Note 376 — Chapter XLII · BATTLES OF PLATÆA AND MYKALE. — FINAL REPULSE OF THE PERSIANS.

Herodot. ix, 78, 79. This suggestion, so abhorrent to Grecian feeling, is put by the historian into the mouth of the Æginetan Lampôn. In my preceding note, I have alluded to another statement made by Herodotus, not very creditable to the Æginetans: there is, moreover, a third (ix, 80), in which he represents them as having cheated the Helots in their purchases of the booty. We may presume him to have heard all these anecdotes at Platæa: at the time when he probably visited that place, not long before the Peloponnesian war, the inhabitants were united in the most intimate manner with Athens, and doubtless sympathized in the hatred of the Athenians against Ægina. It does not from hence follow that the stories are all untrue. I disbelieve, indeed, the advice said to have been given by Lampôn to crucify the body of Mardonius,—which has more the air of a poetical contrivance for bringing out an honorable sentiment, than of a real incident. But there seems no reason to doubt the truth of the other two stories. Herodotus does but too rarely specify his informants: it is interesting to scent out the track in which his inquiries have been prosecuted.

After the battle of Kunaxa, and the death of Cyrus the younger, his dead body had the head and hands cut off, by order of Artaxerxes, and nailed to a cross (Xenoph. Anab. i, 10, 1; iii, 1, 17).