These, and some other allusions to the events of the Persian invasion, coinciding as they do with the more ample narrative given by Herodotus, and coming from an historian who made it his boast that he admitted nothing into his work which was not supported by satisfactory evidence, and who, moreover, was disposed rather to detract from the credit of his rival, than to confirm it, must be held to furnish the most conclusive kind of independent testimony. Indeed, the express affirmation of Thucydides that Athens was destroyed by the Persians, affords alone a sufficient proof of the fact; for no such affirmation as this could either have been made, or tolerated, within sixty years after the event, unless it were universally known to be true.
Lysias the orator, at the early age of fifteen years, it is said, accompanied Herodotus and other Athenians to Thurium: after a long residence in Italy, he returned to Athens, where he distinguished himself by his eloquence. In a funeral oration, pronounced in honour of the Athenians who fell in the Corinthian war, he speaks of the Persian war.—The king of Asia, unsatisfied with his present greatness, and actuated by a boundless ambition, prepared an army of 500,000 men, hoping by this mighty force to reduce Europe under his subjection.... With such rapidity was the victory (at Marathon) accomplished, that the other states of Greece learned by the same messenger the invasion of the Persians, and their defeat; and without the terror of danger, felt the pleasure of deliverance. It is not surprising, then, that such actions, though ancient (about eighty years) should still retain the full verdure of glory, and remain to succeeding ages the examples and the envy of mankind.... Many causes conspired to engage Xerxes, king of Asia, to undertake a second expedition against Europe.... After ten years preparation, he landed in Europe, with a fleet of 1200 sail, and such a number of land forces, that it would be tedious to recount even the names of those various nations by whom he was attended.... He made a journey over land, by joining the Hellespont, and a voyage by sea, by dividing Mount Athos. The orator then briefly mentions the engagements at Artemisium and Thermopylæ, the abandonment of Athens, and the removal of the citizens to Salamis:—their city was deserted, their temples burnt or demolished, their country laid waste.
Isocrates flourished a few years later than Lysias, yet he was contemporary with Herodotus. One of his orations, pronounced in praise of the Athenians, contains passages to the same effect. They first (the Athenians) signalized their courage against the troops of Darius (at Marathon).... The Persians, a short time after renewed their attempts, and Xerxes himself, forsaking his palace and his pleasures, ventured to become a general. At the head of all Asia he formed the most towering designs. For who, though inclined to exaggeration, can come up to the reality? The conquest of Greece appeared to him an object below his ambition.—Designing to effect something beyond human power, he projected that enterprise, so celebrated, of making his army sail through the land, and march over the sea; and he carried this idea into execution by piercing Mount Athos, and by throwing a bridge over the Hellespont. Against a monarch so proud and enterprising, who had executed such vast designs, and who commanded so many armies, the Lacedæmonians, dividing the danger with Athens, drew themselves up at Thermopylæ. With a thousand of their own troops, and a small body of their allies, they determined in that narrow pass to resist the progress of all his land forces. While our ancestors (the Athenians of the last generation) sailed with sixty galleys to Artemisium, and expected the whole fleet of the Barbarians.... The Lacedæmonians perished to a man; but the Athenians conquered the fleet they had undertaken to oppose. Their allies were dispirited. The Peloponnesians, occupied for their own safety, had begun to fortify the Isthmus.... The enemy approached Attica with a fleet of twelve hundred sail, and with land forces innumerable.... The Athenians assembled all the inhabitants of their city, and transported them into the neighbouring island.—And where shall we find more generous lovers of Greece than those who in its defence abandoned their abodes, suffered their city to be ravaged, their altars to be violated, their temples to be burned to the ground, and all the terrors of war to rage in their native country?... Athens, even in her misfortunes, furnished more ships for the sea-fight off Salamis, which was to decide the fate of Greece, than all the other states together; and there is no one, I believe, so unjust as to deny, that by our victory in that engagement the war was terminated, and the danger removed.
