Themistocles, Pausanias, and Cimon: key personalities of the Greek world 500 to 440 BC
“The careers and significance of Themistocles, Pausanias, and Cimon, including the naval policy, the long walls, the regent's medism, the campaigns at Eurymedon and Thasos, and the ostracism of 461 BC”
Themistocles (around 524 to 459 BC, the architect of Athenian naval power at Salamis and of the walls of Athens and Piraeus, ostracised around 471 BC, condemned for medism, and dying as Persian governor of Magnesia), Pausanias (died around 470 BC, the Spartan regent who won Plataea in 479 BC but fell into medism at Byzantium, was recalled and walled up in the temple of Athena Chalkioikos), and Cimon (around 510 to 450 BC, the philolaconian Athenian aristocrat whose campaigns at Eion, Naxos, Eurymedon, and Thasos built the Delian League's reach, who was ostracised in 461 BC after the dismissal at Ithome, and who died at Citium on Cyprus around 450 BC) shaped the political map of the Greek world between the Persian Wars and the rise of Pericles.
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What this dot point is asking
NESA expects you to outline the careers and significance of three major personalities of the period 500 to 440 BC: Themistocles (the architect of Athenian naval power and Salamis), Pausanias (the Spartan regent who won Plataea and fell into medism), and Cimon (the Athenian aristocrat whose campaigns built the Delian League and whose ostracism in 461 BC marked a turning point).
Think of Athens and Sparta after the Persian Wars like two former workmates who teamed up to beat a common rival, then immediately started competing for the same job. Themistocles is the guy who quietly builds the winning team's new headquarters (the navy and the walls) while the rival firm is still congratulating everyone, then gets pushed out by his own side once he is not needed any more. Pausanias is the regional manager sent to run a joint venture who starts wearing the other company's uniform and secretly emailing their CEO, so his own firm sacks him hard. Cimon is the loyal manager who keeps favouring a partnership with the rival firm even after his own team stops trusting that rival, and gets voted off the board (ostracism) when the partnership publicly humiliates him. All three stories are really one story: once Athens and Sparta stopped needing each other in the same way, nobody could stay loyal to both without eventually being destroyed by one of them.
Themistocles: archon 493/2 BC; naval bill 483/2 BC (Laurium silver, around 200 triremes); Salamis 480 BC; walls stratagem 478 BC (Thucydides 1.90 to 91); ostracised around 471/0 BC; died Magnesia around 459 BC (obituary Thucydides 1.135 to 138). Pausanias: regent for Pleistarchus; Plataea 479 BC; Byzantium captured 478 BC; medism (Thucydides 1.94 to 95, 1.128 to 134); died starved in the temple of Athena Chalkioikos, Sparta, around 470 BC. Cimon: son of Miltiades; Eion 476 BC; Scyros soon after; Eurymedon around 466 BC; Ithome humiliation 462 BC; ostracised 461 BC; died Citium, Cyprus, around 450 BC.
The answer
Themistocles (around 524 to 459 BC)
Themistocles son of Neocles, of the deme Phrearrhioi, was born around 524 BC. His family was modest by Athenian aristocratic standards.
- Early career
- Archon (chief annual magistrate) in 493/2 BC. He began the fortification of Piraeus and recognised it as Athens's future naval base.
- Marathon (490 BC)
- Probably one of the ten strategoi (generals); junior to Miltiades. The Plutarch tradition records his ambition: "the trophy of Miltiades will not let me sleep."
- Ostracism of rivals (480s BC)
- A series of ostracisms removed Themistocles's political rivals: Hipparchus son of Charmus (487 BC), Megacles the Alcmaeonid (486 BC), Xanthippus (484 BC), and finally Aristides (482 BC). Aristides was recalled for Salamis.
- The naval policy (483/2 BC)
- A new vein of silver at Laurion in southern Attica produced a windfall of 100 talents annually. Themistocles persuaded the Athenian Assembly to spend it on 200 triremes, framed as preparation for the war with Aegina but in reality for the Persian war.
