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Ὑακίνθια: a three days' celebration, apparently common like the Karneian, to all Dorians, but certainly of pre-Dorian origin in the Peloponnese: Schoemann - Lipsius ii. (1902) 473. For the texts bearing upon the festival see Wide, Lakonische Kulte (1893) 285 ff. The feast was held during the Lakonian month Hekatombeus (Hesych. s.v. Ἑκατομβεύς) (not necessarily = Attic Hekatombaion: perhaps = Thargelion, reff. ap. Busolt ii.2 722). The cult implies a spring festival. The celebration lasted three days: on the first day the death of Hyakinthos was bewailed (Pausan. 3. 19. 3); on another day the women of Sparta brought a Chiton as an offering to the god of Amyklai (Pausan. 3. 16. 2); on another day (Athenaeus 139 τῇ δὲ μέσῃ τῶν τριῶν ἡμερῶν—but, if so, he omits to say what was done on the third) there was a great and joyous festival, with songs and dances, with sacrifice and banquet: presumably in honour of the apotheosis of Hyakinthos (τὸν θεὸν ᾁδουσιν), whom by that time it was very difficult to distinguish from his destroyer (Apollon). (Rawlinson seems to think the Hyakinthia lasted only one day, and that Midsummer-day.) Thucyd. 5. 23. 4 might favour an earlier date, in spring; but that would quite discredit the chronology of this story in Hdt., not indeed in itself a very strong objection. Busolt l.c. argues from Xenophon Hell. 4. 5. 1 ff. that the Hyakinthia were celebrated ‘a few weeks at most’ after the Isthmia, which he places in Μουνυχιών (tenth Attic month); but Xenophon's intervals are very ill-reckoning, nor does he say how long after the Isthmia or how long before the Hyakinthia the Amyklaians started home for the latter celebration in 390 B.C. (al. 392). περὶ πλείστου δ᾽ ἦγον, ‘they considered it of utmost importance’; cp. ἄξω (μέζονος) 7. 150 supra. Cp. 5. 63 τὰ γὰρ τοῦ θεοῦ πρεσβύτερα ἐποιεῦντο (ἢ τὰ τῶν ἀνδρῶν). The Hyakinthia again and again brought Spartan armies, or regiments, home from the field; cp. Xenoph. Hell. 4. 5. 11, Pausan. 3. 10. 1, 4. 19. 4.
πορσύνειν [*πόρω or πόρσω = πρόσω, to ‘further’?]: an epie, poetic, and solemn word; ‘never found in comedy,’ L. & S. The god is of course Hyakinthos, or Apollon. ἅμα δέ: there is no antecedent ἅμα μέν to correspond; but the phrase, echoing as it does the terms of the Athenian message just above, makes a humorous appearanee, perhaps undesigned. τὸ τεῖχος. This wall at the Isthmos has been a most unconscionable time a-building, if it is only now, about midsummer, receiving the finishing touches, in the shape of its battlements (ἐπάλξις). Cp. 8. 71 supra. It had been begun immediately after (if not before) the disaster of Thermopylai, and the work had been pushed on at high pressure. It could not have taken longer to finish than the double wall all round Plataia, with battlements and towers to boot, erected in 429 B.C. in the course of the summer (Thuc. 2. 78, 3. 21). Had the Peloponnesians left this wall unfinished, on the retirement of the Persians, and only renewed and completed it on the advance of Mardonios in the spring of 479 B.C.?
οἱ ἀπ᾽ Ἀθηνέων: an inaccuracy, or perhaps again an undesigned indication that this embassy is dated too late, it placed after the reoccupation of Athens by Mardonios. We can hardly discriminate by aid of the prepositions ἀπό and ἐκ: the Megarians and Plataians were doubtless in Salamis with the Athenians, or at any rate not at home in their own cities; or, if they were, then this embassy to Sparta took place in the early spring.
ἐπελθόντες ἐπὶ τοὺς ἐφόρους: ἐπελθεῖν the correct term; cp. c. 5 supra. If they address the Ephors it is because the question is not of alliance, of peace or war, but merely a question of the mobilization, apparently a functron of the Ephoralty; cp. Xenoph. Hell. 3. 2. 23, etc. At the same time the Ephors were the presidents both of the Gerousia and of the Apella, and no doubt our authorities, Hdt. imprimis, may speak sometimes of the Ephors acting, where they acted really with Senate or Asseinbly; cp. Xenoph. l.c. Leotychidas, by the way, would appear to have been by this time at Aigina, or even Delos (8. 131-133), unless, indeed, it was in response to this spring embassy that the fleet was mobilized.
βασιλεὺς ... ἀποδιδοῖ κτλ.: this suits the early message of Mardonios 8. 140 supra, and would have been no news to the Spartans. If it is supposed to refer to the same offer, repeated by Morychides, c. 5 supra, Athens had rejected it again. But this repetition of the terms from 8. 140 is very tell-tale and inconsequent. τοῦτο μὲν ... τοῦτο δέ: cp. Index.
Δία ... Ἑλλήνιον looks rather like an anachronism: the Zeus Hellenios or Panhellenios known at this period is the Aiginetan; cp. Pindar, Nem. 5. 15 (composed before the date of the battle of Salamis, cp. Mezger, Pindars Siegerslieder, p. 332). Were the Aiginetans represented in this embassy too (cp. 8. 60 supra), or have the Athenians generously adopted the Aiginetan title? cp. Farnell, Cults, i. (1896) 63. Anyway, the appeal from the local or Dorian cult to a pan-Hellenic deity (cp. 8. 144) is effective. αἰδεσθέντες: cp. 7. 141 supra.
