The great Persian War and its preliminaries

by G. B. Grundy

Only one great fact stands out with certainty, namely, that two great simultaneous attacks were made in 480 B.C. on the two great divisions of the free Hellenic world. The question is: Were they part of one great scheme, or was their coincidence purely fortuitous?

To speak with the appearance of assuredness on such a question would be delusive, in that it would assume that there existed in the evidence attainable a conclusiveness to which it cannot lay any claim. Such as it is, it can only be judged by the law of probabilities.

Let us first take the probabilities of the case apart from the evidence actually quoted here.

Phœnicia, the mother country of Carthage, was at this time within the Persian dominion. Its population seems, on the whole, to have received exceptionally favourable treatment from the Persian Government, probably because it supplied the best material, animate and inanimate, to the fleet of the empire. It would also be to the interest of the Persian Government to encourage the most enterprising traders of its dominion. Furthermore, the subjugation of Phœnicia had not broken the tie of relationship between the mother country and the greatest of its colonies. When, under Cambyses, the Persian dominions had been extended as far as the Greater Syrtis, the Phœnicians had refused to prosecute the war further against their kin (H. iii. 17–19); and it had apparently been thought wise, if not necessary, to submit to this refusal. From that time forward there had, in so far as is known, been no unfriendly relations between Persia and Carthage. So long as the Phœnician was well treated there was hardly a point on which they could clash. In the present instance their interests manifestly coincided. It was certainly to the interest of Xerxes that the Sicilian Greeks should have their hands full at the time of his great attack on Greece. The Persians had plenty of means of knowing that there was a great Greek military power in Sicily which might render important aid to the Greeks in the coming struggle. The Carthaginian, on the other hand, might well think this a favourable opportunity for crushing the ever-increasing Greek trade competition in the richest island in the Mediterranean, at a time when the Sicilian Greek could not expect help from the mother country.

It is, when we consider the part played by the Phœnicians in Xerxes’ expedition, infinitely more probable that there was a connection between the two expeditions than that there was not. Whether the connection was of the intimate kind described by Diodorus may perhaps be doubted, but certainly cannot be disproved. Ephoros and Diodorus believe it to have been intimate; and the latter seems, in so far as can be seen from the nature of the fragment of Ephoros, to have had evidence on the subject quite independent of it.

No true canon of criticism can possibly assume that the silence of Herodotus or any other ancient author on this or any other point in ancient history is in any way conclusive. Not to speak of the difficulties of gaining information at a period in which few written records can have existed, the narrative of Herodotus is not unaffected by the special influences to which the author was exposed. On the question of evidence, it may be said that it would be in Sicily and not in Greece that we should expect that written records of the connection between the two expeditions would exist,—records which Diodorus might have seen, though they never came to the knowledge of Herodotus; and, on the question of influence, it would not be in disaccord with Greek practice if the fact that Gelo refused to send aid to Hellas should, quite apart from the grounds of his refusal, have led the Greek world to ignore his participation in the great battle for Greek liberty. The nature of his government could hardly fail to emphasize such a tendency.

The animus of the tradition which Herodotus followed is clearly shown by the motive attached to the reported despatch of the treasure-ship to the Corinthian Gulf. Was it likely that Gelo would worry himself about the distant danger from Persia, when the more immediate and, to him, greater danger from Carthage threatened? Why should he attempt to buy off a doubly hypothetical Persian attack when he was face to face with an enormously powerful foe near at hand? If the treasure-ship was sent, the sending of it looks like the act of a man who wished to provide against possible disaster in Sicily. He had to place it beyond reach of the Carthaginian fleet. He had to speculate on the ultimate success of the Greeks. There was absolutely no other place in the world where it was likely to be more safe than in the Corinthian Gulf, though that might not be an ideal place of security.

From Sketch by E. Lear.]

MOUNTAINS OF THERMOPYLÆ, FROM PHALARA.