- Salamis (480 BC)
- The strategic architect of the Hellenic League position at Salamis and the tactical victor through the Sicinnus stratagem. See greek-world-xerxes-invasion for detail.
- The walls of Athens (478 BC)
- After Salamis the Spartans urged Athens not to rebuild its walls, framing it as a panhellenic concern that walls could be used by an enemy. Themistocles travelled to Sparta as ambassador and delayed the Spartan response while Athenian women, children, and slaves rebuilt the walls behind him (Thucydides 1.89 to 93). He revealed the fait accompli once the walls were defensible.
- The Piraeus
- Themistocles also fortified the Piraeus as Athens's naval base. The deep-water harbours at Cantharus, Zea, and Munychia replaced the open beach at Phaleron.
- Ostracism (around 471 BC)
- Athenian politics turned against Themistocles. He was accused of arrogance and of accepting bribes. The Assembly ostracised him.
- Exile in Persia
- Themistocles took refuge in Argos and then, when condemned for medism in absentia (around 466 BC, on the same case that involved Pausanias), fled through Corcyra, Epirus, and Macedonia to Persia. The new king Artaxerxes I received him and granted him the cities of Magnesia, Lampsacus, and Myus for his support, on the understanding that he would assist Persia against Greece. Themistocles died at Magnesia around 459 BC. The tradition (Plutarch, Themistocles 31) reports that he committed suicide rather than march against Greece; Thucydides (1.138) records death from illness.
- Significance
- Themistocles created the institutional and physical basis of fifth-century Athenian power: the fleet, the walls, the Piraeus, the strategic alignment against Sparta. Thucydides (1.138) calls him "the man of all his contemporaries the most outstanding in natural intelligence."
Pausanias (died around 470 BC)
Pausanias son of Cleombrotus was a Spartan of the Agiad royal house. He served as regent for his cousin Pleistarchus, the young son of King Leonidas.
- Plataea (August 479 BC)
- Pausanias commanded the Hellenic League army at Plataea, the largest Greek army ever assembled, and won the decisive land battle of the Persian Wars. Herodotus (9.64) writes that he won "the most splendid victory of any man we know."
- Byzantium (478 BC)
- Pausanias led the Hellenic League fleet to Cyprus and then to Byzantium, which he captured. At Byzantium his behaviour changed. He adopted Persian dress, Persian guards, and Persian table customs. He released Persian prisoners. He sent a secret letter to Xerxes through Gongylus of Eretria offering to marry Xerxes's daughter and bring Greece under Persian alliance. Xerxes responded favourably.
- Recall and trial (478 BC)
- The ephors recalled Pausanias after allied complaints. He was tried for treason. The major charge (the Xerxes letter) was not yet provable; he was acquitted on the main charge and convicted of minor offences.
- Return to Byzantium privately
- Pausanias returned to Byzantium without official commission and continued his correspondence.
- The second recall
- Spartan agents arranged for one of Pausanias's messengers to open his letter to Persia. The letter ordered the messenger's death on delivery. The messenger turned it over to the ephors.
- The helot conspiracy
- Pausanias also corresponded with the helots, offering them freedom and citizenship in exchange for support against Sparta. The ephors needed direct proof: they planted an informant. When Pausanias admitted treason, the ephors moved to arrest him.
- The death (around 470 BC)
- Pausanias took refuge in the temple of Athena Chalkioikos on the Spartan acropolis. The ephors walled up the doorway. His own mother, Theano, brought the first brick. Pausanias starved. He was carried out alive only to die at once; the Spartans, fearing pollution, performed expiation under instructions from Delphi.
- Significance
- Pausanias's fall confirmed Sparta's withdrawal from the eastern Aegean and opened the way for the Delian League under Athens. His medism became a Spartan precedent that would later fall on Themistocles.
Cimon (around 510 to 450 BC)
Cimon son of Miltiades, of the deme Lakiadai, was born around 510 BC. His father had won Marathon. His mother Hegesipyle was a Thracian princess. He inherited substantial wealth and a public debt of 50 talents from his father's later prosecution.
