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

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ὑστέρῳ μέντοι ... χρημάτων. This sentence has nothing to say to the immediately preceding sentence, or chapter; nor does it fit on very well to c. 81. It would follow most naturally immediately on c. 80 supra; that is to say, in view of the previous notes, c. 81 looks like an addition ‘of the second hand,’ and c. 82 like an addition of the second, or third hand. μέντοι after μέν instead of δέ: cp. 6. 86 ποιέετε μὲν ... ὁκοῖον μέντοι κτλ.

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θήκας, ‘deposits’; the Helots not having been able to dispose of all their thefts to the Aiginetans, had buried many of them in the ground. (The Helots may not have been the only thieves and depositors.)

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ἐφάνη δέ κτλ. Kruger damned the rest of this and the next chapter. The matter is quite to Hdt.'s mind on such occasions, cp. 3. 12, but these curiosities of the battle-field may be additious of his own; on the other hand, the fate of Mardonios' corpse must have been a primary problem.

ὕστερον τούτων: uot strictly after the discovery of the hidden treasures by Plataians, but simply ‘after the war’; cp. c. 75 supra.

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<ἐπὶ> τῶν νεκρῶν περιψιλωθέντων τὰς σάρκας: the plural σάρκας perhaps with reference to the uumbers of differeut dead, but Homer habitually uses the plural, even as ὀστέα. The accusative is “of reference”; cp. c. 72 supra. ἐπί with the genitive here, ‘upon the corpses,’ can hardly be temporal, though that would give one of the quaintest dates on record (‘at, or by, the time the dead bodies were cleaned bare of flesh’); uor even local (the dead bodies having been gathered into one place), but perhaps more generally ‘in the case of’ (cp. App. Crit.). Hdt. does uot say that he had himself seen these curiosities. 1. The skull without a single suture (ῥαφή). 2. The jaw (upper) with all the teeth of a piece. γομφίος (sc. ὀδούς), regular word for ‘molars’ (πρόσθιος ‘front’). (Plutarch Pyrrh. 3 makes a similar statement of Pyrrhus; Pliny 7. 69 of the son of Prusias of Bithynia.) 3. The bones of a man five cubits high (the tallest of the Persians wanted four fingers of that height, 7. 117 supra).