[273] This important fact is not stated by Herodotus: but it is distinctly given in Diodorus, xi, 19. It seems probable enough.
If the tragedy of Phrynichus, entitled Phœnissæ, had been preserved, we should have known more about the position and behavior of the Phenician contingent in this invasion. It was represented at Athens only three years after the battle of Salamis, in B. C. 477 or 476, with Themistoklês as choregus, four years earlier than the Persæ of Æschylus, which was affirmed by Glaukus to have been (παραπεποιῆσθαι) altered from it. The Chorus in the Phœnissæ consisted of Phenician women, possibly the widows of those Phenicians whom Xerxes had caused to be beheaded after the battle (Herodot. viii, 90, as Dr. Blomfield supposes, Præf. ad Æsch. Pers. p. ix), or only of Phenicians absent on the expedition. The fragments remaining of this tragedy, which gained the prize, are too scanty to sustain any conjectures as to its scheme or details (see Welcker Griechische Tragœd. vol. i, p. 26; and Droysen, Phrynichos, Æschylos, und die Trilogie, pp. 4-6).
[274] Herodot. ix, 32.
[275] Herodot. viii, 97-107. Such was the terror of these retreating seamen, that they are said to have mistaken the projecting cliffs of Cape Zôstêr (about half-way between Peiræus and Sunium) for ships, and redoubled the haste of their flight as if an enemy were after them,—a story which we can treat as nothing better than silly exaggeration in the Athenian informants of Herodotus.
Ktesias, Pers. c. xxvi; Strabo, ix, p. 395; the two latter talk about the intention to carry a mole across from Attica to Salamis, as if it had been conceived before the battle.
[276] Compare Herodot. vii, 10.
[277] Herodot. viii, 101, 102.
[278] Herodot. viii, 109, 110; Thucyd. i, 137. The words ἢν ψευδῶς προσεποιήσατο may probably be understood in a sense somewhat larger than that which they naturally bear in Thucydidês. In point of fact, not only was it false that Themistoklês was the person who dissuaded the Greeks from going to the Hellespont, but it was also false that the Greeks had ever any serious intention of going there. Compare Cornelius Nepos, Themistokl. c. 5.
[279] Herodot. viii, 111. ἐπεὶ Ἀνδρίους γε εἶναι γεωπείνας ἐς τὰ μέγιστα ἀνήκοντας, καὶ θεοὺς δύο ἀχρήστους οὐκ ἐκλείπειν σφέων τὴν νῆσον, ἀλλ’ ἀεὶ φιλοχωρέειν—Πενίην τε καὶ Ἀμηχανίην.
Compare Alkæus, Fragm. 90, ed. Bergk, and Herodot. vii, 172.