Excerpt from The Story of the Greatest Nations, Vol. 2: From the Dawn of History to the Twentieth Century Athens into a maritime power. Themistocles was a sagacious though selfish statesman, who foresaw that Persia would ere long renew her attempt to conquer Greece, which would be helpless without a powerful navy. The leading men in Athens at this time were Miltiades, Themistocles, and Aristides. Because of his pure patriotism, Aristides was known as the Just, but he was stubborn and impracticable and in these days would be called a crank. He bitterly opposed the policy of Themistocles, and the people finally became so impatient with his obduracy that they ostracized him. It is said that a countryman, not knowing Aristides, asked him to write his name in favor of the measure, and when calmly asked by the patriot his reason for doing so, he replied that it was merely because he was tired of forever hearing of Aristides the just. Be that as it may, it was undoubtedly a good thing that Athens was freed of his presence for a few years. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.