Now Aristophanes the Boeotian wrote, that Herodotus demanded money of the Thebans but received none, and that going about to discourse and reason with the young men, he was prohibited by the magistrates through their clownishness and hatred of learning; of which there is no other argument. But Herodotus bears witness to Aristophanes, whilst he charges the Thebans with some things falsely, with others ignorantly, and with others as hating them and having a quarrel with them. For he affirms that the Thessalians at first upon necessity inclined to the Persians,Herod. VII. 172 in which he says the truth; and prophesying of the other Grecians that they would betray the Lacedaemonians, he added, that they would not do it willingly, but upon necessity, one city being taken after another. But he does not allow the Thebans the same plea of necessity, although they sent to Tempe five hundred men under the command of Mnamias, and to Thermopylae as many as Leonidas desired, who also alone with the Thespians stood by him, the rest leaving him after he was surrounded. But when the barbarian, having possessed himself of the avenues, was got into their confines, and Demaratus the Spartan, favoring in right of hospitality Attaginus, the chief of the oligarchy, had so wrought that he became the King’s friend and familiar, whilst the other Greeks were in their ships, and none came on by land; then at last being forsaken did they accept conditions of peace, to which they were compelled by great necessity. For they had neither the sea and ships at hand, as had the Athenians; nor did they dwell far off, as the Spartans, who inhabited the most remote parts of Greece; but were not above a day and half’s journey from the Persian army, whom they had already with the Spartans and Thespians alone resisted at the entrance of the straits, and were defeated.

But this writer is so equitable, that having said, The Lacedaemonians, being alone and deserted by their allies, would perhaps have made a composition with Xerxes, he yet abuses the Thebans, who were driven to the same act by the same necessity. But when he could not wholly obliterate this most great and glorious act of the Thebans, yet went he about to deface it with a most vile imputation and suspicion, writing thus: The confederates who had been sent returned back, obeying the commands of Leonidas; there remained only with the Lacedaemonians the Thespians and the Thebans: of these, the Thebans stayed against their wills, for Leonidas retained them as hostages; but the Thespians most willingly, as they said they would never depart from Leonidas and those that were with him. Herod. VII. 222. Does he not here manifestly discover himself to have a peculiar pique and hatred against the Thebans, by the impulse of which he not only falsely and unjustly calumniated the city, but did not so much as take care to render his contradiction probable, or to conceal, at least from a few men, his being conscious of having knowingly contradicted himself? For having before said that Leonidas, perceiving his confederates not to be in good heart nor prepared to undergo danger, wished them to depart, he a little after adds that the Thebans were against their wills detained by him; whereas, if he had believed them inclined to the Persians, he should have driven them away though they had been willing to tarry. For if he thought that those who were not brisk would be useless, to what purpose was it to mix among his soldiers those that were suspected? Nor was the king of the Spartans and general of all Greece so senseless as to think that four hundred armed Thebans could be detained as hostages by his three hundred, especially the enemy being both in his front and rear. For though at first he might have taken them along with him as hostages; it is certainly probable that at last, having no regard for him, they would have gone away from him, and that Leonidas would have more feared his being encompassed by them than by the enemy. Furthermore, would not Leonidas have been ridiculous, to have sent away the other Greeks, as if by staying they should soon after have died, and to have detained the Thebans, that being himself about to die, he might keep them for the Greeks? For if he had indeed carried them along with him for hostages, or rather for slaves, he should not have kept them with those that were at the point of perishing, but have delivered them to the Greeks that went away. There remained but one cause that might be alleged for Leonidas’s unwillingness to let them go, to wit, that they might die with him; and this our historian himself has taken away, writing thus of Leonidas’s ambition: Leonidas considering these things, and desirous that this glory might redound to the Spartans alone, sent away his confederates rather for this than because they differed in their opinions. Herod. VII. 220. For it had certainly been the height of folly to keep his enemies against their wills, to be partakers of that glory from which he drove away his confederates. But it is manifest from the effects, that Leonidas suspected not the Thebans of insincerity, but esteemed them to be his steadfast friends. For he marched with his army into Thebes, and at his request obtained that which was never granted to any other, to sleep within the temple of Hercules; and the next morning he related to the Thebans the vision that had appeared to him. For he imagined that he saw the most illustrious and greatest cities of Greece irregularly tost and floating up and down on a very stormy and tempestuous sea; that Thebes, being carried above all the rest, was lifted up on high to heaven, and suddenly after disappeared. And this indeed had a resemblance of those things which long after befell that city.

