It is, of course, a commonplace of criticism to say that Herodotus gives us no account of the general movements or manœuvres of the two fleets on the actual day of the battle, save that he mentions that the Æginetan vessels fell on the Phœnician ships which the Athenians put to flight. What I may call the enunciation of my proposition is this:— This failure of information in this part of his narrative is due to the fact that he had already, in the previous part of it, used up his information on this point. He antedated a movement made on the night preceding the battle to the previous afternoon, and further antedated the movements in the battle itself to the night preceding the battle. It is curious and noticeable that, when this correction is made in Herodotus’ dating, and in the mistaken accounts of movements which the chronological error entailed, there is so close a resemblance between the narratives of Herodotus and Diodorus that they may be suspected of having been derived from sources which, if not absolutely identical, were close in similarity. The fleet of Xerxes was now at Phaleron, in the bay lying east of the peninsula on which stood the town of Piræus. After spending three days at Histiæa, subsequent to the departure of the army from Thermopylæ, it had taken three days more to reach Phaleron. It is probable, therefore, that it arrived there shortly before the army reached Attic territory. Herodotus is of opinion that, despite the losses at the Sepiad strand, at Thermopylæ, at Artemisium, and in the Hollows of Eubœa, the net strength of the land and sea forces was, owing to the accession of reinforcements, not less than before these losses were incurred. For the numbers of the land forces he makes out something resembling a case. It is probable that the addition of the full contingents of Dorians and Locrians, and of all the Bœotians, except the Platæans and Thespians, largely, if not entirely, compensated for the losses suffered at Thermopylæ, great as they had been. But that the naval contingents of Karystos, Andros, Tenos, and the other islands, can have in any sensible measure compensated for the losses suffered at Sepias, Artemisium, and the Hollows of Eubœa, is plainly absurd. Herodotus has evidently, in his desire to magnify the force opposed to the Greeks at Salamis, forgotten the enormity of the losses he represents the Persians to have suffered in the two storms. ◆H. viii. 67–69.◆