Herodotus • Historia

^{[i.vii-xviii]}

Introduction

A.

^[i.vii] It is impossible to give certain and undisputed dates for the lifetime of Herodotus. But if we are to believe Aulus Gellius, he was born in 484 BCE (Attic Nights 15.23); and the internal evidence of his History proves that he was alive during some part of the Peloponnesian war, as he alludes to incidents which occurred in its earlier years. He may therefore be safely said to have been a contemporary of the two great wars which respectively founded and ended the brief and brilliant pre-eminence of Athens in Greece (or Hellas). He belongs in the fullest sense to the "great" period of Greek history.

Herodotus was (it is agreed on all hands) a native of Halicarnassus in Caria; and if his birth fell in 484, he was born a subject of the Great King. His early life was spent, apparently, in his native town, or possibly in the island of Samos, of which he shows an intimate knowledge. Tradition asserts that after a visit to Samos he "returned to Halicarnassus and expelled the tyrant" (Lygdamis); "but when later he saw himself disliked by his countrymen, he went as a volunteer to Thurii when it was being colonized ^[i.viii] by the Athenians. There he died and lies buried in the market-place" (Suda Ε 536). This is supported by good evidence, and there seems to be no reason for doubting it. It is also stated that he visited Athens and there recited some part of his History; this may have happened, as alleged, about the year 445. It is evident from his constant allusions to Athens that he knew it well and must have lived there.

So much may be reasonably taken as certain. Beyond it we know very little; there is a large field for conjecture, and scholars have not hesitated to expatiate in it. If Herodotus was banished from Halicarnassus for political reasons, it is probable that he was a man of some standing in his birthplace. The unquestioned fact that he traveled far makes it likely that he was well-to-do. But his History, full as it is to the brim of evidences of travel, is never (except in an occasional phrase, "I have myself seen…" and the like) autobiographical; and we know nothing, from any actual statement of the historian's own, of the date of his various visits to the countries which he describes. Probably they were spread over a considerable part of his life. All that can be said is that he must have visited Egypt (after 460 BCE) and may have been before that date in Scythia. Nothing else can be asserted; we only know that at some time or other Herodotus traveled not only in Greece and the Aegean, of which he obviously has personal knowledge, but also in a large part of what we call ^[i.ix] the Near East. He saw with his own eyes much of Asia Minor; Egypt, as far south as Aswan; Cyrene and the country round it; Syria, and eastern lands perhaps as far as Mesopotamia; and the northern coast of the Black Sea. Within these limits, "many were the cites of men that he saw, many their minds that he understood" (Odyssey i.3). But as the dates of his travels are unknown, so is their intention. Did he travel to collect materials for his History, its scheme being already formed? Or was that history the outcome of the traveler's experiences? We only know that Herodotus' wanderings and the nine books of his narrative are mutually interwoven.

His professed object is, as he states it in the first sentence of his first book, to write the history of the Greco-Persian war. But in order to do this he must first describe the rise of the Persian Empire, to which the chapters on Lydia and the story of Croesus are introductory. When he comes in due time to relate the Persian invasion of Egypt, this is the cue for a description and history of the Nile valley, occupying the whole of the second book; and the story of Darius' subsequent expedition against Scythia leads naturally to a long digression on the geography and customs of that country. The narrative in the later books, dealing with the actual Persian invasion of Greece, is naturally less broken; but till then at least it is interrupted by constant episodes and digressions, here a chapter, there a whole book; it is the historian's practice, as he himself says, to introduce additions (prosthḗkai) whenever anything even ^[i.x] remotely connected with the matter in hand occurs to him as likely to interest the reader. The net result is really a history of the Near East, and a good deal besides; a summary of popular knowledge or belief respecting recent events and the world as known more or less to the Greeks; which eventually, after branching out into countless digressions and divagations, centers in the crowning narrative of Marathon, Thermopylae, Salamis, Plataea. Tortuously, but never tediously, Herodotus' History moves to this goal. For all his discursiveness, he does not lack unity. "He is the first," it has been said, to construct a long and elaborate narrative, in which many parts are combined in due subordination and arrangement to make one great whole." (How and Wells 1912: 19).

That a narrative so comprehensive in its nature-dealing with so great a variety of subjects and drawn from sources so miscellaneous-should contain much which cannot be regarded as serious history, is only to be expected. It is impossible to generalize where popular belief and ascertained fact, hearsay and ocular evidence are blended, "the historical value of the matter found in Herodotus' work varies not merely from volume to volume, or from book to book, but from paragraph to paragraph, from sentence to sentence, from line to line. Every separate story, every individual statement is to be tried on its own merits" (Macan, Herodotus 1895: xiii). Many critics have not taken the trouble ^[i.xi] to exercise this discrimination; it was for a long time the fashion to dismiss the Father of History as a garrulous raconteur, hoping to deceive his readers as easily as he himself was deceived by his informants. This "parcel of lies" type of criticism may now, fortunately, be considered extinct. Modern research, which began by discrediting Herodotus, has with fuller knowledge come to far different conclusions. It should be now "universally recognized that the most stringent application of historical and critical methods to the text of Herodotus leaves the work irremovably and irreplaceably at the head of European prose literature, whether in its scientific or in its artistic character" (1895: ix). He has been blamed for a "garrulity" which gives currency too much which is alleged to be beneath the dignity of history. But most scholars must now agree that even from the historical standpoint the world would have lost much of infinite value had Herodotus been more reticent; his "garrulity" is often proved to point the way to right conclusions.

Obviously, the condition of human beliefs and opinions falls within the field of history. Where Herodotus plainly and demonstrably errs, he is often of supreme interest as indicating contemporary thought, which he not only summarizes but criticizes as well. His geography and his meteorology are representative of a stage of thought. He has not arrived at truth (naturally!) but he is consistent with a current opinion which is nearer to truth than earlier con^[i.xii]ceptions of the world. It is true that the sun's course is not affected, as Herodotus believes it to be, by the wind. It is also true that the Danube does not rise in the Pyrenees, and that the course of the upper Nile is not from west to east. But no one in his time knew better. He reflects and discusses contemporary opinion; he rejects earlier and more primitive ideas. It may be counted to him for righteousness that if he knows much less than Strabo, at least he knows a great deal more than Homer.

Always and everywhere, Herodotus gives us the best that is accessible to him; and it is one of his great merits as a historian that he does not give it uncritically. Scanty justice, till lately, has been done him in this matter; in reality, his manner of retailing what has been told him shows anything but credulity. Definite acceptance is much rarer than plain expressions of disbelief in what he has heard; "they say, but I do not believe it" is a very frequent introduction. This attitude is shown by the grammatical construction of the narrative-a construction which translation cannot always reproduce without awkwardness, and which is sometimes therefore overlooked altogether; the fact remains that much of the story is cast in the mold of reported speech, showing that the writer is not stating that so-and-so is a fact but only that it has been told him; and the indirect speech (oratio obliqia) is maintained throughout the narrative. ^[i.xiii] Herodotus deliberately professes that this is his method: "I know not what the truth may be, I tell the tale as 'twas told to me" (e.g. 2.123, 7.152). In view of these plain statements, to attack Herodotus for foolish credulity is nothing less than disingenuous.

