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Anxious to insist on the cogency of the motives which led the Samians to betray the Ionian cause, H. thrusts the bare fact of their treachery between two attempts to excuse it, οἱ Σάμιοι resuming the οἱ στρατηγοὶ τῶν Σαμίων. His primary motive for insisting on the insubordination and effeminacy of the Ionians is to whitewash the Samians. But we can hardly doubt that he was also influenced by the facts and feelings of his own day. The contrast between Lade and Salamis (implicit in H. and explicitly drawn out by Grote, iv. 229) was surely made by men of the Periclean age, when Athenians justified their suzerainty over their Ionic kinsmen by boasting of superior courage and discipline (Thuc. i. 75, 99). Yet the Ionians had long been adventurous sailors, had already once beaten the king's fleet (v. 112), and owed their defeat at Lade to treachery.

πενταπλήσιον: a gross exaggeration. The full force of Xerxes is 1207 ships (vii. 89), or without the Greek and Carian contingents 830.


For Syloson cf. iii. 139 f., for Aeaces iv. 138.

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