which turned upon this bold stretch of exegetical conjecture.
Unless the Athenians had been persuaded, by some plausible
show of interpretation, that the sense of the oracle encouraged
instead of forbidding a naval combat, they would in their existing depression have abandoned all thought of resistance.
Even with the help of an encouraging interpretation, however, nothing less than the most unconquerable resolution and patriotism could have enabled the Athenians to bear up against such terrific denunciations from the Delphian god, and persist in resistance in place of seeking safety by emigration. Herodotus emphatically impresses this truth upon his readers:[1] nay, he even steps out of his way to do so, proclaiming Athens as the real saviour of Greece. Writing as he did about the beginning of the Peloponnesian war,—at a time when Athens, having attained the maximum of her empire, was alike feared, hated, and admired, by most of the Grecian states,—he knows that the opinion which he is giving will be unpopular with his hearers generally, and he apologizes for it as something wrung from him against his will by the force of the evidence.[2] Nor was it only
- ↑ Herodot. vii, 139. (
Greek characters), etc. For the abundance of oracles and prophecies, from many different sources, which would be current at such a moment of anxiety, we may compare the analogy of the outbreak of the Peloponnesian war, described by the contemporary historian (Thucyd. ii, 8).
- ↑ Herodot. vii, 139. (Greek characters) The whole chapter deserves peculiar attention, as it brings before us the feelings of those contemporaries to whom his history is addressed, and the mode of judging with which they looked back on the Persian war. One is apt unconsciously to fancy that an ancient historian writes for men in the abstract, and not for men of given sentiments, prejudices, and belief. The
must be conquered or a king of Sparta must perish,—we may well doubt whether it was in existence before the battle of Thermopylae (Herodot. vii, 220).The later writers, Justin (ii, 12), Cornelius Nepos (c. 2), and Polyænus (i, 30), give an account of the proceeding of Themistokles, inferior to Herodotus in vivacity as well as in accuracy.
