calumniators, and to direct their heads to be cut off: his wrath and vexation, Herodotus tells us, were boundless, and he scarcely knew on whom to vent it.[265] [259] Herodot. viii, 84. φανεῖσαν δὲ διακελεύσασθαι, ὥστε καὶ ἅπαν ἀκοῦσαι τὸ τῶν Ἑλλήνων στρατόπεδον, ὀνειδίσασαν πρότερον τάδε· Ὦ δαιμόνιοι, μέχρι κόσου ἔτι πρύμναν ἀνακρούεσθε; Æschylus (Pers. 396-415) describes finely the war-shout of the Greeks and the response of the Persians: for very good reasons, he does not notice the incipient backwardness of the Greeks, which Herodotus brings before us. The war-shout, here described by Æschylus, a warrior actually engaged, shows us the difference between a naval combat of that day and the improved tactics of the Athenians fifty years afterwards, at the beginning of the Peloponnesian war. Phormio especially enjoins on his men the necessity of silence (Thucyd. ii, 89). [260] Simonides, Epigram 138, Bergk; Plutarch, De Herodot. Malignitate, c. 36. According to Plutarch (Themist. 12) and Diodorus (xi, 17), it was the Persian admiral’s ship which was first charged and captured: if the fact had been so, Æschylus would probably have specified it. [261] Herodot. viii, 85; Diodor. xi, 16. Æschylus, in the Persæ, though he gives a long list of the names of those who fought against Athens, does not make any allusion to the Ionic or to any other Greeks as having formed part of the catalogue. See Blomfield ad Æschyl. Pers. 42. Such silence easily admits of explanation: yet it affords an additional reason for believing that the persons so admitted did not fight very heartily. [262] Herodot. viii, 86; Diodor. xi, 17. The testimony of the former, both to the courage manifested by the Persian fleet, and to their entire want of order and system, is decisive, as well as to the effect of the personal overlooking of Xerxes. [263] Simonides, Epigr. 138, Bergk. [264] The many names of Persian chiefs whom Æschylus reports as having been slain, are probably for the most part inventions of his own, to please the ears of his audience. See Blomfield, Præfat. ad Æschyl. Pers. p. xii. [265] Herodot. viii, 90.