Note 320 — Chapter XLIX · FROM THE BEGINNING OE THE SECOND YEAR DOWN TO THE END OF THE THIRD YEAR OF THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR.

Thucyd. ii. 67. Dr. Thirlwall (Hist. Greece, vol. iii, ch. 20, p. 129) says that “the envoys were sacrificed chiefly to give a decent color to the baseness” of killing Aristeus, from whom the Athenians feared subsequent evil, in consequence of his ability and active spirit. I do not think this is fairly contained in the words of Thucydidês. He puts in the foreground of Athenian motive, doubtless, fear from the future energy of Aristeus; but if that had been the only motive, the Athenians would probably have slain him singly without the rest: they would hardly think it necessary to provide themselves with “any decent color,” in the way that Dr. Thirlwall suggests. Thucydidês names the special feeling of the Athenians against Aristeus (in my judgment), chiefly in order to explain the extreme haste of the Athenian sentence of execution—αὐθήμερον—ἀκρίτους, etc.: they were under the influence of combined motives,—fear, revenge, retaliation.

The envoys here slain were sons of Sperthiês and Bulis, former Spartan heralds who had gone up to Xerxes at Susa to offer their heads as atonement for the previous conduct of the Spartans in killing the heralds of Darius. Xerxes dismissed them unhurt,—so that the anger of Talthybius (the heroic progenitor of the family of heralds at Sparta) remained still unsatisfied: it was only satisfied by the death of their two sons, now slain by the Athenians. The fact that the two persons now slain were sons of those two (Sperthiês and Bulis) who had previously gone to Susa to tender their lives,—is spoken of as a “romantic and tragical coincidence.” But there surely is very little to wonder at. The functions of herald at Sparta, were the privilege of a particular gens, or family: every herald, therefore, was ex officio the son of a herald. Now when the Lacedæmonians, at the beginning of this Peloponnesian war, were looking out for two members of the heraldic gens to send up to Susa, upon whom would they so naturally fix as upon the sons of those two men who had been to Susa before? These sons had doubtless heard their fathers talk a great deal about it,—probably with interest and satisfaction, since they derived great glory from the unaccepted offer of their lives in atonement. There was a particular reason why these two men should be taken, in preference to any other heralds, to fulfil this dangerous mission: and doubtless when they perished in it, the religious imagination of the Lacedæmonians would group all the series of events as consummation of the judgment inflicted by Talthybius in his anger (Herodot. vii, 135—ὡς λέγουσι Λακεδαιμόνιοι).

It appears that Anêristus, the herald here slain, had distinguished himself personally in that capture of fishermen on the coast of Peloponnesus by the Lacedæmonians, for which the Athenians were now retaliating (Herodot. vii, 137). Though this passage of Herodotus is not clear, yet the sense here put upon it is the natural one,—and clearer (in my judgment) than that which O. Müller would propose instead of it (Dorians, ii, p. 437).