The 480s BCE in Athens are a…

The 480s BCE in Athens are a period of intense political struggle.

Miltiades had died in disgrace and from 487 BCE to 483 BCE other leaders are successively ostracized.

Though never himself defeated, Themistocles is doubtless attacked repeatedly; he is the man accused by his enemies of being a danger to the established order.

Nonetheless, in 483 BCE he wins his greatest triumph.

The state-owned silver mines at Laurium, worked since Mycenaean times, are the site of a rich strike, and he persuades the assembly, instead of “declaring a dividend,” to devote the whole surplus to increasing the navy.

Thus when Xerxes I, the Persian king, finally marches against the Greeks in 480 BCE, Athens is to have two hundred triremes, though many of the rowers will still be untrained.

Themistocles further succeeds in selling his naval strategy to the Peloponnesians, headed by Sparta, who can raise another one hundred and fifty triremes.

The combined fleet is to fight not on their own doorstep, as Greeks prefer to do, but as far forward as possible, exploiting the geographical situation.