I have permitted myself to prolong this note to an unusual length, because the supposed mention of such recent events in the history of Herodotus, as those in the reign of Darius Nothus, has introduced very gratuitous assumptions as to the time and manner in which that history was composed. It cannot be shown that there is a single event of precise and ascertained date, alluded to in his history, later than the capture of the Lacedæmonian heralds in the year 430 B. C. (Herodot. vii, 137: see Larcher, Vie d’Hérodote, p. lxxxix); and this renders the composition of his history as an entire work much more smooth and intelligible. It may be worth while to add, that whoever reads attentively Herodotus, vi, 98,—and reflects at the same time that the destruction of the Athenian armament at Syracuse (the greatest of all Hellenic disasters, hardly inferior, for its time, to the Russian campaign of Napoleon, and especially impressive to one living at Thurii, as may be seen by the life of Lysias, Plutarch, Vit. x, Oratt. p. 835) happened during the reign of Darius Nothus in 413 B. C.,—will not readily admit the hypothesis of additions made to the history during the reign of the latter, or so late as 408 B. C. Herodotus would hardly have dwelt so expressly and emphatically upon mischief done by Greeks to each other in the reigns of Darius son of Hystaspês, Xerxês, and Artaxerxês, if he had lived to witness the greater mischiefs so inflicted during the reign of Darius Nothus, and had kept his history before him for the purpose of inserting new events. The destruction of the Athenians before Syracuse would have been a thousand times more striking to his imagination than the revolt of the Medes against Darius Nothus, and would have impelled him with much greater force to alter or enlarge the chapter vi, 98. The sentiment too which Herodotus places in the mouth of Demaratus respecting the Spartans (vii, 104) appears to have been written _before_ the capture of the Spartans in Sphakteria, in 425 B. C., rather than _after_ it: compare Thucyd. iv, 40. Dahlmann (Forschungen auf dem Gebiete der Geschichte, vol. ii, pp. 41-47) and Heyse (Quæstiones Herodoteæ, pp. 74-77, Berlin, 1827) both profess to point out six passages in Herodotus which mark events of later date than 430 B. C. But none of the chronological indications which they adduce appear to me trustworthy.