The Decree of Themistocles is an ancient Greek

Ancient Greek

Ancient Greek is the stage of the Greek language in the periods spanning the times c. 9th–6th centuries BC, , c. 5th–4th centuries BC , and the c. 3rd century BC – 6th century AD of ancient Greece and the ancient world; being predated in the 2nd millennium BC by Mycenaean Greek...

 inscription discussing Greek strategy in the Greco-Persian Wars

Greco-Persian Wars

The Greco-Persian Wars were a series of conflicts between the Achaemenid Empire of Persia and city-states of the Hellenic world that started in 499 BC and lasted until 449 BC. The collision between the fractious political world of the Greeks and the enormous empire of the Persians began when Cyrus...

, purported to have been issued by the Athenian

Athens

Athens , is the capital and largest city of Greece. Athens dominates the Attica region and is one of the world's oldest cities, as its recorded history spans around 3,400 years. Classical Athens was a powerful city-state...

 assembly under the guidance of Themistocles

Themistocles

Themistocles ; c. 524–459 BC, was an Athenian politician and a general. He was one of a new breed of politicians who rose to prominence in the early years of the Athenian democracy, along with his great rival Aristides...

. Since the publication of its contents in 1960, the authenticity of the decree has been the subject of much academic debate. The decree directly contradicts Herodotus

Herodotus

Herodotus was an ancient Greek historian who was born in Halicarnassus, Caria and lived in the 5th century BC . He has been called the "Father of History", and was the first historian known to collect his materials systematically, test their accuracy to a certain extent and arrange them in a...

's account of the evacuation of Attica

Attica

Attica is a historical region of Greece, containing Athens, the current capital of Greece. The historical region is centered on the Attic peninsula, which projects into the Aegean Sea...

 in 480 BC

480 BC

Year 480 BC was a year of the pre-Julian Roman calendar. At the time, it was known as the Year of the Consulship of Vibulanus and Cincinnatus...

, in which it is stated that the evacuation was an emergency measure taken only after the Peloponnesian

Peloponnese

The Peloponnese, Peloponnesos or Peloponnesus , is a large peninsula , located in a region of southern Greece, forming the part of the country south of the Gulf of Corinth...

 army failed to advance into Boeotia

Boeotia

Boeotia, also spelled Beotia and Bœotia , is one of the regional units of Greece. It is part of the region of Central Greece. It was also a region of ancient Greece. Its capital is Livadeia, the second largest city being Thebes.-Geography:...

 to fight the Persians. If the decree is authentic, the abandonment of Attica was part of a considered strategy aiming to draw the Persians into naval combat at Artemisium

Artemisium

Artemisium is a cape north of Euboea, Greece. The legendary hollow cast bronze statue of a debatable Zeus or Poseidon was found off this cape in a sunken ship.-See also:* Temple of Artemis...

 or Salamis

Salamis Island

Salamis , is the largest Greek island in the Saronic Gulf, about 1 nautical mile off-coast from Piraeus and about 16 km west of Athens. The chief city, Salamina , lies in the west-facing core of the crescent on Salamis Bay, which opens into the Saronic Gulf...

.

Discovery

The stone bearing the Themistocles decree (Epigraphical Museum, Athens, EM 13330)was discovered at some point before 1959 by a farmer at Troezen

Troezen

Troezen is a small town and a former municipality in the northeastern Peloponnese, Greece. Since the 2011 local government reform it is part of the municipality Troizinia, of which it is a municipal unit....

, in the northwestern Peloponnese. For some time, he used the inscribed marble slab as a doorstep. In 1959, he donated the stone to a collection of artifacts from Troezen that a local schoolteacher was displaying at a coffeehouse. There, Professor M.H. Jameson

Michael H. Jameson

Michael Hamilton Jameson was a classicist. At the time of his death he was Crossett Professor Emeritus of Humanistic Studies at Stanford University....

 of the University of Pennsylvania saw the slab, and, the next year, published its contents along with a translation and commentary.

