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

---

---

τέσσερα ἔτεα πλήρεα seem to be not calendar years, but full years (of 360 days?) measured from the event specified (Αἰγύπτου ἄλωσις); cp. c. 1 supra. The event itself, however, is not accurately dated, the duration of the revolt not having been specified, c. 7 supra. On the chronology cp. Introduction, § 11, Appendix II. § 3.

---

πέμπτῳ δὲ ἔτεϊ ἀνομένῳ. Blakesley remarks that ἀνομένῳ has been rendered both ‘ending’ and ‘commencing’ to square with particular theories of the chronology, but it simply means ‘advancing,’ i.e. ‘in the conrse of the fifth year’; so ἤνετο τὸ ἔργον 8. 71 infra, cp. 1. 189.

---

χειρί: cp. c. 157 infra, 4. 155.

στόλων γὰρ τῶν ἡμεῖς ἴδμεν ... μέγιστος: a mere formnla for a heightened snperlative, cp. Bks. IV.-VI., Introduction, § 22. Four great expeditions are mentioned, none of which could compare in magnitude with the invasion of Greece by Xerxes; in chronological sequence reversed they are:—i. τὸν Δαρείου τὸν ἐπὶ Σκύθας (this is at least the third time the subject of the ‘Skythian Logi’ has been mentioned in this Bk., cp. c. 10 (bis), but even here there is nothing to suggest that Bk. 4 was in existence when this passage was first composed, in spite of the τῶν εἵνεκεν κτλ.).

ii. τὸν Σκυθικόν: the repeated invasion of Media and Upper Asia by the Skyths in pursuit of the Kimmerians. The Kimmerian invasion of Asia Minor is undoubtedly historical; cp. 1. 6, 15, 103, 4. 11-13. Historical also is the invasion, probably the repeated invasions, of Upper Asia by ‘Skyths,’ nomads from the Oxus and Jaxartes region. But the pursuit of the Kimmerians by the (European) Skyths via Caucasus is perhaps only a theory, a combination, due to the ingenuity of Hdt. or of his authorities; cp. Bks. IV.-VI., notes to l.c. Hdt. speaking here propria persona might well have referred back to the Lydian or Skythian Logi, had they been originally composed prior to this passage.

iii. τὸν Ἀτρειδέων ἐς Ἴλιον. The Trojau expedition does duty in another connexion 1. 3-4, there too as a στόλος μέγας, and indeed the first from Europe to Asia. κατὰ τὰ λεγόμενα, referred by Stein definitely to the Homeric Catalogue, may surely be taken with a more general reference, but in auy ease conuotes written sources, not mere oral tradition, and seems to suggest a doubt as to their trustworthiness; Hdt. (like Thuc. 1. 9 etc.) suspects Homer (cp. 2. 116).

