It is not improbable that the skeleton of the conversation between Xerxes and Demaratus was a reality, heard by Herodotus from Demaratus himself or from his sons; for the extreme specialty with which the Lacedæmonian exile confines his praise to the Spartans and Dorians, not including the other Greeks, hardly represents the feeling of Herodotus himself.
The minuteness of the narrative which Herodotus gives respecting the deposition and family circumstances of Demaratus (vi, 63, seq.), and his view of the death of Kleomenês as an atonement to that prince for injury done, may seem derived from family information (vi, 84).
[65] Herodot. vii, 109, 111, 118.
[66] This sum of four hundred talents was equivalent to the entire annual tribute charged in the Persian king’s rent-roll, upon the satrapy comprising the western and southern coast of Asia Minor, wherein were included all the Ionic and Æolic Greeks, besides Lykians, Pamphylians, etc. (Herodot. iii, 90.)
[67] Herodot. vii, 118-120. He gives (vii, 187) the computation of the quantity of corn which would have been required for daily consumption, assuming the immense numbers as he conjectures them, and reckoning one chœnix of wheat for each man’s daily consumption, equal to one eighth of a medimnus. It is unnecessary to examine a computation founded on such inadmissible data.
[68] Herodot. vii, 108, 109.
[69] Herodot. vii, 114. He pronounces this savage practice to be specially Persian. The old and cruel Persian queen Amestris, wife of Xerxes, sought to prolong her own life by burying alive fourteen victims, children of illustrious men, as offerings to the subterranean god.
[70] Herodot. viii, 116.
[71] Herodot. vii, 122-127.
Respecting the name Pieria, and the geography of these regions, see the previous volume, vol. iv, ch. xxv. p. 14.