Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, August 1847. Various
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to condemn him to death; but they imposed on him the penalty of fifty talents 'for his iniquity.'" (Vol. iv. p. 488.)
He died shortly after from his wound.
On this narrative we must make one or two observations. The turn of expression which the writer has selected for conveying the meaning of the original Greek text of his authority, might lead us to imply that when the Athenians placed a force of seventy ships at the command of Miltiades they did not know on what kind of expedition he was about to employ them. "He would conduct them to a land where gold was abundant, and thus enrich them." Surely no one had an idea that it was a voyage of discovery, in search after some El Dorado that Miltiades was about to undertake. Every one in Athens knew that the fleet was to be directed against some of their neighbours: although, for very manifest reasons,—the advantage of taking their victim by surprise, and of leaving their general unfettered, to act according to circumstances,—the objects of attack were not revealed, and on this a perfect secrecy was allowed to be maintained. It should be also added to this account, that Zanthippes, father of Pericles, who made himself spokesman for the angry feeling of the Athenians, was also, as Dr Thirwall tells us, "the son of Ariphron, the chief of the rival house of the Alcmaonids," who were little pleased with the sudden rise of Miltiades.
From the same authority we may also learn, that "Paros was at this time one of the most flourishing amongst the Cyclades." Miltiades directed the expedition against Paros from personal motives, from vindictive animosity against a Parian citizen; but Paros was rich, and could therefore pay a ransom—the very object of the expedition; and the pretext under which alone Athens could extort a ransom or a tribute from its neighbours, that they had assisted the Persians, or failed in bringing aid to the common cause against them, applied to Paros; it had furnished, or was accused of having furnished, a trireme to Datis. Whatever baseness Miltiades betrayed in using a public force for his own private revenge, there is nothing to make it appear that the selection of Paros for the object of his attack was not in perfect consistency with the real public purpose of the enterprise.
What crime in all this had Miltiades committed against the Athenians? The injustice of the expedition they shared; for it would be childishness to suppose that they sent their general out with seventy ships, and had no idea that he would attack any one. The personal motives which led him to direct it against Paros, however mean and unworthy of him, are not shown to have been at variance with the professed objects of the expedition. Nor can any one doubt for a moment that if he had succeeded in extorting from the Parians, and others, a large sum of money, the Athenians would have welcomed him back with applause, as loud as the censure they bestowed on their defeated generals, who, instead of plunder, brought them back only the disgrace of having tried to plunder. There were those at hand ready to take advantage of the public irritation; they accused him, and obtained his condemnation. We are not claiming for Miltiades the praise of virtue; nor should we make any pathetic appeal in his behalf. He was not free from a moral delinquency; but, so far as the Athenians were concerned, his substantial offence was failure in his enterprise.
That his friends urged no other defence but that of his previous services, is no proof that other grounds for acquittal were not present to their minds. They were pleading before angry and irresponsible judges, whom it, was their object to soothe and propitiate. Would the strain of inculpatory observations that we have been making, have answered their purpose? To tell an angry man that he is angry, because he is disappointed, is not the way to abate his passion. That Miltiades had disappointed them was certain; undoubtedly the best method of defence was to remind them of the great services that he had formerly rendered them. It was not the demands of judicial reason his advocates had to satisfy: they were pleading before judges whose feelings of the moment were to be the law of the moment.
"Thus closed the life of the conqueror of Marathon. The last act of it," continues Mr Grote, "produces an impression so mournful, and even shocking—his descent from the pinnacle of glory, to defeat, mean tampering with a temple-servant, mortal bodily hurt, undefended ignominy, and death under a sentence of heavy fine, is so abrupt and unprepared—that readers, ancient and modern, have not been satisfied without finding some one to blame for it: we must except Herodotus, our original authority, who recounts the transaction without dropping a single hint of blame against any one. To speak ill of the people, as Machiavel has long ago observed, is a strain in which every one at all times, even under a democratical government indulges with impunity and without provoking any opponent to reply; and in this case the hard fate of Miltiades has been imputed to the vices of the Athenians and their democracy—it has been cited in proof partly of their fickleness, partly of their ingratitude. But however such blame may serve to lighten the mental sadness arising from a series of painful facts, it will not be found justified if we apply to those facts a reasonable criticism."
He thus vindicates the Athenians from the charge of fickleness, on the ground that it was not they, but Miltiades who had changed. The fugitive from Paros, and the victor of Marathon, were two very different persons. As any remarkable instance of fickleness we should certainly not be disposed to cite the case. The charge of ingratitude, we have admitted, is, presuming that he was guilty, entirely displaced. But when Mr Grote in his final summary says, "The fate of Miltiades thus, so far from illustrating either the fickleness or the ingratitude of his countrymen, attests their just appreciation of deserts," we must indeed demur. No, no: this was not the triumph of justice over the finer sensibilities of our nature, as Mr Grote would seem to imply. On the fairest review we can give to the whole of the circumstances, we find on the sentence passed upon Miltiades a gross instance of that old notorious injustice which pronounces an enterprise meritorious or criminal according to its success. The enterprise was altogether a disgraceful affair. But the Athenians must be supposed cognisant of the nature of the expedition for which they fitted out their seventy ships:—against them, we repeat, the only substantial offence committed was his failure; nor can we doubt that his welcome back to Athens would have been quite different had there been a different issue to the adventure. Justice there was none; unless it be justice for three freebooters to pass sentence upon the fourth.
Before concluding, we ought, perhaps, to take, some notice of the reform in our orthography of Greek words which Mr Grote is desirous of introducing, in order to assimilate the English to the Greek pronunciation. The principal of these is the substitution of k for c. Our own k, he justly observes, precisely coincides with the Greek k, while a c may be either k or s. He writes Perikles, Alkibiades. To this approximation of the English pronunciation to the Greek we can see nothing to object. A reader of Greek finds it a mere annoyance, and sort of barbarism, to be obliged to pronounce the same name one way while reading Greek, and another when speaking or reading English; and to the English reader it must be immaterial which pronunciation he finally adopts. Meanwhile, it must be allowed that the first changing of an old familiar name is a disagreeable operation. We must leave the popular and the learned taste to arrange it how they can together. Mr Grote has wisely left some names—as Thucydides—in the old English form; in matters of this kind nothing is gained by too rigid a consistency. It is not improbable that his orthography will be adopted, in the first place, by the more learned writers, and will from their pages find its way into popular use. Mr Grote also, in speaking of the Greek deities, calls them by their Greek names, and not by the Latin equivalents—As Zeus for Jupiter—Athene for Minerva.
BEN NEVIS AND BEN MUICH DHUI
It was on a bright, hot day of July, which threw the first gleam of sunshine across a long tract of soaking, foggy, dreary, hopeless weather, that we ascended Ben Nevis. The act was unpremeditated. The wet and fog of weeks had entered into our soul; and we had resolved, in the spirit of indignant resignation, that we would not attempt the hill. Accordingly we were stalking lazily along General Wade's road: we had left Fort William, and thought there might be a probability of reaching Fort Augustus to dinner,—when we were not ungratefully surprised to see the clouds tucking themselves up the side of the mountain in a peculiar manner, which gives the experienced wanderer of the hills the firm assurance of a glorious day. Soon afterwards, the great mountain became visible from summit to base, and its round head and broad shoulders stood dark against the bright blue sky. A sagacious-looking old Highlander, who was passing, protested that the hill had never looked so hopeful during the whole summer: the temptation was irresistible, so