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6 HERODOTUS. on Asiatic ground the beginning of the great retribu- tion which has continued even to the present time, represented by uncertain tides of Western conquest gradually gaining ground on the East. Eever before or since has an author employed him- self with grander subject-matter than Herodotus. The victories of Freedom in all ages, more than any other conquests, have stirred the human heart to its depths. It is the cause that alone humanises war, and makes it other than brutal butchery. Many such victories there have been in the course of time, but all of local and limited importance in comparison. And, indeed, per- haps Marathon made Morgarten possible. By Salamis and "Plataea the world may have escaped being oriental- ised for ever, and bound in the immobility of China. These battles, by saving freedom and securing progress, anticipated the overthrow of the Saracens before Tours, and of the Turks before Vienna. Herodotus, indeed, could not see all this, when the plan of his great his- tory dawned on his mind, but the salvation of his be- loved Greece was to him a sufficient inspiration. We find the same unity of design in the history of Herodotus as in Homer's great epic. As in the * Iliad, 7 not the siege of Troy but the wrath of Achilles is the continual burden, so, in our author's work, not the his- tory of Greece but the destruction of the great Persian armada is its one great subject. All the other local histories, though introduced with much fulness of detail, are subordinate to this consummation. They flow to it like the tributaries of a river, whose might and grandeur make men love to explore its sources. He gives us in succession the early history of Lydia, of Babylon, and of Assyria, in order to trace the rise