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

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ἐγεγόνεε ... ἐνεγόνεσαν: the tense does not seem of much importance in either case, but has its full temporal value at least in the second; the ‘unconscious iteration,’ duplicated by γίνεται and γενόμενον, all within four lines, marks a certain poverty of style The three months' siege of Poteidaia will have filled the winter of 480-79 B. C.

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ἄμπωτις, ‘ebb,’ cp. 7. 198 supra. The words χρόνον ἐπὶ πολλόν are vague; it is impossible to say whether Hdt. means a matter of hours, or of days.

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τὰς δύο μέν κτλ., a curious particularity: at any rate, they had not got quite half-way. ὑπόλοιποι, cp. 7. 171 and ὑπολειφθέντες c. 67 supra.

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πλημμυρίς, ‘flood,’ flood-tide: the reverse of ἄμπωτις just above; this was the largest on record, or in memory. The reference, however, in πολλάκις γινομένη cannot be to normal tidal phenomena such as he has recorded in 7. 198. This passage and that, from different sources, are apparently written without reference to each other. But Hdt. can hardly be taken in this passage to be referring to the great tidal disturbances iecorded in Thuc. 3. 89. 2 ff. for the summer of 426 B. C. He has not been working at his composition so late as that; cp. Introduction, § 9.

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ὡς οἱ ἐπιχώριοι λέγουσι: the authority (not necessary viva voce) is adduced for a statement which Hdt. merely gives ‘for what it is worth’, so, too, just below, αἴτιον δὲ λέγουσι Ποτειδαιῆται. These citations of sources do not, and are not intended to, guarantee the statements, much less to show that Hdt. has cross-questioned the natives. Cp. Introduction, § 10. αἴτιον is used here in a less physical sense than in 7. 125 supra.

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ῥηχίης is plainly identical with πλημμυρίδος (cp. 2. 11, 7. 198).

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αἴτιον δὲ τοῦτο λέγοντες εὖ λέγειν ἔμοιγε δοκέουσι. If just the very ‘Persians’ (were they all Persians?), neither more nor fewer, who perished, had been guilty of the sacrilege in the temple of Poseidon, the coincidence would, indeed, have been remarkable: but was not the guilt to some extent inferred from the doom, on the wellestablished canon which condemned the Galileans on whom the tower in Siloam fell as sinners above all Galileans? Hdt. is less of a critic in this passage than in his rationale of Poseidonian action at Tempe, 7. 129 supra. Perhaps the direct intervention of the deity was more intelligible to him, in a case of human ἀσέβεια, than in the case of a natural object. Hdt. does not indeed here actually specify the personal action of the outraged god; but he must be supposed to have taken it for self-evident, between the ἀσέβεια and the ῥηχίη. Poteidaia is, of course, a city of Poseidon: Poseidon Hippios appears on its coinage, and Head (Hist. Num. p. 188) regards the type of the tetradrachm as “doubtless suggested by the sacred image of Poseidon, which Herodotus mentions as standing in front of the city, ἐν τῷ προαστείῳ.” The city itself appears to have been situate astride the isthmus, fortified north and south by two parallel walls, and protected east and west by the sea. The object of the Persians was to enter the city round the sea end of the wall (just as Aristeus did in 432 B. C., Thuc. 1. 53). Stein's idea that Poteidaia was not fortified on the S. side appears to arise from a misinterpretation of the words in Thuc. 1. 54. 2 “τὸ δ᾽ ἐς τὴν Παλλήνην ἀτείχιστον ἦν”, which refer to the absence of Athenian siege-works on the south side. As a matter of fact the Athenians had demanded the dismantling of the south wall, “τὸ ἐς Παλλήνην τεῖχος” Thuc. 1. 54. 2, a demand compliance with which would have placed the town at the mercy of the sea-power.

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τοὺς περιγενομένους: he has 40,000 men in 9. 66 infra against 60,000 in c. 126 supra.