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222
The Persians.
Messenger.
Had conquest waited upon numbers, queen,
Then Persia's ships were victor, for the fleet 340
Of Hellas counted but three hundred ships,[1]
And other ten selected, in reserve.
But Xerxes, this I know, led fifty score,
While those for swiftness most pre-eminent
Two hundred were and seven: such the tale.
Seem we to thee the weaker in this battle?
Rather some power divine destroyed the host,
The scale depressing with unequal fortune.
Gods save the city of the goddess, Pallas.
Atossa.
Is then the Athenians' city still unsack'd?[2] 350
- ↑ The combined fleet which had now got together at Salamis consisted of 366 ships. . . .We may doubt, however, whether this total, borrowed from Herodotus, be not larger than that which actually fought a little afterwards at the battle of Salamis, and which Æschylus gives decidedly as consisting of 300 sail, in addition to ten prime and chosen ships. That great poet, himself one of the combatants, and speaking in a drama represented only seven years after the battle, is better authority on the point even than Herodotus.—Grote's History of Greece.
- ↑ The sufferings endured by the Athenians in consequence of the Persian occupation of Attica, when the temples of the Acropolis were pillaged, and all its buildings, sacred as well as profane, were consigned to the flames, were so recent and terrible, that any direct allusion to them would have jarred upon the feelings of a large portion of the audience. We cannot but admire the skill of the poet in evading the question which he attributes to the Persian queen.
