In the case of Æschylus, the obvious objection is that he was a poet, and that all the evidence he gives is contained in the “Persæ.” It cannot, of course, be denied that this objection would, from the historical point of view, be a very strong one, were Æschylus merely giving a poetical account of a most dramatic scene, the description of which he derived from others. But when it is remembered that the poet was actually present as a combatant on board the Greek fleet, it is manifest that his narrative, though cast in the poetical form, cannot be ignored by the historian. One element in it, at any rate, must be reckoned with: the stated facts of the author’s personal observation. These are, indeed, few in number, but it so happens that they are of very great importance; nor are they of a character such as might suggest that they had been modified in any way for dramatic purposes.
The evidence of Diodorus is ignored by modern authorities simply on the ground that that author is so notoriously unreliable. That such is the case, no one who knows his work would care to deny; but it is a fallacy to treat the whole of his work as unsound, and to say, as has been said by one eminent authority, that whenever the evidence of Herodotus and Diodorus respectively differs on any particular point, that of Herodotus is to be unhesitatingly preferred.
In the present case, Plutarch may, for the most part, be ignored. His evidence is secondhand of the secondhand; and most details given by him which are not found in any one of the three first-mentioned authorities are either unimportant, highly suspicious, or demonstrably wrong.
The rejection of Herodotus’ account of the tactics pursued by the two fleets rests on two grounds:—
(1) The evidence of the eye-witness Æschylus, which is quite irreconcileable with Herodotus’ description.
(2) Objections of a most important character which must suggest themselves to the mind of any one who has seen the strait, and might well be suggested to any one who possesses a reliable map of it.
In so far as I am aware, Professor Goodwin, in an article on “Salamis” in the Journal of the Archæological Institute of America, 1882–83, was the first to point out the serious difficulties involved, not, as he thought, in Herodotus’ account, but rather in the interpretation which later historians had put upon it.
As the main basis of his argument he enunciated the necessity of taking the evidence of Æschylus into serious consideration; he laid it down, indeed, that that evidence, in so far as it was plainly drawn from personal observation, must be regarded as superior in authority to any evidence on the same point contained in other extant descriptions of the fight. INTERPRETATION OF EVIDENCE. I venture to think that, in so doing, Professor Goodwin rendered a most important service to the study of a great chapter in Ancient History.
He further argued that the discrepancies between Æschylus and Herodotus are apparent and not real, and are due to a mistaken interpretation of Herodotus’ narrative.
It will be seen that I do not agree with the second part of Professor Goodwin’s proposition. My belief is that the modern historians have correctly interpreted Herodotus’ account; and that, so far as his evidence is concerned, the mistake is in the evidence, and not in the interpretation of it.