Contents

The inscription begins with a statement that the contents are a resolution of the Athenian assembly, proposed by Themistocles. It then lays out a plan to evacuate the women, children, and elderly of Attica to Troezen and Salamis, while the men board trireme

Trireme

A trireme was a type of galley, a Hellenistic-era warship that was used by the ancient maritime civilizations of the Mediterranean, especially the Phoenicians, ancient Greeks and Romans.The trireme derives its name from its three rows of oars on each side, manned with one man per oar...

s and prepare to defend the city, leaving only the treasurers and priestesses on the acropolis

Acropolis of Athens

The Acropolis of Athens or Citadel of Athens is the best known acropolis in the world. Although there are many other acropoleis in Greece, the significance of the Acropolis of Athens is such that it is commonly known as The Acropolis without qualification...

. The majority of the extant text then turns to the specifics of preparing the fleet, with the text on the slab becoming illegible before the end of the decree.

Significance

If the account of the evacuation of Athens implied by the Themistocles decree is accurate, the Herodotean account of the events of 480 BC must be revised to reflect a Greek strategy, agreed on in June, focused on stopping the Persian advance at Salamis and the Isthmus of Corinth

Isthmus of Corinth

The Isthmus of Corinth is the narrow land bridge which connects the Peloponnese peninsula with the rest of the mainland of Greece, near the city of Corinth. The word "isthmus" comes from the Ancient Greek word for "neck" and refers to the narrowness of the land. The Isthmus was known in the ancient...

. If this was indeed the Greek plan, then Thermopylae

Battle of Thermopylae

The Battle of Thermopylae was fought between an alliance of Greek city-states, led by King Leonidas of Sparta, and the Persian Empire of Xerxes I over the course of three days, during the second Persian invasion of Greece. It took place simultaneously with the naval battle at Artemisium, in August...

 and Artemisium

Battle of Artemisium

The Battle of Artemisium was a series of naval engagements over three days during the second Persian invasion of Greece. The battle took place simultaneously with the more famous land battle at Thermopylae, in August or September 480 BC, off the coast of Euboea and was fought between an alliance of...

, which Herodotus describes as all-out attempts to defeat the Persian invasion, would in fact have been only holding actions intended to give time for the evacuation of Attica and the preparation of the defenses of the isthmus.

Academic controversy

Challenging as it did the Herodotean account that had up to that point stood as the definitive account of the Greco-Persian Wars, the authenticity of the Themistocles decree soon became the subject of heated scholarly debate. A study of the letter forms used suggested that the marble slab on which the decree was inscribed had been carved in the first half of the 3rd century BC, raising the question of how the text had survived for two centuries, particularly given that Athens was sacked by the Persians in 480 and again in 479 BC. The first extant mention of a decree that can be identified with the one found at Troezen comes from Demosthenes

Demosthenes

Demosthenes was a prominent Greek statesman and orator of ancient Athens. His orations constitute a significant expression of contemporary Athenian intellectual prowess and provide an insight into the politics and culture of ancient Greece during the 4th century BC. Demosthenes learned rhetoric by...

, who records that Aeschines

Aeschines

Aeschines was a Greek statesman and one of the ten Attic orators.-Life:Although it is known he was born in Athens, the records regarding his parentage and early life are conflicting; but it seems probable that his parents, though poor, were respectable. Aeschines' father was Atrometus, an...

read the decree aloud in 347 BC, again leaving a gap of over a century to account for. Scholars who support the authenticity of the decree point to the last two lines of the famous oracle given to the Athenians:

Divine Salamis, you will bring death to women's sons

When the corn is scattered, or the harvest gathered in.

The identification of Salamis as the site of slaughter would seem to suggest that a strategy calling for a battle there had already been agreed upon by the Greek commanders, which would indicate that the account supported by the Themistocles decree is correct. Scholars skeptical of the decree however raise a number of arguments against its authenticity. The correlation provided by the oracle's mention of Salamis has been challenged by pointing out that oracles were sometimes altered after the fact; various anachronisms in phrasing have been pointed out, although supporters of the text's authenticity dismiss these, noting that Greek practice was to paraphrase documents rather than copy them verbatim; finally, more serious content issues, ranging from chronologically suspect passages to statements that seem out of place in an official decree to serious conflicts with Herodotus's detailed descriptions of Greek troop dispositions. In light of these objections, John Fine has argued that it is best to treat the Themistocles decree, if authentic, as an amalgamation of several decrees released at different times.