throughout Greece to call wicked actions by the name di "Lemnian deeds."7 139. When the Pelasgians had thus slain their childr and their women, the earth refused to bring forth its fra for them, and their wives bore fewer children, and their do and herds increased more slowly than before, till at last, s pressed by famine and bereavement, they sent men to Del and begged the god to tell them how they might oka deliverance from their sufferings. The Pythoness answere! that "they must give the Athenians whatever satisfacti they might demand." Then the Pelasgians went to Athens i and declared their wish to give the Athenians satisfaction i the wrong which they had done to them. So the Athen had a couch prepared in their townhall, and adorned it the fairest coverlets, and set by its side a table laden with manner of good things, and then told the Pelasgians th must deliver up their country to them in a similar conditi The Pelasgians answered and said, "When a ship comes w a north wind from your country to ours in a single day, the will we give it up to you." This they said because they kn that what they required was impossible, for Attica lies a len way to the south of Lemnos.8 140. No more passed at that time. But very many year afterwards, when the Hellespontian Chersonese had be brought under the power of Athens, Miltiades, the son Cimon, sailed, during the prevalence of the Etesian wind: from Elæus in the Chersonese to Lemnos, and called on the of Antiquities, p. 785, B. 2nd ed.) 9 Elæus was situated at or near extremity of the peninsula, as is pa from the notices in Scylax (Peripl 68), Pliny (H. N. iv. 11, p. 209), 821 Mela (ii. 2). According to Scym Chius (1. 706) it was a colony from Teos. The site was near to that d the first European castle (Kilid Bahr) a little to the north-east. Some rin remain; but they are not extensi. (Chandler, vol. i. p. 18). CHAP. 138-140. LEMNOS TAKEN. 515 Pelasgians to quit their island, reminding them of the prophecy which they had supposed it impossible to fulfil. The people of Hephæstia obeyed the call; but they of Myrina,2 not acknowledging the Chersonese to be any part of Attica, refused, and were besieged and brought over by force. Thus was Lemnos gained by the Athenians and Miltiades. By a felicitous emendation of a passage quoted by Stephen of Byzantium from the Chronica of Charax, we are enabled to fill up this history. It appears that Myrina was reduced first; and that then Hermon, the king of Hephæstia, fearing a similar fate, declared "that he acknowledged the Pelasgic promises, and gave himself up out of good-will to the Athenians." (Fr. 30.) Other writers tell us that a proverb arose from this circumstance. To "make a virtue of necessity," and give as a favour what you could not keep, was called Ερμώνιος or Ερμώνειος χάρις. (See Zenob. Cent. iii. 86; Suidas ad. voc. Ερμών. χάρ.) Mr. Blakesley's translation of the passage of Charax cannot possibly be received. 2 Lemnos had but two cities of any note, Hephæstia and Myrina (Hecat. Fr. 102; Plin. H. N. iv. 12, p. 219; Ptolem. Geograph. iii. 13, p. 95; Etym. Magn. ad voc. Mupívva). Of these, Myrina was on the coast, Hephæstia inland (Ptol.). The former lay on the western, the latter towards the eastern side of the island (ibid.). It was said that Mount Athos at the solstice cast its shadow into the forum of Myrina (Plin. 1. s. c.; Apoll. Rhod. i. 601-604). The site is probably marked by the modern Kastro, which is now the chief town in the island. APPENDIX TO BOOK VI. ESSAY I. ON THE CIRCUMSTANCES OF THE BATTLE OF MARATHON. 1. Difficulties in the description of Herodotus. 2. Number of Persians enza 3. Numbers of the Greeks. 4. Proportion, five or six to one. 5. Landr of the army of Datis, and disposition of the troops. 6. Position occupa by the Greeks. 7. Motives inducing the Persians to delay the attack. Causes of the original inaction of the Greeks, and of their subsequ 10. Descript change of tactics. 9. Miltiades' preparations for battle. of the battle-re-embarkation of the invading army. 1. THE description which Herodotus has given of the battle Marathon is satisfactory to few moderns. It is a bold and graphi sketch; but it is wanting in that accuracy of detail, and in thos minute allusions to localities, which could alone have enabled the ordinary, or even the military, reader, to reproduce in imaginatiz the struggle as it actually occurred. Herodotus omits to furt any account of the numbers engaged on either side; he does Lot clearly mark the position of either army; he very imperfectl describes the disposition which the Greek general made of his troops, and takes no notice at all (unless incidentally) of the dis position made by the Persian leaders; above all, he is entirely silent on the subject of the Persian cavalry, neither telling us what part they took in the action, nor offering any explanation of their apparent absence from it. Again, he gives us no satisfactory account of the motives at work on either side; of the reasons deter mining both parties to delay so long, and Miltiades to strike whe the he did; nor even of the mode in which the two armies spent 1 Col. Leake, in his 'Demi of Attica' (Appendix, No. I.), and Mr. Blakesley, in his edition of Herodotus (vol. ii. pp. 172-180) have written Essays upon the difficulties which beset the description of our author. Mr. Grote remarks on the deficiencies of his account (Hist. of Greece, vol. iv. p 465, note). ESSAY I. NUMBERS OF THE PERSIANS. 