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

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ἔφη: the word might perfectly well be understood of a written authority or source, cp. 4. 13, 6. 137, and Introduction, § 10. Had Hdt. himself spoken face to face with his authority, he would have let his readers know it (cp. 9. 16), and if he were reporting simply a conversation with others he would scarcely have named one interlocutor without at least indicating the presence of the others. The words with which the anecdote, and the chapter, conclude, ταῦτα μὲν Δίκαιος ο Θεοκύδεος ἔλεγε, Δημαρήτου τε καὶ ἄλλων μαρτύρων καταπτόμενος, look more like an appeal to the vox viva, but are hardly conclusive in this respect, and certainly leave Hdt. himself out of audible range of Dikaios.

Δίκαιος ὁ Θεοκύδεος: doubtless a man of some importance in his day, presumably of the Peisistratid party (cp. cc. 52, 54 supra), and on friendly terms with Demaratos, as the ensuing anecdote proves. But the romantic hypothesis which P. Trautwein has woven out of these few indications plus general probability or possibility, making The Memoirs of Dikaios one of the principal sources used by Hdt. in his history of the Persian war, especially in those passages wherein Demaratos figures, is little more than a suggestive fancy. Sources, and written sources, Hdt. doubtless had; but alas! we can do little to identify or to reproduce them. Cp. Introduction, § 10.

The names ‘Dikaios’ and ‘Theokydes’ are rare, and almost unparalleled; but ‘Thucydides’ implies ‘Thucydes’ (Θεοθου-κύδης), and, if fancy is to be the order of the day, one might speculate upon a possible connexion between the father of Dikaios and the son of Oloros. What was the name of the father of Oloros, or Orolos? Considering the Thracian connexions of Thucydides, noting the extremely ‘superior’ manner in which he disposes of medism and the Median question, marking his tolerance of the Peisistratidar and the Tyrannis at Athens, one might amuse an idle halfhour in elaborating the conjecture that here, in this record of the unpatriotic iôle played by a more or less distant relative of his own, the Athenian historian and exile scented a provocation to the depreciatory estimate, both of the subject selected and the methods pursued, by his greatest literary predecessor, of whom he was obviously more than a little jealous! Cp. Thuc. 1. 20-23

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Μήδοισι rather suggests citation than free composition by Hdt. himself. Cp. c. 5 supra.

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ἐπείτε ἐκείρετο: the imperfect has its proper force, but the statement seems less important chronologically than causally—as explaining how they came to be where they were.

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Δημαρήτῳ τῷ Λακεδαιμονίῳ: cp. Bk. 7 passim. The description was hardly necessary at this stage in the continuous story, and comes perhaps from the source. Did the Spartan exile recall his previons visit to Eleusis some thirty years before (5. 75)?

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ἐν τῷ Θριασίῳ πεδίῳ: mentioned again 9. 7 infra by the Athenian envoy at Sparta as τῆς γε ἡμετέρης ἐπιτηδεότατον μαχέσασθαι u.v. How did Dikaios and Demaratos find themselves there? Had they come from Athens with a Persian column simply to ravage the plain? or were they on their way to Athens with the column which had left Boiotia by the pass of Dryos-Kephalai (cp. c. 50 supra)? or, as might seem most probable, were they crossing the Thriasian plain with the Persian force detached to move against the Isthmos, as recorded c. 70 infra? Or are they to be thought as there by themselves, and for no particular purpose, otherwise how could a cloud of dust surprise them? The Thriasian plain is a good size; it is a pity their exact position thereon is not more precisely defined.

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κονιορτὸν χωρέοντα ἀπ᾽ Ἐλευσῖνος. Did Hdt. suppose that the Pomp moved from Eleusis to Athens? K. O. Mneller accused him; Baehr defends, by invoking the N. or NW. wind! Surely the dust-cloud must move from Eleusis, because Persian fleet and Persian army are conceived, in the anecdote, as still to the east of Aigaleos.

ἀνδρῶν μάλιστά κῃ τρισμυρίων: this is the conventional number of Athenian citizens, cp. 5. 97, but the figure can hardly be used here with that reference, as the context clearly asserts that the festival was not confined to Athenians, while on the other hand all Athenian citizens were not initiate.

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ἀποθωμάζειν τε ... καὶ ... ἀκούειν, ‘they were not done wondering ... when they heard (were hearing)’; the parataxis has force. πρόκατε: c. 135 infra.

