Of this remarkable story, not the least remarkable part is the criticism with which Herodotus himself accompanies it. He treats it as a proceeding infinitely silly (πρῆγμα εὐηθέστατον, ὡς ἐγὼ εὐρίσκω, μακρῷ); he cannot conceive, how Greeks, so much superior to barbarians,—and even Athenians, the cleverest of all the Greeks,—could have fallen into such a trap. To him the story was told as a deception from the beginning, and he did not perhaps take pains to put himself into the state of feeling of those original spectators who saw the chariot approach, without any warning or preconceived suspicion. But even allowing for this, his criticism brings to our view the alteration and enlargement which had taken place in the Greek mind during the century between Peisistratus and Periklês. Doubtless, neither the latter nor any of his contemporaries could have succeeded in a similar trick.
The fact, and the criticism upon it, now before us are remarkably illustrated by an analogous case recounted in a previous chapter, (vol. ii, p. 421, chap. viii.) Nearly at the same period as this stratagem of Peisistratus, the Lacedæmonians and the Argeians agreed to decide, by a combat of three hundred select champions, the dispute between them as to the territory of Kynuria. The combat actually took place, and the heroism of Othryades, sole Spartan survivor, has been already recounted. In the eleventh year of the Peloponnesian war, shortly after or near upon the period when we may conceive the history of Herodotus to have been finished, the Argeians concluded a treaty with Lacedæmon, and introduced as a clause into it the liberty of reviving their pretensions to Kynuria, and of again deciding the dispute by a combat of select champions. To the Lacedæmonians of that time this appeared extreme folly,—the very proceeding which had been actually resorted to a century before. Here is another case, in which the change in the point of view, and the increased positive tendencies in the Greek mind, are brought to our notice not less forcibly than by the criticism of Herodotus upon Phyê-Athênê.
Istrus (one of the Atthido-graphers of the third century B. C.) and Antiklês published books respecting the personal manifestations or epiphanies of the gods,—Ἀπόλλωνος ἐπιφανεῖαι: see Istri Fragment. 33-37, ed. Didot. If Peisistratus and Megaklês had never quarrelled, their joint stratagem might have continued to pass for a genuine epiphany, and might have been included as such in the work of Istrus. I will add, that the real presence of the gods, at the festivals celebrated in their honor, was an idea continually brought before the minds of the Greeks.
The Athenians fully believed the epiphany of the god Pan to Pheidippidês the courier, on his march to Sparta, a little before the battle of Marathôn (Herodot. vi, 105, καὶ ταῦτα Ἀθηναῖοι πιστεύσαντες εἶναι ἀληθέα), and even Herodotus himself does not controvert it, though he relaxes the positive character of history so far as to add—“as Pheidippidês himself said and recounted publicly to the Athenians.” His informants in this case were doubtless sincere believers; whereas, in the case of Phyê, the story was told to him at first as a fabrication.
At Gela in Sicily, seemingly not long before this restoration of Peisistratus, Têlinês (ancestor of the despot Gelon) had brought back some exiles to Gela, “without any armed force, but merely through the sacred ceremonies and appurtenances of the subterranean goddesses,”—ἔχων οὐδεμίην ἀνδρῶν δύναμιν, ἀλλ᾽ ἱρὰ τουτέων τῶν θεῶν—τούτοισι δ᾽ ὦν πίσυνος ἐὼν, κατήγαγε (Herodot. vii, 153). Herodotus does not tell us the details which he had heard of the manner in which this restoration at Gela was brought about; but his general language intimates, that they were remarkable details, and they might have illustrated the story of Phyê Athênê.
[200] Herodot. i, 61. Peisistratus—ἐμίχθη οἱ οὐ κατὰ νόμον.
[201] About Lygdamis, see Athenæus, viii, p. 348, and his citation from the lost work of Aristotle on the Grecian Πολιτεῖαι; also, Aristot. Politic. v, 5, 1.
[202] Herodot. i, 63.
[203] Herodot. i, 64. ἐπικούροισί τε πολλοῖσι, καὶ χρημάτων συνόδοισι, τῶν μὲν αὐτόθεν, τῶν δὲ ἀπὸ Στρύμονος ποτάμου προσιόντων.
[204] Isokratês, Or. xvi, De Bigis, c. 351.