282 mSTORY OF GREECE, He retired into exile, and was residing at Argos, whither he carried a considerable property, yet occasionally visiting other parts of Peloponnesus,! — when the exposure and death of Pau- sanias, together with the discovery of his correspondence, took place at Sparta. Among this correspondence were found proofs, which Thucydides seems to have considered as real and sufficient, of the privity of Themistokles. According to Ephorus and others, he is admitted to have been soUcited by Pausanias, and to have known his plans, — but to have kept them secret while refusing to cooperate in them,2 — but probably after his exile he took a more decided share in them than before ; being well- placed for that purpose at Argos, a city not only unfriendly to Sparta, but strongly believed to have been in collusion with Xerxes at his invasion of Greece. On this occasion the Lace- daemonians sent to Athens, publicly to prefer a formal charge of treason against him, and to urge the necessity of trying him as a Pan-Hellenic criminal before the synod of the allies assembled at Sparta.3 Whether this latter request would have been granted, or whether Themistokles would have been tried at Athens, we cannot tell : for no sooner was he apprized that joint envoys from Sparta and Athens had been despatched to arrest him, than he fled forthwith from Argos to Korkyra. The inhabitants of that island,
- Thucyd. i, 137. ij/.d-e yup avril) varepov Ik te K'&tivCiv Tzapu tuv <pi7^uv,
KoX i^ ' kpyov^ a vrre^eKetTo, etc. 1 follow Mj. Fynes Clinton, in considering the year 471 B.C. to be the date of the ostracism of Themistokles. It may probably be so, nor is there any evidence positively to contradict it : but I think Mr. Clinton states it too confidently, as he admits that Diodorus Includes, in the chapters which he devotes to one archon, events which must have happened in several differ- ent years (see Fast. Hellen. e.g. 471). After the expedition under the command of Pausanias in 478 B.C., we have no one date at once certain and accurate, until we come to the death of Xerxes, where Diodorus is confirmed by the Canon of the Persian kings, B.C. 465. This last event determines by close approximation and inference, the flight of Themistokles, the siege of Naxos, and the death of Pausanias : for the other events of this period, we are reduced to a more vague approx imation, and can ascertain little beyond their order of succession. 2 Thucyd. i, 135 ; Ephorus ap. Plutarch.de Malign. Herodoti, c. 5, p. 855 5 Diodor. xi, 54 ; Plutarch, Themist. c. 23. •* Diodor. xi. 55.
