Page:History of Greece Vol V.djvu/264

240 mSTORY OF GREECE. comparative handful of men by whom they were so ignomini- ously beaten. Both these sentiments are just, but both are often exaggerated beyond the point which attentive contemplation of the facts will justify. The Persian mode of making war (which we may liken to that of the modern Turks,i now that the period of their energetic fanaticism has passed away) was in a high degree disorderly and ineflficient : the men indeed, individually taken, especially the native Persians, were not deficient in the qualities of soldiers, but their arms and their organization were wretched, — and their leaders yet worse. On the other hand, < the Greeks, equal, if not superior, in individual bravery, were incomparably superior in soldier-like order as well as in arms i but here too the leadership was defective, and the disunion a constant source of peril. Those who, like Plutarch (or rather the Pseudo-Plutarch) in his treatise on the Malignity of Herod- otus, insist on acknowledging nothing but magnanimity and heroism in the proceedings of the Greeks throughout these criti- cal years, are forced to deal very harshly with the inestimable witness on whom our knowledge of the facts depends, — and who intimates plainly that, in spite of the devoted courage dis- played, not less by the vanquished at Thermopyl^ than by the victors at Salamis, Greece owed her salvation chiefly to the imbecility, cowardice, and credulous rashness, of Xerxes.2 Had he indeed possessed either the personal energy of Cyrus or the judgment of Artemisia, it may be doubted whether any excel- lence of management, or any intimacy of union, could have pre- served the Greeks against so great a superiority of force ; but it is certain that all their courage as soldiers in line would have been unavailing for that purpose, without a higher degree of gen- eralship, and a more hearty spirit of cooperation, than that which they actually manifested. One hundred and fifty years after this eventful period, we shall see the tables turned, and the united forces of Greece under ' ilr. "Waddington's Letters from Greece, describing the Greek revolution of 1821, will convey a good idea of the stupidity of Turkish warfare : com- pare also the second volume of the Memoirs of Baron de Tott, part iii. ' Thucyd. i, 69. tmara/iEVOL Kal rbv fiupiSapov aiiTov rrepl avrC) ru nlciu cpa'Aivri, etc. : corapare Thucyd. vi, 33.