But the youth of Themistocles contradicts this statement; and though his restless and ambitious temper had led him already into active life, and he might have combined with others more influential against Aristides, it can scarcely be supposed that, possessing no advantages of birth, he rose into much power or distinction, till he won sudden and popular applause by his gallantry at Marathon.
II.

Themistocles was of illegitimate birth, according to the Athenian prejudice, since his mother was a foreigner.

His father, though connected with the priestly and high-born house of the Lycomedae, was not himself a Eupatrid.

The young Themistocles had many of the qualities which the equivocal condition of illegitimacy often educes from active and stirring minds--insolence, ostentation, the desire to shine, and the invincible ambition to rise.

He appears, by a popular tale, to have early associated with his superiors, and to have evinced betimes the art and address which afterward distinguished him.