The great Persian War and its preliminaries

by G. B. Grundy

One minor passage, that relating to Xerxes’ visit to the vale of Tempe, must be mentioned. The considerations on the physical geography of Thessaly, which are put into the mouth of the Great King, are almost certainly those of the historian himself, derived from his personal knowledge of the region. This view is further supported by the remark he makes on his own authority in reference to the withdrawal of the Greek force from that region, that he believes it was due to the discovery that Tempe was not the only pass into the country from the north.

With regard to the other two great battle-grounds of this period, the evidence of autopsy is doubtful Herodotus’ account of Marathon makes it probable that he had not seen the ground. His account of the battle, such as it is, is marked by certain mistaken deductions, probably his own, resting on a basis of misinformation. The remainder of it is obviously traditional in origin.

Whether Herodotus had ever seen the ground at Mykale is very doubtful. He certainly had never examined it in detail. It is, however, quite possible that some of his information with regard to it was drawn from an eye-witness.

Oracles.

Mention has already been made of certain traces of the use of official records of a secular origin. It now remains to consider those oracular responses, whose actual wording in their official written form came under his notice, whether at the place at which they were delivered, or in the city to which they were given. The great difficulty is to determine whether, in the individual cases in which he quotes oracles, his quotation is drawn from an official version, or from a version accepted by tradition. Positive cases of the latter mode of quotation are more easy to recognize than positive cases of the former; though in nearly all cases alike he gives what purports to be, and may be, the actual wording of the response. Nevertheless, the two kinds of quotation demand that the material quoted, even if identical in form, should be regarded as coming under two different classes of evidence. It must not be necessarily assumed that an oracle copied from an official record at Delphi is better historical evidence than one preserved in the memory of those to whom it was delivered. It is too probable that the opposite is the case. There are many strong reasons for the suspicion that in certain instances the hand of the editor brought the record up to date by alterations and additions made in the light of after-events. The oracles relative to Salamis are a case in point. ORACLES. Delphi did no doubt possess sources of information with regard to Greek politics generally, which rendered it able to give very useful advice to those who consulted it; but it is impossible to believe that either at Delphi, or anywhere else, the course of the war could have been so far calculated before the actual struggle began, as that the circumstances which made it so imperative to fight at Salamis should have been foreseen.

It is in the history of the period at which apparently this oracle was delivered, when the Greek states to which the council of defence had appealed for help were making up their minds what attitude to adopt in the coming war, that Herodotus makes most use of the evidence of oracles. There is no reason, save in the case of the Salamis oracle above mentioned, to suspect that those which he quotes are in aught but their original form. They show that Delphi had a definite policy at the time, founded upon the conviction that Athens, and Athens alone, was the goal of the Persian expedition; and even after the war was over Delphi might have argued with some show of reason, though not on the solid basis of fact, that, had its advice been followed, its conviction would have turned out true.

One other very important oracle quoted by Herodotus with reference to the history of the war, is that which was alleged to have brought about the self-sacrifice of Leonidas. From the way in which the historian mentions it, it is obvious that he did not draw it from any source independent of the tradition of the battle, to which, indeed, it supplied the main motive.

Traditions.

It is often very difficult to trace with anything approaching certainty the exact source of the various traditions which Herodotus followed in different minor sections of his history. In some cases it is only possible to make a guess at their origin; and a discussion of them, not in itself very profitable, is but too apt to lead to even less profitable results. It is quite certain, as has been already said, that in many parts of his narrative he combined information of very diverse origin and of very various value.

A statement in a sentence in the midst of a long passage oftentimes shows that its origin differs from that of its context. It is not proposed to deal with such variations of the general pattern, but to seek rather to arrive at some definite conclusion as to the “provenance” of the chief authorities lying behind the main sections of the historian’s work.