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

---

---

κατ᾽ ἀρχάς: the dating is not quite precise, even with the additional indication πρὶν ἢ καὶ ἐς Σικελίην πέμπειν. The question of the Hegemonia was doubtless one of the first to be decided, but it can hardly have been intercalated between the mission to Argos, 7. 148 (where, by the way, the Argives demand ἡγέεσθαι κατὰ τὸ ἥμισυ), and the mission to Sicily, 7. 153 ff. The dispute with the Athenian must have preceded both the other disputes, the stories of which imply that the hegemony is vested in Sparta. The λόγος here recorded, whether speech, demand, or argument, must have taken place (ἐγένετο) at the first meeting of the allies at the Isthmus, in the autumn or early winter of 481 B.C. The Athenians themselves (Themistokles?), or some state friendly to Athens (Plataia?), must have been its authors. The opposition of the allies here reeorded must be identical with the opposition of the allies just above recorded in c. 2.

---

μέγα πεποιημένοι: the whole passage, down to the second εἶκον infra, introduces some obscurity into the argument or narrative, but is in itself clear enough, the subject οἱ Ἀθηναῖοι being carried over or resumed apparently, at least as far as the second εἶκον.

The passive form πεποιημένοι is remarkable as the perfect or pluperfect of ποιέεσθαι. The tense does not appear to have a merely temporal force. Stein's emendation would spoil this aspect of the word.

---

ὀρθὰ νοεῦντες. Hdt. apparently applauds the patriotic modesty of the Athenians, and adds a stock gnome of but doubtful application to the ease in question, unless, indeed, the Athenians had been contemplating actually eoming to blows over the question. The gnome was hardly meant in the first instance to be applied to the case of an allianee or eonfederaey. ‘Civil war (στάσις ἔμφυλος) is to war conducted by a state at unity with itself (πόλεμος ὁμοφρονέων） as war is to peace (εἰρἡνη).’ The gnome does not cover the still darker evil of στάσις and πόλεμος combined (cp. Thuc. 3. 82). The neuter κάκιον is observable.

---

μέχρι ὅσου: sc. χρόνου: but the phrase might still mean either dum (while, so long as) or donec (until the point when). The exact rendering must depend upon the sense in which the words immediately snceeeding are taken.

κάρτα ἐδέοντο αὐτῶν. What is the subjeet of ἐδέοντο, and to whom does the word αὐτῶν refer? The exact meaning of ἐδέοντο may also be in question. If there is no ehange of subjeet, if the subject of all the final verbs (εἶκον, ἐδέοντο, διέδεξαν, ἐποιεῦντο, ἀπείλοντο） is ‘the Athenians,’ then the passage contains a distinetly unfavourable judgement upon the conduct of Athens, thereby conflieting not merely with the general Atticism of Hdt., but with the immediate context, wherein their patriotism, their pan-Hellenism, has been commended. ‘The Athenians, however, made these coneessions only so long as they were badly in need of them (the allies? or the Lakedaimonians? in preference the latter); for as soon as they had repulsed the Persian, and were carrying the war into the enemy's country, they deprived the Lakedaimonians of the lead on pretext of the violence of Pausanias.’ But there is something to be said for a change of subject. The repulse of the Persian, and the war in Ionia or Thrace, were not simply the doing of the Athemans: ὠσάμενοι, ἐποιεῦντο, ἀπείλοντο should hardly be referred exclusively to the Athenians, but rather to ‘the allies,’ or ‘the Hellenes’, in which ease αὐτῶν will refer to ‘the Athenians,’ and the meaning will be: ‘the Athenians gave way and yielded, until such time as they (the allies, the Greeks) had sore need of them (or possibly ‘petitioned them’), as they showed: for the Greeks, after repulsing the Persian, etc.’ The words ὡς διέδεξαν are in any case against the alternative rendering of ἐδέοντο, for it would be intolerably harsh' to take ‘the Greeks’ as the subject of ἐδέοντο and ἐποιεῦντο, but resume ‘the Athenians’ as the subject of the intercalary διέδεξαν. If, however, the subject of ἐδέοντο is οἱ σύμμαχοι, there is some confusion of thought in the passage, as the allies, or Hellenes, who deprived the Lakedaimonians of the naval hegemony at Byzantion in 477 B.C., were quite different persons and states from the allies who refused naval hegemony to the Athenians in 481 B.C. The story of the transfer is told, from an Attic point of view, Thueyd. 1. 95, Diodor. 11. 44, Plutarch, Aristeid. 23, ete. (Cp. G. F. Hill, Sources, i. 18 ff.)

This passage has a bearing on the question of the composition, plan, and completion of the work of Herodotus. He could hardly have expressed himself as here, or concluded this prospective episode with the summary ἀλλὰ ταῦτα μὲν ὕστερον ἐγένετο, had he been intending to earry his narrative below the point where it now terminates, viz. the siege of Sestos in 479-8 B.C. In other words, this passage supports the view that the work of Hdt., as we have it, is finished and complete, according to the author's own idea. Cp. Introduction, § 6.

---

τὴν Παυσανίεω ὕβριν is a remarkable expression, which might point to this passage being an insertion, cp. 9. 10 infra; but the phrase may be a current one, descriptive of the proceedings recorded more fully by Thuc. 1. 94, 95, and touched by Hdt. himself 5. 32.