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

---

---

τοῖσι δὲ Ἕλλησι κτλ. Blakesley considers this passage so confused as to be “quite inexplicable on the mere hypothesis of slovenly writing,” and rewrites it not very happily. The chapter is confused, and partially corrupt, but the main purport is clear.

---

ἠώς τε ... καί: an effective parataxis. The night has apparently been spent by the Greeks, certainly by the Greek Strategoi, no less wakefully than by the enemy. It must be the Strategoi who are referred to in the demonstrative οἵ.

---

σύλλογον τῶν ἐπιβατέων: in c. 74 supra there comes a σύλλογος τῶν στρατηγῶν (Plutarch Aristeid. 8). The assembly of Epibatai must have been held on shore. The ships were in the water, the rowers on board. The battle was not to be so much a question of manœuvring as of hand-to-hand fighting, in the good old style: laying ships alongside, and boarding!

σύλλογον ποιησάμενοι cuts both ways. There was a plurality of conveners, but not necessarily of speakers. It is not quite clear whether each Strategos addressed his own Epibatai, or whether Themistokles was the sole speaker, as he is certainly the sole speaker reported. The total number of Epibatai is a matte<*> of conjecture or inference, and might have varied with different contingents. Plutarch, Themist. 14, says that at Salamis the number was 18 per ship: if correct that estimate would give 6840 for the 380 ships. Hdt. gives 30 men as the number of Epibatai on the Persian sidc, 7. 184 supra—by no means a trustworthy figure in itself for the whole fleet, much less directly transferable to the Greek. If so transferred, it would give a total of 11,400. At the battle of Lade, in 494 B.C., there had been 40 Epibatai on each of the Clnan vessels (6. 15), a very large allowance. During the Peloponnesian war, a time when ships were themselves the weapon of offence, and more was done by manœuvring and ramming, the normal complement was only 10 (Thuc. 2. 92, 102, 3. 91, 95, 4. 76, 101). It would be fairly safe to say that at Salamis there were from 7000 to 10,000 Epibatai on the Greek side.

---

ἐκ πάντων suggests that he was chosen or allowed to speak out of and on behalf of all; but it might mean that of all who spoke he was the most eminent and successful on the occasion (and so he alone is reported).

τὰ δὲ ἔπεα ἦν: the speech of Themistokles, verily ἔπεα πτερόεντα, may have been addressed solely, or primarily, to an Atheman audience, and reported from an Athenian source; it was no doubt a short speech, though not so short as this brief summary, or ‘concept’ thereof; but the speaker was evidently no mean orator. The speech comprised three heads: (i.) A series of antitheses, in which the better and the worse, the noble and the base alternatives in human nature, circumstances, and also no doubt actions, were contrasted. Hdt. characteristically fails to distinguish clearly between action and circumstance (cp. 7. 152 supra). (ii.) An appeal, or exhortation (παραίνεσις) to his hearers to choose the better part, liberty, honour, death, rather than slavery, defeat, the last and the tax-collector; and doubtless to remember that they were fighting under the eyes of their wives and children. (iii.) The appeal merged into a peroration (καταπλέξας τὴν ῥῆσιν), in which no doubt the gods and heroes were invoked, and Marathon, ‘the trophies of Miltiades,’ even Artemision, probably were not forgotten. The whole speech left upon the hearers' minds the sense of confidence, courage, ability, intellectual force. One misses from the brief report two points, which will hardly have been absent in the actual harangue: some estimate of the opponents and their chances, and some hints of the actual tactics to be pursued.

---

ἐσβαίνειν ἐκέλευε ἐς τὰς νέας: doubtless before or after the speech they had breakfast on shore, and were better off than the Persians in this respect.

---

οὗτοι μέν: there is no antithetical δέ unless it be found somewhat incongruously in ἀναγομένοισι δέ below.

ἐσέβαινον καὶ ἧκε: long before they were done embarking the trireme from Aigina was come, which had left the ranks (ἀπεδήμησε, cp. c. 41 supra) for the purpose of summoning, invoking, (and bringing) the Aiakids to the aid of Hellas (c. 64 supra). Presumably the trireme brought the images. But at what point exactly did it reappear in the ranks? If its arrival is to be dated in the morning, after the speech of Themistokles, how did it make its way through the enemy, where Aristeides had barely got through, even under cover of night? Is this trireme any other than the vessel of Aristeides? Was not he the envoy despatched to Aigina, from which he returned in c. 79 supra?