It may be worth while to add, that whoever reads attentively Herodotus, vi, 98,—and reflects at the same time that the destruction of the Athenian armament at Syracuse (the greatest of all Hellenic disasters, hardly inferior, for its time, to the Russian campaign of Napoleon, and especially impressive to one living at Thurii, as may be seen by the life of Lysias, Plutarch, Vit. x, Oratt. p. 835) happened during the reign of Darius Nothus in 413 B. C.,—will not readily admit the hypothesis of additions made to the history during the reign of the latter, or so late as 408 B. C. Herodotus would hardly have dwelt so expressly and emphatically upon mischief done by Greeks to each other in the reigns of Darius son of Hystaspês, Xerxês, and Artaxerxês, if he had lived to witness the greater mischiefs so inflicted during the reign of Darius Nothus, and had kept his history before him for the purpose of inserting new events. The destruction of the Athenians before Syracuse would have been a thousand times more striking to his imagination than the revolt of the Medes against Darius Nothus, and would have impelled him with much greater force to alter or enlarge the chapter vi, 98.
The sentiment too which Herodotus places in the mouth of Demaratus respecting the Spartans (vii, 104) appears to have been written before the capture of the Spartans in Sphakteria, in 425 B. C., rather than after it: compare Thucyd. iv, 40.
Dahlmann (Forschungen auf dem Gebiete der Geschichte, vol. ii, pp. 41-47) and Heyse (Quæstiones Herodoteæ, pp. 74-77, Berlin, 1827) both profess to point out six passages in Herodotus which mark events of later date than 430 B. C. But none of the chronological indications which they adduce appear to me trustworthy.
[413] Herodot. iii, 127, 128.
[414] Herodot. iii, 150.
[415] Herodot. iii, 155. δεινόν τι ποιεύμενος, Ἀσσυρίους Πέρσῃσι καταγελᾷν. Compare the speech of Mardonius, vii, 9.
The horror of Darius, at the first sight of Zopyrus in this condition, is strongly dramatized by Herodotus.
[416] Herodot. iii, 154-158.
[417] Ktêsias represents the revolt and recapture of Babylon to have taken place, not under Darius, but under his son and successor Xerxês. He says that the Babylonians, revolting, slew their satrap Zopyrus; that they were besieged by Xerxês, and that Megabyzus son of Zopyrus caused the city to be taken by practising that very stratagem which Herodotus ascribes to Zopyrus himself (Persica, c. 20-22).
This seems inconsistent with the fact, that Megabyzus was general of the Persian army in Egypt in the war with the Athenians, about 460 B. C. (Diodor. Sic. xi, 75-77): he would hardly have been sent on active service had he been so fearfully mutilated; moreover, the whole story of Ktêsias appears to me far less probable than that of Herodotus; for on this, as on other occasions, to blend the two together is impossible.