24 HISTORY OF GREECE. across the isthmus ; so that the canal was nowise needed." So fa- miliar a process was it, in the mind of a Greek of the fifth century B.C., to transport ships by mechanical force across an isthmus ; a special groove, or slip, being seemingly prepared for them: such was the case at the Diolkus across the isthmus of Corinth. Thirdly, it is to be noted, that the men who excavated the canal at Mount Athos worked under the lash ; and these, be it borne in mind, were not bought slaves, but freemen, except in so far as they were tributaries of the Persian monarch; and that the father of Herodotus, a native of Halikamassus, and a subject of the brave queen Artemisia, may perhaps have been among them. We shall find other examples as we proceed, of this indiscriminate use of the whip, and full conviction of its indis- pensable necessity, on the part of the Persians,i — even to drive the troops of their subject-contingents on to the charge in battle. To employ the scourge in this way towards freemen, and espec- ially towards freemen engaged in military service, was alto- gether repugnant both to Hellenic practice and to Hellenic feel- ing: the Asiatic and insular Greeks were relieved from it, as from various other hardships, when they passed out of Persian dominion to become, first allies, afterwards subjects, of Athens : and we shall be called upon hereafter to take note of this fact, when we appreciate the complaints preferred against the hegemony of Athens. At the same time that the subject-contingents of Xerxes ex- Egyptians and Babylonians, accustomed to the making of canals." (Leake, Travels in Northern Greece, vol. iii, ch. 24, p. 145.) These remarks upon the enterprise are more judicious than those of Major Rennell (Geogr. of Herodot. p. 116). I may remark that Herodotus does not aflBrm that the actual cutting of the canal occupied three years, he assigns that time to the cutting -with aU its preliminary arrangements included, — npoeroi/iuZeTO ek rpluv eteuv Korf /luXiaTa ef Tov'k-&uv (vii, 22). ' Herodot. vii, 22 : upvacov vn!) (laariyuv navTodanol r^f orpaTiTJc duidoxm 6' i(pOLTUv. — vii, 56; Sep^ric «5e, ^Tret re 6ii(3rj cf ttjv 'E.vpunrjv, e-dr]ElTO Tov arparbv virb fiaariyuv diafiaivovTa ; — compare vii, 103, and Xenophon, Anabasis, iii, 4-25. The essential necessity, and plentiful use, of the whip, towards subject- tributaries, as conceived by the ancient Persians, finds its parallel in the modem Turks. See the Me'moires du Baron de Tott, vol. i, p. 256, seqq., and his dialogue on this subject with his Turkish conductor Ali-Aga.
