Themistocles died in 459 BC, probably of natural causes.

Plutarch provides the most evocative version of this story: But when Egypt revolted with Athenian aid ... and Cimon's mastery of the sea forced the King to resist the efforts of the Hellenes and to hinder their hostile growth ... messages came down to Themistocles saying that the King commanded him to make good his promises by applying himself to the Hellenic problem ; then, neither embittered by anything like anger against his former fellow-citizens, nor lifted up by the great honor and power he was to have in the war, but possibly thinking his task not even approachable, both because Hellas had other great generals at the time, and especially because Cimon was so marvelously successful in his campaigns ; yet most of all out of regard for the reputation of his own achievements and the trophies of those early days ; having decided that his best course was to put a fitting end to his life, he made a sacrifice to the gods, then called his friends together, gave them a farewell clasp of his hand, and, as the current story goes, drank bull's blood, or as some say, took a quick poison, and so died in Magnesia, in the sixty-fifth year of his life ... They say that the King, on learning the cause and the manner of his death, admired the man yet more, and continued to treat his friends and kindred with kindness.

Themistocles died with his reputation in tatters, a traitor to the Athenian people ; the " saviour of Greece " had turned into the enemy of liberty.

The date of his death is given by Nepos as 468 ; at any rate, he lived to witness the ostracism of Themistocles, towards whom he always displayed generosity, but he died before the rise of Pericles.

Many Athenians prominent earlier in the century would have lost citizenship, had this law applied to them: Cleisthenes, the founder of democracy, had a non-Athenian mother, and the mothers of Cimon and Themistocles were not Greek at all, but Thracian.

After winning at Eurymedon in 468 BC, Cimon and Themistocles ordered the reconstruction of its southern and northern walls, and Pericles entrusted the building of the Parthenon to Ictinus and Callicrates, under the general direction of Phidias.

Miltiades ordered the two tribes that were forming the center of the Greek formation, the Leontis tribe led by Themistocles and the Antiochis tribe led by Aristides, to be arranged in the depth of four ranks while the rest of the tribes at their flanks were in ranks of eight.

Others, Themistocles among them, said the oracle was clearly for fighting at sea, the metaphor intended to mean war ships.

As a politician, Themistocles was a populist, having the support of lower class Athenians, and generally being at odds with the Athenian nobility.

Due to subterfuge on the part of Themistocles, the Allies lured the Persian fleet into the Straits of Salamis, and the decisive Greek victory there was the turning point in the invasion, which was ended the following year by the defeat of the Persians at the Battle of Plataea.

At this point Themistocles accepted a large bribe from the local people for the fleet to remain at Artemisium, and used some of it to bribe Eurybiades to remain, whilst pocketing the rest.

From this point on, Themistocles appears to have been more-or-less in charge of the Allied effort at Artemisium.

According to Herodotus, Themistocles left messages at every place where the Persian fleet might stop for drinking water, asking the Ionians in the Persian fleet to defect, or at least fight badly.

Even if this did not work, Themistocles apparently intended that Xerxes would at least begin to suspect the Ionians, thereby sowing dissension in the Persian ranks.

Since it was his long-standing advocacy of Athenian naval power which enabled the Allied fleet to fight at all, and it was his stratagem that brought about the Battle of Salamis, it is probably not an exaggeration to say, as Plutarch does, that Themistocles " is thought to have been the man most instrumental in achieving the salvation of Hellas ".

Furthermore, Plutarch reports that at the next Olympic Games: " Themistocles entered the stadium, the audience neglected the contestants all day long to gaze on him, and pointed him out with admiring applause to visiting strangers, so that he too was delighted, and confessed to his friends that he was now reaping in full measure the harvest of his toils in behalf of Hellas.

By delaying in this manner, Themistocles gave the Athenians enough time to fortify the city, and thus ward off any Spartan attack aimed at preventing the re-fortification of Athens.

According to Thucydides, who wrote within living memory of the events, the ship eventually landed safely at Ephesus, where Themistocles disembarked.

Plutarch has the ship docking at Cyme in Aeolia, and Diodorus has Themistocles making his way to Asia in an undefined manner.

Diodorus also extensively praises Themistocles, going as far as to offer a rationale for the length at which he discusses him: " Now on the subject of the high merits of Themistocles, even if we have dwelt over-long on the subject in this digression, we believed it not seemly that we should leave his great ability unrecorded.

