Page:History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (Müller) 2ed.djvu/293

Rh preparations for war, the movements of the army, and the campaign against Greece itself (Book VII.). Even here, however, the narrative moves at a slow pace; and thus keeps the expectation upon the stretch. The march and mustering of the Persian army give full time and opportunity for forming a distinct and complete notion of its enormous force; and the negotiations of the Greek states afford an equally clear conception of their jealousies and dissensions; facts which make the ultimate issue of the contest appear the more astonishing. After the preliminary and undecisive battles of Thermopylæ and Artemisium (Book VIII.), comes the decisive battle of Salamis, which is described with the greatest vividness and animation. This is followed (in Book IX.) by the battle of Platæa, drawn with the same distinctness, particularly as regards all its antecedents and circumstances; together with the contemporaneous battle of Mycale and the other measures of the Greeks for turning their victory to account. Although the work seems unfinished, it concludes with a sentiment which cannot have been placed casually at the end; viz. that (as the great Cyrus was supposed to have said) "It is not always the richest and most fertile country which produces the most valiant men."

§ 5. In this manner Herodotus gives a certain unity to his history; and, notwithstanding the extent of his subject, which comprehends nearly all the nations of the world at that time known, the narrative is constantly advancing. The history of Herodotus has an epic character, not only from the equable and uninterrupted flow of the narrative, but also from certain pervading ideas, which give an uniform tone to the whole. The principal of these is the idea of a fixed destiny, of a wise arrangement of the world, which has prescribed to every being his path; and which allots ruin and destruction, not only to crime and violence, but to excessive power and riches, and the overweening pride which is their companion. In this consists the envy of the gods, so often mentioned by Herodotus; by the other Greeks usually called the divine Nemesis. He constantly adverts, in his narrative, to the influence of this divine power, the Dæmonion, as he also calls it. Thus he shows how the deity visits the sins of the ancestors upon their descendants; how the human mind is blinded by arrogance and recklessness; how man rushes, as it were, wilfully upon his own destruction; and how oracles, which ought to be warning voices against violence and insolence, mislead from their ambiguity, when interpreted by blind passion. Besides the historical narrative itself, the scattered speeches serve rather to enforce certain general ideas, particularly concerning the envy of the gods and the danger of pride, than to characterise the dispositions, views, and modes of thought of the persons represented as speaking. In fact, these speeches are rather the lyric than the dramatic part of the history of Herodotus; and if we compare it with the different parts of a Greek tragedy, they correspond, not to the