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πόνῳ: cp. 6. 114, 7. 224. ἀπὸ μὲν ... ἀπὸ δέ: a tmesis— well recalling the originally substantive quality of the preposition; cp. 5. 81 (κατά).
Ἀριαβίγνης: cp. 7. 97 supra; he was admiral of the Ionio-Karian division. His mother was a daughter of Gobryas, so he was not full brother to the king.
τῶν ἄλλων συμμάχων: τῶν ἄλλων is appositive, not adjectival; Περσέων, and even Μήδων, would hardly come under the head of συμμάχων. The Persians and Medes furnished Epibatai, cp. 7. 96 supra; the Sakai are here not specified, except so far as covered by συμμάχων Ἑλλήνων seems to refer primarily to the national forces, but might cover at least some cases on the barbarian side; cp. c. 86 supra.
νέειν ἐπιστάμενοι: an art, not a science; cp. 7. 211, and c. 88 supra. The participles refer not to the ὀλίγοι τινές who perished, but to the implied majority who survived, even when their ships were destroyed; but Hdt.'s way of putting the case is a little clumsy. τοῖσι, relative.
ἐν χειρῶν νόμῳ: cp. 9. 48 infra; cominus, hand to hand, with the ships laid alongside each other (συμπλακεισῶν τῶν νεῶν, cp. c. 84 supra) and the Epibatai fighting almost as on land. These ones too could have swum, but did not get the chance; nor, again, was it only those who lost their ships that knew how to swim!
ἐς τὴν Σαλαμῖνα διένεον, ‘swam right in to Salamis’—one might have expected some of them to have been picked up on the way. Were there no Greek ships left between them and the shore?
αἱ πρῶται: the vanguard, the leading ships, the head of the column, the first line, in distinction to οἱ ὄπισθε τεταγμένοι the rearward, the second line, the tail of the column, as the case may be; falling back upon those behind, the foremost ships threw everything into confusion (πόνος, θόρυβος）
τῇσι νηυσί is a kind of instrumental, circumstantial, or descriptive dative. ὡς ἀποδεξόμενοί τι καὶ αὐτοὶ ἔργον βασιλέι seems written in view of c. 87 and c. 86—but was there really such keen competition (καὶ αὐτοί)?
τῇσι σφετέρῃσι νηυσί: just the ships on their own side, which were not their own! cp. σφετέρας 7. 194. With ποριέπιπτον cp. περιπ. περὶ ἀλλήλας c. 16 supra.
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