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

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Μεγαρέες, like the Korinthians, add nothing to their Artemisian contingent (20), and the same formula is applied; cp. c. 43 supra. That they were Dorian ‘goes without saying’; unless, indeed, the concluding words of the chapter be taken to cover the case of Megara, and to make it a Korinthian colony. This view would scarcely agree with 5. 76 supra, where the Dorian settlement of Megara is expressly recorded. Cp. Busolt i.2 (1893) 220, who omits any reference to this passage, rightly enough. The later tradition that the Kormthians were especially concerned in the Dorization of Megara hardly accords, as Bnsolt points out, with the silence of Thucydides (i.e. the Korinthians ap. Thuc.), or with the cult of Hera Akraia, in Megara and in Byzantion, its colony.

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Ἀμπρακιῶται: for the geographical position of Ambrakia cp. c. 47 infra. Ἀμπρακία is the older form of the name: cp. Oberhummer, Akarnanien, 25, etc. Their contingent of 7 is a clear addition to the Artemision list. Ambrakia is expressly described as a colony from Korinth by Thuc. 2. 80. 3, and was plainly a loyal colony. For the coinage cp. B. Head, Historia Numorum, 270— none of the many extant varieties (all of Korinthian type) going back before the fourth century. The Ambrakiotes probably came to Pogon and Salamis out of loyalty to Korinth and at her summons (ἐπεβοήθησαν).

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Λευκάδιοι: for the geographical upon Epidauros is described, though without any express recognition of the ‘metropolitan’ character of Epidauros— a contrast at least compatible with the hypothesis that this note is of earlier composition. That Aigina was a Dorian island in the historic period is indubitable; e.g. the not very numerous tituli Aeginetici, Cauer, Delectus2 No. 65-70, E. S. Roberts, Gk. Epigraphy i. (1887) §§ 57-59, and the uniform literary and historical evidences from Pindar to Pausanias. The date and circumstances of its occupation by the Dorians, and the piecise starting-point of the colonists, are items of doubtful tradition and speculation. Hdt. here traces the Dorian colonists no further back than Epidauros; in 1. 146 he mixes up Dorians of Epidauros with the Ionian migration to Asia Minor; the Dorization of Epidauros itself he does not record. Pausanias 2. 29. 5 supplies a text: μοῖρα Ἀργείων τῶν Ἐπίδαυρον ὁμοῦ Δηιφόντῃ κατασχόντων διέβη ές Αἴγιναν. The Dorians of Aigina ultimately hailed from Dorian Argos; and so more expressly Aigina was sometimes made a colony of Argos: Τριάκων τις Ἀργεῖος συλλέξας πλῆθος Ἀργείων, οἱ δὲ Ἀργεῖοι τοῦ Δωρικοῦ γένους, εἰς τὴν Αἴγιναν ἦλθε καὶ κατῴκησε Schol. Pind. Ol. 8. 39. Epidauros was perhaps no more than the port of departure; and notwithstanding the air of antiquity lent to the traditions, we may reasonably doubt whether the Dorization of Aigina was much more aneient than the age of Pheidon, o<*> the dependence of Aigina on Epidanros (5. 83) more than a misconception of the relations of the island to the Argive power under the last of the Temenid kings of Argolis.