iv. τὸν Μυσῶν τε καὶ Τευκρῶν. . Hdt. is our oldest authority for this supposed movement; other or later authorities differ considerably from his presentation of the matter (and to some extent from each other). Six points in the Herodotean account call for observation: (i.) Mysiaus and Teukrians are combined in the movement, which (ii.) passes from Asia into Europe (iii.) via the Bosporos, and (iv.) reaches the Adriatic and the Peneios (v.) in a more or less organized conquest (vi.) dated before the Trojan war. It is difficult to determine on what evidence this theory was based: a clear and indepeudent tradition for it can hardly have existed, but there were evidences, still recoverable, of real connexions between Asia Minor and Thrace, of which this theory is one possible solution, and the Homeric poems played their part, easily understood, in the argument. Stein5 ad l. (following Abel, apparently) adduces five proofs in support of the Herodotean theory, which he accepts; they suggest the evidence, or a part of the evidence, upon which the theory may have been founded, but are not all indisputably matters of fact, and so far as true are equally or even more compatible with the theory (found in later writers, e.g. Strabo, but not therefore of necessity based upon later or inferior evidences) which represented the Mysian (or Mysio-Teukrian) movement, if such it was, as an invasion of Asia from European Thrace. Those proofs are:— (1) The Trojan or ‘Teukrian’ origin of the Paionians on the Strymon, Hdt. 5. 13 (highly disputable, see infra). (2) The presence of Paionian and kindred (Thracian) stocks over the whole district from the Adriatic to the Propontis (a fact pointing to the European side as their origiual or earlier habitat!). (3) The expulsion of the Bithynians from the Strymon into Asia by Teukrians and Mysians, c. 75 infra (almost an absurdity if Teukrians and Mysians are coming from Asia!). (4) The existence of a number of identical names (race- and place-names) on both sides the Hellespont: Strabo, p. 590 (quite compatible with the European origin of the names). (5) The fact that Priam ap. Homerum heads a confederation, which includes the tribes of Thrace as far as the Axios (no proof of a Tenkrian ‘conquest,’ much less immigration in Thrace). Stein's (Abel's) proofs for Hdt.'s theory are unconvincing; a closer examination of Hdt.'s six points will further discredit the argument. (i.) Hdt. plainly regards the Teukrians as primitive Trojans (cp. 2. 118, 5. 13, 122), and the Mysians, their allies, as primitive or early inhabitants of the Troad, or of historic Mysia. But Tenkrians are absolutely unknown to Homer, and the only Mysians known to the Iliad are at home in Europe (N 5, etc., except in the Catalogue, B 858 —of course late; cp. Thraemer, op. cit. infra p. 337). Kallinos of Ephesos is our oldest authority for ‘Teukrians,’ and he regarded them as immigrants, l.c. infra. Blakesley, from the silence of Homer, rashly infers that “the name was certainly more recent than the Iliad”; Kretschmer (op. cit. infra p. 191), more judiciously, that the Epos says nothing of Teukrians in the Troad, because its design is to represent an heroic period, prior to their immigration. If immigrants, whence did they come? Kallinos apparently brought them from Krete (Strabo, p. 604); others brought them from Attica (ibid.). Each alternative may be accounted for (though not shortly enough for this note) and neither is convincing. The latest modern tendency is to connect the Teukrians of the Troad with Kypros, either in virtue of a common wide-spread stratum in the Anatolian populations from the Hellespont to Kypros, or it may be in virtue of actual immigration from Kypros into ‘Mysia.’ Archaeological evidence, especially the pottery, points to a connexion, and that older than the Epos, between the Troad and Kypros; and Τεῦκρος, the Τευκρίδαι, and the Γεργῖνοι (=Γέργιθες） are found in Kypros and the neigh bourhood (Kilikia); cp. further c. 43 infra. Τεῦκρος the Eponym appears in the Iliad among the Achaian heroes fighting against Troy, a mighty bowman, bastard of Telamon, Θ 284, and brother of Aias, of Salamis. Pindar has the easily understood legend of his colonizing Kypros, Nem. 4. 