the passage to it from Lamia, from which town he would start southwards, and very gradually bend round the then existent head of the Malian Gulf. Nothing is more natural than for travellers in the course of such journeyings to fail to notice changes of direction made so gradually. No one who has intimate knowledge of the topography of Thermopylæ can doubt that Herodotus wrote his description from autopsy. The sum of proof is overwhelming. The description is too accurate to be second-hand; and some of the details have little or nothing to do with the battle or its topography. Is it probable that such information would have been given in answer to the enquiries of one who was endeavouring to write an account of the fight? The hypothesis of a literary source is inadmissible because there is not a hint in the whole of ancient literature that any such description existed before he wrote.

We have dealt with this matter at some length, because the question of autopsy is of great importance in reference to Herodotus' work. It makes all the difference with regard to his trustworthiness as an author and authority whether he did or did not take the trouble to visit the scenes of those events which he describes in detail.

The inconsistencies of the story of the last day's fight will always tempt editors of Herodotus to reconstruct the tale. The latest theory is that Leonidas fought a rearguard action in order to ensure the escape of half his force. It may be questioned whether such an action was necessary. If the time of the receipt of the message about the disaster on the path of the Anopaea be correctly stated by Herodotus, there is little doubt that the whole Greek army might have retreated along the mountain path by the modern Upper Drakospilia in comparative safety. It is more probable that Leonidas thought he could hold the main passage with part of his force and stop Hydarnes and his men with the other half. That other half never carried out its mission, and the ugly story of their desertion remained in the tradition.

The historian's account of the battle of Salamis is notoriously difficult, because it is at variance not merely with tactical possibilities, but also with the first-hand evidence of Eschylus. Prof. Goodwin attempted to

reconcile it with both, but only succeeded in showing its impossibility from a tactical point of view. Herodotus seems to have obtained items of information with regard to the battle and its preliminaries which are individually correct; but he has failed to fit them together correctly, and has consequently produced an account of which some of the details are incredible, not in themselves, but in their setting. One thing seems quite clear from the evidence of Æschylus, namely, that on the morning of the battle the Persians advanced in column up the strait, a formation which cannot be deduced from Herodotus' account. The Greek fleet appears to have advanced to meet the Persian column of ships, and it is probable that the two front lines met somewhere north of Kynosura. In Dr Macan's plan (second position) the respective positions of the two fleets just before contact are quite impossible; for, had the battle been begun from such a situation, the result must have been, not a national disaster to either side, but a common disaster to both.

The

Salamis was a decisive action because the vanquished made up their minds that it was so. The victors did not at first regard it as an outright victory; and it is at least probable that they were not far wrong in their estimate of the absolute success attained. But the fleet which had not won the battle was composed of elements which could only be kept together by success. Phoenician contingent had lost that prestige of superior naval skill which had doubtless overawed the heterogeneous fleet into unity and loyalty of action. There was Ladé to be avenged; and the Ionian contingent had shown itself formidable in the recent fight. Such a revenge might be attempted; and it would therefore be well for the Phoenicians to separate themselves from those ships of the European Greeks which might play a decisive part in case the Asiatic Greek contingent proved vindictive. So they placed the breadth of the Ægean between them and their recent antagonists. The strategic position in Europe was thereby completely altered. Doubtless supplies were left at Phaleron to meet the immediate necessities of the army; but with the withdrawal of the fleet the withdrawal of the army to a satisfactory commissariat base became a mere question of time.

The story of the interval between the close of the

campaign of 480 and the opening of that of 479 is badly told in the pages of Herodotus. The baneful Themistokles legend, which he has so unfortunately followed in his account of the war, corrupts this part of his narrative. Moreover, he leaves many important points unexplained, as though he had been in undue haste to tell the story of the fighting of the next year. He never tells us, for example, why a complete change in the command on the Greek side was made during this interval-a change all the more inexplicable in view of the success of the previous year. The story of the relations between Athens and Sparta before the next campaign opened leaves the reader with the impression that it is either half or more than the truth; which it is, he cannot say. Above all, the extraordinary reluctance of Sparta to take the field is incomprehensible. She feared Argos, say some modern commentators; and Herodotus inserts some vague political gossip which lends support to this view. But Argos, if an excuse, was, as we have shown above (p. 128), a very weak one; and the reason alleged is not a satisfactory one from the historical point of view.

