Plutarch is the main source of information about Timocreon's role as a medizer and enemy of Themistocles ("Themistocles" 21), while Herodotus supplies much of the background information ("Histories" 8.111-12). According to these accounts, Themistocles, the hero of the Battle of Salamis, gave up the pursuit of the retreating Persians to extort money from Greek island states in the Aegean, without the knowledge of his fellow commanders. It is possible that Timocreon was on Andros at this time and he paid Themistocles three talents of silver to restore him to his home town in Rhodes, from which he had been exiled for medizing. Themistocles took the money but reneged on the agreement and, even though bonds of hospitality between them required good faith, he accepted a bribe from someone else in a new deal that excluded Timocreon. Sailing away with the poet's money in his coffers but minus the poet himself, Themistocles soon arrived at the Corinthian Isthmus, where the Greek commanders met to decide who most deserved the prize for valour in their recent victory at Salamis. Themistocles hosted a banquet in an attempt to curry favour with his colleagues but won nothing by it since each of the commanders subsequently voted himself the most deserving of the prize ("Histories" 8.123-4). These events are commemorated by Timocreon in Fragment 727 (see below), composed in 480 BC or just a few years after the Battle of Salamis, though some scholars date it after Themistocles' fall from grace in Athens in 471 BC.