- Early career
- Cimon fought at Salamis as a young man. He paid off his father's debt with the help of Callias the wealthy. He was elected strategos from around 478 BC and dominated the office for two decades.
- Campaigns
- See greek-world-delian-league-foundation for detail. Eion (476 BC), Scyros (around 475 BC), Naxos (around 470 BC), Eurymedon (around 466 BC), Thasos (465 to 463 BC). The Eurymedon double victory was the high point.
- Political character
- Cimon was an aristocrat, a philolaconian (he named his son Lacedaemonius after Sparta), and a conservative on Athenian internal politics. He supported the privileges of the Areopagus and opposed the radical democrats. His wealth funded public benefactions: he planted the Academy grove, built the long stoa in the agora, and supported veterans of Marathon.
- The earthquake relief (462 BC)
- A great earthquake struck Sparta around 464 BC, killing many citizens. The helots revolted and seized Mount Ithome in Messenia. Sparta appealed for allied help. Cimon persuaded the Athenian Assembly, against the opposition of Ephialtes, to send 4,000 hoplites to Sparta. The expedition arrived but the Spartans, suspicious of Athenian intentions, dismissed the Athenian force alone of all the allies. Plutarch (Cimon 17) calls this "the great quarrel" between Athens and Sparta.
- The ostracism (461 BC)
- The dismissal at Ithome discredited Cimon's philolaconian policy. Ephialtes and Pericles pushed through the reforms of the Areopagus in 462 BC. Cimon attempted to reverse them and was ostracised in 461 BC.
- Recall (around 451 BC)
- After the first Athenian setbacks in the First Peloponnesian War, Cimon was recalled. He may have negotiated the Five Years' Truce with Sparta in 451 BC.
- Death at Cyprus (around 450 BC)
- Cimon commanded a Delian League expedition of 200 triremes against Persian Cyprus around 450 BC. He died during the siege of Citium (some sources say of illness, others of a wound). The expedition won a final naval and land victory at Salamis-in-Cyprus before withdrawing. The Peace of Callias (around 449 BC) followed within a year.
- Significance
- Cimon built the early Delian League's military reach and shaped its institutional habits. His ostracism in 461 BC marks the turning point at which Athens chose democracy and rivalry with Sparta over conservative oligarchy and alliance with Sparta.
The interactions
The three careers are linked. Themistocles and Cimon were rivals in the 470s and 460s BC: the naval policy versus the Cimonian alliance, the democratic versus the aristocratic Athens. The fall of Pausanias and Themistocles was a paired event; both were prosecuted for medism in the late 470s and 460s BC. Cimon's ostracism in 461 BC opened the way for Pericles and the radical democracy.
The sources
- Thucydides 1.89 to 138
- The major source for Themistocles, Pausanias, and the period.
- Herodotus 7 to 9
- For Themistocles at Salamis and Pausanias at Plataea.
- Plutarch, Themistocles, Aristides, and Cimon
- Later lives but drawing on lost authors (Stesimbrotus, Ion of Chios).
- Aristotle, Athenian Constitution 23 to 27
- Brief political summary.
- Aeschylus, Persians (472 BC)
- Performed when Themistocles was still in Athens; the political background is contemporary.
- Inscriptions
- Ostraka from the agora (thousands of names from Themistocles, Cimon, Pericles); the Athenian Tribute Lists.
Historiography
- Russell Meiggs, The Athenian Empire (1972)
- Standard reconstruction.
- A. R. Burn, Persia and the Greeks (1962)
- Themistocles-centred narrative.
- P. J. Rhodes, A Commentary on the Aristotelian Athenaion Politeia (1981)
- Detailed commentary on the political history.
- Anton Powell, Athens and Sparta (3rd ed., 2016)
- Comparative treatment.
How to read a source on this topic
Section IV sources on personalities typically include extracts from Thucydides 1, Plutarch, or ostraka. Three reading habits.
