Note 295 — Chapter XLII · BATTLES OF PLATÆA AND MYKALE. — FINAL REPULSE OF THE PERSIANS.

Herodot. viii, 131, 132: compare Thucyd. iii, 29-32.

Herodotus says, that the Chian envoys had great difficulty in inducing Leotychidês to proceed even as far as Delos,—τὸ γὰρ προσωτέρω πᾶν δεινὸν ἦν τοῖσι Ἕλλησι, οὔτε τῶν χώρων ἐοῦσι ἐμπείροισι, στρατιῆς τε πάντα πλέα ἐδόκεε εἶναι· τὴν δὲ Σάμον ἐπιστέατο δόξῃ καὶ Ἡρακλέας στήλας ἴσον ἀπέχειν.

This last expression of Herodotus has been erroneously interpreted by some of the commentators, as if it were a measure of the geographical ignorance, either of Herodotus himself, or of those whom he is describing. In my judgment, no inferences of this kind ought to be founded upon it: it marks fear of an enemy’s country which they had not been accustomed to visit, and where they could not calculate the risk beforehand,—rather than any serious comparison between one distance and another. Speaking of our forefathers, such of them as were little used to the sea, we might say,—“A voyage to Bordeaux or Lisbon seemed to them as distant as a voyage to the Indies,”—by which we should merely affirm something as to their state of feeling, not as to their geographical knowledge.