517 interval. Further, besides these various omissions, there are certain inconsistencies in what he actually relates of the battle, which seem to show that his description is not even exact and correct so far as it goes, but requires, besides amplification, a certain degree of correction. Of this nature is the statement that the Persian centre “broke and pursued the Greeks into the inner country;" to which there are two important objections-first, the smallness of the Greek loss, which is incompatible with such a rout of their troops; and secondly, the subsequent account of the proceedings of the Greek wings. The existence of these and similar difficulties seems to constitute a call for some more sustained consideration of the battle and its circumstances than the exigencies of a running comment allow. It is therefore proposed to devote a few consecutive pages to the elucidation of this subject in the present Essay. 2. With regard to the number of troops engaged on the side of the Persians, the reader is referred to the long foot-note on ch. 117. The total strength of the expedition is there estimated at 210,000, a number which has in its favour the authority of a tolerable historian, and the fact that it is the lowest estimate which has come down to us from any ancient writer. This number somewhat exceeds the calculation of Colonel Leake, who supposes the cavalry to have been 7000 instead of 10,000, and the crews of the horsetransports 20,000 instead of 40,000, while he omits the Greek auxiliaries altogether. It is of course impossible to arrive at accuracy on a point where details are for the most part wanting, and where there is so much conflict of authority. Perhaps the whole that we have any right to conclude from our materials is, that the fleet conveyed to the shores of Attica about 200,000 men - but 5 This reduction is purely conjectural. I have not thought myself at liberty to depart from the statement of Nepos. 6 Col. Leake's numbers here do not accord very well with one another. The crew of a horse.transport must be reckoned at 66 men and (!) for 300 transports to give 20,000 seamen ; and the horse-conveying power of a transport must be reckoned at 11 horses and (!) for 3500 horses to need 300 transports. I suppose 10,000 horses, 25 in a transport; therefore 400 transports and 100 men to each. 518 NUMBERS OF THE GREEKS. AFP. BOOK L whether some thousands more or some thousands fewer we canno say. The next point to be considered is, how many of the 20048. took part in the battle? Col. Leake proposes a deduction of nearly one-fourth of the "nominal strength" on account of "want of complement at the outset, desertion, sickness, accidents to ships disabled horses, and garrisons at places on the way."? But Herodotus appears to regard the armament as increased rather tha diminished on its way from Asia. No garrisons are said to have been left in the islands, while troops were taken from each, pr> bably at least enough to balance the losses from other causes. It is however far from probable that the whole 200,000 were engaged in the battle. Herodotus relates that Hippias "anchored the fleet c2 Marathon" at the time of the disembarkation; and the circumstances of the re-embarkation seem to show that the ships were kept riding on their anchors, and ready for sea to the last. This would have involved the detention in the fleet of at least one-half of the crews, say 80,000 men, whereby the men landed would be reduced to 120,000. It is further doubtful (as has been already noticed more than once) whether the cavalry were present in the battle: if ! they were absent, the actual combatants would not have exceeded 110,000, of whom scarcely more than 30,000 could have been heavy. armed.10 3. On the side of the Greeks the number engaged was probably about 20,000. The earliest estimates of their force that we find are those of two Latin writers of the Augustan age, Trogus Pompeirs and Cornelius Nepos. The former (whose work was epitomised by Justin) spoke of the Athenians as 10,000, and the Platæans as 1000;" the latter agreed as to the Plateans, but reduced the number of the 7 Demi of Attica, p. 221. Herod. vi. 99. 9 Ibid. ch. 107. This was a precautionary measure, in case a rapid re-embarkation should be necessary. The common practice was to draw up the vessels on the beach. 10 The triremes in the fleet of Xerxes carried only 30 men-at-arms each (infra, vii. 184). If this was the complement in the fleet of Datis, his heavy-armed would have been but 18,000. As, however, the fleet of Datis was specially intended for the conveyance of troops, whereas that of |