Some harm, moreover, has been done to Herodotus' reputation by the tendency of modern languages to alter the meaning of derived words. Herodotus repeats múthoi. Now a mûthos is simply a tale, with no implication of falsity; it may just as well be true as not. But when we say that Herodotus repeats myths, that is an altogether different matter; myth and mythical carry the implication of falsehood; and Herodotus is branded as a dupe or a liar, who cannot be taken seriously as an authority for anything.

Herodotus' reputation for untrustworthiness arises, in fact, from his professed method of giving a hearing to every opinion. This has been of great service to those who early and late have accused him of deliberate and perhaps interested falsification of historical fact. These attacks began with Plutarch (On the Malice of Herodotus); they have been more than once renewed in modern times by critics desirous of a name for originality and independence. None of them can be regarded as of any serious importance. They leave Herodotus' credit ^[i.xiv] untouched, for the simple reason that they are hardly ever based on solid evidence. Plutarch's treatise on Herodotus' "malignity" only establishes his own. Modern critics, who maintain that Herodotus' praise and blame is unjustly distributed, have seldom any witness to appeal to save the historian himself; and lacking necessary outside support (ab extra), they can only assert the a priori improbability that an historian who is inaccurate in one narrative should be accurate in another. It is quite possible that the heroes of the History were not so heroic and the villains not so villainous as the historian paints them; but we have no evidence as to the private life of Cyrus or Cambyses beyond what the historian himself has given us. Nor is there any justification for depreciating the services of Athens to Greece because the eulogist of Athens happened to believe that the Danube rises in the Pyrenees, and that the sun's course is affected by the wind.

It cannot be denied that Herodotus invites criticism. Plainly enough, a great deal of the evidence on which he relies must be more substantial than simple hearsay. He has undoubtedly learnt much from documents engraved or written. To take one instance, the long and detailed catalog of the nations included in the Persian Empire and the amounts of tribute paid by each must rest on some documentary authority. But he will not support his credit by producing his proofs-at least, he does so seldom; for the most part, his sources (fontes) are included ^[i.xv] under "what he has heard"; he may have seen this, he may have read that, but it is all set down as hearsay and no more. There could be no better way of opening the door to suspicious critics. Further, some of the qualities which constitute the charm of his narrative make him suspect to those who ask only from history that it should be a plain statement of what did actually happen. Herodotus is pre-eminently biographical; personal passion and desire is the guiding motive of events; they are attributed to individual action more than to the force of circumstance. Debatable situations are described in terms of an actual debate between named champions of this or that policy-as in Euripides, nay, as even in the comparatively matter-of-fact narrative of Thucydides. Nor is it only the human individual will which decides; it is the superhuman above all. The fortunes of individuals and communities are presented to us as they appear to a Greek who sees in human life "a sphere for the realization of Divine Judgments" (Macan, Herodotus 1895 : cxiii). The Divine (tó theîon) is always working; whether as Nemesis to balance good and evil fortune, and correct overweening pride and excessive prosperity by corresponding calamity, or as eternal justice to punish actual wrongdoing. Such beliefs, common to all ages, find especial prominence in the History of Herodotus, as they do in Greek tragedy. The stories of Croesus, Polycrates, Cambyses, the fall of Troy-all are illustrations of a ^[i.xvi] divine ordering of human affairs; indeed the central subject of the story-the debacle of the vast Persian expedition against Greece-exemplifies the maxim that "insolence (hubrís), once vainly stuffed with wealth that is not proper or good for it, when it has scaled the topmost ramparts, is hurled to a dire doom" (Sophocles Oedipus Rex 874-77). History thus written is a means to moral edification; and Herodotus may not be above the suspicion of twisting the record of events so as to inculcate a moral lesson. Such predispositions make history more dramatic and more interesting; but those may be excused who hold that they militate against strict accuracy.

The dialect in which Herodotus writes is lonic, the oldest literary dialect of Greece; but he also makes use of many words and forms which are commonly associated with the literature of Attica. When therefore Dionysius of Halicarnassus calls him "the finest exemplar of Ionic" (Letter to Pompey 3.16), this must refer rather to his pre-eminence as an Ionian stylist than to the "purity" of his dialect, which in fact is rightly described as "mixed" (memigménē) and "mottled" (poikílē-Hermogenes Perí ideôn lógou 2.12). Perhaps Herodotus' language was affected by his residence at Athens. But Ionic and "Old Attic" appear to have been so nearly akin that it is difficult to draw a clear line of division between them. From whatever sources drawn, his diction is pervaded by an indefinable but unmistakably archaic quality which constitutes not the least of a translator's difficulties.

B.

^[i.xvii] The following will be of value to the reader of Herodotus: Blakesley (1869), Stein (1869-1871), Rawlinson (1897), Macan (1895, 1908), How and Wells (1912), Hude (1908), and the histories of Greece by Grote (1846-1856) and Bury (1902).

The text of Herodotus rests mainly on the authority of nine MSS, of which a "Laurentianus" and a "Romanus" of the tenth and eleventh centuries respectively are considered the best. The merits of all the nine MSS and the problems which they present to an editor are fully discussed in Hude's preface to the Clarendon Press edition (1908). The text which I have followed is that of Stein (1869-1871); in the few passages of any importance where I have thought fit to follow any other authority, the fact is noted. In the spelling of names I have not attempted to be consistent. I use the familiar transliteration of ' Κ' and 'Ο', and write "Croesus" and "Cyrus," not "Kroisos" and "Kuros," only retaining terminations in ' ΟΣ' where they are familiar and traditional. Where place-names have a well-known English form, not widely different from the Greek, I have kept to that; for instance, "Athens" and "'Thebes," not ^[i.xviii] "Athenae" and "Thebae"; but I write "Carchedon" and "Taras," not "Carthage" and "Tarentum." This is (I trust) a reasonable, though undeniably an inconsistent, method. The scheme of the present series does not contemplate a commentary; only the briefest notes, therefore, have been added to this translation, and only where the "general reader" may be supposed to stand in urgent need of a word of explanation.

[BKG note: for the current edition, we have consistently Latinized transcriptions in the body of the text ("Carthage" and "Tarentum"), while including direct transcriptions from the Greek in the glossary]

Books I & II

^[i.xix] It was by their conquest of Lydia that the Persians were first brought into contact with the Greeks. Hence it is necessary to Herodotus' plan to trace the history of the line of Lydian kings which ended with Croesus; this, with many attendant digressions, occupies Book I.1-44. On the same principle, the history of the Medes and Persians, and the early life of Cyrus himself, must be narrated (I.45-140). Then follows the story of Cyrus' dealings with the Greeks of Asia Minor (I.140-177). The rest of the book is concerned with the wars of Cyrus against the Assyrians and the Massagetae; a descriptive digression on Babylonian civilization naturally forms a part of this section.

Cyrus, killed in battle by the Massagetae, was succeeded by his son Cambyses; and Cambyses, soon after the beginning of his reign, resolved to attack Egypt. This resolve gives the cue for Herodotus' memorable digression on the history and customs of that country.

The second book falls into two parts. The first ^[i.xx] is the portrayal of the Nile valley and its inhabitants (II.1-98); the second gives a history of the Egyptian kings. The whole book-a strange medley of description and conjecture, history and fable-has, in so far as it is descriptive of present things, the supreme merit of a collection of pictures drawn by an eyewitness. Herodotus' travels seem to have been mostly in Lower Egypt. But he knows also the upper valley of the Nile, and apparently has traveled as far as Aswan; his record, apart from the charm of the narrative, has an enduring interest as the earliest and for many centuries the only literary source of our knowledge of the country.

