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

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τηνικαῦτα, ‘by that time’ (ratherthan ‘under those circumstances’).

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οἲ δὲ τοῖσι ξἰφεσι διεργἀζοντο τοὺς Πέρσας: just like the Athenians at Marathon; cp. Suidas sub v. διεξιφίσω and my Hdt. IV.-VI. ii. (1895) pp. 230 ff. It is possible that the Athenian legend of Marathon had associated the long sword with that victory before the story of Thermopylai was garnered by Hdt., or even before the battle of Thermopylai was fought (cp. 9. 27, where, however, the claymore has not yet appeared); or it is possible that the legends of Marathon and of Thermopylai were developed in rivalry with each other, and that Aristophanes (Knights 781 ff.) brought the ξίφος into prominence in the Attic legend, and even took it from this very passage. It does not figure in Hdt.'s account of Marathon (written after this passage). οἳ δέ (δόρατα μέν), the emphatic subject; cp. cc. 8, 50 etc.

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ἐν τούτῳ τῷ πόνῳ: just like the Polemarch at Marathon, 6. 114.

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τῶν ἐγὼ ... ἐπυθόμην τὰ οὐνὀματα, where? when? from whom? Hdt. unfortunately leaves us to guess. It is curious that he does not give any of their names in this place, though he goes on to name several Persian ὀνομαστοί. The sentence τῶν ἐγὼ ... τριηκοσίων (or rather καὶ ἕτεροι κτλ.) might well be a later insertion; the names he might have learnt at Sparta, where, near the theatre, with the monuments of Pausanias and of Leonidas, there stood στήλη πατρόθεν τὰ ὀνόματα ἔχουσα οι<*>` πρὸς Μήδους τὸν ἐν Θερμοπύλαις άγῶνα<*> ὑπέμειναν, Pausan. 3. 14. 1. There can be no doubt that this record was in existence in Hdt.'s time, and it is obvious that he need not have visited Thermopylai (where there may have been a similar record) in order to obtain the list. Cp. Introduction, §§ 9, 10.

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καὶ δὴ Περσέων corresponds (as Stein points out) to Λεωνίδης τε above; a correspondence which supports my suggestion that the words καὶ ἕτεροι ... τριηκοσίων are a later insertion. The duplicate ὀνομαστοί further confirms the point, the one in this sentence being, of course, the earlier.

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Ἀβροκόμης τε καὶ Γ̔περάνθης. “It cannot be supposed that [the] sons of Darius bore names so thoroughly Greek as these,” Rawlinson ad l. One may suppose either that the princes bore names which the Greeks assimilated, or that these names come from some purely literary list (like that in the Persai), or even that these princes were known by nicknames to the Greeks in the forces (‘Fine-locks’ and ‘Full-bloom’). We have here a suggestion of Greek sources on the Persian side; cp. Introduction, § 10.

ἐκ τῆς Ἀρτάνεω θυγατρός. Artanes is brother of Dareios the king (τοῦ βασιλέος), son of Hystaspes, son of Arsames; cp. c. 11 supra—a curiously elaborate description of Dareios and of his brother, if Hdt. were chary of the patronymic! He perhaps takes the description over bodily from his source (Dionysios of Miletos?), and carries the Achaimenid pedigree back in this case as far as his authority went. The lady's name, Φραταγούνη, is made=Rhodogune, O.P. vard, vrad=ῥόδον (Stein). (Rawlinson's Vocabulary, iii. p. 549, connects Phradasmenes, etc., with frâdat, ‘liberal,’ ‘generous’; Baehr quotes Oppert: frâta gaunâ=de forme élevée.) She was sole heiress to her father, as Hdt. explains. τὸν οἶκον, as in 3. 53 τὸν οἶκον τοῦ πατρός of property; οἶκος λέγεται ἡ πᾶσα οὐσἰα, Ammonius, p. 102 (Baehr). Hdt. does not apparently mean that Artanes divested himself of his substance during his life.