The great Persian War and its preliminaries

by G. B. Grundy

It is unnecessary to point to the fact that Carthage would presumably require but little persuasion to attack the rival Greek in Sicily at a time when no help could possibly be given from Greece itself.

H vii. 166.

The Sicilian Greek seems to have had no sort of doubt as to the connection between the invasion of his own island and that of the mother country. H. vii. 165. ad init. Herodotus, even in spite of his bias towards the Greek version of the story, H vii. 166. gives some hint of a different version in Sicily. Frag. Hist. Græc. He does not apparently know much about it, as he does not mention Himera as the locality of the decisive battle.

Frag. III. Schol. Pind.

It is in a fragment of Ephoros that occurs the first extant historical reference to the connection between the two expeditions. Pyth. i. 146. He says that Persian and Phœnician ambassadors were sent to the Carthaginians, “ordering” them to invade Sicily with as large an expedition as possible, and after subduing it, to come on to the Peloponnese. Discredit has been cast on the passage in consequence of the use of the word “order,” because, so it is said, the Persians were not in a position to give orders to Carthage. But, supposing the use of the word is not merely an instance of verbal inaccuracy, it is quite conceivable that a Greek historian might use such an expression to describe the supposed relations between the mother state of Phœnicia and her colony. Diod. xi. 1. The historian Diodorus recognizes the same connection between the two expeditions. He does not, however, make any reference to Phœnician agency in the matter, nor does he speak of an “order,” but of a diplomatic agreement.[106]

SICILIAN TRADITION.

One question remains: Did Gelo ever seriously entertain the idea of sending help to the mother country? It is hardly conceivable that he did. The Carthaginian preparations were on such a scale that he must have been long forewarned of the coming storm. Whether he made any sort of offer to the Greek embassy is quite another question.

If the Greek version of the story of the time provokes the suspicion that it arose under influences inimical to the strict truth, the Sicilian also, of which there is a hint in Herodotus, and some detail in Diodorus, suggests in certain of its passages that it is not an unadorned tale. That sentiment of the free Greek which, when the history of the great war came to be written, led him to deny the Sicilian tyrant all share in its glory, met a counter-sentiment in Sicily, which claimed for the Sicilian Greek a share in the famous triumph. Under such influences both exaggeration and suppression of the truth were sure to take place. The Sicilian version was not content with confining itself to the just claim that Gelo and Sicily in the victory at Himera had contributed to the triumphant result of the great war. It sought evidently to ascribe to the Sicilian Greek a sympathetic, if not actual, share in the liberation of Greece itself. Diod. xi 26. Gelo is represented as having, after the victory of Himera, prepared a fleet with a view to sending help to Greece, but to have desisted from the design on receiving news of the victory at Salamis. This is neither capable of proof nor disproof. The exact date of Himera is not known, though there was a tradition that it was fought on the same day as Salamis. If that be accepted, this addition to the Sicilian version must be rejected; but if the tradition was merely of that class which is found represented in the history of the time, and which supplied the eternal demand for curious coincidences, then it is possible that Himera was fought sufficiently long before Salamis to make it possible for Gelo to entertain such a design; nor would it have been strange had he sought to avenge himself on Persia for an attack which she had provoked against him. It is possible, too, that the epigram reported to have been engraved on an offering of Gelo at Delphi[107] refers not merely to the true significance of Himera, but also to the preparation of this expedition which was never sent.

This war in Sicily, and the questions which arise concerning it, are of much greater importance to the study of this period of Greek history than the comparative brevity of their treatment by Greek historians might suggest to the mind of a reader who did not realize to himself their full significance. The Greek tyrant in Sicily played no small part in spreading and developing certain sides of that Greek civilization which has contributed so largely towards the civilization of the present day. The view, therefore, which was taken by one of the greatest and most able of those tyrants as to the part which he should play at a time when that civilization was threatened with extinction, is not a minor matter in the history of Greece, or, indeed, of the world. Nor, again, can the part played by Persia in the invasion of Sicily be of small account. Persia at this time represented, in certain respects,—and especially with respect to sheer capacity and breadth of view, —the highest development which the great empires of the East were able to attain; and its connection or lack of connection with the attack on Sicily cannot but affect the judgment which the modern world must pass on that capacity.[108]

To the Greeks gathered in council at the Isthmus the outlook, after their retreat from Tempe, and after the return of the embassies, must have been a gloomy one. Nothing had been gained, and much had been lost. Thessaly with its cavalry, that arm in which the Greeks were peculiarly weak, and their enemy peculiarly strong, had been perforce left to its fate; and no one could doubt what that would be. The states between Kithæron and Œta were wavering, ready to desert. They could hardly be blamed. The backbone of the future resistance seemed to be with Sparta and the states of the Peloponnesian league who followed her lead. QUESTION OF THE LINE OF DEFENCE. It might well be suspected, perhaps even then it was known, that, if they could have their way, the defence of the Isthmus would be the beginning and the end of their design. Northern Greece seemed but too likely to be left to its fate, just as Thessaly had been. Was it strange that it should seek to make terms of submission? In one of its states, moreover, and that the most powerful from a military point of view, Bœotia, more sinister influences were at work. The oligarchical party, at all times strong in that country whose comparatively open nature left the many at the mercy of the powerful few, seemed only too ready to play a part similar to that which the Aleuadæ had played in Thessaly.