But a clear distinction must be drawn between the descriptive and the historical chapters.

It is not likely that Herodotus is inaccurate in describing what he has seen. But, for his Egyptian chronicles, he has had to rely on what was told him, certainly through the medium of interpreters and probably in many cases by informants whose own knowledge was limited and inexact. Here, as usual, he safeguards himself against the charge of uncritical credulity by showing that he repeats the tale as told to him without guaranteeing its truth. It is very clear, however, that the impressions of history given to him are exceedingly misleading, at least for the long period before the twenty-sixth or Saïte dynasty. His chronicle is full of errors of nomenclature and chronological sequence and is made to cover far too long a period of time. Our knowledge of the early ^[i.xxi] rulers of Egypt rests, firstly, on evidence supplied by Egyptian monuments; secondly, on what remains to us (though in an epitomized and imperfect form) of the chronicle of Manetho, an Egyptian priest who in the third century BCE compiled a list of the kings of his country. Herodotus is repeatedly at variance with both these sources of information. In a brief introduction it is impossible to multiply proofs, or even to summarize the difficulties which beset students of these abstruse matters; it is enough to remember that "for Egyptian history in the strict sense chapters II.99 to II.146 are valueless." (How and Wells 1912 : vol.1.423) These deal with the dynasties preceding 663 BCE, and covering in fact some 2700 years. Herodotus gives them a far longer duration; apparently he was shown a list of Egyptian rulers, and calculated the united lengths of their reigns by assuming one generation, or thirty years, for each king. So rough-and-ready a method of calculation could lead to no true conclusion; and it is wholly invalidated by the undoubted fact that many of the reigns named in the list were contemporaneous.

Books III & IV

^[ii.vii] Herodotus' narrative in the Third Book of his History is extremely discursive and episodic. It may be briefly summarized as follows:

Chapters 1 to 38 deal in the main with Cambyses. They relate the Persian invasion and conquest of Egypt, Cambyses' abortive expedition against the Ethiopians, and the sacrilegious and cruel acts of the last part of his reign. The section 38-60 begins with an account of Polycrates of Samos, and his relations with Amasis of Egypt, and continues with a narrative of Polycrates' war against his banished subjects. The fact that these latter were aided not only by Spartans but by Corinthians serves to introduce the story of the domestic feuds of Periander, despot of Corinth. Chapter 61 resumes the story of Cambyses; the Magian usurpation of the Persian throne, Cambyses' death, the counterplot against and ultimate overthrow of the pseudo-Smerdis and his brother by seven Persian conspirators, and the accession of Darius-all this is narrated with much ^[ii.viii] picturesque and dramatic detail in twenty-eight chapters (61-88). Then follows a list of Darius' tributary provinces (88-97), supplemented by various unconnected details relating to Arabia and India (98-117). The next thirty-two chapters (118-149) narrate various events in the early part of Darius' reign: the fate of Polycrates of Samos; the insolence and death of his murderer Oroetes; how Democedes, a Samian physician, rose to power at the Persian court and was sent with a Persian commission to reconnoiter Greek coasts; how Polycrates' brother Syloson regained with Persian help the sovereignty of Samos. Lastly, chapters 150-160 describe the revolt and second capture of Babylon.

Book IV begins with the intention of describing Darius' invasion of Scythia, and the subject of more than two-thirds of the book is Scythian geography and history. Chapters 1-15 deal with the legendary origin of the Scythians; 16-31, with the population of the country and the climate of the far north; this leads to a disquisition on the Hyperboreans and their alleged commerce with the Aegean (32-36), and (37-45) a parenthetic section, showing the relation to each other of Europe, Asia, and Libya. The story of a circumnavigation of Libya forms part of this section. Chapters 46-58 enumerate the rivers of Scythia, and 59-82 describe its manners and customs.

Darius' passage of the Hellespont and the Danube is ^[ii.ix] narrated in chapters 83-98. Chapters 99-117 are once more parenthetic, describing first the general outline of Scythia, and next giving some details as to neighboring tribes, with the story of the Amazons. From 118 to 144 Herodotus professes to relate the movements of the Persian and Scythian armies, till Darius turns to the Danube and thence to Asia again.

The Libyan part of the book begins at 145. Twenty-three chapters (145-167) give the history of Cyrene, its colonization from Greece and the fortunes of its rulers till the time of Darius, when it was brought into contact with Persia by the appeal of its exiled queen Pheretima to the Persian governor of Egypt, who sent an army to recover Cyrene for her. The thirty-two following chapters (168-199) are a detailed description of Libya: 168-180, the Libyan seaboard from Egypt to Lake Triton; 181-190, the sandy ridge inland stretching (according to Herodotus) from Thebes in Egypt to the Atlas; 191-199, in the main, Libya west of Lake Triton. At chapter 200 the story of Pheretima is resumed and the capture of Barca described. The book ends with the death of Pheretima and the disastrous return to Egypt of her Persian allies.

The above brief abstract shows that Book IV, at least, is full of geography and ethnology. It is, I believe, generally held that Herodotus himself ^[ii.x] visited the Cyrenaica and the northern coasts of the Black Sea, where the Greek commercial center was the "port of the Borysthenites," later called Olbia; but there is no real evidence for or against such visits. The point is not very important. If he did not actually go to Cyrene or Olbia he must at least have had opportunities of conversing with Greeks resident in those places. These, the only informants whose language he could understand, no doubt supplied him with more or less veracious descriptions of the "hinterlands" of their cities; and possibly there may have been some documentary evidence-records left by former travellers. Whatever Herodotus' authorities-and they must have been highly miscellaneous-they take him farther and farther afield, to the extreme limits of knowledge or report.

As Herodotus in description or speculation approaches what he supposes to be the farthest confines of north and south, it is natural that he should also place on record his conception of the geography of the world-a matter in which he professes himself to be in advance of the ideas current in his time. There were already, it would appear, maps in those days. According to Herodotus, they divided the world into three equal parts-Europe, Asia, Libya; the whole surrounded by the "Ocean," which was still apparently imagined, as in Homer, to be a "river" into which ships could sail from the sea known to the Greeks. Possibly, as has been ^[ii.xi] suggested by moderns, this idea of an encircling river may have originated in the fact that to north, south, and east great rivers ran in the farthest lands known to Greeks: the Nile in the south (and if it could be made to run partly from west to east, so much the better for the belief that it was a boundary), the Danube in the north, the Euphrates in the east; in the west, of course, the untraveled waters outside the "Pillars of Hercules" fitted into the scheme. But whether the legend of an encircling stream had a rational basis or not, Herodotus will have none of it. The Greeks, he says, believe the world to be surrounded by the Ocean; but they cannot prove it. The thing, to him, is ridiculous; as is also the neat tripartite division of the world into three continents of equal extent. His own scheme is different. Taking the highlands of Persia as a base, he makes Asia a peninsula stretching westward, and Libya another great peninsula south-westward; northward and alongside of the two is the vast tract called Europe. This latter, in his view, is beyond comparison bigger than either Asia or Libya; its length from east to west is at least equal to the length of the other two together; and while there are at least traditions of the circumnavigation of Libya, and some knowledge of seas to the south and east of Asia, Europe stretches to the north in tracts of illimitable distance, the very absence of any tale of a northern boundary tending in itself to prove ^[ii.xii] enormous extent. The lands north and south of the Mediterranean have each its great river; and Herodotus has already in the Second Book endeavored to show that there is a kind of correspondence between the Nile and the Danube. He, too, like the geographers with whom he disagrees, is obsessed, in the absence of knowledge, by a desire for symmetry. The Nile, he is convinced, flows for a long way across the country of the Ethiopians from west to east before it makes a bend to the north and flows thus through Egypt. So the Danube, too, rises in the far west of Europe, in the country of "Pyrene"; and as the Nile eventually turns and flows northward, so the Danube, after running for a long way eastward, makes an abrupt turn southward to flow into the Black Sea. Thus the Mediterranean countries, southern Europe and northern Africa, are made to lie within what the two rivers-their mouths being regarded as roughly "opposite" to each other, in the same longitude-make into a sort of interrupted parallelogram.

