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22And at last, when even his fellow-citizens were led by their jealousy of his greatness to welcome such slanders against him, he was forced to allude to his own achievements when he addressed the Assembly, till he became tiresome thereby, and he once said to the malcontents: “Why are ye vexed that the same men should often benefit you?’ “ He offended the multitude also by building the temple of Artemis, whom he surnamed Aristoboulé, or Best Counsellor, intimating thus that it was he who had given the best counsel to the city and to the Hellenes. 2This temple he established near his house in Melité, where now the public officers cast out the bodies of those who have been put to death, and carry forth the garments and the nooses of those who have dispatched themselves by hanging. A portrait-statue of Themistocles stood in this temple of Aristoboulé down to my time, from which he appears to have been a man not only of heroic spirit, but also of heroic presence.
3Well then, they visited him with ostracism,[22] curtailing his dignity and pre-eminence, as they were wont to do in the case of all whom they thought to have oppressive power, and to be incommensurate with true democratic equality. For ostracism was not a penalty, but a way of pacifying and alleviating that jealousy which delights to humble the eminent, breathing out its malice into this disfranchisement.
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Notes
[22] About 472 B.C.