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

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Ἀρτάβανος: c. 10 supra.

τὸ πρῶτον: for he subsequently altered his opinion. There follows here an elaborate Dialogue, with five speeches assigned to each interlocutor (cc. 46-52). Little or no degree of authenticity can be claimed for the passage as a record of an actual conversation between the king and his uncle. (a) The conversation is ex hypothesi a private one; (b） surely not conducted, although reported, in Greek; (c) marked by Greek sen timent rather than Persian, or Oriental; (d） affording an artificial antithesis, or series of antitheses, between the cheery optimism of the king and the sober pessimism of the counsellor; (e) in regard to human life generally and the jealousy of the gods; (f) in regard to the natural difficulties encompassing the expedition; (g) in regard to the danger to be apprehended from the Ionians, a human element of weakness. The passage suggests to some extent a rationale for the coming failure of the undertaking, in ‘the jealousy’ of heaven, the physical obstacles on land and sea, the humau elements of weakness in the composition of the forces, all points which are subsequently worked out more fully, and to a great extent in similar dramatic form. (Cp. cc. 101 ff.) It cannot be said that Xerxes has the worst of the argument upon this occasion; he contrasts favourably with the bl<*>tant egotism of a Kroisos in his interview with Solon (1. 30), and Hdt. has nowhere shown himself a finer literary artist than in his management of this matter, and of the subsequent dialogues which are the vehicles for his own philosophy of history, with especial reference to the great expedition. A modern historian, dealing with a similar problem, must speak in propria persona, and dare not invoke Hdt.'s stage-devices (cp. H. B. George, Napoleon's Invasion of Russia, 1899, passim). But Hermogenes went too far in his commendation of Hdt. as a master in the representation of ἤθη and πάθη προσώπων, in this passage especially, where the treatment is decidedly conventional: περὶ ἰδεῶν β 396 (Spengel, Rhet. Gr. ii. 421).

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οὐ συμβουλεύων: dissuadens, i.e. συμβ. μή . .

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ἐσῆλθε γάρ με λογισα<*>μενον κατοικτῖραι ὡς . ., ‘yes, for pity came over (into) me, when I thought how . .’

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ἐς ἑκατοστὸν ἔτος, ‘a hundredth year,’ from now? or of age? The former seems the more forcible: ‘a hundred years hence they will all be gone.’

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παρὰ τὴν ζόην, ‘during life . .’

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τεθνἀναι βοὐλεσθαι μᾶλλον ἢ ζώειν: the same pessimistic sentiment is put into the lips of Solon, 1. 31 διέδεξέ τε ἐν τούτοισι ὁ θεὸς ὡς ἄμεινον εἴη ἀνθρώπῳ τεθνάναι μᾶλλον ἢ ζώειν. Artabanos of course could not cite the story of Kleobis and Biton as proof of his contention. Side by side with the childlike and the cheery view of life there runs through Greek literature, from Homer to Plutarch, the sadder note of pessimism, as perhaps through every great literature (though ‘prosperity is the blessing of the Old Testament,’ Ecclesiastes, or even Job, is not exactly cheerful reading). Cp. note to 5. 4 (Hdt. IV.-VI. i. 155a). But the sentiment here is Hellenic rather than Persian (Omar Khayyam notwithstanding).

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ὁ δὲ θεὸς γλυκὺν γεύσας τὸν αἰῶνα φθονερὸς ἐν αὐτῷ εὑρίσκεται ἐών, ‘while our God, after giving us a taste of the life that is sweet (or, of the sweetness of life), gives it, one finds, with a jealous hand.’ This thoroughly Greek form of the doctrine of Divine φθόνος is out of place on the lips of a worshipper of Ahuramazda. On the doctrine cp. c. 10 ll. 45 ff. supra, and Introduction, § 11. ἐν αὐτῳ is vague: ‘therein,’ cp. ἐν αὐτοῖσι, c. 8 l. 34 supra.