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τῇ δὲ νήσῳ ... Οἰνώνη. The statement would suggest that the name Αἵγινα was of Dorian coinage; but it belongs to a class of names (beginning with Αἰγ-) that go back long before the coming of the Dorians, and Aigina was the name of the island apparently in the days of the Kalaurian Amphiktyony. So, too, the tradition that Zeus carried the nymph Aigina to the desert island Oinone, where she became mother of the first inhabitant Aiakos (Pausan. 2. 29. 2), pushes the proper name back as far as the earliest population. The form of the name given by Pindar Isth. 7. 23 (telling the same story) is Οἰνοπία (σὲ δ᾽ ἐς νᾶσον Οἰνοπίαν φέρων ἐκοιμᾶτο κτλ.), but elsewhere he has Οἰνώνα (Nem. 4. 46, 5. 15, 8. 7, Isth. 4. (5.) 35). Is the supposed ancient ‘name’ of the island much more than an epithet deranged? As in the parallel cases of Καλλίστη Θήρα (4. 147), or Σχερία = Κόρκυρα (Pausan. 2. 5. 2), the supposed original is more indubitably Greek, or at least more transparently significant, than the name of supposed later origin —a point fatal to the asserted priority. ‘Oinone,’ too is known as a nymph, the bride of Paris (Apollod. 3. 12 6 et al.); and the syllable οἰν- is as common, but is it also as ancient, as αἰγ- in the composition of proper names? The name Oinone might be connected with the frequent Οἰνόη (bis in Attica, ter in Peloponnese, and elsewhere; e.g. Ikaria, Steph. B.), Οἰνοῦς, Οἰνοῦσσαι, Οἰνεών (Οἰνόανδα), and others—all genuine place - names, of indubitably vinous associations. Cp. Grassberger, Gr. Ortsnamen, p. 227. This nomenelature looks Indo-European: can it be primitive in loco?

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Χαλκιδέες furnish 20 vessels to the Salaminian navy-list, and these expressly the same ships as at Artemision; but the list here leaves us to find out for ourselves by back reference that the ships, though manned by the men of Chalkis, were really supplied by Athens (c. 1 supra), in fact it might more accurately have been said of the Chalkidians, τὠυτὸ πλήρωμα παρείχοντο. The observation confirms the suspicion that Hdt. is here drawing on a different source.

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Ἐρετριέες supply ‘the seven,’ i.e. the same as before, at Artemision; but these were really their own. The οὖτοι here refers to the Eretrians, who, though Ionians, are not ἀπὸ Ἀθηνέων. It might coneeivably refer to both Chalkidians and Eretrians, but συναμφότεροι οὗτοι would then have been clearer; see below. The ‘Chalkidians’ are presumably Athenian kleruchs, even though the crews in the 20 vessels may have been natives. Cp. c. 1 supra.

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Κήιοι supply ‘the same’ ships as at Artemision, 2 in number; their Atheno-Ionian origin is expressly specified. The island of Keos is nowhere mentioned nominatim by Hdt. (cp. c. 76 infra), nor does it appear that he ever landed on it; but he had doubtless seen the Κηίων ἱστιητόριον at Delos (4. 35 supra), and he was acquainted with the works of the greatest of all Kerans, Simonides; cp. 7. 228 supra. Athens claimed ‘metropolitan’ recognition, of course, from the Ionians of the Kyklades as from the Ionians of Asia; cp. 5. 99, 1. 147.

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Νάξιοι: the four Naxian triremes are pure gain; the title refers grammatically to the very men on board, who had been despatched by the Commonwealth to join the enemy, their nominal suzerain, but had taken the law into their own hands, and joined the Greek side. This independent action of the Naxian fleet recalls, mutatis mutandis, the action of the Samians despatched by Polykrates to serve under Kambyses in Egypt, 3. 45, and anticipates (in a small way) the separate action of the Athenian fleet at Samos in 412-11 B.C., Thucydides 8. 75 f., not to say that of the Ionians at Byzantion in 477 B.C., Thuc. 1. 95, Plutarch. Arist. 23. One might suspect that the Naxian fleet on this occasion was more ‘democratic,’ more Attic, than οἱ πολιῆται. But see l. 12 below.

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ἐς τοὺς Μήδους: not here, as sometimes, a geographical phrase. The employment of Μῆδος for Πέρσης is not common in these Books, and perhaps belongs to ‘the source.’

κατά περ οἱ ἄλλοι νησιῶται: in the Aegean, who, with the exception of Seriphos, Siphnos, Melos, had all given ‘earth and water’ to ‘the barbarian.’ Cp. c. 66 below.

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ἀπίκατο: a pluperfect, with the full temporal significance, referring to a past act rather than to a present result; so, the force of the form is different from the construction with the auxiliary verb, as in ἦσαν πεπληρωμέναι νέες l. 2 above.

