Themistocles, whose father, Neocles, came of the aristocratic Lycomid family and was not poor, but whose mother was a concubine, non-Athenian, possibly non-Greek, thus owes his citizenship to the legislation of Cleisthenes, which, in 508, had made citizens of all free men of Athens.

Elected archon in 493, he sponsors the first public works destined to make the defensible rocky bays of Piraeus, five miles from Athens, into harbors, replacing the nearer but unprotected beaches of Phaleron.

Miltiades, having arrived in Athens, is bound to raise animosities here because of his fabulous wealth, his foreign wife Hegesipyle (who bore him a son, Cimon the younger, about 510), and his past as a “tyrant”.

As archon, Themistocles must be concerned in the trial of Miltiades, who is prosecuted for his tyrannical role in the Chersonese, probably at the instigation of the rival clan of the pro-Persian Alcmaeonids, but he is triumphantly acquitted as the champion of resistance to Persian encroachments upon Greek freedom.

Having firsthand experience of the Persians, Miltiades is chosen, from 493 onward, as one of the ten generals of the Athenian land forces.

Unlike Themistocles, he is still thinking in terms of land warfare and of an agreement with Sparta, which is favored by the Athenian landowners, the peasantry, and the rural middle class.