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

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τόδε: cp. App. Crit. τότε would mean in 479 B.C.

θῶμά μοι μέγιστον: μοι, à mon avis (Larcher); but not exactly maxime mirum (Baehr), rather miraculum, me judice, maximum.

γενέσθαι, ‘to have taken place.’

λέγεται ὑπὸ Θηβαίων: the citation of the source seems to suggest a doubt, or at least to decline a responsibility. ἄρα continues the note of admiration, or marks an advance, a heightening, of the action. (Cp. Index sub v）

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περιστρωφώμενον πάντα τὰ χρ.: περιστρωφάομαι, a frequentative of περιστρέφομαι, itself a word suggesting a rather hurried procedure, is perhaps hardly complimentary to Mys, whose methods all through are somewhat summary: is the word supplied by the ‘Theban’ source? The construction resembles περιπλέοντες τὰς νήσους 6. 99. Should not πάντα include Delphi?

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τοῦ Πτῴου Ἀπόλλωνος τὸ τέμενος, ‘the close of Ptoian Apollon,’ i.e. the Apollo of Mount Ptous, the god being apparently named from the mount, not the mountain from the god. Mythologically Ptoos was a son of Athamas and Themisto (Asios ap. Pausan. 9. 23 6), perhaps an afterthought On the connexion of Athamas with this district cp. 7. 197 supra. The meaning of the word is obscure: Grasberger (Gr. Ortsnamen, p. 279) suggests ‘Schreckenberg’ (cp. Schreckhorn in Bernese Oberland); cp. Φρίκιον <Φρίκωνις?>, etc. Hdt.'s precise description of the site in the quasi-note τοῦτο δὲ ... πόλιος suggests autopsy; the note may be an addition. The force of the antithesis καλέεται μὲν . . ἔστι δέ is not obvious, but perhaps the sense that the name was older than the Theban (Boiotian) invasion and conquest underlies it.

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τῆς Κωπαίδος λίμνης: this is the only express mention in Hdt. of the Kopaic lake which occupied so large a space in W. Boiotia, at least in the winter months. The Κωπαιῆς or men of Κῶπαι, the township which gave its name to the lake, are mentioned by Thucyd. 4. 93. 4. Strabo 410-11 says that the lake had been called partially after the various cities on its edge until the name of (the insignificant) Kopai prevailed: κοιλότατον γὰρ τοῦτο τὸ χωρίον, that place being deepest in the vale (and so never dry).

Ἀκραιφίης: Akraiphia (“Ἀκραίφνιον” Pausan. 9. 23. 5) was apparently an unimportant township belonging to Thebes (though to judge by the coinage “it must have enjoyed intervals of autonomy,” Head, Hist. Num. p. 292), and is described by Pausanias (l. c.) as standing some fiftcen stades to the left of the temple. Dr. Frazer's note (Pausanias v. 97 ff.) deals with the whole situation fully from personal observation. The precise site of the temple (which has been archaeologically explored) is described (ib. p. 100) as a steep slope, elaborately terraced, high up on the chief mountain in the Ptoan range. On the highest or sixth terrace there is a spring; the temple actually stood on the fifth; lower down the hill is an artificial cavern, connected with the spring above by an earthenware conduit; the oracles were perhaps delivered in this cavern by the prophet, who had previously drunk of the water of the spring (an act paralleled by the procedure of the prophet of the Clarian Apollo, Frazer l.c.).

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ἐπείτε παρελθεῖν: the oratio obliqua is resumed for the Theban narrative, after the interposed note in Hdt.'s own person. One must understand that the Theban government had appointed three commissioners to wait upon Mys. The subject of ἔμελλε must be ὸ θεός.

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καὶ πρόκατε: there is an apparent parataxis, but if the text is correct, Hdt. must have forgotten the ἐπείτε above, and the result is an anakoluthon. Stein5 supposes some words to have fallen out, e.g. ἵζεσθαί τε ἐς τὸ μέγαρον. The seer is here a man (τὸν πρόμαντιν), not a woman as at Delphi.

χρᾶν: as in 1. 55, 4. 155.

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ἐν θώματι ἔχεσθαι, ‘were spellbound’; cp. below.

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Ἑλλάδος: (as always) an adjective.

οὐδὲ ἔχειν, ‘were at a complete loss’; cp. 5. 12.

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τὴν ἐφέροντο δέλτον: on the imperf. cp. note c. 132 supra.

τὰ λεγόμενα ὑπὸ τοῦ προφήτεω γράφειν: it is tantalizing to think that this precious tablet was carried off by Mys to Thessaly, without even a copy being left behind! Nor does it appear that Hdt. had seen the original. There is no hope of recovering it now.

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Καρίῃ μιν γλώσσῃ χρᾶν: sc. τὸν προφήτην = τὸν πρόμαντιν. Unless Mys was a Karian the selection of the Karian language would have been rather pointless. The story may be substantially true; it would not have been difficult to arrange that the prophet should babble a few words of Karian to the man of Euromos, or Europos. One need not summon up the ‘subliminal consciousness’ to explain this miracle.