It is not necessary to suppose—there are, indeed, many reasons for thinking it improbable,—that he ever departed from what he believed to be true; but, at the same time, he was not possessed of the keen critical faculty which would have been necessary to unravel the truth from the falsehood of the tales which must have formed so largely the basis of the history of the earlier part of the fifth century. His account of Gelo is doubtless coloured by, if not reproduced from, the tradition of the Greece of his time with regard to this incident in the history of the great war. That war was regarded as far the greatest of the triumphs of Hellenic freedom, a triumph of free institutions over the monarchical system. The nature of the triumph would have been largely discounted had it been necessary to record the name of a hated tyrant upon the roll of fame. And so, may be, the connection between Gelo’s victory and the war of liberation in Greece itself was a thing almost forgotten in Hellas by the time of Herodotus. It may have been hardly known to his generation, or only sufficiently known to be resented and buried in silence. The tale as it was told was a grand moral lesson to the democratic Greek. Even in the stress of the severest need the free Greek had refused to sell his birthright of command to a hated tyranny, though the price offered had been great. And yet the issue had been triumphant. Could it be bearable that the tyrant should be accorded a share in the triumph? The tradition which Herodotus followed had some such motive behind it. #PERSIA AND CARTHAGE.# It may not be possible at the present time to arrive at aught resembling a detailed knowledge of this side plot of the great drama of 480, and even the circumstances of the information are not of such a kind as to allow us to speak with ultimate assurance on the main outlines of it; but the evidence, actual and presumptive, when the several items are added and subtracted, leaves a large balance of probability in favour of a view very different from that which Herodotus has given to the world. It is not, perhaps, unnatural that knowledge after the event should tend to obscure the true appreciation of all that preceded it. There is, however, one phase of the Persian expedition of 480 which stands out above all others; and that is the splendid character of the organization which placed the enormous host of Xerxes in middle Greece. It was not merely the outcome of the experience of years of campaigning half the world over; it must have been the outcome of some years of preparation with an express end in view. Can it be supposed that in these years the advantages of a diversion in the western world of Greece escaped the notice of a people who gave such practical proof of capacity? It cannot be too often said that it is a great historical mistake to read the incapacity of the Persia of the fourth century into its history at the beginning of the fifth.