Note 247 — Chapter LVIII · FROM THE RESOLUTION OF THE ATHENIANS TO ATTACK SYRACUSE, DOWN TO THE FIRST WINTER AFTER THEIR ARRIVAL IN SICILY.

Herodot. viii, 144; Æschylus, Pers. 810; Æschyl. Agam. 339. The wrath for any indignity offered to the statue of a god or goddess, and impatience to punish it capitally, is manifested as far back as the ancient epic poem of Arktinus: see the argument of the Ἰλίου Πέρσις in Proclus, and Welcker, Griechische Tragödien, Sophoklês, sect. 21, vol. i, p. 162. Herodotus cannot explain the indignities offered by Kambyses to the Egyptian statues and holy customs upon any other supposition than that of stark madness, ἐμάνη μεγάλως; Herod. iii, 37-38.

Timæus the Sicilian historian (writing about 320-290 B.C.) represented the subsequent defeat of the Athenians as a divine punishment for the desecration of the Hermæ, inflicted chiefly by the Syracusan Hermokratês, son of Hermon and descendant of the god Hermes (Timæi Fragm. 103-104, ed. Didot; Longinus, de Sublim. iv, 3).

The etymological thread of connection, between the Hermæ and Hermokratês, is strange enough: but what is of importance to remark, is the deep-seated belief that such an act must bring after it divine punishment, and that the Athenians as a people were collectively responsible, unless they could appease the divine displeasure. If this was the view taken by the historian Timæus a century and more after the transaction, much more keenly was it present to the minds of the Athenians of that day.