6 (return)[ The taste of a people, which is to art what public opinion is to legislation, is formed, like public opinion, by habitual social intercourse and collision. The more men are brought together to converse and discuss, the more the principles of a general national taste will become both diffused and refined. Less to their climate, to their scenery, to their own beauty of form, than to their social habits and preference of the public to the domestic life, did the Athenians, and the Grecian republics generally, owe that wonderful susceptibility to the beautiful and harmonious, which distinguishes them above all nations ancient or modern. Solitude may exalt the genius of a man, but communion alone can refine the taste of a people.
7 (return)[ It seems probable that the principal Bacchic festival was originally held at the time of the vintage—condita post frumenta. But from the earliest known period in Attica, all the triple Dionysia were celebrated during the winter and the spring.
8 (return)[ Egyptian, according to Herodotus, who asserts, that Melampus first introduced the Phallic symbol among the Greeks, though he never sufficiently explained its mysterious significations, which various sages since his time had, however, satisfactorily interpreted. It is just to the Greeks to add, that this importation, with the other rites of Bacchus, was considered at utter variance with their usual habits and manners.
9 (return)[ Herodotus asserts that Arion first named, invented, and taught the dithyramb at Corinth; but, as Bentley triumphantly observes, Athenaeus has preserved to us the very verses of Archilochus, his predecessor by a century, in which the song of the dithyramb is named.
10 (return)[ In these remarks upon the origin of the drama, it would belong less to history than to scholastic dissertation, to enter into all the disputed and disputable points. I do not, therefore, pause with every step to discuss the questions contested by antiquarians—such as, whether the word “tragedy,” in its primitive and homely sense, together with the prize of the goat, was or was not known in Attica prior to Thespis (it seems to me that the least successful part of Bentley’s immortal work is that which attempts to enforce the latter proposition); still less do I think a grave answer due to those who, in direct opposition to authorities headed by the grave and searching Aristotle, contend that the exhibitions of Thespis were of a serious and elevated character. The historian must himself weigh the evidences on which he builds his conclusions; and come to those conclusions, especially in disputes which bring to unimportant and detached inquiries the most costly expenditure of learning, without fatiguing the reader with a repetition of all the arguments which he accepts or rejects. For those who incline to go more deeply into subjects connected with the early Athenian drama, works by English and German authors, too celebrated to enumerate, will be found in abundance. But even the most careless general reader will do well to delight himself with that dissertation of Bentley on Phalaris, so familiar to students, and which, despite some few intemperate and bold assumptions, will always remain one of the most colossal monuments of argument and erudition.
11 (return)[ Aeschylus was a Pythagorean. “Veniat Aeschylus, sed etiam Pythagoreus.”—Cic. Tusc. Dis., b. ii., 9.
12 (return)[ Out of fifty plays, thirty-two were satyrical.—Suidas in Prat.
13 (return)[ The Tetralogy was the name given to the fourfold exhibition of the three tragedies, or trilogy, and the Satyric Drama.
14 (return)[ Yet in Aeschylus there are sometimes more than two speaking actors on the stage,—as at one time in the Choephori, Clytemnestra, Orestes, Electra (to say nothing of Pylades, who is silent), and again in the same play, Orestes, Pylades, and Clytemnestra, also in the Eumenides, Apollo, Minerva, Orestes. It is truly observed, however, that these plays were written after Sophocles had introduced the third actor. [Footnote The Orestean tetralogy was exhibited B. C. 455, only two years before the death of Aeschylus, and ten years after Sophocles had gained his first prize.: Any number of mutes might be admitted, not only as guards, etc., but even as more important personages. Thus, in the Prometheus, the very opening of the play exhibits to us the demons of Strength and Force, the god Vulcan, and Prometheus himself; but the dialogue is confined to Strength and Vulcan.
15 (return)[ The celebrated temple of Bacchus; built after the wooden theatre had given way beneath the multitude assembled to witness a contest between Pratinas and Aeschylus.