Such is the scheme of the world with which Herodotus incidentally presents us. But his real concern in Book Four is with the geography of Libya and Scythia-northern Africa and southern Russia; in both cases the description is germane to his narrative, its motive being, in each, a Persian expedition into the country.

Critics of the Odyssey have sometimes been at ^[ii.xiii] pains to distinguish its "inner" from its "outer" geography-the inner true and real, the outer a world of mere invention and fairy tale. There is no such distinction really; Greeks do not invent fairy tales; there are simply varying degrees of certitude. Greek geographical knowledge contemporaneous with the composition of the Odyssey being presumably confined within very narrow limits, the frontiers of the known are soon passed, and the poet launches out into a realm not of invention, but of reality dimly and imperfectly apprehended-a world of hearsay and travellers' tales, no doubt adorned in the Homeric poem with the colors of poetry. Homer is giving the best that he knows of current information-not greatly troubled in his notices of remote countries by inconsistencies, as when he describes Egypt once as a four or five days' sail from Crete, yet again as a country so distant that even a bird will take more than a year to reach it. Herodotus' method is as human and natural as Homer's. Starting, of course, from a very much wider extent of geographical knowledge, he passes from what he has seen to what he knows at first hand from Cyrenaean or Borysthenite evidence; thence into more distant regions, about which his informants have been told; and so on, the accuracy of his statements obviously diminishing (and not guaranteed by himself) as the distance increases, till at last in farthest north-farthest, that is, with the ^[ii.xiv] possible exception of "Hyperboreans," about whom nobody knows anything-he is in the country of the griffins who guard gold and pursue the one-eyed Arimaspian; and in the south, among the men who have no heads, and whose eyes are in their breasts.

It happens sometimes that the stories which have reached Herodotus from very distant lands and seas, and which he duly reports without necessarily stating his belief in them, do in truth rest on a basis of actual fact. Thus one of the strongest arguments for the truth of the story of a circumnavigation of Libya is the detail, mentioned but not believed by Herodotus, that the sailors, when sailing west at the extreme limit of their voyage, saw the sun on their right hand. Thus also the story of Hyperborean communication with Delos is entirely in harmony with ascertained fact. Whatever be the meaning of "Hyperborean," a term much discussed by the learned (Herodotus certainly understands the name to mean "living beyond the north wind"), the people so named must be located in northern Europe; and the Delos story, however imaginative in its details, does at least illustrate the known existence of trade routes linking the northern parts of our continent with the Aegean. To such an extent Herodotus' tales of the uttermost parts of the earth are informative. But with such exceptions, as one would naturally expect, it is true that as a ^[ii.xv] general rule the farther from home Herodotus is the farther also he is from reality.

It follows from this that in proportion as Herodotus' narrative of events is distant from the Greek world and his possible sources of information, so much the more is it full, for us, of geographical difficulties. It is probable that, as he tells us, "Scythians" did at some time or other invade the Black Sea coasts and dispossess an earlier population of "Cimmerians," whom, perhaps, they pursued into Asia. The bare fact may be so; but Herodotus' description of the way in which it happened cannot be reconciled with the truths of geography. The whole story is confused; the Cimmerians could not have fled along the coast of the Black Sea, as stated by Herodotus; it would, apparently, have been a physical impossibility. In such cases the severer schools of critics were sometimes tempted to dismiss an entire narrative as a parcel of lies. More charitable, moderns sometimes do their best to bring the historian's detailed story into some sort of harmony with the map, by emendation of the text or otherwise. But if the former method was unjust, the latter is wasted labor. There is surely but one conclusion to draw, and a very obvious one: that Herodotus was misinformed as to geographical conditions. Ignorance lies at the root of the matter. Herodotus had not the geographical equipment for describing the movements of tribes on the north ^[ii.xvi] coast of the Black Sea, any more than our best authorities of sixty years ago had for describing tribal wanderings in Central Africa.

Even worse difficulties would confront the enterprising critic who should attempt to deal with Darius' marchings and counter-marchings in Scythia as matter for serious investigation. Herodotus' story is, with regard to its details of time, plainly incredible; a great army could not conceivable have covered anything like the alleged distance in the alleged time. It must, apparently, be confessed that there are moments when the Father of History is "beyond geography" (supra geographiam)-guilty of disregarding it when he did, as appears from other parts of the Fourth Book, know something of Scythian distances. The disregard may be explained, if not excused. Herodotus is seldom proof against the attractions of a Moral Tale. Given an unwieldy army of invaders, or "violence without good sense" (vis consili expers, Horace Odes 3.4.65), and those invaders the natural enemies of Greece-and given also the known evasive tactics of Scythian warfare-there was obviously a strong temptation to make a picturesque narrative, in which overweening power should be tricked, baffled, and eventually saved only by a hair's breadth from utter destruction at a supremely dramatic moment. So strong, we may suppose, was the temptation that Herodotus put from him considerations of time and distance, in the probably not unjustified expectation that his Greek readers or ^[ii.xvii] hearers would not trouble themselves much about such details. In short, it must be confessed that Herodotus' reputation as a serious historian must rest on other foundations than his account of Darius' Scythian campaign (see Macan's introduction, Herodotus 1895 ).

Herodotus' list of the tribute-paying divisions of the Persian Empire is not a geographical document. Obviously it is drawn from some such source as the three extant inscriptions (at Behistun, Persepolis, and Naqsh-e-Rustam) in which Darius enumerated the constituent parts of his empire; but it differs from these in that the numerical order of the units is not determined by their local position. It has indeed geographical importance in so far as the grouping of tribes for purposes of taxation naturally implies their local vicinity; but it is in no sense a description of the various units under Darius' rule; nor can we even infer that these districts and groups of districts are in all cases separate satrapies, or governorships. That, apparently, is precluded by the occasional association of countries which could not have formed a single governorship, for instance, the Parthians, Chorasmians, Sogdians, and Arians, who compose the sixteenth district; while the Bactrians and Sacae, belonging here to separate tax-paying ^[ii.xviii] units, appear in other passages in Herodotus as subjects of a single satrapy. What the historian gives us in Book III is simply a statistical list of Darius' revenues and the sources from which they were drawn.

Books V, VI & VII

^[iii.vii] In Books V and VI, the constant intermixture of references to earlier history with the actual narrative makes chronology obscure and difficult. I have endeavored to make the sequence of events clearer by giving dates here and there in the notes.

Book V describes, with a great many digressions, the events leading to, and the beginning of, the Ionian revolt against Darius. The following is a brief analysis of its contents, based on the summary in Stein's edition (1869-1871):

• 1-16. Megabazus' conquests in Europe.

