also named Themistocles, who had greatly benefited the city. Later, Pausanias wrote that the sons of Themistocles "appear to have returned to Athens", and that they dedicated a painting of Themistocles in the Parthenon and erected a bronze statue to Artemis Leucophryene, the goddess of Magnesia, on the Acropolis. They may have returned from Asia Minor in old age, after 412 BC, when the Achaemenids took again firm control of the Greek cities of Asia, and they may have been expelled by the Achaemenid satrap Tissaphernes sometime between 412 and 399 BC. In effect, from 414 BC, Darius II had started to resent increasing Athenian power in the Aegean and had Tissaphernes enter into an alliance with Sparta against Athens, which in 412 BC led to the Persian conquest of the greater part of Ionia. Plutarch in the 1st century AD indicates that he met in Athens a lineal descendant of Themistocles (also called Themistocles) who was still being paid revenues from Asia Minor, 600 years after the events in question. Assessments Character It is possible to draw some conclusions about Themistocles's character. Perhaps his most evident trait was his massive ambition; "In his ambition he surpassed all men"; "he hankered after public office rather as a man in delirium might crave a cure". He was proud and vain, and anxious for recognition of his deeds. His relationship with power was of a particularly personal nature; while he undoubtedly desired the best for Athens, many of his actions also seem to have been made in self-interest. He also appears to have been corrupt (at least by modern standards), and was known for his fondness of bribes. Yet, set against these negative traits, was an apparently natural brilliance and talent for leadership: Themistocles was a man who exhibited the most indubitable signs of genius; indeed, in this particular he has a claim on our admiration quite extraordinary and unparalleled. By his own native capacity, alike unformed and unsupplemented by study, he was at once the best judge in those sudden crises which admit of little or of no deliberation, and the best prophet of the future, even to its most distant possibilities. An able theoretical expositor of all that came within the sphere of his practice, he was not without the power of passing an adequate judgment in matters in which he had no experience. He could also excellently divine the