XI. — Herodotus' Source for the Opening Skirmish at Plataea. 



In Herodotus' narrative of the tinal land-engagement between the 

 Greeks and the army of Xerxes a single incident of the lirst day's 

 fighting has invariabh' arrested the attention of students of the 

 campaign. This incident, both because of its wealth of circum- 

 stantial details, betraying the eye-witness, and also iDecause of the 

 atmosphere of unmistakable truthfulness which surrounds it, has 

 been accorded, by well-nigh universal consent, a place in the 

 Vulgate tradition ; yet the disproportionate emphasis which it receives 

 in comparison with other features of the campaign is unusual and 

 calls for explanation. The passage in question is the cavalry charge 

 of Masistius.i Although but a minor phase of the campaign of 

 Plataea, this incident receives fuller treatment by Herodotus than 

 the final victory. Scholars have argued that it is accorded greater 

 emphasis in the Herodotean narrative because of the part which 

 Athenians played in it. But against this may be urged the objection 

 that the story is in fact not unduly amplified or embellished to the 

 glory of Athens,^ and that it is of an entireh' different character 

 from the accounts of the two other events of the campaign in which 

 the Athenians were prominent — the engagement with the Medizing 

 Greeks^ and the storming of the Persian camp. -^ Furthermore if we 

 compare the Herodotean treatment of these three events in which 

 Athenians participated with the Ephorean and Plutarchean versions, 

 it will be noted that the episode under discussion is reproduced in 

 the later tradition with very unimportant variation or accretion, 

 aside from what can readih' be accounted for b}^ the individualit}' 

 of Ephorus and Plutarch, while the engagement with the Medizing 

 Greeks and the storming of the Persian camp suffer many changes 

 and additions in fundamentals. What was it, then, one may well 

 ask. which early crystallized this part of the tradition so as to 

 render it proof against the transforming touch of Plerodotus, and 



1 Hdt. ix, 20-25. 



- The rest of the army is really the deciding factor iu the eiigageineiit 

 (Hdt. ix, 23). 



^ Hdt. ix, 61, 67. 

 * Hdt. ix, 70. 



