Polymnia   

either of the two Spartans should be stripped of his dignity- but they
did not oppose the Argive king having one vote like each of them." The
Argives say that they could not brook this arrogance on the part of
Sparta, and rather than yield one jot to it, they preferred to be
under the rule of the barbarians. So they told the envoys to be
gone, before sunset, from their territory, or they should be treated
as enemies.
Such is the account which is given of these matters by the Argives
themselves. There is another story, which is told generally through
Greece, of a different tenor. Xerxes, it is said, before he set
forth on his expedition against Greece, sent a herald to Argos, who on
his arrival spoke as follows: "Men of Argos, King Xerxes speaks thus
to you. We Persians deem that the Perses from whom we descend was
the child of Perseus the son of Danae, and of Andromeda the daughter
of Cepheus. Hereby it would seem that we come of your stock and
lineage. So then it neither befits us to make war upon those from whom
we spring; nor can it be right for you to fight, on behalf of
others, against us. Your place is to keep quiet and hold yourself
aloof. Only let matters proceed as I wish, and there is no people whom
I shall have in higher esteem than you."
This address, says the story, was highly valued by the Argives,
who therefore at the first neither gave a promise to the Greeks nor
yet put forward a demand. Afterwards, however, when the Greeks
called upon them to give their aid, they made the claim which has been
mentioned, because they knew well that the Lacedaemonians would
never yield it, and so they would have a pretext for taking no part in
the war.
Some of the Greeks say that this account agrees remarkably with
what happened many years afterwards. Callias, the son of Hipponicus,
and certain others with him, had gone up to Susa, the city of
Memnon, as ambassadors of the Athenians, upon a business quite
distinct from this. While they were there, it happened that the
Argives likewise sent ambassadors to Susa, to ask Artaxerxes, the
son of Xerxes, "if the friendship which they had formed with his
father still continued, or if he looked upon them as his enemies?"- to
which King Artaxerxes replied, "Most certainly it continues; and there
is no city which I reckon more my friend than Argos."
For my own part I cannot positively say whether Xerxes did send
the herald to Argos or not; nor whether Argive ambassadors at Susa did
really put this question to Artaxerxes about the friendship between
them and him; neither do I deliver any opinion hereupon other than
that of the Argives themselves. This, however, I know- that if every
nation were to bring all its evil deeds to a given place, in order
to make an exchange with some other nation, when they had all looked
carefully at their neighbours' faults, they would be truly glad to
carry their own back again. So, after all, the conduct of the
Argives was not perhaps more disgraceful than that of others. For
myself, my duty is to report all that is said; but I am not obliged to
believe it all alike- a remark which may be understood to apply to
my whole History. Some even go so far as to say that the Argives first
invited the Persians to invade Greece, because of their ill success in
the war with Lacedaemon, since they preferred anything to the smart of
their actual sufferings. Thus much concerning the Argives.
Other ambassadors, among whom was Syagrus from Lacedaemon, were
sent by the allies into Sicily, with instructions to confer with Gelo.
The ancestor of this Gelo, who first settled at Gela, was a native
of the isle of Telos, which lies off Triopium. When Gela was colonised
by Antiphemus and the Lindians of Rhodes, he likewise took part in the
expedition. In course of time his descendants became the
high-priests of the gods who dwell below- an office which they held
continually, from the time that Telines, one of Gelo's ancestors,
obtained it in the way which I will now mention. Certain citizens of
Gela, worsted in a sedition, had found a refuge at Mactorium, a town
situated on the heights above Gela. Telines reinstated these men,