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

---

---

οὕτω ... καὶ ταῦτα ποιησάντων: cp. c. 230 οὕτω ... καὶ διὰ πρόφασιν τοιήνδε. It is not, however, obvious what οὕτω <*>re implies beyond the Spartans' action just narrated, nor there apart from the πρόφασις fully understood (but cp. notes ad l.). In c. 164, on the other hand, τοῦτον δὴ ... τὸν Κάδμον καὶ τοιούτῳ τρόπῳ ἀπικόμενον, though the καί is apparently redundant, yet there is at least the distinction between the person and the mode. The interpretation of ταῦτα depends on the previous question whether Σπαρτιῆται refers only to Sperthias and Boulis, or covers the whole action of the state: Σ<*> αρτιῆται is used plainly c. 134 ad f. for the state, and that sense best suits the argument here.

---

ἐπαύσατο τὸ παραυτίκα: the cesser of the wrath was only temporary; yet with a god who took the will for the deed (cp. 6. 86) more perhaps might have been hoped. The score finally lies with Xerxes and the lower morality. Hdt. does not come very well out of this story: nowhere does he apply the doctrine of τίσις (ποινή), δίκη, νέμεσις (μῆνις), φθόνος to actual affairs in a more trivial or jejune spirit: the austere silence of Thucydides, who tells the same story in his own fashion, is here Hdt.'s condemnation. Cp. Introduction, § 11.

---

χρόνῳ δὲ μετέπειτα πολλῷ: in 430 B.C., some fifty-one years after, or it may be a year or two more, Thuc. 2. 67.

ἐπηγέρθη Stein takes as medial: as ἐξηγέρθη in 1. 34, 209 (of rising from sleep). κατά is here chronological; cp. 3. 131, 153, 1. 67 etc.

---

ὡς λέγουσι Λακεδαιμόνιοι: what exactly is it that the Lakedaimonians say? Perhaps no more than that the fate of the men in 430 B.C. was due to the menis of Talthybios; possibly that this manifestation of the menis was not unprecedented, not the first of its kind. Lakedaimonians may even have told the story of the devotio of Sperthias and Boulis: may even have connected it with a real or supposed outrage on Persian heralds or envoys in the days of Kleomenes. Hdt. appears at least to take credit to himself for the perception of the divine moral of the facts, especially as lying in the parentage of the two Spartans executed at Athens in 430 B.C. But was he really left to himself to draw this moral, if all the rest of the story was reported to him by Lakedaimonians, in the form above given? It seems hardly credible. If the moral is all his own, the facts have not, perhaps, escaped manipulation by him. The transaction in 430 B.C. is somewhat differently reported by Thucydides, and in a way somewhat to obscure or spoil the Herodotean moral. Still more perhaps have the earlier ‘facts’ been transfigured in the interest of an immoral morality: the ‘fable’ has ever been the produet of the ‘moral,’ which it is supposed to generate.

---

τὸ δίκαιον οὕτω ἔφερε. As κήρυκες had been outraged justice demanded that ἄγγελοι (ambassadors) should be visited—somewhat of a non-sequitur, except that ἄγγελος may be taken as the generic term covering κῆρυξ and πρεσβευτής (though generally in Hdt. equivalent to the latter, cp. c. 1 supra). By the previous story it appears that any Spartans might have volunteered for the devotio: the men sent might have been ἄγγελοι but not κήρυκες. In any case, unless the final victims were κήρυκες, could the justice of heaven, and Herodotus, have been satisfied?

But agaiu, as the wrath had long ceased, and divination had been restored, a fresh outbreak of wrath seems to require a fresh crime. Hdt. has to explain the expiation of 430 B.C. as traceable to the crime of 491 (odd): surely a flaw in the divine justice, on his own principles. The statement οὐδὲ ἐπαύσατο πρὶν ἢ ἐξῆλθε is not true; it is contradicted by ἐπαύσατο τὸ παραύτικα above (ἐξῆλθε, cp. 6. 82, 107).

It is not contrary to those principles that the involuntary scapegoats of 430 B.C. are the sons of the voluntary scapegoats of 480 B.C., but it seems a weak spot in the system that vengeance overtakes the Spartans without any satisfaction or benefit to the Persians—rather, indeed, the reverse.

Nor is it obvious, on Herodotean principles, where Aristeas son of Adeimantos comes in. Que diable fait-il dans cette galère? He rather spoils the concinnity of the moral. If he is in, why not the others? (Is it possible that the sentence μετὰ δὲ ... ἀνήρ is not from the hand of Hdt.? Cp. infra.）

