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

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συμβουλεύεαί μοι προθύμως: the force of the middle voice is here observable; cp. 8. 102 συνεβουλεύετο. The adverb seems to mean ‘in earnest.’ One would rather expect the προθυμία to be predicated of Demaratos, but it might come to much the same, and the king had previously turned his advice to ridicule, c. 105.

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εἰ κτλ. seems to be a protasis pendens; but an apodosis is not far to seek. Baehr, indeed, suggests that it should have come instead of ἐκ ταύτης τῆς νήσου κτλ., in fact regards that as the virtual apodosis. But it may just as well, or better, be reckoned to the protasis, and part of the hypothesis. The real apodosis has been already implied: sc. τὸ ἄριστον ἂν εἴη. Cp. for a similar case c. 5 supra.

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τριηκοσίας: probably a third, or at any rate a quarter, of the whole fleet; cp. c. 89. But Demaratos takes no account of the losses off Sepias and Euboia, or in the fighting at Artemision!

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Λάκαιναν: simply the feminine adjective of Λάκων, and still nearer the proper stem than Λακεδαίμων above, and specially appropriate in Demaratos' mouth.

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Κύθηρα: sc. τά (modern Cerigo), the island off Malea, cp. 1. 82 ἡ Κυθηρίη νῆσος: in 1. 105 as here. The older name Πορφύρουσσα (διὰ τὸ κάλλος τὸ παρὰ τῶν πορφυρῶν, ὡς Ἀριστοτέλης, Steph. B. sub v.) suggests its chief commercial value; the epithet of Aphrodite, Κυθέρεια, its religious interest, cp. 1. 105; while in this place its strategic importance is mainly in view, cp. Thuc. 4. 53.

Χίλων: in 1. 59 there is a Chilon of Lakedaimon, contemporary with Hippokrates the father of Peisistratos (about contemporary, that might be, with Solon and other sages), who gives some advice to the Athenian, which is not taken. In 6.65 there is a Chilon son of Demarmenos, whose daughter, Perkalos, is wife to Demaratos. The contemporary of Solon cannot be the father-in-law of Demaratos; perhaps the two Chilons were grandfather and grandson; but which was the sage? Probably the elder.

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ἔφη. The observation of Chilon obviously means that Kythera, from the opportunity it offered to an enemy (especially a maritime power) as a base of operations against Lakonia, was more of a curse than a blessing to ‘mesogaian’ Sparta. Was this strategic observation as old as the days of Solon, or as young as the Archidamian war, and moreover the eighth year thereof (424 B.C.)? Stein, without venturing to date the composition of this passage as late as 424, argues that the comparison of this place with Thucydides, 4. 52 ff., appears to prove that the notion of occupying Kythera had been cuirent since the beginning of the war (431 B.C.), i.e. he appears to think that this passage was written after the outbreak of the Archidamian war in the light of an idea first started in or about 431 B.C. But Pausan. 1. 27. 5 preserves a completely acceptable record of the occupation of Kythera by Tolmides, on his great Periplous, which is also recorded, without much detail, by Thuc. 1. 108. 5, though he mentions the burning of Gytheion. The date of that exploit is 456-455; cp. Busolt, Gr. Gesch. iii. 1. 325 f. This earlier date for the inception of the idea suits far better any rational view of the composition of Hdt.'s history, and especially of the provenience of his sources, as here the Demaratossource, than Stein's indication. But is the perception of the strategic aspects of Kythera only as old as Tolmides and the exploit of the Pentekontaëteris? It figures here, in the first instance, as a virtual criticism on a profound error or shortcoming in the Persian plan of campaign: it is repeated substantially in Bk. 9. 9 as the sagacious criticism, not of Chilon the Spartiate but of Chileos the Tegeate! and referred not to the Persian fleet in 480 B.C. but to the Athenian fleet in 479 B.C. There was one man at least at that time who will have understood perfectly the best use of a fleet against the Peloponnesos, to wit, Themistokles; and the veiled critique in 9. 9, as here, might safely be carried back to the great Athenian. That reference would at least safeguard this passage as part of Hdt.'s original concept and draft of his work (cp. Introduction, § 9); but is it even necessary to stop there? The use of such islands generally, and of Kythera in particular, was probably understood in the Peloponnesos; and ages before the Persian war (cp. 5. 125) Kythera itself had been a bone of contention (cp. 1. 82). It is dramatically appropriate for Demaratos to point out the obvious advantages of Kythera to Xerxes, but we may be astonished at his moderation in fathering the mot upon even the elder Chilon; it might go back to the days of the Phoenicians, or even of Minos (to whom might be ascribed the introduction of the Aphrodite cult: is not the Snake-goddess of Knossos (cp. A. J. Evans, Annual of B.S.A. ix. pp. 75 ff.) the Ouranian Aphrodite? Cp. note 1. 5 supra).

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παροίκου δὲ πολέμου. It was an obvious rule of Spartan policy, enforced by the miserable domestic situation, with helots ever ready to revolt, Argos ever plotting to recover the lost hegemony, allies constantly striving to push their local interests irrespective of Sparta's dignity, that war and trouble ‘at home’ kept Lakedaimonians within the Isthmos. They could not help Kroisos or Ionia in 547 B.C.; they could not help the revolted Ionians in 498 B.C. by reason of that; they had to acquiesce afterwards in the growth of the power of Athens, because they were πολέμοις οἰκείοις ἐξειργόμενοι, Thuc. 1. 118. 2. This was no great arcanum of Spartan policy and history, which Demaratos divulges to Xerxes, but a glimpse of the facts obvious to Greek publicists.

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καταδουλωθείσης ... λείπεται: this observation, put into the mouth of Demaratos, contains the clue to the policy and action of Sparta in the Persian war; Sparta could not afford in her own interest to allow all Greece outside the Isthmos, and Attica especially, to be conquered and incorporated in the Persian empire (as Makedon and Thrace had been for a generation). The isolation of the Peloponnesos was an impossibility in view of the naval power of the Persians, or, after that was destroyed, of Athens —if Athens ‘medized.’

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ἀσθενὲς ... μοῦνον is redundant, and the redundancy is heightened by λείπεται.

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ἔστι ... ἰσθμὸς στεινός: how completely ‘dramatic’ the conversation is, this sentence shows; the information is addressed to Xerxes, not to Hdt.'s audience or readers.

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πἀντων Πελοποννησίων: Demaratos might seem to have forgotten Argos; but Πελοποννήσιοι is frequently used for the allies of Sparta (e.g. by Thucydides), and Demaratos perhaps is talking the language of the Pentekontaeteris. In 9. 26 the Arkadian orator carries the unity of the Peloponnese back into heroic times.