De Heroditi malignate

Plutarch

Plutarch. Plutarch's Morals, Vol. IV. Goodwin, William W., editor; A.G., translator. Boston: Little, Brown, and Company; Cambridge: Press of John Wilson and Son, 1874.

And deriding the Greeks still further, he says, that Themistocles, who was called another Ulysses for his wisdom, was so blind that he could not foresee what was fit to be done; but that Artemisia, who was of the same city with Herodotus, without being taught by any one, but by her own consideration, said thus to Xerxes: The Greeks will not long be able to hold out against you, but you will scatter them, and they will flee to their own cities; nor is it probable, if you march your army by land to Peloponnesus, that they will sit still, or take care to fight at sea for the Athenians. But if you make haste to give them a naval battle, I fear lest your fleets receiving damage may prove also very prejudicial to your land-forces. [*](Herod. VIII. 68.) Certainly Herodotus wanted nothing but verses to make Artemisia another Sibyl, so exactly prophesying of things to come. Therefore Xerxes also delivered his sons to her to be carried to Ephesus; for he had (it seems) forgot to bring women with him from Susa, if indeed the boys wanted a train of female attendants.

But it is not our design to search into the lies of Herodotus; we only make enquiry into those which he invented to detract from the glory of others. He says: It is reported by the Athenians that Adimantus, captain of the Corinthians, when the enemies were now ready to join battle, was struck with such fear and astonishment that he fled; not thrusting his ship backward by the stern, or leisurely

retreating through those that were engaged, but openly hoisting up his sails, and turning the heads of all his vessels. And about the farther part of the Salaminian coast, he was met by a pinnace, out of which one spake thus to him: Thou indeed, Adimantus, fliest, having betrayed the Grecians; yet they overcome, and according to their desires have the better of their enemies. [*](Herod. VIII. 94.) This pinnace was certainly let down from heaven. For what should hinder him from erecting a tragical machine, who by his boasting excelled the tragedians in all other things? Adimantus then crediting him (he adds) returned to the fleet, when the business was already done. This report, says he, is believed by the Athenians; but the Corinthians deny it, and say, they were the first at the sea-fight, for which they have the testimony of all the other Greeks. Such is this man in many other places. He spreads different calumnies and accusations of different men, that he may not fail of making some one appear altogether wicked. And it has succeeded well with him in this place; for if the calumny is believed, the Corinthians — if it is not, the Athenians — are rendered infamous. But in truth the Athenians did not belie the Corinthians, but he hath belied them both. Certainly Thucydides, bringing in an Athenian ambassador contesting with a Corinthian at Sparta, and gloriously boasting of many things about the Persian war and the sea-fight at Salamis, charges not the Corinthians with any crime of treachery or leaving their station. Nor was it likely the Athenians should object any such thing against Corinth, when they saw her engraven in the third place after the Lacedaemonians and themselves on those spoils which, being taken from the barbarians, were consecrated to the Gods. And in Salamis they had permitted them to bury the dead near the city, as being men who had behaved themselves gallantly, and to write over them this elegy:
  • Well-watered Corinth, stranger, was our home;
  • Salamis, Ajax’s isle, is now our grave;
  • Here Medes and Persians and Phoenician ships
  • We fought and routed, sacred Greece to save.
    • And their honorary sepulchre at the Isthmus has on it this epitaph:
  • When Greece upon the point of danger stood,
  • We fell, defending her with our life-blood.
    • [*](The versions of this epigram and of the last two in this chapter are taken from Burges’s Greek Anthology. (G.))
    Moreover, on the offerings of Diodorus, one of the Corinthian sea-captains, reserved in the temple of Latona, there is this inscription:
  • Diodorus’s seamen to Latona sent
  • These arms, of hostile Medes the monument.
    • And as for Adimantus himself, against whom Herodotus frequently inveighs, — saying, that he was the only captain who went about to fly from Artemisium, and would not stay the fight, — behold in how great honor he is:
  • Here Adimantus rests: the same was he,
  • Whose counsels won for Greece the crown of liberty.
    • For neither is it probable, that such honor would have been shown to a coward and a traitor after his decease; nor would he have dared to give his daughters the names of Nausinica, Acrothinius, and Alexibia, and his son that of Aristeas, if he had not performed some illustrious and memorable action in that fight. Nor is it credible that Herodotus was ignorant of that which could not be unknown even to the meanest Carian, that the Corinthian women alone made that glorious and divine prayer, by which they besought the Goddess Venus to inspire their husbands with a love of fighting against the barbarians. For it was a thing divulged abroad, concerning which Simonides made an epigram to be inscribed on the brazen image set up in that temple of Venus which is said to have been founded by Medea, when she desired the Goddess, as
    some affirm, to deliver her from loving her husband Jason, or, as others say, to free him from loving Thetis. The tenor of the epigram follows:
  • For those who, fighting on their country’s side,
  • Opposed th’ imperial Mede’s advancing tide,
  • We, votaresses, to Cythera pray’d;
  • Th’ indulgent power vouchsafed her timely aid,
  • And kept the citadel of Hellas free
  • From rude assaults of Persia’s archery.
    • These things he should rather have written and recorded, than have inserted Aminocles’s killing of his son.

    After he had abundantly satisfied himself with the accusations brought against Themistocles, — of whom he says that, unknown to the other captains, he incessantly robbed and spoiled the islands, — [*](Herod. VIII. 112.) he at length openly takes away the crown of victory from the Athenians, and sets it on the head of the Aeginetans, writing thus: The Greeks having sent the first-fruits of their spoils to Delphi, asked in general of the God, whether he had a sufficient part of the booty and were contented with it. He answered, that he had enough of all the other Greeks, but not of the Aeginetans; for he expected a donary of them, as having won the greatest honor in the battle at Salamis. [*](Herod. VIII. 122.) See here how he attributes not his fictions to the Scythians, to the Persians, or to the Egyptians, as Aesop did his to the ravens and apes; but using the very person of the Pythian Apollo, he takes from Athens the chief honor of the battle at Salamis. And the second place in honor being given to Themistocles at the Isthmus by all the other captains, — every one of which attributed to himself the first degree of valor, but gave the next to Themistocles, — and the judgment not coming to a determination, when he should have reprehended the ambition of the captains, he said, that all the Greeks weighed anchor from thence

    through envy, not being willing to give the chief honor of the victory to Themistocles.[*](Herod. VIII. 123, 124.)