day, the orb of the moon being not yet full.
And therefore they stayed for the full moon." (Herodotus, vi. 106.)
But thou, O Herodotus, transferest the full moon from the middle to the
beginning of the month, and at the same time confoundest the heavens,
days, and all things; and yet thou dost claim to be the historian of
Greece!

And professing to write more particularly and carefully of the affairs
of Athens, thou dost not so much as say a word of that solemn procession
which the Athenians even at this day send to Agrae, celebrating a feast
of thanksgiving to Hecate for their victory. But this helps Herodotus
to refel the crime with which he is charged, of having flattered the
Athenians for a great sum of money he received of them. For if he had
rehearsed these things to them, they would not have omitted or
neglected to remark that Philippides, when on the ninth he summoned the
Lacedaemonians to the fight, must have come from it himself, since (as
Herodotus says) he went in two days from Athens to Sparta; unless the
Athenians sent for their allies to the fight after their enemies were
overcome. Indeed Diyllus the Athenian, none of the most contemptible
as an historian, says, that he received from Athens a present of ten
talents, Anytus proposing the decree. Moreover Herodotus, as many say,
has in relating the fight at Marathon derogated from the credit of
it, by the number he sets down of the slain. For it is said that the
Athenians made a vow to sacrifice so many kids to Diana Agrotera, as
they should kill barbarians; but that after the fight, the number of the
dead appearing infinite, they appeased the goddess by making a decree to
immolate five hundred to her every year.

But letting this pass, let us see what was done after the fight. "The
barbarians," say he, "retiring back with the rest of their ships, and
taking the Eretrian slaves out of the island, where they had left them,
doubled the point of Sunium, desiring to prevent the Athenians before
they could gain the city. The Athenians suspected this to have been done
by a plot of the Alcmaeonidae, who by agreement showed a shield to the
Persians when they were got into their ships. They therefore doubled
the cape of Sunium." (Herodotus, vi. 115, 121-124.) Let us in this place
take no notice of his calling the Eretrians slaves, who showed as much
courage and gallantry in this war as any other of the Grecians, and
suffered things unworthy their virtue. Nor let u