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

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ταύτῃ: by the route over Dysoros. οἱ is surely something better here than a mere substitute for the possessive: it is an ‘ethical’ dative.

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καταφοιτέοντες: down from the mountain heights—their usual haunts (ἤθεα). Did it really happen more than once? τὰς νύκτας: temporal accusative, not of duration, but of frequency. (“Hdt. uses νύκτα, τὰς νύκτας, instead of νυκτός,” Madvig, p. 29 n.)

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ἄλλου μὲν οὐδενὸς ... οἳ δέ: on this remtroduction of the subject in a pseudo-antithesis cp. c. 13 supra. The fact here asserted is hardly credible, unless by some accident these camels happened to be in such a position in the Laager as to be especially exposed. Pausan. 6. 5. 4 is, of course, taken from Hdt. and cannot be cited as confirmation of the fact. κεραίζειν is remarkable as used of lions. It is a common word with Hdt. (rare in Attic), and had quite lost any etymological force; but cp. 8. 71.

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θωμάζω δὲ τὸ αἴτιον ... τὸ ἀναγκάζον. If science be only rerum cognoscere causas, Hdt. here shows a laudable wonder, or curiosity; but science is also the ascertainment of ‘facts,’ and the previous question is whether the fact was really as Hdt. believed. He seems to suppose that there was some intrinsic or natural reason why the <*>ons went for the camels, when they had their pick of the whole lot of sumpter animals, though he does not venture to assign as the cause the novelty and outlandishness of the camel in the eyes of a Macedonian lion. Perhaps the camels were the last of the train, or were spent and lagging, or dropped by the way. Perhaps the non-appearance of the camels in Greece had to be accounted for. This is the last we hear of them on the march; cp. c. 86 supra, but cp. 9. 81 infra. The use of αἴτιον here for a physical ‘cause’ is observable. Even δι᾽ ἣν αἰτίην ἐπολέμησαν ἀλλήλοισι 1. 1 is not quite so strong. With the expression ὅ τι κοτὲ ἦν τὸ αἴτιον cp. Demosth. 8. 56 τί ποτ᾽ οὖν ἐστι τὸ αἴτιον, ὦ ἄνδρες Ἀθ. κτλ.