• 17-22. Story of a Persian embassy to Macedonia, and its fate.

• 23-27. Histiaeus of Miletus at the Persian court; Otanes' conquests in N.W. Asia Minor and the neighborhood.

• 28-38. Troubles at Miletus and Naxos; Aristagoras' temporary alliance with Artaphrenes, and its breach; Aristagoras instigated by Histiaeus to revolt.

• 39-48. Story of Anaxandrides king of Sparta and his sons Cleomenes and Dorieus. Dorieus' death in Sicily; Cleomenes king of Sparta.

• 49-51. Aristagoras' unsuccessful attempt to obtain a Spartan alliance; his map of Asia.

• 52-54. Description of the "Royal Road" from Ephesus to Susa.

^[iii.viii] • 55-96. Aristagoras' visit to Athens; a long digression on Athenian history.

• 55-61. The death of Hipparchus; origin of the Gephyraeans by whom he was killed.

• 62-65. Expulsion of the Pisistratidae, by Lacedaemonian help.

• 66-69. Reforms of Cleisthenes at Athens, on the model of those affected by an elder Cleisthenes at Sicyon.

• 70-73. Counter-revolution organized by Isagoras with Lacedaemonian help; its failure; Athenian embassy to Persia, without result.

• 74-78. Joint attack on Athens by Lacedaemonians, Boeotians, and Chalcidians; its repulse.

• 79-89. Alliance of Thebes and Aegina against Athens; former feud between Athens and Aegina, arising out of relations between Athens and Epidaurus.

• 90, 91. Debate among the Spartans and their allies, as to restoring Hippias at Athens.

• 92. Protest of the Corinthians against this; story of the Cypselid dynasty at Corinth.

• 93-96. Hippias' retirement to Sigeum; story of how Sigeum had originally been occupied by the Athenians; Hippias' appeal to Persia for protection, leading to a final breach between Persia and Athens.]

• 97, 98. Aristagoras' success in obtaining Athenian help. Escape of the Paeonians from Asia, at his instigation.

• 99-102. Sardis attacked and burnt by Athenians and lonians; their subsequent retreat.

• 103, 104. Spread of the revolt in Caria and Cyprus. ^[iii.ix]

• 105-107. Histiaeus' mission from Susa to Ionia, on pretense of dealing with the revolt.

• 108-115. War in Cyprus; battles by sea and land; Cyprus reduced by the Persians.

• 116-123. Persian victories in western Asia Minor.

• 124-126. Flight and death of Aristagoras.

Book VI continues in its earlier chapters the story of the next phase of the Ionian revolts.

• 1-5. Histiaeus' return from Susa to the west, and the ill-success of his enterprises there.

• 5-10. Preparation of the opposing forces of Persians and lonians at Miletus; Persian attempts to tamper with the lonians.

• 11-17. Dionysius' attempt to train the lonians for battle. Sea-fight off Lade, Samian treachery, and complete victory of the Persians. Bravery and misfortunes of the Chians.

• 18-21. Fall of Miletus.

• 22-24. Flight of certain Samians to Sicily, and their treacherous occupation of Zancle.

• 25-32. Further Persian successes; capture and death of Histiaeus; complete suppression of the Ionian revolt.

• 33-41. Persian conquest of the Thracian Chersonese and the towns of the Hellespont. Story of the rule there of the elder Miltiades; escape from the Persians of Miltiades the younger.

• 42. Persian administration of Ionia.

• 43-45. First expedition of Mardonius against Greece (492); wreck of his fleet off Athos; his return to Asia.

• 46, 47. Subjection of Thasos to Persia.

^[iii.x] • 48-50. Darius' demand of "earth and water" from Greek states, Aeginetans accused as traitors for submitting to it.

• 51-60. Digression on Spartan kingship. Origin of dual system; position and privileges of kings.

• 61-70. Story of Demaratus; his birth; his quarrel with and deposition by Cleomenes, the other king. Succession of Leutychides,

• 71-84. Subsequent career of Cleomenes and Leutychides. Cleomenes' war with Argos, and his death (491, probably).

• 85, 86. Quarrel between Leutychides and Aegina; Leutychides' demand for the restoration by the Athenians of Aeginetan hostages; story of Glaucus.

• 87-93. Incidents in war between Athens and Aegina.

• 94-101. New Persian expedition against Greece under Datis and Artaphrenes. Conquest of Naxos, Delos, and Eretria.

• 102-108. Persian landing at Marathon in Attica, with Hippias; Athenian force sent thither, Miltiades one of their generals. His recent history. Athenian messenger dispatched to Sparta for help. Reinforcement sent by Plataea.

• 109-117. Battle at Marathon and complete victory of the Athenians.

• 118-120. Persian retreat; fortunes of the Eretrians taken prisoners by the Persians; arrival of Lacedaemonian reinforcements at Athens.

• 121-131. Herodotus' argument against the accusation of treason brought against the Alcmaeonid family at Athens. Story of the family. Success ^[iii.x] of one of its members in being chosen as the husband of Agariste, daughter of Cleisthenes of Sicyon.

• 132-136. Unsuccessful expedition of Miltiades against Paros; his condemnation by the Athenians, and his death.

• 137-140. Story of the Pelasgian settlements in Attica and subsequently in Lemnos, and the ultimate reduction of Lemnos by Miltiades.

The narrative in Book VII is much easier to follow. There are fewer digressions from the course of the story, and events are described in their chronological order for the most part.

• 1-4. New Persian preparation against Greece. Dispute about the succession to the throne among Darius' sons; death of Darius and accession of Xerxes (485).

• 5-6. Influence at the Persian court in favor of war.

• 7-11. Suppression of the Egyptian revolt. Xerxes' deliberation on invasion of Greece; speeches of Xerxes, Mardonius, and Artabanus.

• 12-18. Xerxes' doubts; his and Artabanus' visions; eventual decision for war.

• 19-25. Preparation for the expedition; its magnitude; construction of a canal across the promontory of Athos.

• 26-32. March of Xerxes' army from Critalla in Cappadocia to Sardis. Story of Pythius' offer of money.

• 33-36. Construction of bridges across the Hellespont.

• 37-43. Route of the army from Sardis to ^[iii.xii] Abydos; Pythius' request, and its punishment; the order of march.

• 44-56. Review of the fleet and army at Abydos, Xerxes' conversation with Artabanus. Passage of the Hellespont.

• 57-60. From the Hellespont to Doriscus; the numbering of the army.

• 61-99. Catalogue and description of the national contingents composing Xerxes' army and fleet.

• 100-107. Xerxes' review of his forces at Doriscus; his conversation with Demaratus; notice of some of the governors left by Xerxes in charge of Thracian towns.

• 108-121. Route of the army and fleet from Doriscus to Acanthus. How the army was fed.

• 122-126. From Acanthus to Therma.

• 127-131. Xerxes' excursion to Tempe in Thessaly.

• 132-137. Reception in Greece of proposals sent by Xerxes to Greek states. Vengeance alleged to be taken by Talthybius on the Lacedaemonians for their killing of ambassadors; story of Sperthias and Bulis.

• 138-144. Athens' services in the cause of Greek freedom. Oracles given to the Athenians; decision to increase their fleet, on the advice of Themistocles.

• 145-147. General reconciliation among Greeks; their dispatch of spies to Sardis; Xerxes' generosity in dealing with these.