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ἀνθρώπων: not the Persian army, nor yet the advancing Peloponnesians (they thought), nor any mortal beings. The doubt is whether it be not superhuman.

καί οἱ φ. τ. φ. εἶναι: Dikaios is not quite sure. If there is any trath in the anecdote (as seems probable) this Athenian exile, himself a mystes, may well have been in an excited frame of mind that evening, Boedromion 20, that found him once more in his native land, under such unhallowed auspices, to assist on the morrow at the consummation of its ruin, or of his own eternal disgrace. Like the anecdote of Thersandros (9. 16), the story would suggest that there were those in the king's following who viewed with apprehension the struggle at close quarters with the Greeks, and were anything but confident of victory.

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τὸν μυστικὸν ἴακχον: i.e. the cry ‘Iakchos,’ or the hymn in honour of ‘Iakchos’—a specimen of which is perhaps presented by Aristoph. Frogs, 398-413, and which was uttered by the band of pilgrims as they went from Athens to Eleusis on the 19th or 20th Boedromion; see further infra. The very day itself was also apparently known by the same name, Plutarch, Camillus 19. Iakchos may be etymologically a reduplicated form of Bakchos (ϝιϝακχος, cp. L. & S.), but, as M. Foucart points out (l'Origine et la Nature des Mystères d'Eleusis, 1895, p. 81), Iakchos was a late comer at Eleusis, and a subordinate personage; this very passage is the earliest evidence of his association with the mysteries.

ἀδαήμονα: an ‘Epic’ word, not used by Hdt. elsewhere. Stein suggests that it comes, with σίνος and ἀρίδηλα below, from Hdt.'s ‘source’—a suggestion which further suggests that the source in question was in writing. How far this ignorance on the part of the Spartan exile is assumed for dramatic purposes, it is hard to determine. But even if Demaratos is the mere vehicle of Herodotean didactics, it is obvious that Herodotus addresses an audience which had much to learn in regard to the Eleusinia. Such a public was hardly to be found in Athens. Whether the author himself was a μύστης does not appear, but, no doubt appropriately, the Athenian exile plays the part of divine or exegete, the Spartan that of politician or diplomat.

τῶν ἱρῶν τῶν ἐν Ἐλευσῖνι γινομένων: in Hdt.'s own day, as in the times of Demaratos and Dikaios, of Peisistratos, and long before. There is surely no need to bring down this whole anecdote to the later draft of Hdt.'s work, or its revision—easily as the chapter might be an insertion—or to connect it merely with the attempted revival, or rather extension, of the Eleusinian Festrval after the thirty years' truce, which was to be one of Perikles' consolations for the failure of his more violent attempts to make Athens the head of a great empire, or of his still earlier and more ingenuous plan to win pan-Hellenic recognition for his city by making it the focus of a panHellenic Congress (Plutarch Perik. c. 17).

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οὐκ ἔστι ὅκως οὐ ... ἔσται: there is here an omitted antecedent, and the ellipse, coupled with the double negation, serves to emphasize the assertion, in this case a prediction; cp. Xenoph. Anab. 2. 4. 3 οὐκ ἔστιν ὅπως οὐκ ἐπιθήσεται ἡμῖν (se. βασιλεύς). σίνος (neut.), an ἅπαξ λ. in Hdt., though the verb σίνεσθαι is to be found passim (esp. Bk. 9); cp. l. 9 supra.

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στρατιῇ, as the context proves, embraces both the land and sea forces.

ἀρίδηλα, ‘absolutely clear’— also a ἅπαξ λ. in Hdt.; cp. l. 9 supra.

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ἐς τιμωρίην, assistance, aid, support—as often ap. Hdt. The prominence of ‘the Athenians’ betrays the origin of the anecdote.

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κατασκήψῃ: for the verb cp. 7, 134, 137 supra, passages which would suggest that a μῆνις or νέμεσις was here too in view—although clearly not directed against the Greeks in Peloponnese or in Salamis. The word may be used in a weakened sense, meaning little more than the τράπηται just below. The grammatical subjeet is obscure; the nearest would be τὸ φθεγγόμενον, but, as that must be taken in the passive, the result is nonsense. Stein suggests νέφος, by anticipation; κονιορτός from above would be less remote and obseure; but a vague though self-evident subject, such as τὸ θεῖον τοῦτο, or such like, suggests itself in the immediate context, or even τὸ σίνος τοῦτο, τὸ κακὸν τ.

