
‘I, Themistocles, am coming unto thee, who, of all the Grecians, as long as I was forced to resist thy father that invaded me, have done your house the maniest damages;
yet the benefits I did him were more after once I with safety, he with danger, was to make retreat.
And both a good turn is already due unto me,’ (writing here, how he had forewarned him of the Grecians' departure out of Salamis and ascribing the then not breaking of the bridge falsely unto himself) ‘and at this time to do thee many other good services, I present myself, persecuted by the Grecians for thy friendship's sake.
But I desire to have a year's respite that I may declare unto thee the cause of my coming myself.’
The English works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury. Thucydides. Thomas Hobbes. translator. London. Bohn. 1843.
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