Volume 2

Herodotus : the fourth, fifth, and sixth books / With introduction, notes, appendices, indices, maps by Reginald Walter Macan.

  • Herodotus
Date:
1895
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Herodotus : the fourth, fifth, and sixth books / With introduction, notes, appendices, indices, maps by Reginald Walter Macan. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    188/374 (page 168)
    APP. X some considerable difficulties in regard to the actual course of events, which make it unacceptable. Failing this explanation, we are thrown back upon a wide field of conjecture. The shield might have notified the approach of the Spartans, or some unrecorded movement of Athenian ships, which play no part whatsoever in the story of this campaign, or some unrecorded occurrence or arrangement in the city. But with the exception of the first alternative, none of these suggestions can be said to have any real ground in the traditions; and the author of c. 124 might well have added to his conclusion that the exact reason for the signal, or what it exactly signified, was even more disputable and obscure than the problem, who the man was who gave it. To conclude, however, that no shield was raised at all with treacherous intent, no signal given, and to rationalise away the episode into pure fiction dictated by malignity, or to see no more historic basis for the anecdote than an unintended flash of shield, or other shining surface, in sight of Greeks and Barbarians at Marathon, mis- interpreted by the suspicions and heated imagination of a political partisan; to reduce, in short, the shield-episode to the level of the vision of Epizelos,^ is to be too benevolently sceptical in regard to Athenian disaffection, and defeats the very object which the sceptic may be supposed to have at heart. The presence of traitors in Athens exalts not diminishes the heroism of the patriotic majority. The splendour and the wonder of the victory at Marathon were enhanced by the magnitude, not of the battle, but of the danger; a danger more than doubled by the presence of traitors within. (5) It is hardly necessary to discuss at length the question, whether the Alkmaionidae were at this time the traitors, except to observe the inconsequence and fallacy of which Herodotus is guilty in this connexion. To establish their ‘ miso-tyranny ’ it is asserted that the Alkmaionids had opposed Peisistratos and driven out his son. The elenchus which is here ignored is supplied by Herodotus himself elsewhere, in the story of the compact and alliance between Megakles and Peisistratos, which resulted in the first restoration of the usurper (1. 60): while the chapters from the family records which follow (6. 125-130) mainly prove that the Alkmaionids were on good terms with tyrants, whether Barbarian (Kroisos) or Hellenic (Kleisthenes). Prima facie, it might be more natural to look for the traitors on this occasion among the ranks of the Peisistratid faction or family, which was not extirpated at Athens,^ and to ascribe the scandal against the Alkmaionids to afterthought perverted by jealousy and prejudice; but it is not easy to understand how such prejudice hit upon the ‘ shield-episode,’ and exploited it, unless there was something unfortunate, if not unpatriotic, in the conduct of the Alkmaionidae at 1 AsH.Delbr1ick,Z)iePe?’serATieg'e,p.60. that of Megakles, son of Hippokrates, ^ The ostrakism of Hipparchos in 487 ’A6t]v. ttoK. c. 22. Cp. Appendix IX. § 14 B.c. is succeeded (in the next year) by supra, and p. 176 infra.