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τὴν δὲ ὁρτὴν ταύτην: no feast or festival, strictly speaking, has been described, or even expressly mentioned, but may be taken as implied in τὸν μυστικὸν ἴακχον supra. The reference here is not to an ἀγών, which undoubtedly was held at Elensis (in strict terminology τὰ Ἐλευσίνια), but to the celebration of the ‘mysteries’ (τὰ με- γάλα), which took place annually in Boedromion (15-23?), the 19th and 20th being especially devoted to the Iakchospomp, and the latter of the two known by his name. On the evening which began that calendar day the pilgrims reached Eleusis. During the daylight of the 19th they would have been marching from Athens, and it is, therefore, inferentially to the 19th that the conversation between Dikaios and Demaratos is to be dated, and consequently to the 20th that the actual battle is to be referred. Cp. generally, on the festival, etc., A. Mommsen, Feste dex Stadt Athen (1898), 179-277.

ἀνὰ πάντα ἔτεα: cp. 7. 106 ἀνὰ πᾶν ἔτος.

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τῇ Μητρὶ καὶ τῇ Κούρῃ: the cult of the mother and the daughter, Demeter and Persephone, was presumably the original nucleus of the Eleusmian τελεταί, but not necessarily, like the Thesmophoria, confined to women (cp. 2. 171). The Homeric Hymn to Demeter bears no trace of the exclusion of men. The position of the other deities (‘the god’ and ‘the goddess,’ Eubulos, Pluton, Triptolemos, Dionysos) associated with the cult is obscure, but the supposed Egyptian origin of the mysteries (Foucart, op. cit. supra) looks like a retrogression in constructive criticism. At some early date, perhaps in connexion with the introduction of a new deity, perhaps as a consequence of the Athenian conquest of Eleusis, the cult obtained more catholic recognition, but the exact point at which ‘pan - Hellenic’ significance was given to the ‘mysteries’ is not clear; probably at least as early as the times of Peisistratos, with whose position and policy such ideas were congruous. Even in the age of Peisistratos the enlarged Eleusinia may have been represented as a restoration.

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ἰακχάζουσι: sc. ᾁδουσι (τὸν Ἴακχον), op. l. 9 supra.

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τὸν λόγον τοῦτον ... τὰ ἔπεα ταῦτα appear to be used here as virtual equivalents; cp. Index sub vv.

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ἀνενειχθῇ, ‘be reported.’

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οὐδὲ εἷς, ‘no, not one!’—a somewhat false, but perhaps idiomatic emphasis; cp 9. 80 infra.

ἔχ᾽ ἥσυχος: an eminently idiomatic expression; Larcher cites Eurip Med. 553, Orest. 1275 for the adjectival construction with ἔχειν.

στρατιῆς: as above, l. 13.

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θεοῖσι μελήσει, ‘the will of the gods be done.’

ἐκ: perhaps with a double force, material and temporal; ‘out of the dust and after the voice’; for temporal ἐκ cp. 7. 188.

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μεταρσιωθέν = μετάρσιον γενόμενον: μετάρσιον = μετέωρον, cp. 7. 188. But cp. App. Crit.

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ἐπί: the uses with genitive (Σαλαμῖνος） and accusative (τὸ στρατόπεδον） illustrated. The cloud could not have reached the Hellenic laager without reaching Salamis. Apparently here the genitive denotes the more general direction, the accusative the more definite.

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οὕτω δή κτλ.: that this vision of the souls of the faithful celebrating a pan-Hellenic festival in a land occupied by the enemy portended aught but destruction to the barbarian, could not enter their minds!

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Δημαρήτου τε καὶ ἄλλων: they were not then tête-à-tête; others were present to attest the truth of the story. Or did Dikaios disregard the injunctions of Demaratos, and communicate their adventure to other persons on returning to camp? μαρτύρων is of course used appositively; cp. note on ἄλλος c. 55 supra. καταπτόμενος: cp. 6. 88, antestans, obtestans, a purely Herodotean use; cp. L. & S.

This remarkable anecdote is framed in, so to speak, at the beginning and the end, by express reference to the souree, the authority. It comes in strangely and out of place here, at the close of the account of events on the Greek side, and before the account of events on the Persian side, to which it might rather seem to belong; but (i.) the Persian army has already been introduced into Attica, cc. 50-55; (ii.) chronologieally the event seems to belong to the very day reached in c. 64.