When he arrived at Cyme, and understood that all along the coast
many laid in wait for him (the king of Persia having offered by
public proclamation two hundred talents to him that should take
him), he fled to Aegae, a small city of the Aeolians, where no one
knew him but only his host Nicogenes, who was the richest man in
Aeolia, and well known to the great men of Inner Asia. There
Themistocles, going to bed, dreamed that he saw a snake coil
itself up upon his belly, and so creep to his neck; then, as soon
as it touched his face, it turned into an eagle, which spread its
wings over him, and took him up and flew away with him a great
distance; then there appeared a herald's golden wand, and upon
this at last it set him down securely, after infinite terror and
disturbance.
His departure was effected by Nicogenes by the following artifice:
the barbarous nations, and among them the Persians especially, are
extremely jealous, severe, and suspicious about their wives, whom
they keep so strictly that no one ever sees them abroad; they
spend their lives shut up within doors, and, when they take a
journey, are carried in close tenets, curtained in on all sides,
and set upon a wagon. Such a traveling carriage being prepared for
Themistocles, they hid him in it, and carried him on his journey,
and told those whom they met or spoke with upon the road that they
were conveying a young Greek woman out of Ionia to a nobleman at
court.
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