Aristides

Family: Athens · Role: statesman · First appears: Themistocles

Aristides, son of Lysimachus, was an Athenian statesman of the tribe Antiochis and township of Alopece. He was a friend and supporter of Clisthenes and admired Lycurgus above all politicians. He and Themistocles were enemies who “always opposed him,” and later took opposite sides as political rivals; they were also rivals for Stesilaus of Ceos. At Marathon, Aristides transferred his command to Miltiades, showing that it was noble and prudent to follow a wiser leader.

The Athenians later banished Aristides by ostracism for ten years, out of jealousy of his reputation, while he was oppressed by Themistocles’s faction. Three years after Xerxes entered Attica, they decreed the return of the banished. At Psyttalea, Aristides led an attack that killed nearly all the enemy defenders, and at Plataea he uncovered a democratic conspiracy, apprehending eight conspirators while Aeschines of Lampra and Agesias of Acharnae escaped. After the Athenians returned to the city, he introduced a decree allowing everyone to share in government and opening the archonships to all Athenians.

Aristides exposed Themistocles’s plan to burn the Greek arsenal, and the Athenians ordered Themistocles to desist, trusting Aristides’s justice. When the allies revolted from Pausanias, Aristides and Cimon accepted command and asked Sparta to recall him; Aristides later helped promote Cimon, who followed his example in courtesy and disinterested conduct. He was accused of bribery by Diophantus of Amphitrope, opposed Hyperbolus, and refused gifts from his cousin Callias; his granddaughter Myrto lived with Socrates.