• 148-152. Dubious attitude of Argos and Herodotus' reflections thereon.

• 153-167. Greek mission to Sicily. History of ^[iii.xiii] the rise of Gelon. His negotiations with the Greek envoys. Dispatch of Cadmus. Victory of Gelon and Theron over the Carthaginians in Sicily.

• 168. Dubious attitude of Corcyra.

• 169-171. Greek mission to Crete; Delphic advice to Cretans to be warned by the fate of Minos, and the Trojan War.

• 172-174. Greek forces in Thessaly; their withdrawal; attitude of the Thessalians.

• 175-178. Greek occupation of Thermopylae and Artemisium. Description of localities. Delphian advice to the Greeks to pray to the winds.

• 179-187. First encounter of Greek and Persian ships; Greek fleet at Chalcis, Persian at Sepias. Herodotus' estimate of total Persian numbers.

• 188-195. Heavy losses of Persian fleet in a storm. Persians at Aphetae, Greeks at Artemisium. Greeks capture Persian ships.

• 196, 197. March of Xerxes' army through Thessaly and Achaia. Description of religious custom at Alus.

• 198-201. Further description of Thermopylae and neighborhood.

• 202-207. Composition of the Greek force with Leonidas; his decision to remain at Thermopylae.

• 208, 209. Persian scouts and the Greeks; Xerxes' conversation with Demaratus.

• 210-212. Fights at Thermopylae and repulse of the Persians.

• 213-218. Flank movement of a Persian force over the hills, guided by Epilates. ^[iii.xiv]

• 219-225. Withdrawal of part of the Greek force by Leonidas' order. Final battle; annihilation of the Lacedaemonians and Thespians.

• 226-233. Individual instances of bravery; the commemorative inscriptions; fortunes of the few survivors; Theban surrender to Xerxes.

• 234-238. Opinions of Demaratus and Achaemenes as to Xerxes' future policy. Mutilation of Leonidas' body.

• 239. Digression as to Demaratus' secret message to Sparta about Xerxes' proposed expedition.

Among the highly miscellaneous data for internal Greek history of which Books V and VI are composed, those portions are especially interesting which give an account of governmental changes in the Hellenic world. Here we have the first beginnings of constitutional history. The period to which Herodotus' narrative generally refers was a time of transition. Those old vague kingships which existed in the Homeric age had passed away; the powers of ruling king (basileús) had passed mostly into the hands of some sort of oligarchy, whether based on wealth or birth. The relations between these and the unprivileged weaker population produced the economic disorders of the seventh century; and different states solved their problems in different ways. Sometimes the fall of an unpopular oligarchy or group of privileged families was brought about by the establishment of "despotism," some member of the hitherto powerful caste making himself master of the situation by a coup d'etat, with or without the support of the unprivileged; thus the rule of the Battiadae at Corinth gave place to the "tyranny" ^[iii.xv] of the Cypselid dynasty. But despotism was for the most part-at least in Greece Proper-only an interlude. Judged by its works, it became more unpopular than the oligarchical rule which it had displaced; the general estimate of it was that an irresponsible ruler was probably a criminal, and that unchecked power meant the gratification of the worst passions of humanity. It is true that as despotism decayed in Greece Proper, it took a fresh leave of life in the west, where it was justified by its practical utility. The benevolent despotism of Gelon in Sicily was praised as much as the malevolent despotism of Periander at Corinth was condemned; in neither case was there any theoretical objection to an unconstitutional usurper—the system was not judged on any a priori grounds, but simply on the record of the particular despot (týrannos)—Periander was a mere oppressor, Gelon was an Augustus of Syracuse, whose magnificence impressed even the sternest champions of "freedom," and whose services to the Hellenic world against the Semites of Africa, and the wild tribes of the west, were of proved efficacy.

Thus despotism endured in Sicily; but in Greece on the whole it gave place to some form of constitutional government. Now, therefore, for the first time we begin to hear of that strange thing, "freedom" (eleuthería)—the name of which has played so vast a part in the history of the world, and will continue to play it so long as men are the slaves of names.

What "freedom" meant to Herodotus and to the Greece of which he writes is clear enough-simply freedom from the personal caprice of a single despotic ruler. It is worth pointing out to those who appeal ^[iii.xvi] to Greece when they claim a traditional connection between "liberty" and democracy, that they will find in the history of the fifth century no warrant for their peculiar theory. Dēmocratía, of course, was not at all like Democracy, and would in fact have seemed to modern democrats to be a singularly close and oppressive form of oligarchy; but leaving this patent fact out of consideration we may see that Herodotus at least did not connect freedom with popular government. Athens, the stock instance of a democratic state par excellence, achieved eleuthería not by giving power to the common folk (dēmós, or "rabble") but by ridding herself of her despots; that was the "liberating" act; had she established an oligarchy, as she well might have done, on the ruins of despotism, she would have equally gained her "liberty" (eleuthería, or isēgoría, which like eleuthería simply means "absence of despotism"). That to Herodotus democracy has no prescriptive right to "liberty," is sufficiently shown by the fact that Sparta with her close and tyrannous oligarchy is the typically "free" state. It is a Spartan who points out to a Persian the blessings of freedom. Herodotus, seeing alternative forms of government, and admiring eleuthería (always on the ground of its higher efficiency), has no particular liking for democracy. When he mentions it, he does so without respect. Gelon of Sicily is made to call it dēmós akharitṓtatos ("the quite thankless rabble"). In the discussion of various constitutions in Book III the Persian debaters condemn democracy even more than oligarchy. The Athens which Herodotus lived in and admired was the Periclean city-state, of which Thucydides says, "it was a nominal democracy, but in reality the rule of the first man"(2.65).

^[iii.xvii] These digressions on constitutional changes and conditions occupy considerable parts of Books V and VI, while the main story works its way to the denouement. With Marathon, the drama reaches its climax. From this moment we are amidst the great scenes of history; and nothing can detract from the compelling interest of the narrative. Herodotus' marvelous skill heightens the dramatic appeal throughout by a constantly interwoven personal element. We are made to see the scale of the conflict, and judge of the issues involved, from the particular standpoint of individuals; we see through the eyes of a present witness. Herodotus does not only describe the greatness of Xerxes' fleet; he describes it as seen by Xerxes; just as Homer's most admired similes are those where the imagined scene is presented to us as viewed by a spectator. At most of the critical moments, the various reflections which might occur to a thoughtful mind, or the alternative courses of action which might naturally be suggested, are presented to us in a dramatized form by debate or dialogue illustrating the diverse points of view-after the manner later made familiar by Euripides and Thucydides.

So much of fiction there is, obviously; but the trustworthiness of the narrative, apart from these additions (additamenta), has not been seriously assailed. Very many details in this part of Herodotus' History lend themselves to speculation and controversy. He may exaggerate to the Persian numbers; it is natural that he should. He may lend too ready an ear to legend. But modern research has not detracted from his general credibility. It is not too much to say that where Herodotus gives most local detail he is least assailable. The story of Marathon is very briefly told, and it has been left for moderns to fill in what was lacking or explain what brevity makes obscure; but the full and detailed description of Thermopylae is verifiable today. Of course one cannot argue with certainty from such instances to the credibility of everything. But they are at least encouraging; and make any candid reader, in respect of those parts of the narrative where Herodotus is the sole witness, incline rather to belief in the first of historians than in those who would reconstruct history on the precarious basis of a priori probability.