16 (return)[ 1st. The rural Dionysia, held in the country districts throughout Attica about the beginning of January. 2d. The Lenaean, or Anthesterial, Dionysia, in the end of February and beginning of March, in which principally occurred the comic contests; and the grand Dionysis of the city, referred to in the text. Afterward dramatic performances were exhibited also, in August, during the Panathenaea.
17 (return)[ That is, when three actors became admitted on the stage.
18 (return)[ For it is sufficiently clear that women were admitted to the tragic performances, though the arguments against their presence in comic plays preponderate. This admitted, the manners of the Greeks may be sufficient to prove that, as in the arena of the Roman games, they were divided from the men; as, indeed, is indirectly intimated in a passage of the Gorgias of Plato.
19 (return)[ Schlegel says truly and eloquently of the chorus—“that it was the idealized spectator”—“reverberating to the actual spectator a musical and lyrical expression of his own emotions.”
20 (return)[ In this speech he enumerates, among other benefits, that of Numbers, “the prince of wise inventions”—one of the passages in which Aeschylus is supposed to betray his Pythagorean doctrines.
21 (return)[ It is greatly disputed whether Io was represented on the stage as transformed into the actual shape of a heifer, or merely accursed with a visionary phrensy, in which she believes in the transformation. It is with great reluctance that I own it seems to me not possible to explain away certain expressions without supposing that Io appeared on the stage at least partially transformed.
22 (return)[ Vit. Aesch.
23 (return)[ It is the orthodox custom of translators to render the dialogue of the Greek plays in blank verse; but in this instance the whole animation and rapidity of the original would be utterly lost in the stiff construction and protracted rhythm of that metre.
24 (return)[ Viz., the meadows around Asopus.
25 (return)[ To make the sense of this detached passage more complete, and conclude the intelligence which the queen means to convey, the concluding line in the text is borrowed from the next speech of Clytemnestra—following immediately after a brief and exclamatory interruption of the chorus.
26 (return)[ i. e. Menelaus, made by grief like the ghost of his former self.
27 (return)[ The words in italics attempt to convey paraphrastically a new construction of a sentence which has puzzled the commentators, and met with many and contradictory interpretations. The original literally is—“I pity the last the most.” Now, at first it is difficult to conjecture why those whose adversity is over, “blotted out with the moistened sponge,” should be the most deserving of compassion. But it seems to me that Cassandra applies the sentiments to herself—she pities those whose career of grief is over, because it is her own lot which she commiserates, and by reference to which she individualizes a general reflection.
28 (return)[ Perhaps his mere diction would find a less feeble resemblance in passages of Shelley, especially in the Prometheus of that poet, than in any other poetry existent. But his diction alone. His power is in concentration—the quality of Shelley is diffuseness. The interest excited by Aeschylus, even to those who can no longer sympathize with the ancient associations, is startling, terrible, and intense—that excited by Shelley is lukewarm and tedious. The intellectuality of Shelley destroyed, that of Aeschylus only increased, his command over the passions.
29 (return)[ In the comedy of “The Frogs,” Aristophanes makes it the boast of Aeschylus, that he never drew a single woman influenced by love. Spanheim is surprised that Aristophanes should ascribe such a boast to the author of the “Agamemnon.” But the love of Clytemnestra for Aegisthus is never drawn—never delineated. It is merely suggested and hinted at—a sentiment lying dark and concealed behind the motives to the murder of Agamemnon ostensibly brought forward, viz., revenge for the sacrifice of Iphigenia, and jealousy of Cassandra.
30 (return)[ In plays lost to us.
31 (return)[ I reject the traditions which make Aristides and Themistocles rivals as boys, because chronology itself refutes them. Aristides must have been of mature age at the battle of Marathon, if he was the friend and follower of Clisthenes, one of the ten generals in the action, and archon in the following year. But both Plutarch and Justin assure us that Themistocles was very young at the battle of Marathon, and this assurance is corroborated by other facts connected with his biography. He died at the age of sixty-five, but he lived to see the siege of Cyprus by Cimon. This happened B. C. 449. If, then, we refer his death to that year, he was born 514 B. C., and therefore was about twenty-four at the battle of Marathon.
