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ἀπό: temporal; cp. cc. 54, 55 infra.
τῆς διαβάσιος τοῦ Ἑλλησπόντου: cp. 7. 54-56 supra. The Hellespont is here, curiously euough, treated as the starting-point of the march (ἔνθεν πορεύεσθαι ἤρξαντο οἱ βάρβαροι). In Bk. 7 the passage of the Hellespont is a mere episode on the march from Sardes iu 480 B.C., aud the start is made from Sardes with great pomp and circumstance (7. 37-40). Agaiu, in Bk. 7. 56 the passage of the Hellespont occupies seveu days and seven nights, just a week of our reckoniug: here, a month is spent in passing the Hellespont (ἕνα αὐτοῦ διατρίψαντες μῆνα ἐν τῷ διέβαινον ἐς τὴν Εὐρώπην). It might be possible to ‘harmonize’ the two statements by supposing that the mouth covers all the time spent on the Hellespout; but such a harmouy is not convincing. The month might as well cover all the period from the start at Sardis: and in any case the discrepancy remains, aud suggests a difference of source. The passages in Bk. 7 are probably from Asianic sources. The passage before us here is hardly less obviously from the Europeau side, and presumably from Attic authority, as the Archoutate suggests. It is important to recognize the insouciance with which Hdt. writes down in different contexts different data from different sources, without troubling himself to rationalize them; cp. Introduction, § 10. This acceptauce of the local source for all it may be worth is of the essence of Hdt.'s method, or unmethod; it is half the secret of his charm, and the chief cause of his value; the unity of his work is a literary, a poetic illusion, uot a scientific miracle.
ἐν τρισὶ ἑτέροισι μησί. The meaning is not so self-evideut as might be wished. How are the ‘months’ computed? By the calendar? Or purely by the interval between start and arrival? Are we to understaud that just uinety days, or rather less, separated Sestos and Athens on the Persian march? Or are the months three months of the Attic caleudar, Skirophorion, Hekatombaion, Metageitnion, for example? In either case the three months seems an underestimate. The battle of Salamis was fought about the 20th of Boedromiou (cp. c. 65 infra), and surely within a mouth of the arrival of the Persians iu Atheus. The fighting at Artemision-Thermopylai approximately synchronized with the Olympiad (7. 206 supra, but cp. c. 26 supra), i.e. could not at the earliest have fallen before the Attic uew year, which suits the date for Salamis and the Archontate. But to snppose that the battle of Salamis took place only ninety days or so after the passage of the Hellespont ascribes extraordinary activity to the Persian advance. Moreover, the start from Sardes will probably have taken place at latest in Elaphebolion (say March), and the passage of the Hellespont in Thargelion (say May). Taking the months here as Attic months, and reckoning exclusively, it might be correct to say that Xerxes reached Athens three months after leaving the Hellespont, i.e. in the fifth month, reckoning inclusively. There is an exactly parallel case in Xenoph. Hell. 1. 4. 21, where Alkibiades is said to have qnitted Athens τρίτῳ μηνὶ μετὰ τὸν κατάπλουν (407 B.C.). He had landed on Thargelion 25 (ib. § 12); he left after Boedromion 20 (§ 20). This would be at least four months after, reckoning simply from arrival to departure, or in the fifth month, reckoning by Attic months, nominatim, or after a clear three months' interval, reckoned exclusively. The word ἑτέροισι here might favour this last method (But does τρίτῳ μηνί in Xenophon perhaps = Βοηδρομιῶνι?) See further on the chronology Appendix IV. § 2.
Καλλιάδεω ἄρχοντος Ἀθηναίοισι, i.e. in the conrse of the year 480-479 B.C. = Ol. 75. 1. Cp. Clinton, F. H. ad an. Bnt as there were twelve months in the year (and sometimes thirteen) this chronological indication, though highly acceptable on many grounds, leaves a good deal to be wished: if but the day of Xerxes' coming had happened to engrave itself npon the records! Probably it was a day towards the end of Metageitnion (say Angnst) or beginning of Boedromion (September). τὸ ἄστυ, here, at least, must be admitted as contradistinguished from ἡ ἀκρόπολις, whieh they did not find deserted, or take withont a struggle. Even in Attica they had picked np some 500 captives, if the story in 9. 99 infra be trne as it stands, and the men there reported be not the remnant of the Akropolis garrison. The Asty was not apparently at this time snfficiently walled, or fortified, to enable it to stand a siege, or we may well doubt whether the Athenians would have evacuated Attica. It was, however, a πόλις τροχοειδής — unless, indeed, that description apply to the Akropolis, 7. 140.
