TM Gallery info The Decree of Themistocles (TM 805782) is a Greek inscription discovered by a local farmer at Troezen in the north-east Peleponnesos in 1959. After using it as a doorstep first, he donated it to a local schoolteacher to be exhibited it in a coffee house, where it was seen by a visiting professor who published it the year after.
The text documents a 480 BC proposal by Themistocles to evacuate Athens strategically before the advent of the Persians. This has been interpreted by scholars as contradicting the account by Herodotus, which has been interpreted as a panic evacuation after the first Greek defeat at Thermopylae. The palaeography of the stone also made clear that the preserved copy dated to the 3rd century BC, and in view of the destruction of Athens by the Persians it is not clear how the text of the decree would have been preserved. Demosthenes mentions that a decree such as this one was first read by Aeschines in 347 BC, which led some to the conclusion that the latter, against the contemporary Macedonian threat, fabricated the text to stress the sacrifice Athens made. The authenticity of the decree - not of the 3rd century copy - is still disputed.