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

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δεύτερα, ‘in the second place.’ The king's previous question had not been addressed to Pythios himself (αὐτόν), or τὸ δεύτερον might have stood here; cp. 5. 28.

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οὔτε σε ἀποκρύψω: sc. τὴν οὐσίην (cp. 1. 92, 6. 86, etc., the primary sense of οὐσία, ‘substance’=property).

οὔτε σκήψομαι τὸ μὴ εἰδέναι: the negative is here quite regular and inevitable, but would no doubt equally have stood idiomatically after ἀποκρύψω. (ἀποκρύπτεσθαί τινά τι is the more usual idiom, here perhaps avoided on account of the coming σκήψομαι.)

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ἀτρεκέως καταλέξω: an ‘Homeric remmiscence,’ cp. c. 159 infra; hardly appropriate in the mouth of Pythios addressing Xerxes; nor would the courtier have denominated the sea between Asia and Europe θάλασσαν τὴν Ἑλληνίδα in addressing the king. Cp. the use of βάρβαρος infra.

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λογιζόμενος: this Lydian Rothschild was not apparently in the habit of striking a balance periodically! His wealth consisted in silver, gold, slaves and ‘realty’ (if his land included mines he might soon renew his specie). The silver and gold he offers (not on loan) to the king. Assuming that the computation was made in Babylonian talents (Babyl.: Euboic:: 7:6, Hdt. 3. 89), the silver (2000 T.) would amount to £584,325 of our money (taking B. talent =£292:3:3). 2000 Euboic=£500,841: 13:4, 2000 Attic = £500,000 (circa), while the 3,993,000 gold Darics (taking the Daric = £1:1:101/2) may be expressed roughly as so many guineas. Rawlinson defends the derivation of the name Daric from Dareios (cp. louis and napoleon), but the later evidence referred to by Head, Historia Numorum (1887) p. 698, seems to show that Dariku is an old Babylonian measure or weight, possibly connected with the Assyrian darag manu, ‘degree (i.e. 1/60) of the mina,’ an expression with which the Greek δραχμή has been connected. That the Greeks should find native or less remote derivations for these words was inevitable (e.g. δράσσομαι for δραχμή), but does any extant Greek authority derive the ‘Dareik’ from Dareios? Harpokration says sub v. ἐκλήθησαν δὲ Δαρεικοὶ οὐχ ὡς οἱ πλεῖστοι νομίζουσιν ἀπὸ Δαρείου τοῦ Ξέρξου πατρὸς ἀλλ᾽ ἀφ᾽ ἑτέρου βασιλέως. This negation is of some value in support of the Babylonian origin of the term, especially since the old Persian darâ = king has been given up. The term δαρεικός is properly adjectival, as here, and in Thuc. 8. 28. 4.