Books VIII & IX

^[iv.vii] The following is a brief analysis of the contents of Books VIII and IX, based on the summary in Stein's edition (1869-1871):

• 1-5. The Greek fleet at Artemisium; question of supreme command; bribery of Themistocles by the Euboeans.

• 6-14. Dispatch of a Persian squadron on to sail round Euboea, and its destruction by storm. Effect of the storm on the rest of the Persian fleet; first encounter between the two fleets.

• 15-17. Second battle off Artemisium.

• 18-23. Retreat of the Greeks; Themistocles' attempt to tamper with the lonians; Persian occupation of Euboea.

• 24-33. Visit of Persian sailors to the field of Thermopylae. Olympic festival (26). Feuds of Thessalians and Phocians; Persian advance through Phocis (27-33).

• 34-39. Persian march through Boeotia, and unsuccessful attempt upon Delphi.

• 40-48. Abandonment of Attica by the Athenians; the Greek fleet at Salamis.

• 49-55. Greek council of war; Persian invasion of Attica and occupation of Athens.

^[iv.viii] • 56-64. Greek design to withdraw the fleet to the Isthmus of Corinth. Decision to remain at Salamis, by Themistocles' advice.

• 65. Dicaeus' vision near Eleusis.

• 66-69. Persian fleet at Phalerum; advice given by Artemisia in a council of war.

• 70-73. Greek fortification of the Isthmus. Digression on the various Peloponnesian nationalities.

• 74-82. Unwillingness of the Peloponnesians to remain at Salamis. Themistocles' design to compel them; his message to Xerxes, and Persian movement to encircle the Greeks. Announcement of this by Aristides.

• 83-96. Battle of Salamis.

• 97-99. Xerxes' intention to retreat; news at Susa of the capture of Athens and the battle of Salamis.

• 100-102. Advice given to Xerxes by Mardonius and Artemisia.

• 103-106. Story of the revenge of Hermotimus.

• 107-110. Flight of Persian fleet, and Greek pursuit as far as Andros; Themistocles' message to Xerxes.

• 111, 112. Siege of Andros, and demands made by Themistocles on various islands.

• 113. Mardonius' selection of his army.

• 114-120. Incidents in Xerxes' retreat.

• 121-125. Greek division of spoil and assignment of honors; Themistocles' reception at Sparta.

• 126-129. Artabazus' capture of Olynthus and siege of Potidaea, during the winter.

• 130-132. Greek and Persian fleets at Aegina and Samos respectively (spring of 479). Leutychides' command. Message to the Greeks from the lonians.

^[iv.ix] • 133-135. Mardonius' consultation of Greek oracles.

• 136-139. Mission to Athens of Alexander of Macedonia; origin of his dynasty.

• 140-144. Speeches at Athens of Alexander and the Spartan envoys; Athenian answer to both.

BOOK IX

• 1-5. Mardonius in Attica; his fresh proposals to the Athenians.

• 6-11. Hesitation of the Spartans to send troops; appeals made by the Athenians; eventual dispatch of a force.

• 12-15. Argive warning to Mardonius; his march to Megara and withdrawal thence to Boeotia.

• 16-18. Story of a banquet at Thebes, and Mardonius' test of a Phocian contingent.

• 19-25. The Greeks at Erythrae; repulse of Persian cavalry attack, and death of its leader; Greek change of position.

• 26-27. Rival claim of Tegeans and Athenians for the post of honor.

• 28-32. Battle array of Greek and Persian armies.

• 33-37. Stories of the diviners in the two armies.

• 38-43. Persian attack on a Greek convoy; Mardonius' council of war and determination to fight.

• 44-51. Alexander's warning to the Athenians; attempted change of Greek and Persian formation; Mardonius' challenge to the Spartans, and retreat of Greeks to a new position.

^[iv.x] • 52-57. Flight of the Greek center; Amompharetus' refusal to change his ground.

• 58-65. Battle of Plataea; initial success of Spartans and Tegeans.

• 66-69. Flight of Artabazus; Athenian success against the Boeotians; disaster to part of the Greek army.

• 70-75. Assault and capture of the Persian fortified camp. Distinctions of various Greek fighters.

• 76-79. Pausanias' reception of the Coan female suppliant; the Mantineans and Eleans after the battle; Lampon's proposal to Pausanias and his reply.

• 80-85. Greek division of the spoil and burial of the dead.

• 86-89. Siege of Thebes and punishment of Theban leaders; retreat of Artabazus.

• 90-95. Envoys from Samos with the Greek fleet. Story of the diviner Euenius.

• 96-105. Movements preliminary to the battle of Mycale, and Greek victory there.

• 106, 107. Greek deliberation at Samos; quarrel between Persian leaders.

• 108-1 13. Story of Xerxes' adultery and cruelty, and the fate of his brother Masistes.

• 114-121. Capture of Sestus by the Greeks; sacrilege of Artayctes, and his execution.

• 122. Cyrus' advice to the Persians to prefer hardship to comfort.

In Books Eight and Nine, the central subjects are the battles of Salamis and Plataea respectively. Herodotus describes the preliminaries of Salamis, ^[iv.xi] and both the operations prior to Plataea and the actual battle, with much detail; and his narrative has given rise to a good deal of controversy. Sometimes it is difficult to reconcile his story with the facts of geography. Sometimes, it is alleged, he is contradicted by the only other real authority for the sea fight at Salamis, Aeschylus. More often, he is said to sin against the laws of probability. He makes generals and armies do things which are surprising; and this is alleged to detract from his credit; for a historian, who allows generals and armies to disregard known rules of war, is plainly suspect, and at best the dupe of camp gossip, if not animated by partiality or even malice.

As to the battle of Salamis, a mere translator has no desire to add greatly to the literature of controversy. But it is worthwhile to review Herodotus' account. On the day before the battle, the Persian fleet, apparently, lay along the coast of Attica, its eastern wing being near Munychia; the Greeks being at Salamis, opposite to and rather less than a mile distant from Xerxes' ships. During the night, Persian ships were detached to close the two entrances of the straits between the mainland and Salamis. At dawn of the following day, the Greeks rowed out and made a frontal attack on the Persians facing them.

This account is questioned by the learned, mainly on two grounds; firstly, because (it is alleged) the Persians, if they originally lay along the Attic coast, could not have closed the two entrances of the straits without the knowledge of the Greeks; secondly, because Herodotus' narrative differs from that given by Aeschylus, in The Persians (or Persae) a play ^[iv.xii] produced only eight years after the battle. As to the first objection, the Persian maneuver was executed in darkness, and by small vessels, not modern battleships: it is surely not incredible that the Greeks should have been unaware of its full execution. As to the second ground of criticism-that Herodotus and Aeschylus do not agree, and that Aeschylus must be held the better authority-it still remains to be shown in what the alleged discrepancy consists. It is a fact which appears to escape the observation of the learned that Aeschylus is writing a poetic drama, and not a dispatch. His manner of telling the story certainly differs from that of Herodotus; but the facts which he relates appear to be the same: and in all humility I cannot but suggest that if commentators would re-read their Herodotus and their Aeschylus in parallel columns, without (if this be not too much to ask) an a priori desire to catch Herodotus tripping, some of them, at least, would eventually be able to reconcile the historian with the tragedian. For Aeschylus nowhere contradicts what is apparently the view of Herodotus-that the Persians, or their main body, lay along the Attic coast opposite Salamis when the Greeks sailed out to attack them. How and Wells, "whom I name only to honor" (quos honoris causa nomino, cf. Cicero Pro Roscio 2 [6]), say that this was probably not so, because, according to Aeschylus, some time elapsed before the Persians could see the Greek advance, and the strait is only one thousand five hundred yards wide. But as a matter of fact, Aeschylus does not say that some time elapsed, but "quickly they were all plain to view" (Persians 398, cf. How and Wells 1912, at 8.70f).

