Page:History of Greece Vol V.djvu/40

16 mSTORY OF GREECE. getter to ruin it. The wrath of the monarch, when apprized of this catastrophe, burst all bounds ; it was directed partly against the chief-engineers, whose heads he caused to be struck offji but partly also against the Hellespont itself. He commanded that the strait should be scourged with three hundred lashes, and that a set of fetters should be let down into it as a farther punish- ment : moreover Herodotus had heard, but does not believe, that he even sent irons for the purpose of branding it. " Thou bitter water (exclaimed the scourgers while inflicting this punishment), this is the penalty which our master inflicts upon thee, because thou hast wronged him though he hath never wronged thee. King Xerxes ivill cross thee, whether thou wilt or not ; but thou deservest not sacrifice from any man, because thou art a treacher- ous river of (useless) salt water."=2 Such were the insulting terms heaped by order of Xerxes on the rebellious Hellespont, — Herodotus calls them "non-Hellenic and blasphemous terms," which, together with their brevity, leads us to believe that he gives them as he heard them, and that they are not of his own invention, like so many other speeches in his work, where he dramatizes, as it were, a given position. It has been common, however, to set aside in this case not merely the words, but even the main incident of punishment inflicted on the Hellespont,^ as a mere Greek fable rather than a real fact : the extreme childishness and absurdity of the proceeding giving to it the air of an enemy's calumny. But this reason will not ' Plutarch (De Tranquillitate Animi, p. 470), speaks of them as having had their noses and ears cut off. ^ Herod ot. vii, 34, 35. kveTEllero dfj uv f>aTTi^ovTac, leyeiv fSaplSapa re tcai uTua-&a?M, 'Q iriKpov v6up, SeoTroTTjg tol Siktjv eTriri^el TTjvde, on (uv ridiKTiaag, ovdiv Trpog iKEivov adiKov na-^ov. Kal l3am2.£vc fiiv atp^Tjg dial^rjaeTai at, tjv te cv je (3ov?iri, f/v te kqi jirj- aol <5e Kara d'lKTjv upa ov6Eig av&pdmuv ■&vEi, wf eovti doTispu te koI ukfAvpCi ■Korajiij. The assertion — that no one was in the habit of sacrificing to the Hel- lespont — appears strange, when we look to the subsequent conduct of Xerxes himself (vii, 53) : compare "vii, 113, and vi, 76. The epithet salt employed as a reproach, seems to allude to the undrinkable character of 'he water. 3 See Stanley and Blomfield ad jEschyl. Pers. 731, and K. O. Muller (in his Review of Benjamin Constant's work Sur la Religion), Kleine Schrif t€n, vol. ii, p. 59.