---

δς εἶλε Ἁλιέας ... ἀνδρῶν. The Tirynthians, on the destruction of their city by the Argives (468 B.C. ? cp. 6. 83 and my note) occupied Ἁλιεῖς (Ἁλιαί, Ἁλι<*>α, Ἁλική), a small town in the territory of Hermione, opposite the island of Spetzia: Strabo 373. (Steph. B. sub v. places it in Laconia, and cites Ephoros for an oracle given to the Tirynthians in explanation of the name: sub v. Τίρυνς he says that the former name of that city was Ἁλιεῖς.) Ἁλιεῖς is the scene of an Athenian defeat by Korinthians and Epidaurians in 458 B.C., Thuc. 1. 105; Ἁλιάς is ravaged by the Athenians in 430 B.C., Thuc. 2. 56. 5; the Haliaeans must therefore at that time be reckoned among the allies of Sparta; and again in 425 B.C. (4. 45. 2). Blakesley (reading ἁλιέας) thought the exploit here referred to was merely one of those piratreal proceedings at the opening of the Archidamian war recorded by Thuc. 2. 67. 4 (where the ὁλκάδες, by the way, belong to the sufferers not to the aggressors). Stein would date it during the time when Argos was in all<*>auee with Athens (463-45 should be 462-51 B.C.); but why should a Spartan raid the Tirynthians at Halieis then? They would be no friends either of Argos or of Athens. Spartans would have been more likely to help the Tirynthians to the possession of Halieis than to harry them, when there established. Is it possible that τοὺς ἐκ Τίρυνθος is a gloss?

---

ἀνδρῶν, fighting men, who had no business on a ὸλκάς<*>

δῆλον ὦν: Hdt. has become somewhat excited over the supernatural coincidence (συμπεσεῖν); the result is a slight Anakoluthon.

---

οἵ: Thucyd, 2. 67 mentions three Spartan πρέσβεις, Aneristos, Nikolaos and Pratodamos (sic), without patronymics (which would not have suited Hdt.). The third Spartau is quite de trop from Hdt.'s point of view, and is here omitted. There were three other men in the same boat: Timagoras of Tegea, ‘Aristeus’ of Korinth, and an Argive by name Pollis, who had no public mission (ἰδίᾳ). The Athenians apparently put all six men to death (ἀπέκτειναν) and threw their bodies, perhaps not into the Barathron but into a rocky cleft (καὶ ἐς φάραγγα ἐσέβαλον) on the very day they arrived. Of these six summary executions Hdt. mentions three: cp. infra.

---

Σιτάλκεω τοῦ Τήρεω Θρηίκων βασιλέος καὶ Νυμφοδώρου τοῦ Πύθεω ἀνδρὸς Ἀβδηρίτεω: does Hdt. forget that he has introduced Sitalkes before (4. 80)? That passage can hardly be subsequent to this; but the fortuitous and excursional character of this whole passage may easily excuse the absence of a cross reference. Thucydides treats more fully the Thracian agency in the matter; Nymphodoros is not mentioned in this connexion: elsewhere indeed (2. 29) he plays an important rôle when (summer of 431 B.C.) as a power at the court of Sitalkes (who had his sister to wife), and proxenos of Athens, he brought about the AthenoThrakian alliance, and procured ‘the freedom of the city’ for Sadokos. It is Sadokos who with Thuc. 2. 67 plays the part here assigned to Nymphodoros, urged thereto by two Athenian πρέσβεις whose names and patronymics are given: the omission of Nymphodoros by Thucyd. is marked, and must be a deliberate correction of Hdt, (though Rawlinson would away with it by supposing that “Sadocus may well have acted under the influence of Nymphodorus”). Only in one respect is the story as told by Hdt. more precise than that in Thuc., viz. in naming the place where the arrest was effected.

---

κατὰ Βισάνθην τὴν ἐν Ἑλλ. The preposition is locative. Was there any other Bisanthe except the one known to Steph. B. as πόλις Μακεδονίας κατὰ Θρᾴκην, Ἑλληνίς, άποικία Σαμίων? Alkibiades built a castle there (ἐν Θρᾴκῃ περὶ Βισάνθην, Plutarch 36), and in 400 B.C. Seuthes made a very attractive proposal to Xenophon: σοὶ δέ, ὦ Ξενοφῶν, καὶ θυγατέρα δώσω καὶ ἔ τις σοὶ ἔστι θυγάτηρ ὠνήσομαι Θρακίῳ νόμῳ, καὶ Βισάνθην οἴκησιν δώσω, ὅπερ ἐμοὶ κάλλιστον χωρίον ἐστὶ τῶν ἐπὶ θαλάττῃ (Anab. 7. 2. 38, cp. 7. 5. 8). There is no doubt of the practical identity of Bisanthe with Rodosto on the sea of Marmora (cp. Oberkummer, ap. Pa<*>ly-Wissowa, iii. 504), a place with an excellent harbour.

---

Ἀριστέας ὁ Ἀδειμάντου Κορίνθιος ἀνήρ: though the introduction of a third party rather spoils the closeness of the moral, yet it may be explained by the subsequent prominence of Adeimantos in the Logi of Hdt., and of Aristeas himself in the politics and operations of the time. The sentence μετὰ δὲ—ἀνήρ might be a gloss; but a glossator would probably have introduced all the names of the victims from Thucydides.

---

ἐπάνειμι δὲ ἐπὶ τὸν πρότερον λόγον marks the story just told very clearly as a digression, an excursus, a possible addition: but where exactly has the πρότερος λόγος been mterrupted? Is the digression confined to c. 137? Or does it extend from ee. 133-7? Or should its beginning be carried back to c. 131, or even to c. 128? The problem of the composition of the whole passage cc. 128-137 is, indeed, a perplexing one; for its diseussion cp. Introduction, § 9.

It is not, however, the mere πρότερος λόγος that is here resumed, except vaguely in the sense of the main theme, or story: rather there is a new departure: time, place, persons change, and the second ehief part of this Book begins. Cp. Introduction, § 3.