^[iv.xiii] Herodotus' narrative of the maneuvers of Mardonius' and Pausanias' armies near Plataea is, like most descriptions of battles, not always very clear. It is full of detail; but as some of the localities mentioned cannot be quite certainly identified, the details are not always easy to understand; and it must be confessed that there are gaps in the story. For instance, we must presume (though meritorious efforts are made to explain the statement away) that Herodotus means what he says when he asserts in 9.15 that Mardonius' army occupied the ground "from Erythrae past Hysiae"; the Persians, therefore, were then on the right bank of the Asopus; yet soon afterwards they are, according to the historian's equally plain statement, on the left bank. Hence there are real obscurities; and the narrative is not without picturesque and perhaps rather surprising incidents; which some commentators (being rather like M. Edmond About's eponymous gendarmes, persons whose business it is to see that nothing unusual happens in the locality) promptly dismiss as "camp gossip." Altogether, what with obscurity and camp gossip, scholars have given themselves a fairly free hand to reconstruct the operations before Plataea as they must have happened-unless indeed "someone had blundered," an hypothesis which, apparently, ought only to be accepted in the very last resort, and hardly then if its acceptance implies Herodotus' veracity. Reconstruction of history is an amusing game, and has its uses, especially in places of education, where it is played with distinguished success; yet one may still doubt whether rejection of what after all is our only real authority brings the public any nearer to ^[iv.xiv] knowing what did actually happen. Strategists and tacticians do make mistakes; thus, generally, are battles lost and won; and unreasonable incidents do occur. However, it is fair to say that most of the reconstruction of Salamis and Plataea was done before August 1914.

But here, as elsewhere in his History, Herodotus' authority is much impaired by the presumption, popular since Plutarch, of a pro-Athenian bias which leads him to falsify history by exaggerating the merit of Athens at the expense of other states, especially Sparta. Now we may readily believe that if Herodotus lived for some time at Athens, he was willing enough to do ample justice to her achievements; but if he is to be charged with undue and unjust partiality, and consequent falsification, then it must be shown that the conduct which he attributes to Athens and to Sparta is somehow not consistent with what one would naturally expect, from the circumstances of the case, and from what we know from other sources (aliunde) about those two states. Scholars who criticize Herodotus on grounds of probability ought to be guided by their own canon. If a historian is to be discredited where his narrative does not accord with what is antecedently probable, then he must be allowed to gain credit where antecedent probability is on his side; and there is nothing in Herodotus' account of Athenian and Spartan actions during the campaigns of 480 and 479 which disagrees with the known character of either people. No offense to (pace) the socialistic conception of an unrelieved similarity among all states and individuals, the Athenians of the fifth century BCE were an exceptional people; their record is not precisely the ^[iv.xv] record of Boeotia or Arcadia; it seems fair to say, without appealing to Herodotus' testimony, that they were more gifted, and more enterprising, than most. The spirit of the Hellenic world is general-intense local patriotism, intense fear and hatred of Oriental absolutism and strange worships-was more alive among the Athenians, probably, than in any other Greek state. Sparta also had her share of these qualities; she too would make no terms with the Persian; only her methods of resistance were different. Primarily, each state was interested in its own safety. To Spartans-disinclined to methods other than traditional and as yet unaccustomed to naval warfare-it seemed that Sparta could be best defended by blocking the land access to the Peloponnese; they would defend the Isthmus successfully, as they had tried and failed to defend Thermopylae. This meant, of course, the sacrifice of Attica; and naturally that was a sacrifice not to be made willingly by Athenians. Their only chance of saving or recovering Attica lay in fighting a naval action close to its coasts; nay, the abandonment of Salamis meant the exposure of their dependents to fresh dangers; therefore, they pressed for the policy of meeting and defeating the Persian where he lay by the Attic coast. This policy was to prove successful; and thereby, the Athenians incidentally accomplished what was undoubtedly also their object, the salvation of Greece; but the primary purpose of both Sparta and Athens, both before Salamis and before Plataea (when the Athenians were naturally displeased by a plan which left Attica a prey to the enemy) was undoubtedly to do the best they could for themselves. ^[iv.xvi] This, in fact, was always the desire of all Greek states, as of most others in the history of the world; and as the actions of both Athens and Sparta were the natural outcome of that desire, there is no need to suspect Herodotus of unduly favoring the Athenians when he credits them with the plans which led to victory, or of unduly disparaging the Spartans when he describes their delays and hesitations before their march to Boeotia.

If the charge of an excessively pro-Athenian bias is to be sustained, it must be shown that Herodotus is prone to deny credit to the great rival of Athens. But there is no evidence of that. Sparta receives full measure from Herodotus. No Spartan could conceivably have been dissatisfied with the chapters on Thermopylae. Plataea is represented as a Spartan victory; it was the Spartans and Tegeans who in Herodotus' story were the real heroes of the day; the glory of winning "the greatest victory ever won" is definitely given to the Spartan commander-in-chief. On the other hand Themistocles, the typical Athenian, is treated with a severity which even appears to be rather gratuitous. It is true that Herodotus does not take pains to praise two other Greek states which at various times were at feud with Athens. He tells us that the Thebans "Medized," a fact which has not, I believe, been denied, even by Plutarch; it is difficult to see what else he could have said. True, he reports a damaging story about the Corinthians and their failure to take part in the action of Salamis; but he adds, in his candid way, that nobody believes the story outside Attica.

The hypothesis of Herodotus' "obvious pro-^[iv.xvii]Athenian bias" is one which is bound to appeal to readers who are laudably afraid of being led away by hero-worship; but it has one fault-it lacks evidence.

With the crowning victory of Mycale, where for the first time a Persian army was defeated by a Greek within the boundaries of the Persian Empire, the history of the war comes to an end. But the chapters which conclude Book IX are no anticlimax; they are congruous with the whole, part and parcel of the narrative, and as striking an example of Herodotus' supreme art as any passage in his History. What was it after all (a reader might be supposed to ask) that nerved most of the Greeks to resist Darius' and Xerxes' powerful armaments? The answer is plain; it was fear of the caprice and cruelty of Oriental despots, and desire to protect Greek temples from sacrilege. These concluding chapters illustrate and justify the Greek temper. The methods of Persian absolutism are vividly portrayed in the gruesome story of Xerxes' love and Masistes' death; and the crucified body of Artayctes, the defiler of temples, hangs by the Hellespontine shore, overlooking the scene of Xerxes' proudest achievement and display, as a warning to all sacrilegious invaders; so perish all who lay impious hands on the religion of Greece! . . . The story is now complete. The play is played; and in the last chapter of the book, Cyrus the great protagonist of the drama is called before the curtain to speak its epilogue.

Besides the authorities enumerated at the beginning of vol. I of this translation, the following ^[iv.xviii] sources are recommended to the students of the campaigns of Salamis and Plataea-Grundy (1901), Munro (1899, 1902, 1904) Goodwin (1906).