BATTLEFIELD OF PLATAEA
London: John Murray, Albemarle St.
Stanford’s Geographical Establishment, London.
Footnotes.
[1] See [note] at the end of the Preface.
[2] It would be misleading to claim any exact accuracy for the chronology of this period. All that can be said is that the dates given are nearly correct. It is, therefore, undesirable to use the preposition “in” when the preposition “about” represents in reality the extent of our knowledge.
[3] Herodotus, speaking probably of the earlier part of the reign, mentions twenty. The Behistun inscription enumerates twenty-three; the inscription of Naksh-i-Rustem twenty-eight.
[4] Any date after 511 is highly improbable, because in that year Hippias was driven out of Athens and retired to Sigeum. Had the expedition taken place after his arrival there, it is almost certain that he would have accompanied Darius. Other considerations tend in the same direction.
[5] Herodotus says seven hundred thousand men and six hundred ships. This would imply that somewhat more than the ordinary general levy of the Empire was called out for the expedition. The numbers are almost certainly exaggerated.
The number of ships, viz. six hundred, as stated by Herodotus, is somewhat suspicious. The Persian fleet at Ladé is stated to have been six hundred (H. vi. 9). At Marathon it is the same (vi. 95). These may be mere vague calculations without any real foundation; it may be that six hundred was the ordinary official number of vessels that belonged to the Persian war fleet, and that Herodotus has assumed that on each of these occasions the whole fleet was employed. In the present instance, he does not mention any save the Greek contingents. It is extremely unlikely that the Greeks could furnish six hundred vessels. They could only raise three-fifths of that number at the time of the battle of Ladé. Still, Herodotus knows so little about the present expedition, that his omission to mention other contingents, if not a mere oversight, may be due to the want of information.
[6] As it is important to note the exact nature of the traceable evidence on which Herodotus bases the various details he gives of the campaign, it may be pointed out in the present case that he states that Darius set up pillars with bilingual inscriptions at the point of crossing, and that the Byzantians removed them to their city, and used them for the altar of the temple of Artemis Orthosia. One stone, covered with Assyrian letters, was left in the temple of Dionysus.