07-25-2006, 10:47 PM
Quote:We must be missing something.Yes, I agree; what we are missing is, indeed, the gossip. The legend, as I call it, must have been there almost immediately and I sometimes think that Leonidas' wife Gorgo must have been one of those who offered this interpretation. After all, she could with plausibility claim that she knew that her husband had known an oracle; note the fishy story that involves Gorgo in 7.239.
What's also absent from Herodotus is the story of the night attack, which is told by Diodorus. Peter Greene has recently argued that it took in fact place. I have ordered the book, but not read it.
