Note 258 — Chapter XLI · BATTLE OF SALAMIS. — RETREAT OF XERXES.

Herodot. viii, 83; Plutarch (Themistoklês, c. 13; Aristeidês, c. 9; Pelopidas, c. 21). Plutarch tells a story out of Phanias respecting an incident in the moment before the action, which it is pleasing to find sufficient ground for rejecting. Themistoklês, with the prophet Euphrantidês, was offering sacrifice by the side of the admiral’s galley, when three beautiful youths, nephews of Xerxes, were brought in prisoners. As the fire was just then blazing brilliantly, and sneezing was heard from the right, the prophet enjoined Themistoklês to offer these three prisoners as a propitiatory offering to Dionysus Omêstês: which the clamor of the bystanders compelled him to do against his will. This is what Plutarch states in his life of Themistoklês; in his life of Aristeidês, he affirms that these youths were brought prisoners from Psyttaleia, when Aristeidês attacked it at the beginning of the action. Now Aristeidês did not attack Psyttaleia until the naval combat was nearly over, so that no prisoners can have been brought from thence at the commencement of the action: there could therefore have been no Persian prisoners to sacrifice, and the story may be dismissed as a fiction.