First, watch the moral framing. Plutarch organises lives around character; Thucydides around action. Reconstruct the careers from the action, not the character labels.
Second, integrate the personalities with the institutions. Themistocles's naval policy presupposed the Athenian Assembly; Cimon's campaigns presupposed the Delian League; Pausanias's fall presupposed the Spartan ephoralty.
Third, follow the ostraka. The literal physical record of ostracisms is the most direct evidence we have of mid-fifth-century Athenian politics.
Source-analysis response. Question: "Source B: a reconstructed dedicatory relief of the type set up by a Greek city after a fifth-century BC naval victory, showing rowers at the oar beneath a short label reading 'to the goddess, for the ships that saved the city.' Using Source B and your own knowledge, explain what the source suggests about the basis of Themistocles's influence." Response: "Source B suggests that Themistocles's influence rested on naval, not hoplite, power: the label credits 'the ships' rather than a land army with saving the city, matching Themistocles's real achievement in persuading the Assembly in 483/2 BC to spend the Laurium silver windfall on around 200 triremes rather than distributing it to citizens. This naval policy produced the fleet that won Salamis in 480 BC and later underpinned the fortification of Piraeus. The source is useful for illustrating the type of civic gratitude a naval saviour might receive, but as an ExamExplained reconstruction rather than a transcribed artefact, it cannot be cited as direct fifth-century evidence; the stronger evidence for Themistocles's naval basis of power is Thucydides's narrative at 1.93 and Herodotus's account of the Laurium debate. Marker's note: full marks require using the source's specific content (the rowers, the dedication formula) rather than simply restating known facts about Themistocles, and flagging the source's status as illustrative rather than authentic."
Essay paragraph. Question: "Assess the extent to which Pausanias's fall was the result of his own conduct rather than Spartan politics." Response: "Pausanias's fall was substantially the result of his own conduct, though Spartan institutional suspicion accelerated it. Thucydides (1.94 to 95, 1.128 to 130) records that after capturing Byzantium in 478 BC, Pausanias adopted Persian dress, released Persian prisoners without authorisation, and corresponded secretly with Xerxes offering to bring Greece under Persian alliance in exchange for marrying the king's daughter; this was self-generated treason, not a fabricated charge. Even so, the ephors' willingness to recall him twice, and ultimately to wall him into the temple of Athena Chalkioikos rather than risk a public trial with imperfect evidence, reflects Sparta's structural anxiety about any individual, even a royal regent, accumulating personal authority abroad. Modern historians such as Meiggs treat the medism charge as broadly credible given the corroborating detail of the intercepted letter, while noting that Sparta's handling of the case also served the ephors' interest in reasserting control over an over-mighty regent. The balance of evidence therefore favours Pausanias's own actions as the primary cause, with Spartan political anxiety as an amplifying, not originating, factor. Marker's note: rewards a stated extent-judgement, use of the two Thucydides passages by number, and a named historian's interpretation used to qualify rather than merely decorate the argument."
"Outline" wants a sequenced summary of what happened with dates; "explain" wants reasons or effects, not just narrative; "assess" and "evaluate" require a judgement, stated as a thesis and defended with evidence and historian input; "to what extent" specifically wants you to weigh how far a statement is true, including a genuine qualification. For any source item, work through four things: content (what does the source actually say, quoted or paraphrased precisely), reliability (who produced it, how close to the event, does it show bias or moralising), usefulness (what can a historian actually learn from it, and what are its limits), and perspective (whose viewpoint does it represent, e.g. Thucydides's admiration for Themistocles or the hostile Spartan tradition on Pausanias). Weave in historiography by naming a historian's actual position (Meiggs on the transfer of hegemony, Rhodes on the political mechanics of ostracism) rather than dropping a name with no argument attached. Structure a paragraph as point, dated evidence, source or historian, and a link back to the question.
- Confusing Pausanias the regent with Pausanias the travel writer
- The regent died around 470 BC; the travel writer flourished in the second century AD.
- Treating Themistocles and Aristides as opposites
- They were rivals but allies at Salamis.