46. There is also the possibility that the ‘Teukrians’ of Mysia were from Thrace—if the Mysians were. In some ways this theory is attractive, as it recognizes the supposed TenkroMysian invasion of Europe (from which the whole discussion starts), only inverting it into a Teukro-Mysian invasion of the Troad. In this case the ‘Teukri’ might have passed from the Troad to Kypros, etc. But it is on the whole more probable (me iudice) that the ‘Teukrians,’ coming from Kypros, first met and became associated with the Mysians, coming from Thrace, in the Troad, and have thus been made to share the Mysian adventure. The European and Thracian character of the Mysians may be taken as proved by the Homeric ethnography, even if the express assertions of the later writers cannot be cited as independent evidence (being perhaps inference from the Homeric facts); nor need we hesitate (if Kretschmer op. cit. p. 211 etc. is to be trusted) to see in the Moesi of the Roman empire the same name and tribe in their original habitat. Hdt. obvionsly treats the ‘Mysians’ as indigenons to Asia. Their real or supposed affinity with the Lydians and Karians (the strongest proof of which is to be found in Hdt. 1. 171) is in favour of this view; but if this affinity is anything more than inferential and factitious, it would point not to the indigenons origin of the Mysians, but to an external origin for Karians and Lydians: Hdt. himself indeed brings the Karians to Asia from outside (wrongly in my opinion), and some of the moderns would recognize a Thracian origin, or element, in the ‘Lydians’ (cp. Radet, La Lydie, pp. 53, 57; Forbiger, ap. Pauly, Real-Encycl. iv. 1279). The doctrine of the antochthonous character of the Lydians was, of course, a ‘Lydian’ dogma, found in Hdt. and in Xanthos Lydos; cp. c. 74 infra, Xanth. Frag. 1. The remaining five points in Hdt.'s theory quickly arrange themselves, once the Tenkrians and the Mysians have been acconnted for. (ii.) The Mysian movement must be corrected into a migration from Thrace into NW. Asia, not conceived as an invasion of Thrace by Asianics. It falls into place with the series of such movemcnts, the greatest of which flooded Asia with ‘Phrygians’; cp. c. 73 infra. (iii.) The tradition that the point of crossing was the ‘Bosporos’ squares very ill with Hdt.'s own conception of the source and direction of the invasion, but agrees extremely well with (a) the Asiatic position of the Mysians in the Homeric Catalogue (l.c. supra), also with (b) the historic position of the Moesians on the Danube, and (c) is confirmed by the entirely aceeptable tradition that the Bosporos was named of old ‘the Mysian Bosporos’ (Strabo, p. 566), and further (d） by Hdt.'s own record that the Mysian movement drove the Bithynians from the Enropean side into historic Bithynia. (iv.) The extension of the Mysio-Teukrian occupation in Hdt. to the shore of the Adriatic and (the outlet of) the Peneios might be explained by reference to the homogeneity of the populations in the northern Balkans (cp. Stein's second proof supra), but is rendered more easily intelligible by reference to the tradition preserved in Hellanikos, Frag. 46, that once on a time the ‘Makedones’ dwelt among the Mysians, i.e. the Mysians occupied what was afterwards known as Makedonia; and also to Hdt.'s own record connecting the Phrygians with Mt. Bermios, cp. 8. 138 infra. (v.) That Hdt. makes the movement an organized invasion and conquest may be dismissed as obviously a ‘pragmatic’ notion, demanded by the occasion and comparison; neither he nor any one else furnishes a story for the action; and if the previous argument is correct, any such story could only have been fabulons. (vi.) Last, and not least curious, Hdt. dates the event πρὸ τῶν Τροικῶν. The rival view represented by Strabo and his authorities, and adopted above, that the Mysian migration was from Europe into Asia, naturally dated the movement after the Trojan war, as Mysians (and Teukrians) are unknown in the Troad of Homer. Hdt. is led to the earlier date by a need to account for (a) the presence of Mysians in Homeric Thrace, and (b) the absence of Mysians and ‘Tenkrians’ in Homeric Troy. But thereby his own theory breaks down as not affording any explanation for the presence of Mysians and Teukrians in historic Mysia. Ed. Thraemer's Pergamos (1888), ch. ii., contains an admirable discussion of the ‘Mysian’ problem, and P. Kretschmer's Einleitung in die Geschichte d. gr. Sprache (1896) corrects and supplements the same, and deals admirably with the question of the Teukrians. Without these works, which entirely supersede the lueubiations of Abel, Giseke, Stein, Rawlinson, etc., on these points, the above note could not have been composed.

---

τὸν Ἰόνιον πόντον: the Adriatic, cp. 6. 127, 9. 92 infra.

It is curious to find the Peneios (Tempe?), not Olympos, apparently as the Macedonian frontier; cp c. 128 infra.