[622] Herodot. vi, 100. Τῶν δὲ Ἐρετριέων ἦν ἄρα οὐδὲν ὑγιὲς βούλευμα, οἳ μετεπέμποντο μὲν Ἀθηναίους, ἐφρόνεον δὲ διφασίας ἰδέας· οἳ μὲν γὰρ αὐτῶν ἐβουλεύοντο ἐκλιπεῖν τὴν πόλιν ἐς τὰ ἄκρα τῆς Εὐβοίης, ἄλλοι δὲ αὐτῶν ἴδια κέρδεα προσδεκόμενοι παρὰ τοῦ Πέρσεω οἴσεσθαι προδοσίην ἐσκευάζοντο.
Allusion to this treason among the Eretrians is to be found in a saying of Themistoklês (Plutarch, Themist. c. 11).
The story told by Hêrakleidês Ponticus (ap. Athenæ. xii, p. 536), of an earlier Persian armament which had assailed Eretria and failed, cannot be at all understood; it rather looks like a mythe to explain the origin of the great wealth possessed by the family of Kallias at Athens,—the Λακκόπλουτος. There is another story, having the same explanatory object, in Plutarch, Aristeidês, c. 5.
[623] Herodot. vi, 101, 102.
[624] Plato, Legg. iii, p. 698, and Menexen. c. 10, p. 240; Diogen. Laërt. iii, 33; Herodot. vi, 31: compare Strabo, x, p. 446, who ascribes to Herodotus the statement of Plato about the σαγήνευσις of Eretria. Plato says nothing about the betrayal of the city.
It is to be remarked that, in the passage of the Treatise de Legibus, Plato mentions this story (about the Persians having swept the territory of Eretria clean of its inhabitants) with some doubt as to its truth, and as if it were a rumor intentionally circulated by Datis with a view to frighten the Athenians. But in the Menexenus, the story is given as if it were an authentic historical fact.
[625] Plutarch, De Garrulitate, c. 15, p. 510. The descendants of Gongylus the Eretrian, who passed over to the Persians on this occasion, are found nearly a century afterwards in possession of a town and district in Mysia, which the Persian king had bestowed upon their ancestor. Herodotus does not mention Gongylus (Xenoph. Hellen. iii, 1, 6).
This surrender to the Persians drew upon the Eretrians bitter remarks at the time of the battle of Salamis (Plutarch, Themistoklês, c. 11).
[626] The chapter of Herodotus (vi, 40) relating to the adventures of Miltiadês is extremely perplexing, as I have already remarked in a former note: and Wesseling considers that it involves chronological difficulties which our present MSS. do not enable us to clear up. Neither Schweighäuser, nor the explanation cited in Bähr’s note, is satisfactory.
[627] Herodot. vi, 43-104.