Note 2 — Chapter XXXVIII · FROM THE BATTLE OF MARATHON TO THE MARCH OF XERXES AGAINST GREECE.

Herodot. vii, 1-4. He mentions—simply as a report, and seemingly without believing it himself—that Demaratus the exiled king of Sparta was at Susa at the moment when Darius was about to choose a successor among his sons (this cannot consist with Ktesias, Persic. c. 23): and that he suggested to Xerxes a convincing argument by which to determine the mind of his father, urging the analogy of the law of regal succession at Sparta, whereby the son of a king, born after his father became king, was preferred to an elder son born before that event. The existence of such a custom at Sparta may well be doubted.

Some other anecdotes, not less difficult of belief than this, and alike calculated to bestow a factitious importance on Demaratus, will be noticed in the subsequent pages. The latter received from the Persian king the grant of Pergamus and Teuthrania, with their land-revenues, which his descendants long afterwards continued to occupy (Xenoph. Hellen. iii, 1-6): and perhaps these descendants may have been among the persons from whom Herodotus derived his information respecting the expedition of Xerxes. See vii, 239.

Plutarch (De Fraterno Amore, p. 488) gives an account in many respects different concerning the circumstances which determined the succession of Xerxes to the throne, in preference to his elder brother.