APPENDIX L. (Page 422.)

ON THE WALLS OF BABYLON.

MR. GROTE however (here quoted, loc. sup. cit.) has no difficulty in accepting in its integrity the account of Herodotus; and vindicates his belief by an appeal to the Chinese wall, which he describes as "1200 English miles in length, from 20 to 25 feet in height, and wide enough for six horses to run abreast." The analogy is not very apparent between such a line of frontier rampart, averaging about 223 feet of cubic dimensions, and two city walls each 337 feet high, 60 miles long, and from 50 to 75 feet broad. The grandeur of the Chinese work consists certainly not so much in its own bulk, as in the great extent of the frontier line which it protected. But the parallel between the two fails as entirely in regard to bulk as to general character. The above figures give for the whole of the outer Babylonian wall an amount of gross cubic dimensions more than double that of the whole Chinese wall; and taking the inner line of Babylonian wall at little more than one half the size of the outer one, the dimensions of the two together would be from three to four times those of the Chinese structure. Mr. Grote, in order to add force to his illustration, remarks that the Chinese wall contains more materials than all the buildings of the British empire put together." At this rate the walls of Babylon must have contained from three to four times as much masonry as all the buildings of the British empire; -a consequence which certainly does not tend

to increase our faith in the numbers of Herodotus. It is to be presumed that Mr. Grote has here used the phrase "British empire" inadvertently for British islands. Otherwise, taking the expression in the literal sense, the statement it affirms may be pronounced still more wildly extravagant than the historian's account of the Babylonian fortification. The substitution of "islands" for "empire" would diminish the exaggeration of the statement, but would be far from reducing it within the bounds of credibility.

APPENDIX M. (Page 468.)

ON THE HYPOTHESIS THAT THE HISTORY OF HERODOTUS IS AN UNFINISHED WORK.

THERE can be no better proof of the blindness to the higher principles of epic composition with which the disciples of the Wolfian school of criticism continue to be afflicted, than the fact, that several very able modern commentators of Herodotus have pronounced his history an unfinished work, even in respect to its main narrative; and have insisted that his original plan comprised, or ought to have comprised, a further sequel of events, such as would have been destructive of that unity which now constitutes its fundamental excellence.' Had the historian continued his subject beyond the return of the Athenian fleet to the Piræus, as these critics have suggested; had he undertaken to record the transactions narrated by Thucydides in his introductory chapter; the rise of fresh heart-burnings betwixt Athens and Sparta; the insidious attempts of the latter state to obstruct the measures of the Athenians for the restoration of their country to its former prosperity; and the fresh naval armaments fitted out by the Confederacy against the Persians, we should have been embarked in an entirely new career of historical adventures, which Herodotus would assuredly perceive to be beyond the just limits of his undertaking, as instinctively as Thucydides has recognised in them an appropriate introduction to his history of the Peloponnesian The only evidence adduced in support of this doctrine is a passage of the seventh book 2, in which the historian promises to direct the reader's attention in the sequel to a transaction beyond the limits of his present narrative; but of which transaction no further mention is made in the existing text. A more reasonable

war.

1 There is no obvious reason, says O. Müller (Hist. of Gr. Lit. p. 269.), why Herodotus should have carried down the war between the Greeks and the Persians to the taking of Sestos, without mentioning any subsequent event. This opinion however, strange to say, he contradicts — but without retracting it, in a note to the same page; where the taking of Sestos is very properly characterised as a "distinctly marked epoch." Conf. Dahlmann, Herodot. 1. § 9. p. 48., 1x. § 37. p. 217.; Smith, Dict. v. Herodotus, pp. 432. 434.

inference would be that Herodotus, who in so many other instances has noticed prospectively, or in the way of episode, matters extraneous to his immediate subject, has in this single instance, after promising further information forgotten to fulfil his engagement.

APPENDIX N. (Page 494.)

ON THE AWARDS OF MARTIAL ARISTIA BY THE GREEK CON

FEDERACY.