- Underestimating Cimon
- He was the single most successful Athenian general of his generation; his ostracism in 461 BC, not his campaigns, is the point about him.
- Forgetting that all three died abroad
- Themistocles in Magnesia, Pausanias in a walled-up temple, Cimon at Citium. Public service did not always end at home.
Exam-style questions
Questions in the style of NESA exam questions on this dot point, each with a worked answer. They are written by ExamExplained unless tagged "Past paper"; the year shows the paper a question is modelled on.
Practice (NESA)15 marksCompare the contributions of Themistocles and Cimon to the Greek world between 480 and 461 BC.Show worked answer →
A 15-mark "compare" needs both careers, similarities and differences, and a judgement.
- Thesis
- Themistocles built the naval base and aligned Athens against Sparta; Cimon built the Aegean alliance and aligned Athens with Sparta.
- Themistocles (around 524 to 459 BC)
- Archon 493/2 BC; began fortifying Piraeus. Naval policy of 483/2 BC (200 triremes from Laurion). Decisive at Salamis (480 BC). Rebuilt Athens's walls in 478 BC over Spartan objection (Thucydides 1.89 to 93). Ostracised around 471 BC, condemned for medism in absentia, fled to Persia, governor of Magnesia until death around 459 BC.
- Cimon (around 510 to 450 BC)
- Son of Miltiades. Strategos from 478 BC. Campaigns at Eion (476 BC), Scyros (around 475 BC), Naxos (around 470 BC), Eurymedon (around 466 BC), Thasos (465 to 463 BC). Conservative, philolaconian, aristocratic. Led relief to Sparta in 462 BC after the helot earthquake; the dismissal at Ithome discredited him. Ostracised 461 BC. Recalled around 451 BC; died at Cyprus around 450 BC.
- Similarities
- Both strategoi. Both increased Athenian power. Both ostracised. Both died abroad.
- Differences
- Themistocles aligned Athens against Sparta; Cimon with Sparta. Themistocles was a democrat; Cimon an aristocrat. Themistocles's naval policy was the empire's foundation; Cimon's campaigns extended its reach.
- Verdict
- Themistocles created the Athens that fought the Peloponnesian War; Cimon created the empire that funded it. Cimon was defeated when Athenian politics turned against Sparta in 462 to 461 BC.
Practice (NESA)8 marksAccount for the recall, conviction, and death of Pausanias the regent.Show worked answer →
An 8-mark response needs the offences, the trial, and the death.
- The offences
- After Plataea (479 BC) and the campaigns of 478 BC (Cyprus, Byzantium) Pausanias adopted Persian dress and Persian guards. He released Persian prisoners taken at Byzantium and corresponded with Xerxes (Thucydides 1.128 to 130). The letters offered Persian aid in making himself ruler of Greece in exchange for Persian alliance.
- Recall to Sparta (478 BC)
- The ephors recalled Pausanias after the allies complained of his arrogance. He was tried for treason but acquitted on the major charge (the letters had not yet been intercepted), though convicted of minor offences. He returned privately to Byzantium and resumed correspondence.
- The second recall
- Spartan agents intercepted his messenger and found a letter ordering the killing of the messenger himself. The messenger turned the letter over. The ephors recalled Pausanias again.
- The conspiracy
- Pausanias also corresponded with the helots, offering them freedom and citizenship in exchange for support. This was treason against the Spartan state.
- The death (around 470 BC)
- Pausanias took refuge in the temple of Athena Chalkioikos on the Spartan acropolis. The ephors walled up the temple. Pausanias starved; he was carried out alive only to die immediately. The Spartans, fearing pollution of the sanctuary, performed expiation under instruction from Delphi.
- Significance
- The fall of Pausanias confirmed Spartan withdrawal from the eastern Aegean. It also fed the Spartan suspicion of personal ambition that would later fall on Cimon.
Markers reward the offences, the trial, the conspiracy, and the death.
