Reginald Walter Macan, Herodotus, The Seventh, Eighth, & Ninth Books with Introduction and Commentary

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Μεγακρέοντος ἀνδρὸς Ἀβδηρίτεω. Megakreon is a rare name. Did he belong to the same family as Nymphodoros and Pythes, c. 137 infra? He is the author of a bon-mot (ἔπος εὖ εἰρημένον, almost an Herodotean formula, cp. Introduction, § 10). Abdera was the birthplace of Demokritos, ‘the laughing philosopher’ (b. circa 460 B.C.), of Pro<*> :as (b. circa 480 B.C.), and of other bru<*>ant wits, yet its name became proverbial for stupidity and folly (so Cicero, on Pompey's plan for sending him to Sicily in 50 B.C., id est Ἀβδηριτικόν, ad Att. 7. 7. 4; and again on a previous occasion, of ‘a very bedlam’ (Tyrrell) in the Senate: rein ad senatum rettulerunt. Hic Abdera, non tacente me, ib. 4. 16. 6; cp. Martial 10. 25 Abderitanae pectora plebis habes). The usual physical explanation was given of this, the crassus aer, cp. Juvenal 10. 50. Wieland made use of the motif in his comic Romance Die Geschichte der Abderiten (1774).

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παρέχειν γὰρ ἄν κτλ. The ἔπος would be more pointed and smarter without the added explanation. Blakes ley, indeed, puts this sentence down purely to Hdt., not to Megakreon; but the grammar (orat. obliq.) seems to bar that interpretation, unless we might suppose Hdt. running his own superfluous explanation right on to the original bon-mot. 4. 144 supplies a parallel instance. In c. 162 infra, the point of Gelon's ῥῆμα is saved by the oratio recta.

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ὅμοια: adverbial, cp. c. 118.

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διατριβῆναι hardly seems so happy a word as ἐκτρίβειν, cp. 4. 120, 6. 37, 86. Thuc. 8. 78 (κινδυνεύσειν） διατριβῆναι is interpreted by the schol. διαφθαρῆναι. Poppo, however, gives periculum esse ne paulatim attererentur, more in aceord with the usual meaning of the word.