Page:History of Greece Vol V.djvu/31

XERXES RESOLVES tO INVAt)E GREECE. 7 I have already mentioned that Xerxes is described as having originally been averse to the enterprise, and only stimulated thereto by the persuasions of Mardonius : this was probably the genuine Persian belief, for the blame of so great a disaster would naturally be transferred from the monai'ch to some evil counsel* lor.' As soon as Xerxes, yielding to persuasion, has announced to the Persian chief men whom he had convoked his resolution to bridge over the Hellespont and march to the conquest of Greece and Europe, Mardonius is represented as expressing his warm concurrence in the project, extolling the immense forced of Persia and depreciating the lonians in Europe — so he denomi- nated them — as so poor and disunited that success was not only certain but easy. Against the rashness of this general — the evil genius of Xerxes — we find opposed the prudence and Ion* experience of Artabanus, brother of the deceased Darius, and therefore uncle to the monarch. The age and relationship of this Persian Nestor emboldens him to undertake the dangerous task of questioning the determination which Xerxes, though pro- fessing to invite the opinions of others, had proclaimed as already uov dia^eair av-^EKaarog rig Kal ircKpu, koL ry narpidi trig (pvyr/g /ivrjaiKd' Koi'aa ■ TO, fiev yap duapr^/xaTa ifrs^epxeTat. Kal [laka uKpi^wg, tuv 6e /card vovv KexuprjKoruv aa-duTra^ oh /xe/nvrjTai ij uansp TjvayKaafiivog. (Dionys. Hal. ad. Cn. Pompeium de Prsecip. Historicis Judic. p. 774, Eeisk.) Precisely the same fault which Dionysius here imputes to Thucydides (though in other places he acquits him, uiro navrdg q>-&6vov Kal TzucTTjg ko- laKEiag, p. 824), Plutarch and Dio cast far more harshly upon Herodotus. In neither case is the reproach deserved. Both the moralists and the rhetoricians of ancient times were very apt to treat history, not as a series of tnie matters of fact, exemplifying the laws of human nature and society, and enlarging our knowledge of them for purposes of future inference, — but as if it were a branch of fiction, so to be handled as to please our taste or improve our morality. Dionysius, blaming Thucydides for the choice of his subject, goes so far as to say that the Peloponnesian war, a period of minous discord in Greece, ought to have been left in oblivion and never to have passed into history {aium) Kal XT]dr] Tvapado'&elg, v-o rcJv iniyiyvofiEVUv i/yvoT/ad-ai, ibid. p. 768), — and that especially Thucydides ought never to have thrown the blame of it UDon his own city, since there were many other causes to which it might have been imputed (tTEpacg Ixovra no2.?Mtg iKpopfialg TTEpiuxpac rag alriag, p. 770). ' Herodot. viii, 99. Mapdoviov hv ahiy rc'&EVTEg : compare c. 100. • Herodot. vii, 9. j^ -