THE principle on which the awards of Aristia, or preeminent valour, were bestowed by Herodotus, or by Greek public opinion, appears to have been the same narrow Spartan principle which dictated the useless sacrifice of valuable lives at Thermopylæ; account being taken, not so much of the aggregate excellence of the several combatants, as of the degree of desperation displayed in the hand to hand conflict with the foe. From the commencement of the operations before Platea1 to the close of the battle, the conduct of the Athenians is described by Herodotus as not only in all respects blameless, but as distinguished by brilliant courage combined with strict discipline. During the retrograde movement from Gargaphia to Oeroe, while the fortunes of Greece were being placed in jeopardy by the dogged insubordination of a Spartan chief of battalion 2, the Athenians were steadily following out the combined movement; their share in the execution of which was peculiarly hazardous, exposing them to the much dreaded assaults of the Persian horse, the only very efficient portion of the enemy's force; while the Spartan march, being over the declivities of Citharon, was free from that annoyance.3 The Athenians, in the battle itself, were opposed to the Thebans and other HellenoPersian troops, an enemy more than five times their own number, and in themselves unquestionably far more formidable than the native Persians, the tumultuous barbarism of whose attacks, as described by Herodotus, rendered them an easy conquest to any well disciplined body of Hellenic warriors. The old and bitter hatred of the Thebans against the Athenians insured, on the other hand, as we also learn from the historian, a determined resistance 2 IX. 53. 3 IX. 56.

1 See especially 1x. 20. sqq.

on the part of the former.1

2

Even after the enemy was driven from

his position the victory remained undecided, as Herodotus pointedly tells us, until secured by the superior conduct of the Athenians; Spartan ferocity having been altogether at fault in its efforts to storm the fortified camp of the enemy, which was carried at once by the Attic troops. Yet, in the face of all these facts, not only is the award of superior valour bestowed on Sparta, but the same Amompharetus, who at the most critical moment of the action had risked the fortune of the battle by an act of mischievous and insolent disobedience, for which a modern lieutenant-colonel might have been shot or cashiered, because he happened to fall fiercely fighting in the subsequent onslaught, is numbered among the four warriors to whom the highest honours of the victory were awarded.

APPENDIX O. (Page 511.)

ON THE ATHENIAN CHARGE AT THE BATTLE OF MARATHON.

MR. GROTE supposes the object of this rapid charge to have been, to prevent, by an instantaneous attack, the disunion and distraction which the partisans of Hippias were endeavouring to create in the minds of the Athenian citizens. Whether he means the citizens left behind in the town, or the citizen soldiers drawn up on the field, is not specified. In either case it is not easy to see how, after the attack was once resolved on, the difference of some five or ten minutes between the time required for charging a mile at a run and that required for the same advance at quick march, could have appeared to Miltiades so pregnant with momentous political consequences, as to have led him to prefer a mode of assault which, as Mr. Grote further assumes, instead of securing the victory involved serious risk of defeat. That Miltiades, in spite of his apprehensions as to the state of factions in the city, was in no hurry to bring on the action, whatever may have been the ultimate velocity of his attack, is evident from the previous statement of the historian that after the other Attic generals had consented to devolve on him their share in the common right of exercising the

supreme command each in turn on successive days, he had, in order to escape all risk of blame at home, delayed the action for several days until his own proper turn came round.

Mr. Grote, however, in the face of this statement, has assumed', for behoof of his own theory, that Miltiades fought the battle immediately after the resolution of his colleagues to waive their privilege in his favour. Nor is it easy to reconcile Mr. Grote's pointed description2 of Athens "as one and indivisible" at the epoch of this battle, "instead of disunited, and torn into armed factions as she had been forty years before," with his subsequent hypothesis that the same battle was in danger of being lost, or never fought, through the machinations of the Pisistratid faction in the city to effect an armed junction with the Persian force.3

APPENDIX P. (Page 511.)

ON A POINT OF GREEK MILITARY TACTICS.

It appears from the accounts both of this battle, and of others fought by the Greeks during their flourishing age, that the Hellenic commanders attached greater importance to the strength of their flanks than to that of their centre, and had little notion of the value of the opposite system of bringing the main attack to bear on the centre of the enemy's line. The best troops were stationed in the wings, and the critical turn of the action depended mainly on the efforts of the two lines to outflank each other.4 This was the defect of the Lacedæmonian tactics, which when met by the improved system of Pelopidas and Epaminondas involved the defeat of the Spartan armies by those generals. The great battle of Mantinea is pointedly described by Xenophon5 as having been gained by the modern manœuvre of breaking the line. The Macedonian phalanx was also formed on the principle of concentrating the weight of the attack on a particular point of the enemy's front; so much so as to have been somewhat unwieldy, and hence unable to withstand the still more improved science of the Romans.