At the end, in an arresting narrative displacement, his obituary comes not after his death but before it (138.3):Themistocles most securely revealed the strength of natural ability and differently and more than any other man was worthy to be admired in this respect; for by his native intelligence and neither having learned anything in advance towards it nor having learned afterwards, he was both the best knower of things present by means of the least deliberation, and the best conjecturer of the things that were going to happen, to the greatest extent of what would be; and the things which he took in hand he was able to expound and the things of which he had no experience he did not fall short of judging appositely; and the better or worse course in what was yet un-apparent he foresaw the most. To say the whole: by power of natural ability and by brevity of study this was the best man at improvising the necessary things.