Les sorts croisés de deux célèbres exilés : Thémistocle et Cimon

Abstract

Among the most famous political refugees of ancient Greece, it must be certainly mentioned the Athenian Themistocles. His ostracism, at the end of a career characterized by great military and political achievements, which ended in the request of hospitality at the court of his former enemy, the Persian king, soon gets fictional contours. We are informed on the subject by Plutarch in Themistocles’s Life (26-31) and in Kimon’s Life 18, 6-7. Kimon too was expelled from Athens after an ostracism procedure, around the late Sixties, when probably Themistocles was already dead, but whose political projects seemed to come back. Even though the bibliography about the two men is huge, it’s worth reexamining the cross destinies of these two famous refugees, to operate a tuning about the several remaining issues.

Keywords

• Themistocles
• Kimon
• Plutarch
• Athens
• Persia