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τὰ περὶ τοὺς νεκρούς, the title of this anecdote, which seems quite independent of the record in 7. 238.
καὶ δύο μυριάδες, ‘about (even) twenty thousand’: of these the king buried 19,000 and left 1000 unburied, as a preparation for the ensuing comedy. The figures and the farce are alike incredible: 20,000 men cannot have fallen at Thermopylai, still less could 19,000 have been so speedily interred; nor is it by any means certain that the Persian king would have caused them to be interred at all—exposure being perhaps the Persian custom; cp. 7. 117—though doubtless he would have permitted the various nations concerned each to follow its own rite. Nor, had the king attempted such a fraud, could he have hoped to silence men's tongues, or befool their eyes. It is likely enough that a good many of the slain had been interred before the visitors from the fleet made their appearance at Thermopylai; for the rest, the anecdote seems to be part of the comic Nemesis which Greek anecdote-mongers inflicted upon Xerxes (cp. Introduction, § 11). It forms in any case a contrast to the Spartan review of the Persian dead at Marathon, 6. 120 —a truly dignified proceeding. Perhaps ὡς χιλίους represents about the numbers of the Persian slain in the third engagement.
τάφρους ὀρυξάμενος: cp. τάφρον μεγάλην ὀρύξαντες c. 28 infra. The king did not work with his own hands, ἐπιβαλών notwithstanding.
φυλλάδα τε ἐπιβαλὼν καὶ γῆν ἐπαμησάμενος. Stein takes φ. ἐπιβ. as a hysteron proteron with γ. ἐπαμ. The earth would first be filled in, heaped up (ἐπ́αμάομαι), and the leaves then strawed over to conceal the diggings. φυλλάς, collective, like λιθάς, νιφάς, ίππάς. ἵνα μὴ ὀφθείησαν: sc. αἱ τάφροι rather than οὶ νεκροί. With the construction cp. c. 7 supra.
σύλλογον ποιησἀμενος: cp. c. 83 infra. παντὸς τοῦ στρατοπέδου: sc. τοῦ ναυτικοῦ. He would need an interpreter, or rather a number of interpreters, to address the motley array.
σύμμαχοι is polite; cp. e. 19 supra.
παραδίδωσι, ‘permits, gives leave’; in 6. 103, with a slightly different suggestion, the victor Miltiades παραδιδοῖ Πεισιστ ρἀτῳ ἀνακηρυχθῆναι.
ὑπερβαλέεσθαι: superare, 7. 39, 163.
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