32 (return)[ Plut. in Vit. Them. Heraclides et Idomeneus ap. Athen., lib. 12.
33 (return)[ See Dodwell’s “Tour through Greece,” Gell’s “Itinerary.”
34 (return)[ “Called by some Laurion Oros, or Mount Laurion.” Gell’s Itinerary.
35 (return)[ Boeckh’s Dissert. on the Silver Mines of Laurium.
36 (return)[ Boeckh’s Dissert. on the Silver Mines of Laurium.
37 (return)[ On this point, see Boeckh. Dissert. on the Silver Mines of Laurion, in reference to the account of Diodorus.
38 (return)[ If we except the death of his brother, in the Cambyses of Ctesias, we find none of the crimes of the Cambyses of Herodotus—and even that fratricide loses its harsher aspect in the account of Ctesias, and Cambyses is represented as betrayed into the crime by a sincere belief in his brother’s treason.
39 (return)[ The account of this conspiracy in Ctesias seems more improbable than that afforded to us by Herodotus. But in both the most extraordinary features of the plot are the same, viz., the striking likeness between the impostor and the dead prince, and the complete success which, for a time, attended the fraud. In both narrations, too, we can perceive, behind the main personages ostensibly brought forward, the outline of a profound device of the magi to win back from the Persian conquerors, and to secure to a Mede, the empire of the East.
40 (return)[ Herodotus says it was resolved that the king could only marry into the family of one of the conspirators; but Darius married two daughters and one grand-daughter of Cyrus. It is more consonant with eastern manners to suppose that it was arranged that the king should give his own daughters in marriage to members of these six houses. It would have been scarcely possible to claim the monopoly of the royal seraglio, whether its tenants were wives or concubines, and in all probability the king’s choice was only limited (nor that very rigidly) to the family of Cyrus, and the numerous and privileged race of the Achaemenids.
41 (return)[ Besides the regular subsidies, we gather from Herodotus, I. c. 92, that the general population was obliged to find subsistence for the king and his armies. Babylon raised a supply for four months, the resources of that satrapy being adequate to a third part of Asia.
42 (return)[ That comparatively small and frontier part of India known to Darius.
43 (return)[ Forming a revenue of more than 100,000l. sterling.—Heeren’s Persians, chap. ii.
44 (return)[ Such are the expressions of Herodotus. His testimony is corroborated by the anecdotes in his own history, and, indeed, by all other ancient authorities.
45 (return)[ Dinon. (Apud Athen., lib. xiii.) observes, that the Persian queen tolerated the multitude of concubines common to the royal seraglio, because they worshipped her, like a divinity.
46 (return)[ See, in addition to more familiar authorities, the curious remarks and anecdotes relative to the luxury of the Persian kings, in the citations from Dinon, Heraclides, Agathocles, and Chares of Mitylene, scattered throughout Athenaeus, lib. xii., xiii., xiv.; but especially lib. xii.
47 (return)[ Strabo, lib. xv, Herod., lib. i., c. cxxxi., etc.
48 (return)[ Among innumerable instances of the disdain of human life contracted after their conquest by those very Persians who, in their mountain obscurity, would neither permit their sovereign to put any one to death for a single offence, nor the master of a household to exercise undue severity to a member of his family (Herod., lib. i., c. cxxxvii.), is one recorded by Herodotus, and in the main corroborated by Justin. Darius is at the siege of Babylon; Zopyrus, one of the seven conspirators against the magian, maims himself and enters Babylon as a deserter, having previously concerted with Darius that a thousand men, whose loss he could best spare, should be sent one day to the gate of Semiramis, and two thousand, another day, to the gates of Ninus, and four thousand, a third day, to the Chaldaean gates. All these detachments Zopyrus, at the head of the Babylonians, deliberately butchered. The confidence of the Babylonians thus obtained, Zopyrus was enabled to betray the city to the king. This cold-blooded and treacherous immolation of seven thousand subjects was considered by the humane Darius and the Persians generally a proof of the most illustrious virtue in Zopyrus, who received for it the reward of the satrapy of Babylon. The narrative is so circumstantial as to bear internal evidence of its general truth. In fact, a Persian would care no more for the lives of seven thousand Medes than a Spartan would care for the lives of suspected Helots.
