Note 570 — Chapter XLIV · FROM THE BATTLES OF PLATÆA AND MYKALE DOWN TO THE DEATHS OF THEMISTOKLES AND ARISTEIDES.

Thucyd. i, 138. Νοσήσας δὲ τελευτᾷ τὸν βίον· λέγουσι δέ τινες καὶ ἑκούσιον φαρμάκῳ ἀποθανεῖν αὐτὸν, ἀδύνατον νομίσαντα εἶναι ἐπιτελέσαι βασιλεῖ ἃ ὑπέσχετο.

This current story, as old as Aristophanês (Equit. 83, compare the Scholia), alleged that Themistoklês had poisoned himself by drinking bull’s blood (see Diodor. xi, 58), who assigns to this act of taking poison a still more sublime patriotic character by making it part of a design on the part of Themistoklês to restrain the Persian king from warring against Greece.

Plutarch (Themist. c. 31, and Kimon, c. 18) and Diodorus both state, as an unquestionable fact, that Themistoklês died by poisoning himself: omitting even to notice the statement of Thucydidês, that he died of disease. Cornelius Nepos (Themist. c. 10) follows Thucydidês. Cicero (Brutus, c. 11) refers the story of the suicide by poison to Clitarchus and Stratoklês, recognizing it as contrary to Thucydidês. He puts into the mouth of his fellow dialogist, Atticus, a just rebuke of the facility with which historical truth was sacrificed to rhetorical purpose.