c. 530–468 BCE
Aristides was an Athenian statesman and general of the early fifth century BCE, remembered by later writers by the sobriquet “the Just.” He participated in the political and military life of Athens during the Persian Wars and is traditionally associated with command at the Battle of Marathon in 490 BCE. As a rival of Themistocles over Athenian policy, he was ostracised around 482 BCE, but he returned when the renewed Persian invasion created an emergency requiring experienced leaders.
During the invasion of Xerxes, Aristides supported the Greek war effort at Salamis and played an important role with Athenian forces at Plataea in 479 BCE. In the years after the Persian retreat he was associated with the organisation of the Delian League and with assessing the tribute expected from allied states, a task later tradition said he performed with unusual fairness. Much of the moralised portrait comes from authors writing long after his lifetime, but his reputation for public integrity was already strong in classical Athens. He died around 468 BCE.
In Plutarch’s The Rise and Fall of Athens, this Plutarch collection gives biographical sources for Athens from legendary Theseus through Solon, Themistocles, Aristides, Cimon, Pericles, Nicias, Alcibiades and Lysander. Further fictional perspectives on Aristides can be found in Christian Cameron’s Marathon, Christian Cameron’s Rage of Ares, Christian Cameron’s Salamis, and Conn Iggulden’s Protector.