49 (return)[ Herodot., lib. i., c. cxxxiv. The Pasargadae, whom the ancient writers evidently and often confound with the whole Persian population, retained the old education and severe discipline for their youth, long after the old virtues had died away. (See Strabo, xv., Herod., lib. i., and the rhetorical romance of Xenophon.) But laws and customs, from which the animating spirit of national opinion and sentiment has passed, are but the cenotaphs of dead forms embalmed in vain.
50 (return)[ Ctesias, 20.
51 (return)[ Herod., lib vii., c. xi.
52 (return)[ Juvenal, Richardson, etc. The preparations at Mount Athos commenced three years before Xerxes arrived at Sardis. (Compare Herod., l. vii. 21, with 33, 37.)
53 (return)[ Differently computed; according to Montfaucon, the sum total may be estimated at thirty-two millions of Louis d’ors.
54 (return)[ It must be confessed that the tears of Xerxes were a little misplaced. He wept that men could not live a hundred years, at the very moment when he meditated destroying a tolerable portion of them as soon as he possibly could.—Senec. de Brev. Vit., c. 17.
55 (return)[ Common also to the ancient Germans.
56 (return)[ For this reason—whoever died, whether by disease or battle, had his place immediately supplied. Thus their number was invariably the same.
57 (return)[ Diod. Sic.
58 (return)[ See note [Footnote 48:.
59 (return)[ Her., lib. vii., c. 138.
60 (return)[ Mueller on the Greek Congress.
61 (return)[ Mueller on the Greek Congress.
62 (return)[ Anaxandrides, king of Sparta, and father of Cleomenes and Leonidas, had married his niece: she was barren. The Ephors persuaded him to take another wife; he did so, and by the second wife. Cleomenes was born. Almost at the same time, the first wife, hitherto barren, proved with child. And as she continued the conjugal connexion, in process of time three sons were born; of these Leonidas was the second. But Cleomenes, though the offspring of the second wife, came into the world before the children by the first wife and therefore had the prior right to the throne.
63 (return)[ It is impossible by any calculations to render this amount more credible to modern skepticism. It is extremely likely that Herodotus is mistaken in his calculation; but who shall correct him?
64 (return)[ The Cissii, or Cissians, inhabited the then fertile province of Susiana, in which was situated the capital of Susa. They resembled the Persians in dress and manners.
65 (return)[ So Herodotus (lib. vii., c. 218); but, as it was summer, the noise was probably made rather by the boughs that obstructed the path of the barbarians, than by leaves on the ground.
66[ Diod. Sic., xi., viii.
67 (return)[ Justin, ii., ix.
68 (return)[ Another Spartan, who had been sent into Thessaly, and was therefore absent from the slaughter of Thermopylae, destroyed himself.
69 (return)[ The cross was the usual punishment in Persia for offences against the king’s majesty or rights. Perhaps, therefore, Xerxes, by the outrage, only desired to signify that he considered the Spartan as a rebel.
70 (return)[ “Thus fought the Greeks at Thermopylae,” are the simple expressions of Herodotus, lib. vii., c. 234.
71 (return)[ Thus the command of the Athenian forces was at one time likely to fall upon Epicydes, a man whose superior eloquence had gained an ascendency with the people, which was neither due to his integrity nor to his military skill. Themistocles is said to have bribed him to forego his pretensions. Themistocles could be as severe as crafty when occasion demanded: he put to death an interpreter who accompanied the Persian envoys, probably to the congress at the Isthmus [Footnote Plutarch implies that these envoys came to Athens, but Xerxes sent none to that city.:, for debasing the language of free Greeks to express the demands of the barbarian enemy.
72 (return)[ Plutarch rejects this story, very circumstantially told by Herodotus, without adducing a single satisfactory argument for the rejection. The skepticism of Plutarch is more frivolous even than his credulity.
