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

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Ξέρξης ἦν περὶ Θεσσαλίην. Hdt. seems to keep Xerxes waiting all the while Mardonios was making his selection—an improbability in itself, and hardly consistent with the emphasis lard upon the rapidity of the king's flight, cc. 115, 120 infra.

χρηστήριον ἐληλύθεε ἐκ Δ. Λ.: another item in Delphian apologetics; obviously the anecdote and oracle are this time at least post eventum. If so, is it necessary to inquire at what ideal point of time in 480 B.C. we shall date the response, or whether the Lakedaimonians <*>d consulted the oracle concerning <*> death of their king? χρηστήριον is <*>ere the actual response, or utterance. The pluperfect appears to be rhetorical, but not temporarily incorrect; cp. c. 50 supra. δίκας αἰτέειν τινά τινος is of course the regular construction, cp. 1. 2 etc.

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τὸ διδόμενον ἐξ ἐκείνου δέκεσθαι. De Pauw misunderstood: accipere omen. Wesseling approved. Baehr corrected: id quod a Xerxe oblatum esset, accipere. No doubt δέκομαι can be used of accepting an omen (cp. 9. 91), but also of accepting anything offered. Stein follows Baehr (apparently), and for τὸ διδόμενον cps. 3. 148, 8. 138, 9. 111. Below, δεξάμενος τὸ ῥηθέν has a slightly more oracular flavour, and though not used of accepting an oracle, is used of accepting something more than human.

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Σπαρτιῆται is hardly used by Hdt. in deliberate contrast to Λακεδαιμονίοισι just above, and Λακεδαιμόνιοι just below, but merely as a literary <*>n.

κατέλαβε, deprehendit, overtook; cp. κατελαμβάνετο 6. 29.

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πᾶσαν: not merely the select 300,000. Nor is there any hint of any garrisons south of Othrys.

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Μήδων: had Sparta or Delphi not yet percerved the distinction between Medes and Persians? The use of the term generally is a kind of recognition, from the Greek side, of the continuity of the empires of Astyages, Kyros, Dareios.

Λακεδαιμόνιοί τε ... καὶ Ἡρακλεῖδαι οἱ ἀπὸ Σπάρτης. The demand is a joint one, on behalf of the state, and of the royal family—which has now a blood-feud of its own with the Achaimenids. The Herakleids of Sparta —there were other Herakleids elsewhere —had a longer pedigree than Xerxes himself; cp. 7. 11, 204, and c. 131 infra. It can hardly be said that the vendetta was wiped out by the death of Mardonios, but it does not figure as real history afterwards. (Alexander, though an Herakleid, took a very different line; cp. Arrian Anab. 3. 22. 1, 30. 1-3, 4. 7. 3 ff.)

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ὃ δὲ γελάσας τε καὶ κατασχὼν πολλὸν χρόνον: one does not see much to laugh at (the laugh was soon to be on the other side): but perhaps the king already had his humorous answer ready, though he must wait some considerable time to deliver it, until Mardonios is in evidence.

κατασχών: like another despot, under sorer provocation, who (6. 129) κατεῖχε ἑωυτόν, οὐ βουλόμενος ἐκραγῆναι.

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τοιγάρ σφι Μαρδόνιος ... πρέπει: the remark is not a reply to the ‘herald’ but a witticism addressed to the suite (but δεικνὺς ἐς τοῦτον, for the benefit of the Spartan?), unless, indeed, the king spake Greek, or elaborated his jest through the medium of an interpreter. The irony of the aneedote is conspicuous, and the king's promise, or prophecy, is fulfilled, to his shame and astonishment, in 9. 64 ἀποθνήσκει δὲ Μαρδόνιος ὑπὸ Ἀειμνήστου ἀνδρὸς ἐν Σπάρτῃ λογίμου. But if Xerxes himself had fought and fallen at Plataia, how much more tragic, more cathartic, had been the irony! He would at least have escaped the comic Nemesis. Mardonios in death is the more dignified figure. Even the great Kyros had fallen by a woman, cp. 1. 214. But that is another story.

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πρέπει: sc. διδόναι or δοῦναι: so L. & S., Krueger, Abicht, Sitzler. Rawlinson renders ‘they deserve to get’ (i.e. δέξασθαι), which gives a more pregnant and forcible sense, and is, perhaps, just grammatieally possible ad sensum.