Page:History of Greece Vol V.djvu/35

 DREAMS OF XERXES. H also a third dream, which appeared to Xerxes after his resolution to march was finally taken, and which the mistake of the Maoian interpreters falsely construed i into an encouragement, though it really thi-eatened ruin. How much this religious conception of the sequence of events belongs to the age, appears by the fact, that it not only appears in Pindar and the Attic tragedians gen- erally, but pervades especially the Persae of -^schylus, exhibited seven years after the battle of Salamis, — in which we find the premonitory dreams as well as the jealous enmity of the gods towards vast power and overweening aspirations in man,^ though without any of that inclination, which Herodotus seems to have derived from Persian informants, to exculpate Xerxes by repre- senting him as disposed himself to sober counsels, but driven in a contrary direction by the irresistible fiat of the gods.3 ' Compare the dream of Darius Codomannus. Plutarch, Alexander, c. 18. Concerning, the punishment inflicted by Astyages on the Magians for misinterpreting his dreams, see Herodot. i, 128. Philochorus, skilled in divination, affirmed that Nikias put a totally wrong interpretation upon that fatal eclipse of the moon which induced him to delay his retreat, and proved his ruin (Plutarch, Nikias, c. 23). ^ ^schylus, Pers. 96, 104, 181, 220, 368, 745, 825: compare Sophocl. Ajax, 129, 744, 775, and the end of the CEdipus Tyrannus ; Euripid. Hecub. 58 ; Pindar, Olymp. viii. 86 ; Isthm. vi, 39 ; Pausanias, ii, 33, 3. Compare the sense of the word Ssiaidai/j-uv in Xenophon. Agesilaus, c. 11, sect. 8, — " the man who in the midst of success fears the envious gods," — opposed to the person who confides in its continuance ; and Klausen, The- ologumena JEschyli, p. 18. ^ The manner in which Herodotus groups together the facts of his history, in obedience to certain religious and moral sentiments in his own mind, is well set forth in Hoffmeister, Sittlich — religiose Lebensansicht des Herod- otos, Essen, 1832, especially sects. 21, 22, pp. 112, seqq. Hoffmeister traces the veins of sentiment running through, and often overlaying, or trans- forming, the matters of fact through a considerable portion of the nine books. He does not, perhaps, sufficiently advert to the circumstance, that the informants from whom Herodotus collected his facts were for the most part imbued with sentiments similar to himself; so that the religious and moral vein pervaded more or less his original materials, and did not need to be added by himself. There can be little doubt that the priests, the ministers of temples and oracles, the exegeta; or interpreting guides around these holy places were among his chief sources for instructing himself: a stranger, visiting so many different cities must have been constantly in a situation to have no other person whom he could consult. The temples we- e interest-