Ctesias, as we have seen, affords a testimony conclusive in favour of the antiquity of the history attributed to Herodotus. We have now to adduce his evidence on the subject of the Persian invasion—reminding the reader that his history of Persia was composed with the avowed design of invalidating the account given by Herodotus of Persian affairs: he thus speaks of the expedition of Xerxes:—Xerxes, having collected a Persian army, consisting, besides the chariots of war, of eight hundred thousand men, and a thousand galleys, led them into Greece by a bridge which he had caused to be constructed at Abydos. It was then that he was accosted by Demaratus the Lacedæmonian, who passed with him into Europe, and who endeavoured to dissuade the king from attacking the Lacedæmonians. Xerxes arriving at the pass of Thermopylæ, placed ten thousand men under the command of Artapanus, who there engaged Leonidas—chief of the Lacedæmonians. In this conflict a great slaughter of the Persians took place, while not more than three or four of the Lacedæmonians were slain. After this Xerxes sent twenty thousand men to the field; these also were overcome, and though driven to fight by blows, were still vanquished. The next day he sent forward fifty thousand men; but as these also failed in their attack, he no longer attempted to fight. Thorax the Thessalian, and Calliades and Timaphernes, princes of the Trachinians, were then present (in the Persian camp) with their troops. These, with Demaratus, and Hegias of Ephesus, Xerxes called into his presence, and from them he learned that the Lacedæmonians could by no means be vanquished unless they were surrounded and attacked on all sides. Forty thousand Persians were therefore despatched under the command of these two Trachinian leaders, who traversing a difficult path, came behind the Lacedæmonians. Thus surrounded, they fought valiantly, and perished to a man. Again Xerxes sent an army of one hundred and twenty thousand men, commanded by Mardonius, against the Platæans: it was the Thebans who incited the king against the Platæans. Mardonius was met by Pausanias the Lacedæmonian, at the head of not more than three hundred Spartans—one thousand of the people of the country—and about six thousand from the other cities. The Persian army being vanquished, Mardonius fled from the field wounded. This same Mardonius was sent by Xerxes to pillage the temple of Apollo; but to the great grief of the king, perished in the attempt by a hail-storm.
Xerxes next advanced with his army to Athens; but the Athenians having fitted out one hundred and ten galleys, fled to the island of Salamis: he therefore entered the deserted city, and burned it, except only the citadel, which was defended by a few who remained; but they retiring by night, he burned that also. The king then advancing to the narrowest part of Attica, called Heracleum, began to construct a mole towards Salamis, with the intention of marching his army on to the island. But by the advice of Themistocles the Athenian, and of Aristides, a body of Cretan archers was brought up to obstruct the work. A naval engagement then took place between the Persians and the Greeks, the former having more than a thousand ships, commanded by Onophas—the latter seven hundred. Yet the Greeks conquered, and the Persians lost five hundred ships. Xerxes himself, by the counsel and contrivance of Themistocles and Aristides, fled:—not fewer than one hundred and twenty thousand men having perished on the side of the Persians in the several actions. Passages to this effect occur in the Myriobiblon of Photius.
In those particulars in which this account of the Persian invasion differs from that of our author, no one who carefully compares the two, can hesitate to give his confidence to Herodotus rather than to Ctesias, not only because he lived some years nearer to the events; but because his narrative displays more judgment, more consistency, and more probability, and is also better supported by other evidence. It is enough for our present purpose that this writer affirms the same great events to have taken place—that the Persian king led an immense army into Greece, where he met a total defeat.
Of the authors whom we have cited, the first two—Pindar and Æschylus, had reached maturity at the time of the Persian invasion, and were personally concerned in its events, and composed the works to which we have referred while Herodotus was yet a youth. Though poets, they represent the victories of the Greeks as recent facts, well known to their hearers, and the slightest allusion to which was enough to kindle the national enthusiasm. The other writers—Thucydides, Lysias, Isocrates, and Ctesias, were also contemporary with Herodotus; and two of them were his professed rivals. From their evidence it is apparent that the events of the Persian invasion were matters of common knowledge and conversation, and were the themes of writers in every class among the Greeks, in the very age in which they are said to have taken place.
It follows therefore that the historian of these transactions is not to be regarded as if he were the author of a narrative for the truth of which he is individually responsible, and in which we cannot confide until we have proof of his veracity. He is rather the collector of facts that were universally acknowledged by his contemporaries:—and the truth of the history rests upon the fact that it was published, and was accepted, while the individuals to whom the events were known were still living.
If we look to the Greek writers of the next and of the following age, we find the same general facts affirmed or alluded to—orators, poets, and historians, hold the same language, and assume it as certain that their ancestors gloriously repulsed an innumerable Asiatic army. But historical proof of a traditionary kind differs essentially from that which it is just now our intention to display; we therefore do not bring it forward in the present instance.
In a preceding chapter (XV.) we have referred to the mass of evidence, confirmatory of the written testimony of ancient Historians, which might be brought forward from the treasures of the British Museum. In many instances the general truthfulness of Herodotus, and his exactness also, are vouched for in the most substantial and convincing manner, by objects of various kinds, to which the reader may have access any day in that vast collection. Yet in relation to such instances there may be room for a cautionary remark; and it is of this kind.—