73 (return)[ Demost., Philip. 3. See also Aeschines contra Ctesiphon.
74 (return)[ I have said that it might be doubted whether the death of Leonidas was as serviceable to Greece as his life might have been; its immediate consequences were certainly discouraging. If his valour was an example, his defeat was a warning.
75 (return)[ There were [Footnote three hundred, for the sake of round numbers—but one of the three hundred—perhaps two—survived the general massacre.: three hundred Spartans and four hundred Thespians; supposing that (as it has been asserted) the eighty warriors of Mycenae also remained with Leonidas, and that one hundred, or a fourth of the Thebans fell ere their submission was received, this makes a total of eight hundred and eighty. If we take now what at Plataea was the actual ratio of the helots as compared with the Spartans, i. e, seven to one, we shall add two thousand one hundred helots, which make two thousand nine hundred and ninety; to which must be added such of the Greeks as fell in the attacks prior to the slaughter of Thermopylae; so that, in order to make out the total of the slain given by Herodotus, more than eleven hundred must have perished before the last action, in which Leonidas fell.
76 (return)[ Plut. in vit. Them.
77 (return)[ Ibid.
78 (return)[ It is differently stated; by Aeschylus and Nepos at three hundred, by Thucydides at four hundred.
79 (return)[ Plut. in vit. Them.
80 (return)[ Here we see additional reason for admiring the sagacity of Themistocles.
81 (return)[ Her., lib. viii., c. 74.
82 (return)[ The tutor of his children, Sicinnus, who had experience of the Eastern manners, and spoke the Persian language.
83 (return)[ The number of the Persian galleys, at the lowest computation, was a thousand [Footnote Nepos, Herodotus, and Isocrates compute the total at about twelve hundred; the estimate of one thousand is taken from a dubious and disputed passage in Aeschylus, which may be so construed as to signify one thousand, including two hundred and seven vessels, or besides two hundred and seven vessels; viz., twelve hundred and seven in all, which is the precise number given by Herodotus. Ctesias says there were more than one thousand.:; that of the Greeks, as we have seen, three hundred and eighty. But the Persians were infinitely more numerously manned, having on board of each vessel thirty men-at-arms, in addition to the usual number of two hundred. Plutarch seems to state the whole number in each Athenian vessel to be fourteen heavy armed and four bowmen. But this would make the whole Athenian force only three thousand two hundred and forty men, including the bowmen, who were probably not Athenian citizens. It must therefore be supposed, with Mr. Thirlwall, that the eighteen men thus specified were an addition to the ordinary company.
84 (return)[ Aeschylus. Persae. 397.
85 (return)[ The Persian admiral at Salamis is asserted by Ctesias to have been Onaphas, father-in-law to Xerxes. According to Herodotus, it was Ariabignes, the king’s brother, who seems the same as Artabazanes, with whom he had disputed the throne.—Comp. Herod., lib. vii., c. 2, and lib. viii., c. 89.
86 (return)[ Plut in vit. Them.
87 (return)[ Plut. in vit. Them. The Ariamenes of Plutarch is the Ariabignes of Herodotus.
88 (return)[ Mr. Mitford, neglecting to observe this error of Xerxes, especially noted by Herodotus, merely observes—“According to Herodotus, though in this instance we may have difficulty to give him entire credit, Xerxes, from the shore where he sat, saw, admired, and applauded the exploit.” From this passage one would suppose that Xerxes knew it was a friend who had been attacked, and then, indeed, we could not have credited the account; but if he and those about him supposed it, as Herodotus states, a foe, what is there incredible? This is one instance in ten thousand more important ones, of Mr. Mitford’s habit of arguing upon one sentence by omitting those that follow and precede it.
89 (return)[ Diod., lib xi., c. 5. Herod., lib. viii., c. 110. Nepos, et Plut, in vit. Them.
90 (return)[ Plut. in vit. Them.
91 (return)[ Ibid. These anecdotes have the stamp of authenticity.
