Page:History of Greece Vol V.djvu/219

BATtLES OF PLAT^A AND MYKALE. 195 combatants of Mykale were alive to tell their o.wn story : he moreover mentions another of those coincidences which the respecting his intention to liill tlic Phocians, turned out incorrect (Herodot ix, 17). Two passages in iEschines (cont. Timarchum, c. 27, p. 57, and De Tals. Legat. c. 45, p. 290) are peculiarly valuable as illustrating the ancient idea ot^T/fiTi, — a divine voice, or vocal goddess, generally considered as inform- ing a crowd of persons at once, or moving them all by one and the same unanimous feeling, — the Vox Dei passing into the Vox Populi. There ■was an altar to ^fjfZTj at Athens (Pausan. i, 17, 1 ) ; compare Hesiod. 0pp. Di. 761, and the 'Oaaa of Homer, which is essentially the same idea as ^^/nTj : Iliad, ii, 93. fisTa 6e ff<ptaiv 'Oaaa 6e6tjec ^Orpvvova' livai, Aide uy/c/lof ; also Odyssey, i, 282 — opposed to the idea of a distinct human speaker or mformant — ijv rig tol eiTTT^ai j3poTuv, tj 'Ocaav unovarig 'E/c Atof, ^re iiakicTa (pepEi kXeo^ uvdpunotGi ; and Odyss. xxiv, 412. 'Oacra d' up' uyyeXog una Karii nTnliv uxeTo ttuvttj, TslvrjcTfipuv cTvyepbv -duvarov Kal Kr^p' IvEivovaa. The Word K7ir)6i}v is used in the same meaning by Sophokles, Philoktet. 255 (see Andokides de Mysteriis, c. 22, p. 64) : and Herodottis in the passage now before us considers the two as identical, — compare also Herodot. v, 72 : both words are used also to signify an omen conveyed by some undesigned human word or speech, which in that particular case is considered as deter- mined by the special intervention of the gods for the information of some person who hears it : see Homer, Odyss, xx, 100 : compare also Aristophan. Aves, 719; Sophokles, CEdip. Tyr. 43-472 ; Xenophon, Symposion, c. 14, s. 48. The descriptions of Fama by Virgil, ^neid, iv, 176, seqq., and Ovid Metamorph. xii, 40. seqq., are more diffuse and overcharged, departing from the simplicity of the Greek conception. We may notice, as partial illustrations of what is here intended, those sudden, unaccountable impressions of panic terror which occasionally ran through the ancient armies or assembled multitudes, and which were sup- posed to be produced by Pan or by Nymphs — indeed sudden, violent, and contagious impressions of every kind, not merely of fear. Livy, x, 28. " Vic- torem equitatum velut lymphaticus pavor dissipat." ix, 27. " Milites, incertum ob quam causam, lymphatis similes ad arma discurrunt," — in Greek, vvfi(t>6- "kTjTZTOL : compare Polysn. iv, 3, 26, and an instructive note of Mutzel, ad Quint. Curt, iv, 46, 1 (iv, 12, 14). But I cannot better illustrate that idea which the Greeks invested with divinity under the name of '^nnv, than by transcribing a striking passage from M. Michelet's Histoire de la Revolution Franqoise. The illustration is the more instructive, because the religious point of view, which in Herod- otus is predominant, —and which, to the believing mind, furnishes an ex- planation preeminently satisfactory, — has passed away in the historian of the nineteenth century, and gives place to a graphic description of the real phenomenon, of high importance in human affairs ; the common suscepti-