Xanthippus

The Greater or City Dionysia, the annual Athenian state festival in honor of Dionysus, had added comedies to its program in 487 BCE; Aeschylus wins his first victory at in 484 BCE.

Xanthippus is a typical member of the first Athenian generation able to use the new weapon of the popular vote against the old power of family politics.

Almost certainly a member of an old family, Xanthippus had begun his political career by a dynastic marriage into the controversial family of the Alcmaeonids.

He soon left their political camp, probably on the question of relations with Persia, and has taken the new path of legal prosecution as a political weapon.

Perhaps outbid in his search for popular support, Xanthippus is ostracized in 484 BCE.

This novel custom, which made its first historical appearance in 487, is a way of getting rid of a man for ten years without depriving him of his property.

First, a vote is taken as to whether an ostracism should be held in principle; if the voters want one, a second vote is taken, and, if the total number of votes now cast exceeds six thousand, the “candidate” whose name appears on the largest number of potsherds, or ostraca, goes into this special sort of exile.

Xanthippus, in 479 BCE, commands the Athenian force at Mycale on the Asiatic coast, where the residue of the Persian navy is to engage the Greek fleet, commanded by Spartan co-king Leotychidas.

The Persian navy instead beaches its ships and, joining a land army, fights a losing battle against a Spartan force led by Leotychidas.

This victory prepares the way for the liberation of the Greeks of western Asia Minor from Persian rule.

Sparta honors Themistocles with a great ovation; but Athens, led during the crisis by the Areopagus, or council of nobles, gives the chief commands in 479 to the recalled exiles, Aristides and Xanthippus, who had both returned the previous year.

Cimon's conspicuous valor in the victorious sea fight with the Persians at Salamis leads soon to his election as strategos—one of Athens' ten annual war ministers and generals.

The Greeks in addition recognize, with a prize for valor, the conspicuous bravery of the tiny Aeginetan contingent (only about forty ships) at the battle of Salamis.

In the repulse of Xerxes I it is possible that the Aeginetans played a larger part than is conceded to them by Herodotus.

The Athenian tradition, which he follows in the main, would naturally seek to obscure their services.

As it is to Aegina rather than Athens that the prize of valor at Salamis is awarded, the destruction of the Persian fleet appears to have been as much the work of the Aeginetan contingent as of the Athenian (Herod. viii. 91).

There are other indications, too, of the importance of the Aeginetan fleet in the Greek scheme of defense.

In view of these considerations, it becomes difficult to credit the number of the vessels that is assigned to them by Herodotus (thirty as against one hundred and eighty Athenian vessels).