Note 299 — Chapter XLII · BATTLES OF PLATÆA AND MYKALE. — FINAL REPULSE OF THE PERSIANS.

Herodot. viii. 141. Λακεδαιμόνιοι δὲ ... ἀναμνησθέντες τῶν λογίων, ὥς σφεας χρεόν ἐστι ἅμα τοῖσι ἄλλοισι Δωριεῦσι ἐκπίπτειν ἐκ Πελοποννήσου ὑπὸ Μήδων τε καὶ Ἀθηναίων, κάρτα τε ἔδεισαν μὴ ὁμολογήσωσι τῷ Πέρσῃ Ἀθηναῖοι, etc.

Such oracles must have been generated by the hopes of the medizing party in Greece at this particular moment: there is no other point of time to which they could be at all adapted,—no other, in which expulsion of all the Dorians from Peloponnesus, by united Persians and Athenians, could be even dreamed of. The Lacedæmonians are indeed said here, “to call to mind the prophecies,”—as if these latter were old, and not now produced for the first time. But we must recollect that a fabricator of prophecies, such as Onomakritus, would in all probability at once circulate them as old; that is, as forming part of some old collection like that of Bakis or Musæus. And Herodotus doubtless, himself, believed them to be old, so that he would naturally give credit to the Lacedæmonians for the same knowledge, and suppose them to be alarmed by “calling these prophecies to mind.”