καί τινας ὀλίγους εὑρίσκουσι . . ἐόντας: they discover a fact, perhaps to their astonishment, viz. that some few men of the citizens of Athens are in the Sacred Place—these words introdnce an emmently apologetic and fictitious account of the defence and siege of the Akropolis, which was probably a far more serious and formidable nndertaking than the story, devised in the light of events, expressly suggests. The men in the Akropolis were perhaps neither so few, so poor, so abject, so superstitious, nor so deplorable as the story assumes and asserts. ἐν τῷ ἱρῷ: what temple is meant? Was this an old Erechtheion (cp. c. 55 infra), or was it the old ‘Athenaenm’ (so to speak) which had been enlarged by Peisistratos? Did Hdt. know anything of there being more than one temple on the Akropolis of Peisistratos? Or was there, in fact, more than one? Cp. Furtwaengler, Masterpieces (E.T.) Appendix, pp. 415 ff.; E. A. Gardner, Ancient Athens, c. m. pp. 78 ff. Baehr would take τὸ ἱρόν here in a wider sense: de todo loco diis ac potissimum Minervae consecrato in arce. But its recurrence jnst below, and in c. 53, is against him.
ταμίας τε ... καὶ πένητας ἀνθρώπους: prima facie, the same persons are meant, bnt the ταμίαι τοῦ ἱροῦ, or more correctly ταμίαι τῶν ἱερῶν χρημάτων τῆς Ἀθηναίας, for it surely must be these officials that are here intended (cp. G. Gilbert, Handbuch i.2 269), would of necessity have been assessed nnder the highest τίμημα, cp. Ἀθ. πολ. 7. 3, 8. 1. Their existence is demonstrable epigraphically before the middle of sixth cent., C I.A. iv. 3. 373. They were not ‘poor,’ except in so far as the war had ruined them. ἀνθρώπους too is contemptnons: φραξάμενοι is a strict middle, and ἠμύνοντο a strict imperfect: θύραι uot so much ‘doors’ torn from their hiuges, as ‘raft-like structures’ (cp. 2. 96, Thuc. 6. 101. 3).
ἄμα μὲν ... πρὸς δέ . .: two reasous are giveu, one reflecting upon their material, the other upon their meutal resources: they were poverty-stricken, deficieut iu meaus of livelihood; yet they were proud, or couceited euough to have a private interpretation of the divine word (αὐτοί): cp. “τοὺς πλέον τι ἐς τὸν χρησμὸν ἢ Θεμιστοκλῆς εἰδέναι νομίζοντας” Pausan. 1. 18. 2. These two reasons are sibi repugnantia (but this was writteu before the Lords decided that the ‘Wee Frees’ were in the right!): auyway everything teuds to depreciate the defenders of the Akropolis, and to betray the ‘pragmatism’ of the story!
ἐξευρηκέναι τὸ μαντήιον, ‘(to have discovered), to uuderstand, (the true meauing of) the respouse.’ The reference is, of course, to the story told 7. 140-144; cp. especially c. 142, where the justificatiou of the ξύλινον τεῖχος is better explained thau iu this passage, which ouly suggests the extemporized θύραι and ξύλα of these poor wretches. Replaced in its proper perspective, that is, after the fiasco at Thermopylai, the story of the Athenian theoria to Delphi, of the two responses, and the various interpretations thereof, gains immensely in poiut. The defeuce of the Akropolis may have beeu of the uature of a compromise, a concession, ou the part of Themistokles; yet it looks by no meaus iuconsisteut with his plau of a sea-fight at Salamis, aud it might have had the effect of briuging the Peloponnesiau army from behind the Isthmos iuto Attica to the rescue of the Akropolis: in any case, it occupied the Persiau forces, and to some exteut checked and divided them, and made pro tanto for the safety of Salamis aud the success of the fleet.
ἀνάλωτον ἔσεσθαι: these words might have ended au hexameter, but as a matter of fact the actual verse ran ἀπόρθητον τελέθειν. The variatiou suggests that Hdt. is here following an independeut story, without reference to 7. 141 supra.
τὸ κρησφύγετον: cp. 5. 124.
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