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Λακεδαιμόνιοι δέ κτλ. If any part of the story of Alexander's embassy could have come from other than an Athenian source, it is not this chapter, which positively reeks Atticism. The solidarity of the story as a whole carries the Attic source for every part. πυθόμενοι: who let them know? Their friends in Athens? Themistokles?
τῷ βαρβάρῳ with ὁμολογίην. Baehr cps. 7. 169 τὰ Μενελέῳ τιμωρήματα.
ἀναμνησθέντες τῶν λογίων: what oracles were these which they now recalled to mind? Blakesley detects herein the oracles found by Kleomenes in the Akropolis (in 511 B.C.) 5. 90, and further suggests that they were fabrications by Onomakritos (cp. 7. 6 supra). But was such a prediction, as is here reported, likely to have been formulated so early as that? Or is the added motive, based upon these supposed oracles, required to account for the action of the Lakedaimonians on this occasion? Onomakritos may have been the author of these λόγια, but, if so, their fabrication was probably of later date, and they were perhaps part of the artillery brought to bear upon the Athenians to procure their medism, not Lakedaimonian reminiscences of discoveries thirty years old. In any case this prediction is precious: prophecies fulfilled are sweet, but those unfulfilled are sweeter, to the historian; their authenticity is so much more obvious. The unfulfilled prediction, besides, makes room for some fulfilment of prediction. The extreme precision of the present instance raises it to the level of a maxim of policy, cp. c. 62 supra. The expulsion of the Lakedaimonians and all the other Dorians to boot from the Peloponnesos by the Medes and Athenians, i.e. the complete reversal of the Dorian conquest and its effects, was not a bad idea to conjure with, and has rather a Themistoklean touch about it: perhaps it was not an offer made by Mardonios to attract the Athenians, but a bogle devised in Athens to terrify the Spartans. It might at least suggest possibilities in the future: but what of Argos as the king's best friend? 7. 150 ff. Perhaps the whole notion really belongs to the later date, and the time of Themistokles' medism. The patriotic (i.e. Attic) aspects of that gran rifiuto were nevei allowed to emerge in the Themistoklean legend; and Athenian tradition was quite capable of ignoring the true and original connexion of this prophecy, and utilizing it in the present connexion, where it is materially and even grammatically de trop.
ἔδοξε: here of a formal decision.
ἀγγέλους = πρέσβεις: cp. 7. 1. καὶ δή: each particle has its full and ordinary sense. συνέπιπτε ὥστε: cp. c. 15 supra; it was a coincidence, but not an undesigned one: ἐπίτηδες ἐποίευν just below. This latter verb may represent έπανέμειναν (so Stein), an abstract idiom, corresponding to the use of our verb ‘do,’ ‘did’ (which would, however, require an express object, however abstract: ‘this they were doing’).
κατάστασιν: in the same sense 3. 46; in a different one, c. 83 supra.
ἐνδεικνύμενοι, ‘displaying’; cp. Thuc. 4. 126. 6 “τὸ εὔψυχον ἐν τῷ ἀσφαλεῖ ὀξεῖς ἐνδείκνυνται”.
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