Now Herodotus, in his narration of that fight, hath obscured also the bravest act of Leonidas, saying that they all fell in the straits near the hill.Herod. VII. 225. But the affair was otherwise managed. For when they perceived by night that they were encompassed by the barbarians, they marched straight to the enemies’ camp, and got very near the King’s pavilion, with a resolution to kill him and leave their lives about him. They came then to his tent, killing or putting to flight all they met; but when Xerxes was not found there, seeking him in that vast camp and wandering about, they were at last with much difficulty slain by the barbarians, who surrounded them on every side. What other acts and sayings of the Spartans Herodotus has omitted, we will write in the Life of Leonidas; yet that hinders not but we may here set down also some few. Before Leonidas went forth to that war, the Spartans exhibited to him funeral games, at which the fathers and mothers of those that went along with him were spectators. Leonidas himself, when one said to him, You lead very few with you to the battle, answered, There are many to die there. When his wife, at his departure, asked him what commands he had for her; he, turning to her, said, I command you to marry good men, and bring them good children. After he was enclosed by the enemy at Thermopylae, desiring to save two that were related to him, he gave one of them a letter and sent him away; but he rejected it, saying angrily, I followed you as a soldier, not as a post. The other he commanded on a message to the magistrates of Sparta; but he, answering by his act, took his shield, and stood up in his rank. Who would not have blamed another that should have omitted these things? But he who has collected and recorded the fart of Amasis, the coming of the thiefs asses, and the giving of bottles, and many such like things, cannot seem to have omitted these gallant acts and these remarkable sayings by negligence and oversight, but as bearing ill-will and being unjust to some.

He says that the Thebans, being at the first with the Greeks, fought compelled by necessity.Herod. VII. 233. For belike not only Xerxes, but Leonidas also, had whipsters following his camp, by whom the Thebans were scourged and forced against their wills to fight. And what more savage libeller could be found than Herodotus, when he says that they fought upon necessity, who might have gone away and fled, and that they inclined to the Persians, whereas not one came in to help them. After this, he writes that, the rest making to the hill, the Thebans separated themselves from them, lifted up their hands to the barbarian, and coming near, cried with a most true voice, that they had favored the Persians, had given earth and water to the King, that now being forced by necessity they were come to Thermopylae, and that they were innocent of the King’s wound. Having said these things, they obtained quarter; for they had the Thessalians for witnesses of all they said. Behold, how amidst the barbarians’ exclamations, tumults of all sorts, flights and pursuits, their apology was heard, the witnesses examined; and the Thessalians, in the midst of those that were slain and trodden under foot, all being done in a very narrow passage, patronized the Thebans, to wit, because the Thebans had but a little before driven away them, who were possessed of all Greece as far as Thespiae, having conquered them in a battle, and slain their leader Lattamyas! For thus at that time stood matters between the Boeotians and the Thessalians, without any friendship or good-will. But yet how did the Thebans escape, the Thessalians helping them with their testimonies? Some of them, says he, were slain by the barbarians; many of them were by command of Xerxes marked with the royal mark, beginning with their leader Leontiades. Now the captain of the Thebans at Thermopylae was not Leontiades, but Anaxander, as both Aristophanes, out of the Commentaries of the Magistrates, and Nicander the Colophonian have taught us. Nor did any man before Herodotus know that the Thebans were stigmatized by Xerxes; for otherwise this would have been an excellent plea for them against his calumny, and this city might well have gloried in these marks, that Xerxes had punished Leonidas and Leontiades as his greatest enemies, having outraged the body of the one when he was dead, and caused the other to be tormented whilst living. But as to a man who makes the barbarian’s cruelty against Leonidas when dead a sign that he hated him most of all men when living,Herod. VII. 238. and yet says that the Thebans, though favoring the Persians, were stigmatized by them at Thermopylae, and having been thus stigmatized, again cheerfully took their parts at Plataea, it seems to me that such a man — like that HippoclidesSee Herod. VI. 126-130. who stood on his head upon a table and gesticulated with his legs — would dance away the truth and exclaim, Herodotus cares not for that.

