variety of fruit-bearing trees, and was too good a possession for any mortal man except the Persian kings.”[6] Fifteen years before, the Milesian Aristagoras,[7] when entreating the Spartans to assist the Ionic revolt, had exaggerated the wealth and productiveness of Asia in contrast with the poverty of Greece,—a contrast less widely removed from the truth, at that time, than the picture presented by Mardonius. [4] Herodot. vii, 6; viii, 20, 96, 77. Ὀνομάκριτος—κατέλεγε τῶν χρησμῶν· εἰ μέν τι ἐνέοι σφάλμα φέρον τῷ Πέρσῃ, τῶν μὲν ἔλεγε οὐδέν· ὁ δὲ τὰ εὐτυχέστατα ἐκλεγόμενος, ἔλεγε τόν τε Ἑλλήσποντον ὡς ζευχθῆναι χρέον εἴη ὑπ’ ἀνδρὸς Πέρσεω, τήν τε ἔλασιν ἐξηγεόμενος, etc. An intimation somewhat curious respecting this collection of prophecies; it was of an extremely varied character, and contained promises or threats to meet any emergency which might arise. [5] Æschylus, Pers. 761. [6] Herodot. vii, 5. ὡς ἡ Εὐρώπη περικαλλὴς χώρη, καὶ δένδρεα παντοῖα φέρει τὰ ἥμερα, βασιλέϊ τε μούνῳ θνητῶν ἀξίη ἐκτῆσθαι—χώρην παμφορωτέρην (vii, 8). [7] Herodot. v, 49. Having thus been persuaded to alter his original views, Xerxes convoked a meeting of the principal Persian counsellors, and announced to them his resolution to invade Greece, setting forth the mingled motives of revenge and aggrandizement which impelled him, and representing the conquest of Greece as carrying with it that of all Europe, so that the Persian empire would become coextensive with the æther of Zeus and the limits of the sun’s course. On the occasion of this invasion, now announced and about to take place, we must notice especially the historical manner and conception of our capital informant,—Herodotus. The invasion of Greece by Xerxes, and the final repulse of his forces, constitute the entire theme of his three last books, and the principal object of his whole history, towards which the previous matter is intended to conduct. Amidst those prior circumstances, there are doubtless many which have a substantive importance and interest of their own, recounted at so much length that they appear coördinate and principal, so that the thread of the history is for a time put out of sight. Yet we shall find, if we bring together the larger divisions of his history, omitting the occasional prolixities of detail, that such thread is never lost in the historian’s own mind: it may be traced by an attentive reader, from his preface and the statement immediately following it—of Crœsus, as the first barbaric conqueror of the Ionian Greeks—down to the full expansion of his theme, “Græcia Barbariæ lento collisa duello,” in the expedition of Xerxes. That expedition, as forming the consummation of his historical scheme, is not only related more copiously and continuously than any events preceding it, but is also ushered in with an unusual solemnity of religious and poetical accompaniment, so that the seventh book of Herodotus reminds us