But Xerxes was not at first equally willing to prosecute the schemes of his deceased father against Greece. At least such is the statement of Herodotus; who represents Mardonius as the grand instigator of the invasion, partly through thirst for warlike enterprise, partly from a desire to obtain the intended conquest as a satrapy for himself. Nor were there wanting Grecian counsellors to enforce his recommendation, both by the promise of help and by the color of religion. The great family of the Aleuadæ, belonging to Larissa, and perhaps to other towns in Thessaly, were so eager in the cause, that their principal members came to Susa to offer an easy occupation of that frontier territory of Hellas: while the exiled Peisistratids from Athens still persevered in striving to procure their own restoration at the tail of a Persian army. On the present occasion, they brought with them to Susa a new instrument, the holy mystic Onomakritus,—a man who had acquired much reputation, not by prophesying himself, but by collecting, arranging, interpreting, and delivering out, prophetic verses passing under the name of the ancient seer or poet Musæus. Thirty years before, in the flourishing days of the Peisistratids, he had lived at Athens, enjoying the confidence of Hipparchus, and consulted by him as the expositor of these venerated documents. But having been detected by the poet Lasus of Hermione, in the very act of interpolating them with new matter of his own, Hipparchus banished him with indignation. The Peisistratids, however, now in banishment themselves, forgot or forgave this offence, and carried Onomakritus with his prophecies to Susa, announcing him as a person of oracular authority, to assist in working on the mind of Xerxes. To this purpose his interpolations, or his omissions, were now directed: for when introduced to the Persian monarch, he recited emphatically various encouraging predictions wherein the bridging of the Hellespont and the triumphant march of a barbaric host into Greece, appeared as predestined; while he carefully kept back all those of a contrary tenor, which portended calamity and disgrace. So at least Herodotus,[4] strenuous in upholding the credit of Bakis, Musæus, and other Grecian prophets whose verses were in circulation, expressly assures us. The religious encouragements of Onomakritus, and the political cooperation proffered by the Aleuadæ, enabled Mardonius effectually to overcome the reluctance of his master. Nor indeed was it difficult to show, according to the feelings then prevalent, that a new king of Persia was in honor obliged to enlarge the boundaries of the empire.[5] The conquering impulse springing from the first founder was as yet unexhausted; the insults offered by the Athenians remained still unavenged: and in addition to this double stimulus to action, Mardonius drew a captivating picture of Europe as an acquisition;—“it was the finest land in the world, produced every