92 (return)[ Herod., lib. viii., c. 125. See Wesseling’s Comment on Timodemus. Plutarch tells the same anecdote, but makes the baffled rebuker of Themistocles a citizen of Seriphus, an island in which, according to Aelian, the frogs never croaked; the men seem to have made up for the silence of the frogs!
93 (return)[ See Fast. Hell., vol. ii., page 26.
94 (return)[ Plut. in vit. Arist.
95 (return)[ Ibid.
96 (return)[ The custom of lapidation was common to the earlier ages; it had a kind of sanction, too, in particular offences; and no crime could be considered by a brave and inflamed people equal to that of advice against their honour and their liberties.
97 (return)[ See Herod., lib. ix., c. 10. Also Mr. Clinton on the Kings of Sparta. Fast. Hell., vol. ii., p. 187.
98 (return)[ See Herod., lib, vi., c. 58. After the burial of a Spartan king, ten days were devoted to mourning; nor was any public business transacted in that interval.
99 (return)[ “According to Aristides’ decree,” says Plutarch, “the Athenian envoys were Aristides, Xanthippus, Myronides, and Cimon.”
100 (return)[ Herodotus speaks of the devastation and ruin as complete. But how many ages did the monuments of Pisistratus survive the ravage of the Persian sword!
101 (return)[ Plut. in vit. Arist.
102 (return)[ This, among a thousand anecdotes, proves how salutary and inevitable was the popular distrust of the aristocracy. When we read of the process of bribing the principal men, and of the conspiracy entered into by others, we must treat with contempt those accusations of the jealousy of the Grecian people towards their superiors which form the staple declamations of commonplace historians.
103 (return)[ Gargaphia is one mile and a half from the town of Plataea. Gell’s Itin. 112.
104 (return)[ Plut. in vit. Arist.
105 (return)[ A strange fall from the ancient splendour of Mycenae, to furnish only four hundred men, conjointly with Tiryns, to the cause of Greece!
106 (return)[ Her., lib. ix., c. 45.
107 (return)[ Plutarch in vit. Arist.
108 (return)[ This account, by Herodotus, of the contrast between the Spartan and the Athenian leaders, which is amply supported elsewhere, is, as I have before hinted, a proof of the little effect upon Spartan emulation produced by the martyrdom of Leonidas. Undoubtedly the Spartans were more terrified by the slaughter of Thermopylae than fired by the desire of revenge.
109 (return)[ “Here seem to be several islands, formed by a sluggish stream in a flat meadow. (Oeroe?) must have been of that description.— “Gell’s Itin, 109.
110 (return)[ Herod., lib. ix., c. 54.
111 (return)[ Plut. in vit. Arist.
112 (return)[ Sir W. Gell’s Itin. of Greece.
113 (return)[ Herod. lib. ix., c. 62.
114 (return)[ The Tegeans had already seized the tent of Mardonius, possessing themselves especially of a curious brazen manger, from which the Persian’s horse was fed, and afterward dedicated to the Alean Minerva.
115 (return)[ I adopt the reading of Valcknaer, “tous hippeas.” The Spartan knights, in number three hundred, had nothing to do with the cavalry, but fought on foot or on horseback, as required. (Dionys. Hal., xi., 13.) They formed the royal bodyguard.
116 (return)[ Mr. Mitford attributes his absence from the scene to some jealousy of the honours he received at Sparta, and the vain glory with which he bore them. But the vague observations in the authors he refers to by no means bear out this conjecture, nor does it seem probable that the jealousy was either general or keen enough to effect so severe a loss to the public cause. Menaced with grave and imminent peril, it was not while the Athenians were still in the camp that they would have conceived all the petty envies of the forum. The jealousies Themistocles excited were of much later date. It is probable that at this period he was intrusted with the very important charge of watching over and keeping together that considerable but scattered part of the Athenian population which was not engaged either at Mycale or Plataea.
117 (return)[ Thucyd., lib. i., c. 89.
118 (return)[ Ibid., lib. i., c. 90.
119 (return)[ Diod. Sic., lib. xi.; Thucyd., lib. i., c. 90.
