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τὰς ἀρχαίας τάξις: i.e. the order, or positions, ‘originally occupied’ before the changes, or attempted changes, recorded in c. 47.
κήρυκα ... ἔλεγε τάδε: the exact words of Mardonios' message! The speaker must have been a Greek, or a ‘diglott.’ The herald apparently comes across the river (with a flag of truce?) to the Spartan quarters; but the story was never so told in Sparta! The speech is an Athenian Appendix to the previous Athenian self-glorifications. It contains some sarcastic reflexions on Spartan reputation, and an extremely sporting offer, or challenge, on Mardonios' part. Grote discredíts the anecdote; Rawlinson defends the ‘Homeric’ (sic!) taunt as quite agreeable to the practice of primitive and specially oriental races (rather contradictory terms), but even he admits that the challenge is less probable. Here again we may fairly conjecture that there was some foundation in fact for the fiction. The object of Mardonios must still have been to induce the Greeks to cross the river. Did he really offer them a free and unmolested passage? Or did he offer to come across if they would give him time to reform on their side? Such offers are not made in war à outrance; but the Persians were cavaliers and sportsmen, and Mardonios may have thought of the Greeks as his own future subjects. (Cp. the Assyrian challenge to Hezekiah, 2 Kings 18. 23.)
δή is sarcastic; cp. l. 115. The first of four such in the speech, to which add ἄρα, νῦν ὦν, δ᾽ ὦν, καί, δέ, ἀλλά, all of which heighten the effect, to say nothing of the blunter satire in the more material phrases and propositions. The contrast in ἄνδρες: ἀνθρώπων is intentional. τῇδε, ‘in these parts.’
ἐκπαγλεομένων: cp. 7. 181. Mardonios was no doubt with Xerxes at Thermopylai, cp. 7. 209, and had heard Demaratos testimonials to his countrymen! The reputation of the Spartans ὡς ἀπολεόμενοί τε καἰ ἀπολέοντες (l.c.） was unshaken in Greece down to 425 B.C.; cp. Thuc. 4. 40. 1. (The notion that this speech dates after that disillusionment will not do; the point, the irony of the passage, lies in its barbarous insolence.)
τῶν δ᾽ ἄρ᾽ ἦν οὐδὲν ἀληθές. Mardonios, like the Athenians throughout, ignores the lesson of Thermopylai. But that story had not yet reached the classic development which it exhibits in Bk. 7 supra, a form which illustrates the effects of dialectic on the genesis of tradition, partly in answer to the charge of blundering, and partly, no doubt, in answer to other Athenian criticisms. ἄρα gives a touch of ironic surprise, and the irony is also continued in the tense.
συμμεῖξαι: of hostile congress, cp. 8. 94, so that ἐς χειρῶν τε νόμ<*>ν ἀπικέσθαι (cp. 8. 89) is somewhat tautologous. ἡμέας: us and you? καὶ δή = ἤδη: cp. 8. 94. 11 supra.
στάσιν = τάξιν: cp. c. 21 supra. ἐν Ἀθηναίοισί τε τὴν πρόπειραν ποιευμένους: the phrase betrays the source. For πρ ποιεῖσθαι cp. Thuc. 3. 86. 4 “πρόπειράν τε ποιούμενοι εἰ σφίσι δυνατὰ εἴη τὰ ἐν τῇ Σικελίᾳ πράγματα ὑποχείρια γενέσθαι”. Here the Athenians would remember that they had already furnished a πρόπειρα at Erythrai, c. 21 supra, to say nothing of Marathon c. 46 supra. Athenian tradition fully exploited this motif; cp. Plutarch, Aristeid. 16.
ἀντία δούλων τῶν ἡμετἑρων: pleasant hearing, or reading, for Thebans, and other medizers! ἀντία, plural; cp. c. 31 supra.
ἐν ὑμῖν, ‘in your case.’
κατὰ κλέος, ob vestram gloriam, Baehr; cp. c. 38 supra. προκαλέεσθαι, ‘to challenge’ (Homeric, but also legal Attic).
ἄρτιοι: cp. c. 27 supra.
εὕρομεν: cp. c. 28 supra. The tense is observable; we might render it in the perfect, ‘we have found’; so too ἤρξατε just below.
πτώσσοντας: like timid birds; an Homeric word and metaphor passim, e.g. Il. 7. 129. Oddly enough Tyrtaios (a Spartan!) uses it without any suggestion of fear: 11. 36 (Bergk ii.4 17) ὑμεῖς δ᾽ ὦ γυμνῆτες, ὑπ᾽ ἀσπίδος ἄλλοθεν ἄλλος πτώσσοντες μεγάλοις βάλλετε χερμαδίοις. νῦν ὦν: here too the speaker comes to the point; cp. c. 45 supra. ἐπειδὴ ... ἀλλά: cp. c. 42 supra ἐπεὶ ... ἀλλ᾽ ἐγὼ ἐρέω.
τί δὴ οὐ ... ἐμαχεσάμεθα; this ‘Attic’ form of challenge, ‘mostly with the aorist,’ is only found in this one place in Hdt. (Stein). Cp. Madvig, § 111, R. c; 141, R. 3.
δεδόξωσθε: cp. 7. 135, 8. 124; the perfect is both more magniloquent and also slightly suggestive of a temps passé. It is time they did something κατὰ κλέος δή. πρὸ δὲ τῶν βαρβάρων ἡμεῖς. Hdt. gives himself, his source, his herald, and Mardonios away in this phrase; it is a sheer impossibility. When Plautus uses barbarus for Roman it is by the mouth of a dramatis persona who would use the word naturally, as even in his prologues: “‘Demophilus scripsit, Marcus vortit barbare!’” Trinum. 19, Asin. 10. If this grated on a Roman ear, it was after all a comedy. Here the noble Persian commander by the mouth of his herald taunting the premier Greeks writes himself down—just at a Greek's valuation! That the messenger in the Persai of Aischylos does the like (187, 225, 337) emphasizes the unhistorical character of this speech put by Hdt. into the mouth of Mardonios.
ἴσοι πρὸς ἴσους. Xerxes had among his guards men prepared to engage three Greeks at a time, 7. 103; in his own playful vein he had suggested to Demaratos that as a Spartan king he should be prepared to tackle a score of Persians. Mardonios proposes the strictest λόγον μουνομαχίης. Such proposals in the eyes of the Spartans of the fifth century might be magnificent but were not war; cp. Thuc. 5. 41. 3.
ἢν μὲν δοκέῃ ... εἰ δὲ καὶ μὴ δοκέοι: the first gives the more probable, the second the less probable alternative. οἳ δ᾽ ὦν seems to combine (1) δέ with resumed subject, (2) δέ in apodosi, (3) δ᾽ ὦν as a significant admission. ἡμεῖς δέ combines (1) and (2).
ἀποχρᾶν: cp. c. 94 infra. νικᾶν, ‘be victors’; cp. cc. 69, 100 infra.
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