that
behaved themselves valiantly, but inscribed their names on the trophies
and colossuses, and granted them part of the spoils? Lastly they set up
an altar, on which was engraven this epigram:

The Greeks, by valor having put to flight
The Persians and preserved their country's right,
Erected here this altar which you see,
To Jove, preserver of their liberty.

Did Cleadas, O Herodotus, or some other, write this also, to oblige the
cities by flattery? What need had they then to employ fruitless labor in
digging up the earth, to make tombs and erect monuments for posterity's
sake, when they saw their glory consecrated in the most illustrious
and greatest donaries? Pausanias, indeed, when he was aspiring to the
tyranny, set up this inscription in Delphi:--

Pausanias, of Greeks the general
When he the Medes in fight had overthrown,
Offered to Phoebus a memorial
Of victory, this monumental stone.

In which he gave the glory to the Greeks, whose general he professed
himself to be. Yet the Greeks not enduring but utterly misliking it, the
Lacedaemonians, sending to Delphi, caused this to be cut out, and the
names of the cities, as it was fit, to be engraven instead of it. Now
how is it possible that the Greeks should have been offended that
there was no mention made of them in the inscription, if they had
been conscious to themselves of deserting the fight? or that the
Lacedaemonians would have erased the name of their leader and general,
to insert deserters and such as withdrew themselves from the common
danger? For it would have been a great indignity, that Sophanes,
Aeimnestus, and all the rest who showed their valor in that fight,
should calmly suffer even the Cythnians and Melians to be inscribed on
the trophies; and that Herodotus, attributing that fight only to three
cities, should raze all the rest out of those and other sacred monuments
and donaries.

There having been then four fights with the barbarians; he says, that
the Greeks fled from Artemisium; that, whilst their king and general
exposed himself to danger at Thermopylae, the Lacedaemonians sat
negligent at home, celebrating the Olympian and Carnean feasts; and
discoursing of the action at Salamis, he uses more words about Artemisia
than he does in his whole narrative of the naval battle. Lastly, he
says, that the Greeks sat still at Plataea, knowing no more of the
fight, till it was over, than if it had been a