120 (return)[ Ap. Plut. in vit. Them.
121 (return)[ Diodorus (lib. xi.) tells us that the Spartan ambassadors, indulging in threatening and violent language at perceiving the walls so far advanced, were arrested by the Athenians, who declared they would only release them on receiving hack safe and uninjured their own ambassadors.
122 (return)[ Thucyd., lib. i., c. 91.
123 (return)[ Ibid., lib. i., c. 92.
124 (return)[ Schol. ad Thucyd., lib. i., c. 93. See Clinton, Fasti Hell., vol. i., Introduction, p. 13 and 14. Mr. Thirlwall, vol. ii., p. 401, disputes the date for the archonship of Themistocles given by Mr. Clinton and confirmed by the scholiast on Thucydides. He adopts (page 366) the date which M. Boeckh founds upon Philochorus, viz., B. C. 493. But the Themistocles who was archon in that year is evidently another person from the Themistocles of Salamis; for in 493 that hero was about twenty-one, an age at which the bastard of Neocles might be driving courtesans in a chariot (as is recorded in Athenaeus), but was certainly not archon of Athens. As for M. Boeckh’s proposed emendation, quoted so respectfully by Mr. Thirlwall, by which we are to read Hybrilidon for Kebridos, it is an assumption so purely fanciful as to require no argument for refusing it belief. Mr. Clinton’s date for the archonship of the great Themistocles is the one most supported by internal evidence—1st, by the blanks of the years 481-482 in the list of archons; 2dly, by the age, the position, and repute of Themistocles in B. C. 481, two years after the ostracism of his rival Aristides. If it were reduced to a mere contest of probabilities between Mr. Clinton on one side and Mr. Boeckh and Mr. Thirlwall on the other, which is the more likely, that Themistocles should have been chief archon of Athens at twenty-one or at thirty-three—before the battle of Marathon or after his triumph over Aristides? In fact, a schoolboy knows that at twenty-one (and Themistocles was certainly not older in 493) no Athenian could have been archon. In all probability Kebridos is the right reading in Philochorus, and furnishes us with the name of the archon in B. C. 487 or 486, which years have hitherto been chronological blanks, so far as the Athenian archons are concerned.
125 (return)[ Pausan., lib. i., c. 1.
126 (return)[ Diod., lib. xi.
127 (return)[ Diod., lib. xi.
128 (return)[ Diod., lib. xi. The reader will perceive that I do not agree with Mr. Thirlwall and some other scholars, for whose general opinion I have the highest respect, in rejecting altogether, and with contempt, the account of Diodorus as to the precautions of Themistocles. It seems to me highly probable that the main features of the story are presented to us faithfully; 1st, that it was not deemed expedient to detail to the popular assembly all the objects and motives of the proposed construction of the new port; and, 2dly, that Themistocles did not neglect to send ambassadors to Sparta, though certainly not with the intention of dealing more frankly with the Spartans than he had done with the Athenians.
129 (return)[ Thucyd., lib. i.
130 (return)[ Aristot. Pol., lib. ii. Aristotle deems the speculations of the philosophical architect worthy of a severe and searching criticism.
131 (return)[ Of all the temples, those of Minerva and Jupiter were the most remarkable in the time of Pausanias. There were then two market-places. See Pausanias, lib. i., c. i.
132 (return)[ Yet at this time the Amphictyonic Council was so feeble that, had the Spartans succeeded, they would have made but a hollow acquisition of authority; unless, indeed, with the project of gaining a majority of votes, they united another for reforming or reinvigorating the institution.
133 (return)[ Thucyd., lib. i., c. 96.
134 (return)[ Heeren, Pol. Hist. of Greece.
135 (return)[ Corn. Nep. in vit. Paus.
136 (return)[ Thucyd., lib. i., c. 129.
137 (return)[ Plut. in vit. Arist.
138 (return)[ Ibid.
139 (return)[ Thucyd., lib. i.
140 (return)[ Plut. in vit. Cimon. Before this period, Cimon, though rising into celebrity, could scarcely have been an adequate rival to Themistocles.
