He indeed ought not to have too much insulted over
the Greeks that took part with the Persians, who, being
by others thought a Thurian, reckons himself among the
Halicarnassians, who, being Dorians by descent, went with
their wives and children to the war against the Greeks.
But he is so far from giving first an account of the straits
they were in who revolted to the Persians, that, having related how the Thessalians sent to the Phocians, who
were their mortal enemies, and promised to preserve their
country free from all damage if they might receive from
them a reward of fifty talents, he writ thus of the Phocians:
‘For the Phocians were the only people in these quarters
who inclined not to the Persians, and that, as far as I upon
due consideration can find, for no other reason but because
[p. 359]
they hated the Thessalians; for if the Thessalians had
been affected to the Grecian affairs, I suppose the Phocians
would have joined themselves to the Persians.’ And yet
a little after he will say, that thirteen cities of the Phocians
were burned by the barbarians, their country laid waste,
and the temple which was in Abae set on fire, and all of
both sexes put to the sword, except those that by flight
escaped to Parnassus.1 Nevertheless, he puts those who
suffered all extremities rather than lose their honesty in
the same rank with those who most affectionately sided
with the Persians. And when he could not blame the
Phocians' actions, he sat at his desk devising false causes
and framing suspicions against them, and bidding us judge
them not by what they did, but by what they would have
done if the Thessalians had not taken the same side, as if
they had been shut out from treason because they found
the place already occupied by others! Now if any one,
going about to excuse the revolt of the Thessalians to the
Persians, should say that they would not have done it but
for the hatred they bare the Phocians,—whom when they
saw joined to the Greeks, they against their inclinations
followed the party of the Persians,—would not such a one
be thought most shamefully to flatter, and for the sake of
others to pervert the truth, by feigning good causes for
evil actions? Indeed, I think, he would. Why then
would not he be thought openly to calumniate, who says
that the Phocians chose the best, not for the love of virtue,
but because they saw the Thessalians on the contrary side?
For neither does he refer this device to other authors, as
he is elsewhere wont to do, but says that himself found it
out by conjecture. He should therefore have produced
certain arguments, by which he was persuaded that they,
who did things like the best, followed the same counsels
with the worst. For what he alleges of their enmities is
[p. 360]
ridiculous. For neither did the difference between the
Aeginetans and the Athenians, nor that between the Chalcidians and the Eretrians, nor yet that between the Corinthians and the Megarians, hinder them from fighting
together for Greece. Nor did the Macedonians, their most
bitter enemies, divert the Thessalians from their friendship
with the barbarians, by joining the Persian party themselves. For the common danger did so bury their private
grudges, that banishing their other passions, they applied
their minds either to honesty for the sake of virtue, or to
profit through the impulse of necessity. And indeed, after
that necessity which compelled them to obey the Persians
was over, they returned again to the Greeks, as Lacrates
the Spartan has openly testified of them. And Herodotus,
as constrained to it, in his relation of the affairs at Plataea,
confessed that the Phocians took part with the Greeks.2
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