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

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πάντα τὸν στρατόν seems to imply that all the forces were there to review. The Anatolian levies may have been given Abydos as the rendezvous. The fleet appears just below; but is it very likely that the whole fleet of 1207 vessels (more or less) was conveyed into and out of the Hellespont, and apparently for nothing but this review? If so, the fleet will have been numbered by tens, not by hundreds, and those who desire to diminish the scale of the expedition as much as possible should take note of this review.

προεπεποίητο: how weak the mere temporal force of the pluperfect is with Hdt. is shown by the compositum προ:. Cp. Index sub v. ‘Pluperfect.’

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προεξέδρη: the word is found elsewhere only in Pollux, 9. 46 (not 49 as in L. & S. and Didot's Stephanus), inter partes urbis. προ- has here the same force as in προεδρία, a seat ‘in front,’ i.e. of honour. This white marble seat, or platform (as Rawlinson suggests), had been commandeered some time before, and was probably a substantial structure.

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κατορῶν ἐπὶ τῆς ἠιόνος ἐθηεῖτο, “gazing thence upon the shore below, beheld” (Rawlinson); “looking down upon the shore he gazed” (Macaulay). The ships apparently were drawn up on the shore: another indication that there were not so many of them at Abydos. The next chapter, however, has them all afloat.

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τῶν νεῶν ἅμιλλαν: perhaps the earliest international Regatta on record; the Sidonians were victorions, and Xerxes' joys were multiplied (ἤσθη, cp. c. 29 supra). It was, perhaps, the vessel victorious on this occasion that he afterwards employed as his yacht, c. 128 infra; the captain, according to one story, though a good seaman, came to a sad end, 8. 118.