In order to counter this, and possibly with an eye already at the mounting Persian preparations, in 483 / 2 BC the Athenian statesman Themistocles used his political skills and influence to persuade the Athenian assembly to start the construction of 200 triremes, using the income of the newly discovered silver mines at Laurion.

The Allied fleet now sailed from Artemisium to Salamis to assist with the final evacuation of Athens ; en route Themistocles left inscriptions addressed to the Ionian Greek crews of the Persian fleet on all springs of water that they might stop at, asking them to defect to the Allied cause.

However, Themistocles argued in favour of an offensive strategy, aimed at decisively destroying the Persians ' naval superiority.

After the death of Themistocles, his nephew, Phrasicles, went to Magnesia, and married, with her brothers ' consent, another daughter, Nicomache, and took charge of her sister Asia, the youngest of all ten children.

Artaxerxes I offered asylum to Themistocles, who was the winner of the Battle of Salamis, after Themistocles was ostracized from Athens and Artaxerxes I gave him Magnesia, Myus and Lampsacus to maintain him in bread, meat and wine, Palaescepsis to provide him with clothes and he gave him Percote with bedding for his house.

* Themistocles, after being exiled from Athens, makes his way across the Aegean to Magnesia, an inland Ionian city under Persian rule.

In the fifth century BC, the exiled Athenian Themistocles came to Persia to offer his services to Artaxerxes, and was given control of Magnesia to support his family.

Magnesia contained a temple of Dindymene, the mother of the gods ; the wife or daughter of Themistocles, was said to have been a priestess of that divinity.

Themistocles ( Greek: ; " Glory of the Law "; c. 524 – 459 BC ), was an Athenian politician and a general.

This inference is supported by the date of the building of the 200 triremes for the war against Aegina on the advice of Themistocles, which is given in the Constitution of Athens as 483-482 BC.

From the handwriting they appear to have been written by fourteen individuals and bear the name of Themistocles, ostracised before 471 BC and were evidently meant for distribution to voters.

* 480 BC – Battle of Salamis: The Greek fleet under Themistocles defeats the Persian fleet under Xerxes I.

Themistocles was born in Athens around 524 BC, the son of Neocles, who was, in the words of Plutarch " no very conspicuous man ".

Themistocles probably turned 30 in 494 BC, which qualified him to become an archon, the highest magistracies in Athens.

Tension between the two camps built over the winter, so that the ostracism of 482 BC became a direct contest between Themistocles and Aristides.

It is probable that in early 479 BC, Themistocles was stripped of his command ; instead, Xanthippus was to command the Athenian fleet, and Aristides the land forces.

Though Themistocles was no doubt politically and militarily active for the rest of the campaign, no mention of his activities in 479 BC is made in the ancient sources.

However, his reputation in Athens was rehabilitated by Pericles in the 450s BC, and by the time Herodotus wrote his history, Themistocles was once again seen as a hero.

* 471 BC: Athenian politician Themistocles is ostracized.

The Athenians had also been preparing for war with the Persians since the mid-480s BC, and in 482 BC the decision was taken, under the guidance of the Athenian politician Themistocles, to build a massive fleet of triremes that would be necessary for the Greeks to fight the Persians.

The fleet was effectively under the command of Themistocles, but nominally led by the Spartan nobleman Eurybiades, as had been agreed at the congress in 481 BC.

* Themistocles, Athenian politician and naval strategist ( b. 525 BC )

Salamis island is known for the Battle of Salamis, the decisive naval victory of the allied Greek fleet, led by Themistocles, over the Persian Empire in 480 BC.

In 493 BC, Themistocles initiated the fortification works in Piraeus and later advised the Athenians to take advantage of its natural harbours ' strategic potential instead of using the sandy bay of Phaleron.

After the second Persian invasion of Greece, Themistocles fortified the three harbours of Piraeus and created the neosoikoi ( ship houses ); the Themistoclean Walls were completed in 471 BC, turning Piraeus into a great military and commercial harbour.

The Athenian general Miltiades the Younger led the victory over the Persians at Marathon in 490 BC, and Themistocles was chiefly responsible for the victory at Salamis 10 years later.

After the battle of Marathon, Themistocles persuaded the Athenians to devote the anticipated revenue derived from a major silver vein strike in the mines of Laurion circa 483 BC to expanding the Athenian fleet to 200 triremes, and thus laid the foundation of the Athenian naval power.

Aristides continued to oppose Themistocles's policy, and tension between the two camps built over the winter, so the ostracism of 482 BC became a direct contest between Themistocles and Aristides.