Practice questions
Original practice questions graded from foundation to exam level, each with a full worked solution. Try them before revealing the solution.
foundation4 marksSource A: a reconstructed dedicatory inscription of the type set up at a Greek sanctuary after a fifth-century BC military success, recording that "the commander dedicated a tenth part of the spoils to the god, having led the allied fleet to victory and enlarged the city's power by sea."
Using Source A and your own knowledge, identify which of Themistocles, Pausanias or Cimon the inscription most likely commemorates, and explain your choice.
Show worked solution →
1 mark: identifies Themistocles (Salamis, 480 BC) OR Cimon (Eurymedon, around 466 BC) as a defensible answer, since both led allied fleets to naval victories that expanded a city's sea power; Pausanias is a weaker fit because Plataea was primarily a land victory.
Up to 3 marks for explanation using the source: the phrase "allied fleet" points to a naval command (rules out a purely land general); "enlarged the city's power by sea" fits Themistocles's naval policy of 483/2 BC that produced Salamis (480 BC) and the fleet that underpinned Athenian sea power, or Cimon's Eurymedon campaign (around 466 BC) that extended Delian League reach. "Dedicated a tenth part of the spoils" is the conventional tithe (dekate) known from other Greek victory dedications, supporting the plausibility of the source type without it being a real artefact.
Full marks require the candidate to use the source's specific wording (not just retell the events) and to justify the choice against a rival identification.
foundation3 marksOutline the reasons for Themistocles's naval policy of 483/2 BC.Show worked solution →
1 mark: identifies the discovery of a new silver vein at Laurium as the trigger.
1 mark: notes the public framing as war preparation against Aegina.
1 mark: notes the real strategic purpose, preparing against a renewed Persian invasion, and that the policy funded around 200 triremes.
Markers reward correct sequencing (silver find before the fleet vote) and the distinction between the stated and real motive.
core5 marksExplain how Pausanias's conduct after Byzantium (478 BC) alienated Sparta's allies.Show worked solution →
Up to 2 marks: describes the conduct - adopting Persian dress, Persian guards and Persian customs; releasing Persian prisoners; corresponding secretly with Xerxes (Thucydides 1.94 to 95, 1.128 to 130).
Up to 2 marks: explains the effect - the allies, especially the Ionians, found his arrogance intolerable and preferred Athenian leadership, which directly enabled the shift of hegemony to Athens and the formation of the Delian League.
1 mark: names Thucydides as the source for this account and notes he wrote it to explain the origin of the Athenian empire, so the account is not neutral reportage but bears on his broader argument.
Markers reward linkage between Pausanias's personal conduct and the structural outcome (transfer of naval leadership to Athens).
core6 marksAssess the reliability of Thucydides as a source for the fall of Themistocles and Pausanias.Show worked solution →
Up to 2 marks: content - Thucydides 1.90 to 91 (the walls stratagem) and 1.135 to 138 (Themistocles's flight and obituary) are near-contemporary, and Thucydides had access to Athenians who remembered the events.
Up to 2 marks: limitations - Thucydides wrote decades later, compresses chronology (the exact link and dating between the two medism cases is debated by historians), and openly admires Themistocles, which may colour the obituary at 1.138 as more favourable than a neutral account would be.
Up to 2 marks: comparison - contrast with Plutarch (1st to 2nd century AD), who is far later, more detailed and anecdotal, drawing on now-lost earlier writers such as Stesimbrotus and Ion of Chios, and prone to moralising (for example the suicide tradition at Themistocles 31, which Thucydides does not confirm and instead attributes death to illness).
Markers reward explicit reliability/usefulness/perspective language, not just a list of facts about Thucydides.
exam20 marks"The fall of each of Themistocles, Pausanias and Cimon reflected the same underlying tension: Athens and Sparta could not both trust the same man." To what extent is this statement a fair assessment of the three careers?
Show worked solution →
Band 6 requires a sustained argument (not three separate narratives), precise dated evidence for each career, and engagement with historiography.