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Δημοκρίτου. Hdt. may owe the name of Demokritos (a popular name!) to an epigram of Simonides, recognized as authentic by M. Hauvette, de l'authenticitédes Epigrammes de Simonide (1896) p. 53,

Δημὁκριτος τρίτος ἦρξε μάχης ὅτε πἁρ Σαλαμῖνα

Ἕλληνες Μήδοις σύμβαλον ἐν πελάγει:

πέντε δὲ νῆας ἕλεν δηίων, ἕκτην δ᾽ ὑπὸ χειρὸς

ρ̀ύσατο βαρβαρικῆς Δωρίδ᾽ ἁλισκομένην,

preserved by Plutarch, de malig. Hdti. 36. His τριηραρχία presumably extended to one only of the four triremes. His position would not be inconsistent with his being a democrat. It is remarkable that Hdt. does not supply his father's name, nor does the epigram. There is no sharp opposition intended between τῶν ἀστῶν and τῶν πολιητέων just above.

On the Athenian origin of the Ionian Naxians cp. l. 8 above. Naxos was and had been a much more important island than Keos, and had been held to Athenian interests in the days of Peisistratos (1. 64). Its rivalry with Miletos at the end of the sixth cent., and party feuds within the island itself, had led indirectly to the conflict between the Ionians and Persia in which Athens had become involved (5. 28, 31); and though Naxos had escaped the first assault upon its liberties from the Asiatic side (5. 33), it had succumbed— with the rest—to Datis and Artaphrenes (6. 95 f.) in 490 B.C. For the decade previous to Salamis its history is a blank; but evidently Naxos had resigned neither its ambitions nor its party feuds.

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Στυρέες. Styra, iu Euboia, sends the same ships as to Artemision, two in uumber. The Styrians are ‘Dryopians’; cp. c. 43 supra.

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Κύθνιοι. Kythnos, a small island due south of Keos, had been unrepresented at Artemision; its modest contingent, one trireme aud one ‘pentekonter,’ is hardly equivalent to its later, aud apparently fixed, tribute to Athens of 3 taleuts, au amouut doubled by the τάξις of 425 B.C.

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συναμφότεροι clears οὗτοι.

Σερίφιοι. Seriphos, due south of Kythuos, appears for the first time, and with but one peutekonter; c. 48 infra. (It paid Athens afterwards 2 - 1 talents tribute—the figure for 425 B.C. unfortunately irrecoverable.) Athens couuts as its metropolis, ib.

Σίφνιοι. Siphnos, SE. of Seriphos, was a well-to-do island (cp. 3. 57 f.), aud afterwards paid 3 talents' tribute to Athens, a sum trebled by the τάξις of 425 B.C. Yet it likewise contributes but one pentekouter to the fleet, c. 48 infra. The populatiou is iudistinguishable from that of Seriphos, ib.

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Μήλιοι. Melos, SW. of Siphnos, a larger islaud, and still better knowu to fame, but not properly belonging to the Kyklades (cp. c. 48 infra), furnished two pentekonters, c. 48 infra. In 425 B.C. the Athenians assessed Melos at 15 taleuts (vid. τάξις φόρου, Hicks's Manual,2 No. 64); but this was probably a mere excuse for the conquest aud destruction of the island, which was accomplished in 416 B.C., Thucyd. 5. 84-116 (unless, indeed, it was meant to recoup the Atheniaus for the failure of the previous expeditiou in the year before the τάξις, Thuc. 3. 91). The days of greatest wealth for Melos were in that primitive period wheu its beds of obsidiau supplied oue of the most valuable staples of the stone age (cp. Annual of Br. School at Athens, Nos. iii., iv., v.), but the fame of the island in modern times is more intimately associated with the marble now stauding in the Louvre and known as the ‘Veuus of Milo.’

οὗτοι: there is again, and for the third time in the list, some ambiguity iu the exteusion of this term, but it may be restricted to Μήλιοι.