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ἐν τούτῳ τῷ πόνῳ, paullo aliter 6. 114 (Baehr). οἳ ἐλαχίστας λέγουσι: sc. λέγουσι. 400 was the lowest estimate, according to Hdt. There were higher estimates. He seems to be thinking only of ships of war (νέας); cp. next c. ad init. Hdt. himself (8. 66) restores the fighting fleet to integrity, in a way which must discount its original total or its losses on this occasion; though the 200 which were making round Euboia (8. 14) may never have come to land. The destruction of open boats and transports also may have been great, and helps to account for their disappearance from the subsequent narrative; cp. infra c. 191.
χρημάτων τε πλῆθος ἄφθονον, ‘abundant quantities of goods, stores’ (commodities); ἄφθ., cp. c. 83 supra.
ὥστε: cp. c. 191 infra: the following anecdote is of later composition than the context. Ἀμεινοκλέι τῷ Κρητίνεω: of this Ameinokles, of his father Kretines (cp. c. 165 supra), and of his children, we know nothing more than Hdt. has here recorded; Plutarch (de Hdti, malig, 30) thinks Hdt. has only brought in the gold galore in order to point the moral of the wretched man's domestic woes—but such ‘moralizing’ hardly amounts to ‘malignity,’ except in the eyes of an ineurable optimist!
γηοχέοντι περὶ Σηπιάδα, ‘a landowner in the immediate neighbourhood of Sepias.’ γηοχέειν=γηουχέειν=γηοῦχος (i. e. γαιήοχος) εἶναι: a grandiloquent phrase.
ἄφατα χρήματα, ‘untold wealth.’ περτεβάλετο, ‘invested himself with,’ was invested with, cp. 8. 8.
τἆλλα οὐκ εὐτυχέων, ‘in all other respects was ill-staried, though . .’
καὶ τοῦτον: like every man, espeeially the very wealthy or prosperous, he had an οἰκήιον κακόν: cp. e. 152 supra. In his case it took the form of a mortality among his children (one of the worst curses; cp. 6. 86 γ). ἄχαρις, a euphemism: cp. e. 36 supra.
παιδοφόνος. Plutarch apparently understood this to mean that Ameinokles was himself the murderer (τὴν Ἀμεινοκλέους παιδοφονίαν). Stein supports this view by quoting the plagiarism from Dionys. Hal. 3. 21 (of Horatius, who slew his sister) ἄχαριν συμφορὰν άδελφοκτόνον. Reiske and Schweighaeuser take the same view. Larcher and Blakesley deny that Hdt.'s words must necessarily have this meaning, and I agree, but add that ‘a misfortune by which a child of his was killed’ (Blakesley) would hardly account for Hdt.'s interest in the case: there must have been a more extensive fatality. Had Ameinokles been himself the doer, Hdt. would surely have put the point clearly, and not represented him as passive. If a madman, again, Hdt. would not have shrunk from saying so (cp. 6. 75). In any case we are in the presence of one of those ‘domestic tragedies’ in which the work of Hdt. is so rieh (cp. 3. 50-53, 8. 104-106, 9. 108-113, etc.).
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