The poet,
Timokreon of Rhodes, in one of his songs, writes bitterly of
Themistokles, saying that he was prevailed upon by the bribes which he
received from exiles to restore them to their native country, but
abandoned himself, who was his guest and friend. The song runs as
follows:
"Though ye may sing Pausanias or Xanthippus in your lays,
Or Leotychides, 'tis Aristeides whom I praise,
The best of men as yet produced by holy Athens' State,
Since thus upon Themistokles has fall'n Latona's hate:
That liar and that traitor base, who for a bribe unclean,
Refused to reinstate a man who his own guest had been.
His friend too, in his native Ialysus, but who took
Three silver talents with him, and his friend forsook.
Bad luck go with the fellow, who unjustly some restores
From exile, while some others he had banished from our shores,
And some he puts to death; and sits among us gorged with pelf.
He kept an ample table at the Isthmian games himself,
And gave to every guest that came full plenty of cold meat,
The which they with a prayer did each and every of them eat,
But their prayer was 'Next year be there no Themistokles to meet.'"
And after the exile and condemnation of Themistokles, Timokreon wrote
much more abusively about him in a song which begins,
"Muse, far away,
Sound this my lay,
For it both meet and right is.
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