[322] Herodot. ix, 17. διεξῆλθε φήμη, ὡς κατακοντιεῖ σφέας. Respecting φήμη, see a note a little farther on, at the battle of Mykalê, in this same chapter.
Compare the case of the Delians at Adramyttium, surrounded and slain with missiles by the Persian satrap, though not his enemies—περιστήσας τοὺς ἑαυτοῦ κατηκόντισε (Thucyd. viii, 108).
[323] Οὐκ ἔχω δ’ ἀτρεκέως εἰπεῖν, οὔτε εἰ ἦλθον μὲν ἀπολέοντες τοὺς Φωκέας, δεηθέντων τῶν Θεσσαλῶν, etc. (Herodot. ix, 18.)
This confession of uncertainty as to motives and plans, distinguishing between them and the visible facts which he is describing, is not without importance as strengthening our confidence in the historian.
[324] Compare this list of Herodotus with the enumeration which Pausanias read inscribed on the statue of Zeus, erected at Olympia by the Greeks who took part in the battle of Platæa (Pausan. v, 23, 1).
Pausanias found inscribed all the names here indicated by Herodotus except the Palês of Kephallenia: and he found in addition the Eleians Keans, Kythnians, Tenians, Naxians, and Mêlians. The five last names are islanders in the Ægean: their contingents sent to Platæa must, at all events, have been very small, and it is surprising to hear that they sent any,—especially when we recollect that there was a Greek fleet at this moment on service, to which it would be natural that they should join themselves in preference to land-service.
With respect to the name of the Eleians, the suspicion of Bröndstedt is plausible, that Pausanias may have mistaken the name of the Palês of Kephallenia for theirs, and may have fancied that he read FΑΛΕΙΟΙ when it was really written ΠΑΛΕΙΣ, in an inscription at that time about six hundred years old. The place in the series wherein Pausanias places the name of the Eleians, strengthens the suspicion. Unless it be admitted, we shall be driven, as the most probable alternative, to suppose a fraud committed by the vanity of the Eleians, which may easily have led them to alter a name originally belonging to the Palês. The reader will recollect that the Eleians were themselves the superintendents and curators at Olympia.
Plutarch seems to have read the same inscription as Pausanias (De Herodoti Malignit. p. 873).
[325] Herodot. ix, 19, 28, 29.
[326] Herodot. ix, 28. οἱ ἐπιφοιτῶντές τε καὶ οἱ ἀρχὴν ἐλθόντες Ἑλλήνων.