Page:History of Greece Vol V.djvu/65

MARCH OF XERXES. 41 certainly, and the Dorians of Peloponnesus probably, will resist him to the death, be the difference of numbers what it may. Xerxes receives the statement with derision, but exiiibits no feel- ing of displeasure : an honorable contrast to the treatment of Charidemus a century and a half afterwards, by the last monarch of Persia.i After the completion of the review, Xerxes with the army pursued his march westward, in three divisions and along three different lines of road, through the territories of seven distinct tribes of Thracians, interspersed with Grecian maritime colonies : all was still within his own empire, and he took reinforcements from each as he passed : the Thracian Satrce were preserved from this levy by their unassailable seats amidst the woods and snows of Rhodope. The islands of Samothrace and Thasus, with their subject towns on the mainland, and the Grecian colo- criticisms on the beha-aor and character of the various monarchs, — criti- cisms which are nothing more than general maxims, moral and relig- ions, brought out by Solon, Croesus, or Artabanus, on occasion of particular events. The speechc3 interwoven by Herodotus have, in the main, not the same purpose as tho^o of Tacitus, — to make the reader more intimately acquainted with the existing posture of affairs, or with the character of the agents, — but a different purpose quite foreign to history: they embody in the narrative his own personal convictions respecting human Life and the divine government." This last opinion of Hoffmeister is to a great degree true, but is rather too absolutely delivered. ' Hcrodot. vii, 101-104. How inferior is the scene between Darius and Charidemus, in Quintus Curtius ! (iii, 2, 9-19, p. 20, ed. Mutzel.) Herodotus takes up substantially the same vein of sentiment and the same antithesis as that which runs through the Pcrste of ^schylus ; but he handles it like a social philosopher, with a strong perception of the real causes of Grecian superiority. It is not improbable that the skeleton of the conversation between Xerxes and Demaratus was a reality, heard by Herodotus from Demaratus him- self or from his sons ; for the extreme specialty with which the Lacedae- monian exile confines his praise to the Spartans and Dorians, not includ- ing the other Greeks, hardly represents the feeling of Herodotus himself. The minuteness of the narrative which Herodotus gives respecting tlie deposition and family circumstances of Demaratus (vi, 63, seq.), and his view of the death of Ivleomenes as an atonement to that prince for injury done, may seem derived from family infomiation (vi, 84).