Note 26 — Chapter I · THE WORLD-RELIGIONS.
Reading edition
Cicero rightly appreciated the religious character of the Persian invasions: ‘delubra humanis consecrata simulacris Persae nefaria putaverunt; eamque unam ob causam Xerxes inflammari Atheniensium fana iussisse dicitur, quod deos, quorum domus esset omnis hic mundus, inclusos parietibus contineri nefas esse duceret’ Rep. iii 9, 14. So Themistocles as represented by Herodotus: ‘the gods and heroes grudged that one man should become king both of Asia and of Europe, and he a man unholy and presumptuous, one who made no difference between things sacred and things profane, burning and casting down the images of the gods’ History viii 109 (Macaulay’s translation).