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139.
Here I am forced to declare an opinion which will be displeasing to most, but I will not refrain from saying what seems to me to be true.
[2]
Had the Athenians been panic-struck by the threatened peril and left their own country, or had they not indeed left it but remained and surrendered themselves to Xerxes, none would have attempted to withstand the king by sea. What would have happened on land if no one had resisted the king by sea is easy enough to determine.
[3]
Although the Peloponnesians had built not one but many walls across the Isthmus for their defense,1 they would nevertheless have been deserted by their allies (these having no choice or free will in the matter, but seeing their cities taken one by one by the foreign fleet), until at last they would have stood alone. They would then have put up quite a fight and perished nobly.
[4]
Such would have been their fate. Perhaps, however, when they saw the rest of Hellas siding with the enemy, they would have made terms with Xerxes. In either case Hellas would have been subdued by the Persians, for I cannot see what advantage could accrue from the walls built across the isthmus, while the king was master of the seas.
[5]
As it is, to say that the Athenians were the saviors of Hellas is to hit the truth. It was the Athenians who held the balance; whichever side they joined was sure to prevail. choosing that Greece should preserve her freedom, the Athenians roused to battle the other Greek states which had not yet gone over to the Persians and, after the gods, were responsible for driving the king off.
[6]
Nor were they moved to desert Hellas by the threatening oracles which came from Delphi and sorely dismayed them, but they stood firm and had the courage to meet the invader of their country.
1 Cp. Hdt. 1.181, where the wall of Babylon is called a θώρηξ.
Herodotus, with an English translation by A. D. Godley. Cambridge. Harvard University Press. 1920.
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References (26 total)
- Commentary references to this page
(1):
- E.C. Marchant, Commentary on Thucydides: Book 7, 7.64
- Cross-references to this page
(5):
- Herbert Weir Smyth, A Greek Grammar for Colleges, THE PARTICIPLE
- Raphael Kühner, Bernhard Gerth, Ausführliche Grammatik der griechischen Sprache, KG 1.3.1
- Raphael Kühner, Bernhard Gerth, Ausführliche Grammatik der griechischen Sprache, KG 1.pos=2.2
- Raphael Kühner, Bernhard Gerth, Ausführliche Grammatik der griechischen Sprache, KG 3.5.3
- William Watson Goodwin, Syntax of the Moods and Tenses of the Greek Verb, Chapter VI
- Cross-references in notes from this page
(1):
- Herodotus, Histories, 1.181
- Cross-references in general dictionaries to this page (19):
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