οὐ καταινέσαμεν ἀλλ᾽ ἀπειπάμεθα, ‘we did not consent but refused’—a sort of Hendiadys! καταινέειν, cc. 33. 34 infra. ἀπείπασθαι, 7. 14 supra.
κερδαλεώτερον. in earlier Ionic ‘shrewd,’ ‘crafty’ (Homer, Archilochos); in Attic (Aristoph., Thucyd.), as here, ‘advantageous,’ ‘profitable’ (cp. L. & S.). μᾶλλον is de trop. The sentiment expressed is observable: the Athenians are still in heroic mood.
οὐ μὲν οὐδέ, ‘not indeed that . .’ ἑκόντες εἶναι: cp. 7. 164 supra.
τὸ μὲν ἀπ᾽ ἡμέων, ‘our conduct, our policy’ ὑμεῖς δέ supplies the contrast. κίβδηλος, 1. 66, 75, 5. 91, of oracles (Delphic), not as ‘spurious’ but as ‘misleading,’ deceitful. νέμεται ἐπὶ τοὺς Ἕλληνας, ‘is (being) exercised, conducted, towards the Hellenes’ (with perfect honesty, without ambiguity); or ἐπί, distinctly locative, as in c. 95 infra, ‘throughout Hellas’; or coram, 8. 79, cp. ἐπὶ τοὺς ἐφόρους supra.
τότε prima facie refers back to the scene laid at Athens in 8. 140-144, when the Lakedaimonians κάρτα ἔδεισαν μὴ ὁμολογήσωσι τῷ Πέρσῃ Ἀθηναῖοι.
καὶ διότι gives a further reason, parallel to ἐπείτε just above.
ἐν τέλεϊ, ‘complete,’ or ‘near completion’; cp. πρὸς τέλει c. 8 infra (and contr. ἐν τέλει c. 106 infra).
καὶ δή: Stem follows Baehr in remarking that these words introduce the apodosis; no doubt—but why not = ἤδη (with Kruger)? Cp. c. 6 supra. λόγον οὐδ. π.: cp. 7. 13, 57, 218 supra. συνθέμενοι ... τὴν Βοιωτίην: an express agreement (σύνθημα or συνθήκη） to this effect has not been actually recorded, but has been taken for granted; cp. 8. 144 ad f.
προδεδώκατε is rather strong language, both in matter and tense: a perfect, the effects of which are not past. περιείδετε: a particular act, on a partieular occasion, the occasion being apparently the present invasion of Attica by Mardonios (not the previous occupation by Xerxes, to which the remark might have applied, cp. 8. 40 supra). These Athenian ambassadors, however, have left Athens (or Salamis) for Sparta before Mardonios had actually entered Attica (cp. c. 6 supra); and if they here rhetorically treat the invasion of Attica by Mardonios as a fait accompli, it is rhetoric, not strict history: how else could they proceed to call upon the Spartans to send an army back with them ὡς ἂν τὸν βάρβαρον δεκώμεθα ἐν τῇ Ἀττικῇ, to ‘receive’ the barbarian in Attica?
ἐς μέν νυν τὸ παρεὸν ... νῦν δέ: the antithesis between τὸ παρεόν and νῦν is not prima facie a sharp one; but νῦν is purely temporal, τὸ παρεόν is circumstantial. Again, ἐς might be taken ‘down to’ the present = ἐς τὸ νῦν (cp. ἐς τόδε 7. 29, but ἐς τὸ παρεόν ibid. not so): νῦν δέ is then distinct. νῦν qualifies ἐκπέμπειν rather than ἐκέλευσαν. μηνίειν: cp. 7. 229.
（οὐκ） ἐπιτηδέως is a meiosis; leniter dicta (Sehweighaeuser). ὅτι τάχος = ὡς τάχος 5. 106. Cp. Thuc. 7. 42. 3. ἅμα, simul, simul cum = σύν but stronger.
δεκώμεθα: cp. 8. 28 supra.
ἡμάρτομεν τῆς Βοιωτίης: they were too late to ‘receive’ him in Boiotia, but there was still time to ‘receive’ him in the Thriasian plain. This argument likewise points to an earlier date for the embassy.
τὸ Θριάσιον πεδίον: cp. 8. 65 supra. If Mardonios was already at Athens the Peloponnesian forces could not count on getting into the Thriasian plain, for Mardonios would doubtless be in possession of Eleusis; unless, indeed, he had entered Attica by Dekeleia or Phyle, and omitted to use or occupy the pass of Dryoskephalai: not a very probable hypothesis. The advantages of the Thriasian plain as a battle-field, from the Peloponncsian point of view, are open to discussion: if the Greeks could have encountered Mardonios as he emerged from the pass of Eleutherai-Eleusis they might have scored a local success, but they would have had to hold the sacred way by Daphne and the route between Aigaleos and Parnes (crossed by Archidamos in 431 B.C., Thuc. 2. 19. 2), while on the plain itself the Persian cavalry would have ridden round them. This plain was never one of the great battle-fields of Greece. The Greek fleet could not have been of much service in the case.
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