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103.
When he heard this, Xerxes smiled and said, “What a strange thing to say, Demaratus, that a thousand men would fight with so great an army! Come now, tell me this: you say that you were king of these men. Are you willing right now to fight with ten men? Yet if your state is entirely as you define it,1 you as their king should by right encounter twice as many according to your laws.
[2]
If each of them is a match for ten men of my army, then it is plain to me that you must be a match for twenty; in this way you would prove that what you say is true. But if you Greeks who so exalt yourselves are just like you and the others who come to speak with me, and are also the same size, then beware lest the words you have spoken be only idle boasting.
[3]
Let us look at it with all reasonableness: how could a thousand, or ten thousand, or even fifty thousand men, if they are all equally free and not under the rule of one man, withstand so great an army as mine? If you Greeks are five thousand, we still would be more than a thousand to one.
[4]
If they were under the rule of one man according to our custom, they might out of fear of him become better than they naturally are, and under compulsion of the lash they might go against greater numbers of inferior men; but if they are allowed to go free they would do neither. I myself think that even if they were equal in numbers it would be hard for the Greeks to fight just against the Persians.
[5]
What you are talking about is found among us alone, and even then it is not common but rare; there are some among my Persian spearmen who will gladly fight with three Greeks at once. You have no knowledge of this and are spouting a lot of nonsense.”
Herodotus, with an English translation by A. D. Godley. Cambridge. Harvard University Press. 1920.
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References (27 total)
- Commentary references to this page
(2):
- C.E. Graves, Commentary on Thucydides: Book 4, CHAPTER CX
- George W. Mooney, Commentary on Apollonius: Argonautica, 3.481
- Cross-references to this page
(4):
- Herbert Weir Smyth, A Greek Grammar for Colleges, ADVERBIAL COMPLEX SENTENCES (2193-2487）
- Raphael Kühner, Bernhard Gerth, Ausführliche Grammatik der griechischen Sprache, KG 1.pos=2.2
- William Watson Goodwin, Syntax of the Moods and Tenses of the Greek Verb, Chapter IV
- Basil L. Gildersleeve, Syntax of Classical Greek, The Particle ἄν
- Cross-references in notes from this page
(1):
- Herodotus, Histories, 6.57
- Cross-references in general dictionaries to this page
(20):
- LSJ, ἀνίημι
- LSJ, ἀνι^σόω
- LSJ, ἀντάξιος
- LSJ, ἀντιτάσσω
- LSJ, αὐτίκα^
- LSJ, αὐχέω
- LSJ, δίζημαι
- LSJ, διπλ-άσιος
- LSJ, εἰκός
- LSJ, φλυ^α_ρ-έω
- LSJ, φοιτ-άω
- LSJ, κόμπος
- LSJ, μάτην
- LSJ, ὀρθόω
- LSJ, πεντα^κισ-μύριοι
- LSJ, περί
- LSJ, πολι_τ-ι^κός
- LSJ, τοιοῦτος
- LSJ, τοσοῦτος
- LSJ, χαλεπ-ός
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