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ἐπισχεῖν, ‘to hold on’: a stronger term than προσμεῖναι or even καταμεῖναι, connoting a longer time, a larger purpose. τούτων τῶν χρημάτων: partitive genitive, emphasized by μεταδιδοῖ.
ὡς παρ᾽ ἑωυτοῦ δῆθεν: so on a subsequent occasion he presents to Eurybiades arguments which are not of his own devising, as though they were his own, c. 58 infra.
ἀνεπέπειστο: the pluperfect here has its full temporal foree; but a shade of difference enters below, in ἀναπεπεισμένοι ἦσαν and ἐκεχάριστο. Ἀδείμαντος ... ὁ Ὠκύτου: cp. 7. 137 ad f., a passage which in part might explain the hostility of Athens to the memory of Adeimantos, were it not that the stories to the discredit of Adeimantos are surely far older than the exploits of Aristeas his son. The account of the bribery of Adeimantos by Themistokles at Artemision is, indeed, not merely absurd in view of the strategic necessities of the position, and obviously ‘pragmatic’—to the discredit of Themistokles too; but it is flagrantly inconsistent with the stories of the relations between The mistokles and the Korinthian admiral just before the battle of Salamis. It is thus donbly significant that the version of the story followed by Plutarch, Themist. 7, omits Adeimantos altogether. If there is any truth in the tradition of the employment of money by Themistokles to proeure a halt, to promote a battle, the scene must be laid at Salamis, not at Artemision, where the Peloponnesians could no more have thought of retreating than the Athenians themselves, as long as Leonidas was holding Thermopylai. The name and patronymic of the Korinthian strategos are here genuine, as the γάρ would show; cp. c. 59 infra. Aineas, son of Okytos, a Korinthian, appears among the signatories of the truce of Laches in 423 B.C., Thuc. 4. 119. 2. This second Okytos might well be a son of Adeimantos; the name is presumably connected with ὠκύς.
ἤσπαιρε: like a fish out of water, cp. 9. 120, or a babe new-born, cp. 1. 111, or (as Stein suggests, but without a reference) a bird in the hand of the fowler.
Μήδων. Did Themistokles, and the Athenians of his generation, speak of the ‘Mede’ rather than of the ‘Persian’? cp. Aristoph., Thuc. The general colour of the stories of Artemision is decidedly Attic; Hdt. and the Ionians for at least a generation before him could clearly distinguish between Mede and Persian. ταῦτά τε ἅμα ἠγόρευε καὶ πέμπει: the emphatic parataxis and the historic tenses are observable: ‘the words were hardly out of his mouth before he sends to the Korinthian admiral's flag-ship three talents of silver.’
πληγέντες. The reading of the second class for πάντες (ep. App. Crit.), adopted by Blakesley and Baehr, from Wesseling, and now by Stein, on the ground that πάντες is inadmissible for δύο. Baehr compares Plutarch, Demosth. 25 πληγεὶς ὑπὸ τῆς δωροδοκίας, and other Plutarehisms more remote; Stein still thinks of bird-snaring, and cps. Horace, Od. 3. 16 “munera navium Saevos illaqueant duces.” It is easier to understand πάντες as a corruption of πληγέντες ex librariorum quibus vulgatum durius visum ingenio (Wesseling) than vice versa, or one might be tempted to see in πάντες a hint of a story of still more farreaching corruption than that just related; at any rate, the corruptela was intended to cover ‘all three.’
ἀλλ̓: as though a negative had preceded, ἐλάνθανε having indeed a sort of negative force.
ἐκ τῶν Ἀθηνέων: if we transfer the scene to Salamis we shall be convmced that the recipients were right in their opinion; and the purpose (λόγος, ratío） was to keep them at Salamis.
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