In the Eighth Book our author says, that the Greeks being frighted designed to fly from Artemisium into Greece, and that, being requested by the Euboeans to stay a little till they could dispose of their wives and families, they regarded them not, till such time as Themistocles, having taken money of them, divided it between Eurybiades and Adimantus, the captain of the Corinthians, and that then they stayed and had a sea-fight with the barbarians.Herod. VIII. 4 Yet Pindar, who was not a citizen of any of the confederate cities, but of one that was suspected to take part with the Medians, having made mention of Artemisium, brake forth into this exclamation: This is the place where the sons of the Athenians laid the glorious foundation of liberty. But Herodotus, by whom, as some will have it, Greece is honored, makes that victory a work of bribery and theft, saying that the Greeks, deceived by their captains, who had to that end taken money, fought against their wills. Nor does he here put an end to his malice. All men in a manner confess that, although the Greeks got the better at sea, they nevertheless abandoned Artemisium to the barbarians after they had received the news of the overthrow at Thermopylae. For it was to no purpose for them to stay there and keep the sea, the war being already within Thermopylae, and Xerxes having possessed himself of the avenues. But Herodotus makes the Greeks contriving to fly before they heard any thing of Leonidas’s death. For thus he says: But they having been ill-treated, and especially the Athenians, half of whose ships were sorely shattered, consulted to take their flight into Greece. Herod. VIII. 18. But let him be permitted so to name (or rather reproach) this retreat of theirs before the fight; but having before called it a flight, he both now styles it a flight, and will again a little after term it a flight; so bitterly does he adhere to this word flight. Presently after this, says he, there came to the barbarians in the pinnace a man of Hestiaea, who acquainted them with the flight of the Grecians from Artemisium. They, because the thing seemed incredible, kept the messenger in custody, and sent forth some light galleys to discover the truth. Herod. VIII. 23. But what is this you say? That they fled as conquered, whom the enemies after the fight could not believe to have fled, as having got much the better? Is then this a fellow fit to be believed when he writes of any man or city, who in one word deprives Greece of the victory, throws down the trophy, and pronounces the inscriptions they had set up to Diana Proseoa (Eastward-looking) to be nothing but pride and vain boasting? The tenor of the inscription was as follows: When Athens youth had in a naval fight All Asia’s forces on this sea overthrown, And all the Persian army put to flight, Than which a greater scarce was ever known, To show how much Diana they respected, This trophy to her honor they erected. Moreover, not having described any order of the Greeks, nor told us what place every city of theirs held during the sea-fight, he says that in this retreat, which he calls their flight, the Corinthians sailed first and the Athenians last.Herod. VIII. 21.

He indeed ought not to have too much insulted over the Greeks that took part with the Persians, who, being by others thought a Thurian, reckons himself among the Halicarnassians, who, being Dorians by descent, went with their wives and children to the war against the Greeks. But he is so far from giving first an account of the straits they were in who revolted to the Persians, that, having related how the Thessalians sent to the Phocians, who were their mortal enemies, and promised to preserve their country free from all damage if they might receive from them a reward of fifty talents, he writ thus of the Phocians: For the Phocians were the only people in these quarters who inclined not to the Persians, and that, as far as I upon due consideration can find, for no other reason but because they hated the Thessalians; for if the Thessalians had been affected to the Grecian affairs, I suppose the Phocians would have joined themselves to the Persians. And yet a little after he will say, that thirteen cities of the Phocians were burned by the barbarians, their country laid waste, and the temple which was in Abae set on fire, and all of both sexes put to the sword, except those that by flight escaped to Parnassus.Herod. VIII. 30-33. Compare IX. 17. Nevertheless, he puts those who suffered all extremities rather than lose their honesty in the same rank with those who most affectionately sided with the Persians. And when he could not blame the Phocians’ actions, he sat at his desk devising false causes and framing suspicions against them, and bidding us judge them not by what they did, but by what they would have done if the Thessalians had not taken the same side, as if they had been shut out from treason because they found the place already occupied by others! Now if any one, going about to excuse the revolt of the Thessalians to the Persians, should say that they would not have done it but for the hatred they bare the Phocians, — whom when they saw joined to the Greeks, they against their inclinations followed the party of the Persians, — would not such a one be thought most shamefully to flatter, and for the sake of others to pervert the truth, by feigning good causes for evil actions? Indeed, I think, he would. Why then would not he be thought openly to calumniate, who says that the Phocians chose the best, not for the love of virtue, but because they saw the Thessalians on the contrary side? For neither does he refer this device to other authors, as he is elsewhere wont to do, but says that himself found it out by conjecture. He should therefore have produced certain arguments, by which he was persuaded that they, who did things like the best, followed the same counsels with the worst. For what he alleges of their enmities is ridiculous. For neither did the difference between the Aeginetans and the Athenians, nor that between the Chalcidians and the Eretrians, nor yet that between the Corinthians and the Megarians, hinder them from fighting together for Greece. Nor did the Macedonians, their most bitter enemies, divert the Thessalians from their friendship with the barbarians, by joining the Persian party themselves. For the common danger did so bury their private grudges, that banishing their other passions, they applied their minds either to honesty for the sake of virtue, or to profit through the impulse of necessity. And indeed, after that necessity which compelled them to obey the Persians was over, they returned again to the Greeks, as Lacrates the Spartan has openly testified of them. And Herodotus, as constrained to it, in his relation of the affairs at Plataea, confessed that the Phocians took part with the Greeks.Herod. IX. 31.