Historical Parallels, vol. 2 of 3) — A Reader’s Guide

A Skeptical Eye on Heroic Stories

Malkin does not simply retell famous episodes; he weighs the credibility of the sources. When discussing Miltiades’ prosecution after Paros, he dismisses the “ornamental passages in Grecian history” and points out that Herodotus’ silence undermines a dramatic tale of imprisonment. He then offers an alternative inference from Plato, suggesting the sentence may not have been carried out. This critical habit extends to the Athenian reaction: Malkin suspects that “if Miltiades had returned with one hundred talents, he would have heard nothing of prosecution,” and that the failure, not the attack on Paros, was the true grievance. Such remarks reveal a historian alert to political motives and popular inconsistency, and they give the volume a forensic quality unusual in a popular work of the 1840s.

Character as a Driver of Historical Change

The volume’s treatment of Aristides and Themistocles shows Malkin’s interest in personality as a force in politics. He presents them as “diametrically opposite as well in character as in politics”: Aristides is “simple, just, and disinterested,” while Themistocles is “crooked as acute in his policy,” willing to use any means to advance himself. Yet Malkin avoids simple moralizing; he notes that Themistocles could “lay aside private enmity when an emergency required it,” proposing the recall of Aristides before Salamis. This nuanced portrait suggests that Malkin sees effective leadership as a blend of principle and pragmatism, and he uses the parallel structure to highlight how different temperaments respond to similar crises.

Pace and the Art of the Parallel

The volume’s organization creates a distinctive rhythm. Each chapter pairs a Greek battle with one or more later conflicts, but the treatment is not uniform: the Marathon chapter, for instance, includes the Poema del Cid and the Siege of Vienna, while the Thermopylae chapter covers the Battle of St. Jacques and the destruction of the Sacred Band. This accumulation of examples can feel breathless, but Malkin often slows to examine a single figure or controversy in detail, as with the extended discussion of Miltiades’ trial. The effect is a constant shift between broad comparison and close analysis, a pace that rewards readers who attend to both the sweep of history and the texture of individual decisions.

Readers approaching this volume should expect a work that is as much about the writing of history as about the events themselves. Malkin’s willingness to challenge received stories and his sharp character sketches make the parallels feel less like set pieces and more like arguments. The volume benefits from being read alongside the first and third parts, but it stands on its own as a study of how leaders, armies, and chroniclers shape the past.

Reading Malkin’s pairing of Marathon with Morgarten made me think of how differently we trace home when we read older histories. His careful pulling apart of sources reminded me of sitting with A Student's History of England, v. 1: B.C. 55-A.D. 1509 From the Earliest Times to the Death of King Edward VII — Key Ideas to Explore, where every distant battle felt like a quiet footprint, too easy to mistake for something grander than it was.