To us, with our knowledge after the event, the strategic situation seems to be one which called for prompt action on the part of Sparta. Mardonius had wintered in Thessaly with what was probably the main part of the Persian army of the previous year. When the season opened he moved south, showing thereby that any commissariat difficulties which had existed had been overcome. In the previous year Sparta had shown a marked reluctance to risk much by land against the Persian. That feeling seems to have abided with her. She may have expected, or at least hoped, that Mardonius' move southward was a mere raid, whose effects might be remedied so soon as he was compelled to retire north again. Perhaps in the first instance, as Dr Macan suggests, she may have half anticipated that Mardonius would be recalled to Asia. He also suggests that, as Herodotus alleges, it was the definite threat of 'medism' on the part of Athens which brought Sparta to her Single motives are rare in history, and this one may have played some part; but it is noticeable that the movement north of the Isthmus was not undertaken until Mardonius had retired from Attica and

senses.

taken up a position in front of his immediate base, Thebes. The gathering of a Greek force at the Isthmus was quite enough to make it necessary for the Persian to abandon Attica, otherwise his line of communication might have been cut by an advance on Thebes along the Megara-Eleusis-Dryoskephalæ road. The theory that the advance north was made with a view to the interests of Athens and Attic territory alone is therefore not convincing. It is more probable that Sparta thought Mardonius meant to stay at Thebes, and that his design was to acquire permanently for the Persian Empire the medised States of northern Greece.

The complicated details of the various operations at Platæa render it inevitable that various opinions should be expressed with regard to the course which that battle or series of battles took. The fact that a map of the region is now in existence has happily made vague a priori criticism of Herodotus' ninth book a thing of the past. One thing seems clear. Platæa, in so far as it was a decisive action, was a soldier's rather than a general's battle; and there is therefore an unintentional appropriateness in its story being told, as it is in Herodotus, from the soldier's point of view.

We think that the reader who studies Dr Macan's edition of Herodotus will lay it down with the impression, which has been gaining ground among specialists of recent years, that there is much more real history in the pages of the first historian than has been alleged by some of his critics. We cannot agree on all points with Dr Macan; we may detect in his volume a large element which is more characteristic of the editor than of the historian whose work he edits; but, when all is said, it is impossible not to recognise that we have in this new edition a valuable and interesting commentary on a work which, both in matter and form, is peculiarly real, because, alike in strength and weakness, it is peculiarly human.

G. B. GRUNDY.

Art. 7.-THE PUBLIC AND THE MOTOR-CAR.

THERE is little doubt that, in the coming session of Parliament, the Government will be compelled to introduce a measure dealing with motor-cars on the public roads. Most likely, apart from that measure, we shall see both increase and redistribution of motor-car taxation, of which the former is certainly demanded by public opinion. But the question of taxation is not attacked here, partly because of its extreme intricacy, but mainly because another and a far more vital, or lethal, aspect of the motor problem demands all the space and all the care that can be given to it.

Legislation must come-and it is to be hoped it will follow lines approaching to finality-because the present situation is both demoralising to motorists and intolerable to the public. It is plain, and is indeed generally admitted, that the vast majority of motorists, being persons of law-abiding habits apart from their motorcars, habitually disobey that part of the existing statute which prescribes a speed limit, and feel no shame when they are caught and punished. They justify themselves, not by pleading conscientious objections, but by saying, in effect, that the speed limit is unnecessary-which is open to doubt-and that the Act was passed by a Parliament knowing next to nothing of the dirigible quality of motor-cars. Also they feel that they are not fairly treated by the police, in the first instance, since police ambuscades are usually so set as to compel the inference that fines, and not the public safety, are the objects sought; and there is a prevalent feeling among motorists that, before some benches of magistrates, they cannot reckon upon receiving impartial justice. The gradual growth of these views needs not to be followed in detail because it is a story familiar to all.

There is no denying that this was, and is, a most unwholesome state of things; but there was worse to come. Harassed by police ambuscades, many of them of the money-seeking kind, a body of motorists, a small body at the outset, conceived the sublimely impudent idea that they might retaliate upon the law and upon the police by sending out scouts to locate and to discover police