141 (return)[ Corn. Nep. in vit. Cim.
142 (return)[ According to Diodorus, Cimon early in life made a very wealthy marriage; Themistocles recommended him to a rich father-in-law, in a witticism, which, with a slight variation, Plutarch has also recorded, though he does not give its application to Cimon.
143 (return)[ Corn. Nep. in vit. Cim.
144 (return)[ Thucyd., lib. i.
145 (return)[ Ibid., lib. i. Plut. in vit. Cim. Diod. Sic., lib. xi.
146 (return)[ See Clinton, Fast. Hell., vol. ii., p. 34, in comment upon Bentley.
147 (return)[ Athenaeus, lib. xii.
148 (return)[ Plut. in vit. Them.
149 (return)[ Plut. in vit. Aristid.
150 (return)[ About twenty-three English acres. This was by no means a despicable estate in the confined soil of Attica.
151 (return)[ Aristot. apud Plat. vit. Cim.
152 (return)[ Produced equally by the anti-popular party on popular pretexts. It was under the sanction of Mr. Pitt that the prostitution of charity to the able-bodied was effected in England.
153 (return)[ Plut. in vit. Cim.
154 (return)[ His father’s brother, Cleomenes, died raving mad, as we have already seen. There was therefore insanity in the family.
155 (return)[ Plut. in vit. Cim. Pausanias, lib. iii., c. 17.
156 (return)[ Pausarias, lib. iii., c. 17.
157 (return)[ Phigalea, according to Pausanias.
158 (return)[ Plut. in vit. Cim.
159 (return)[ Thucyd., lib. i.
160 (return)[ Plato, leg. vi.
161 (return)[ Nep. in vit. Paus.
162 (return)[ Pausanias observes that his renowned namesake was the only suppliant taking refuge at the sanctuary of Minerva Chalcioecus who did not obtain the divine protection, and this because he could never purify himself of the murder of Cleonice.
163 (return)[ Thucyd., lib. i., 136.
164 (return)[ Plut. in vit. Them.
165 (return)[ Thucyd., lib. i., 137.
166 (return)[ Mr. Mitford, while doubting the fact, attempts, with his usual disingenuousness, to raise upon the very fact that he doubts, reproaches against the horrors of democratical despotism. A strange practice for an historian to allow the premises to be false, and then to argue upon them as true!
167 (return)[ The brief letter to Artaxerxes, given by Thucydides (lib i., 137), is as evidently the composition of Thucydides himself as is the celebrated oration which he puts into the mouth of Pericles. Each has the hard, rigid, and grasping style so peculiar to the historian, and to which no other Greek writer bears the slightest resemblance. But the matter may be more genuine than the diction.
168 (return)[ At the time of his arrival in Asia, Xerxes seems to have been still living. But he appeared at Susa during the short interval between the death of Xerxes and the formal accession of his son, when, by a sanguinary revolution, yet to be narrated, Artabanus was raised to the head of the Persian empire: ere the year expired Artaxerxes was on the throne.
169 (return)[ I relate this latter account of the death of Themistocles, not only because Thucydides (though preferring the former) does not disdain to cite it, but also because it is evident, from the speech of Nicias, in the Knights of Aristophanes, i. 83, 84, that in the time of Pericles it was popularly believed by the Athenians that Themistocles died by poison; and from motives that rendered allusion to his death a popular claptrap. It is also clear that the death of Themistocles appears to have reconciled him at once to the Athenians. The previous suspicions of his fidelity to Greece do not seem to have been kept alive even by the virulence of party; and it is natural to suppose that it must have been some act of his own, real or imagined, which tended to disprove the plausible accusations against him, and revive the general enthusiasm in his favour. What could that act have been but the last of his life, which, in the lines of Aristophanes referred to above, is cited as the ideal of a glorious death! But if he died by poison, the draught was not bullock’s blood—the deadly nature of which was one of the vulgar fables of the ancients. In some parts of the continent it is, in this day, even used as medicine.