- Thesis
- The statement is largely fair: each man's fall can be read through the shifting, mutually exclusive loyalties Athens and Sparta demanded, though the mechanism differed in each case (Themistocles chose Athens against Sparta and was destroyed by Athens; Pausanias chose Persia against Sparta and was destroyed by Sparta; Cimon chose Sparta against a democratising Athens and was destroyed by Athens).
- Argument line 1 (Themistocles)
- The walls stratagem of 478 BC (Thucydides 1.90 to 91) deliberately deceived Sparta to secure Athens's independent power; his ostracism around 471 BC and the medism charge (around 466 BC) show Athens itself turning on the man who had built its naval strength, once his usefulness gave way to suspicion of his personal ambition. Thucydides's admiring obituary (1.135 to 138) suggests the fall was political, not a genuine verdict on his loyalty to Greece.
- Argument line 2 (Pausanias)
- Byzantium (478 BC) shows the regent adopting Persian habits and corresponding with Xerxes (Thucydides 1.94 to 95, 1.128 to 134); Sparta's ephors, not Athens, ended his career, starving him in the temple of Athena Chalkioikos. Historians (for example Meiggs) debate how far the medism charge was genuine treason versus a Spartan pretext to remove an over-mighty regent; either way the case shows Sparta unable to trust its own commander once he operated among the allies Athens was courting.
- Argument line 3 (Cimon)
- The Ithome humiliation of 462 BC, where Sparta dismissed the Athenian relief force alone of all the allies, discredited Cimon's philo-Spartan policy at home; his ostracism in 461 BC was an Athenian, not Spartan, verdict, delivered by a democratising Assembly under Ephialtes and Pericles that no longer trusted a pro-Spartan aristocrat. This inverts the mechanism of Themistocles's fall (Athens punishing anti-Spartan defiance) into Athens punishing pro-Spartan loyalty, showing the tension cuts both ways.
- Qualification
- The claim should not be pushed too far: Cimon's later recall (around 451 BC) and his death campaigning against Persia at Citium (around 450 BC) show Athens could still use him once the Ithome grievance faded, and Themistocles's obituary is respectful, suggesting Athenian judgement of these men was not simply about trust but also about the immediate political utility of ostracism as an institution.
- Model paragraph
- "Each fall exposes the same structural fact: an individual could not simultaneously hold Spartan and Athenian confidence once the two states' interests diverged. Pausanias's Persian dress and secret letters (Thucydides 1.128 to 130) cost him Sparta's trust because he behaved like an autonomous Aegean hegemon rather than a Spartan regent; Cimon's march to Ithome in 462 BC cost him Athens's trust for the mirror-image reason, that he behaved like Sparta's ally rather than a champion of the emerging democracy. Themistocles's case shows the tension is not always symmetrical: he was destroyed not for choosing Sparta or Persia, but for having chosen Athens too successfully and then out-lived his usefulness to the very institution, ostracism, that his own political system had normalised."
Marker's note: full marks require a sustained thesis carried across all three careers (not three mini-essays), specific dated evidence tied to each argument, at least one named historian's interpretation used analytically, and a genuine qualification that tests the statement rather than simply restating it.
exam8 marksEvaluate the significance of the ostracism of 461 BC for the direction of Athenian foreign policy.Show worked solution →
Up to 3 marks: context - Cimon's philo-Spartan policy culminated in the Ithome expedition of 462 BC; the dismissal of the Athenian force discredited that policy and coincided with Ephialtes's reforms curbing the Areopagus.
Up to 3 marks: consequence - Cimon's ostracism in 461 BC removed the leading advocate of alignment with Sparta, clearing the way for Pericles's rise, the radical democracy, and the more assertive, eventually anti-Spartan foreign policy that produced the First Peloponnesian War.
Up to 2 marks: qualification/historiography - note that Cimon's recall around 451 BC and his role in the Five Years' Truce show the break with Sparta was not total or irreversible, and that historians such as Rhodes caution against over-reading a single ostracism as fully determining subsequent policy.
Marker's note: reward a judgement on significance (a turning point, not the only cause) rather than a narrative retelling of 461 BC alone.