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

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ἐντός, ‘east of’ this side: a natural phrase to Hdt. aud his eastern sources, but not one that he would have used in this conuexiou while resideut in Italy, or even after familiarity with the further west. Pro tanto the phrase makes for the early composition of thess Books; cp. Introduction, §§ 7, 8.

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Θεσπρωτῶν καὶ Ἀχέροντος ποταμοῦ: the same conjunction in 5. 92 ἐς Θεσπρωτοὺς ἐπ᾽ Ἀχέροντα ποταμόν, the seat of a νεκυομαντήιον. Thesprotia is giveu above, 7. 176, as the original home of the Thessalians, and still more precisely in 2. 56 as in the ueighbourhood of the oracle of Dodona. The position of Acheron and Thesprotis is still more clearly marked by Thucydides, 1. 46. 3 f. ἐπειδὴ δὲ προσέμειξαν τῇ κατὰ Κέρκυραν ἠπείρῳ ἀπὸ Λευκάδος πλέοντες, ὁρμίζονται ἐς Χειμέριον τῆς Θεσπρωτίδος γῆς. ἔστι δὲ λιμήν, καὶ πόλις ὑπὲρ αὐτοῦ κεῖται ἀπὸ θαλάσσης ἐν τῇ Ἐλαιάτιδι τῆς Θεσπρωτίδος Ἐφύρη. ἐξίησι δὲ παρ᾽ αὐτὴν Ἀχερουσίο λίμνη ἐς θάλασσαν: διὰ δὲ τῆς Θεσπρωτίδος Ἀχέρων ποταμὸς ῥέων ἐσβάλλει ἐς <*>ὐ ήν, ἀφ̓ οὗ καὶ τὴν ἐπωνυμίαν ἔχει. ῥεί δὲ καὶ Θύαμις ποταμός, ὁρίζων τὴν Θερπρωτίδα καὶ Κεστρίνην, ὧν ἐντὸς ἡ ἄκρα ἀνέχει τὸ Χειμέριον (where, by the way, ἐντός = μεταξύ). Cp. Thnc. 1. 30. 3, also 50. 3 ἔστι δὲ τὰ Σύβοτα τῆς Θεσπρωσίδος λιμὴν ἐρῆμος.

Hdt.'s description of Thesprotis as bordering on Lenkas and Ambrakia is not very precise, and leaves the relative positions of the two great Korinthian colonies in donbt. Here again Thncydides snpplies fuller and more accurate topography, both direetly and incidentally, e g the relation of Leukas to Kephallenia and its position in Akarnania, 2. 30. 2, and narrative passim; the site of Ambrakia, on the ‘Ambrakian gnlf,’ 1. 29. 3; and the chorography presented in the account of the eampaign round Argos Amphilochicum, 2. 68-114, passim.

Hdt.'s references here do not snggest autopsy, or any personal acquaintance with the region. If he ever landed in those parts (as e.g. for a visit to Dodona) it was after this passage had been written, and the passage has been left unrevised: fresh evidence of the relatively early date of the eomposition of this part of the work.

Acheron must have been notorions as the principal stream of Thesprotis, thongh by no means so considerable a stream as the Arachthos, on which Ambrakia was sitnate. What its relation, if any, to the snbterranean stream of Homer, Od. 10. 513, is an obscure problem (bnt there was necromancy in the neighbonrhood, see above).

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Κροτωνιῆται: this passage on Kroton looks as thongh it might be an insertion (cp. Introduction, § 9): the one trireme from Italy does not affect the total, whieh is in any case ont of gear. The addition of any one, after naming those ἐξ ἐσχατέων χωρέων, is rather clnmsy. The absence of any reference in Bk. 7 to an invitation to Kroton further isolates this note. The Krotoniate name does not figure on the τρικάρηνος ὄφις. On the other hand, the notice of Phayllos τρὶς πυθιονίκης makes it more likely that the service of the Krotoniate trireme at Salamis was definitely commemorated in the east, or the mother-land; and the passage presently quoted from Pansanias makes this eonclnsion binding The μοῦνοι here excludes not merely all other Italiotes and Sikeliotes, bnt the Korkyraians to boot; cp. 7. 168.

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Φάυλλος: Phayllos of Kroton was celebrated throughout Hellas for his three victories at Pytho, two in the Pentathlon, one in the foot-race alone. The inference that all three Pythian victories were won previously to his service at Salamis is not binding: it is enough that they were all ancient history to Herodotns. Φαΰλῳ (sic) “δὲ Κροτωνιάτῃ—Ὀλυμπίασι μὲν οὐκ ἔστιν αὐτῷ νίκη, τὰς δὲ Πυθοῖ πεντάθλου δύο ἀνείλετο καὶ σταδίου τὴν τρίτην: ἐναυμάχησε δὲ καὶ ἐναντία τοῦ Μήδου ναῦν τε παρασκευασάμενος οἰκείαν, καὶ Κροτωνιατῶν ὁπόσοι ἐπεδήμουν τῇ Ἑλλάδι ἀνεβίβασε—τούτου ἐστὶν ἀνδριὰς ἐν Δελφοῖς” Pausan. 10. 9. 2. The inscription on this statue is nltimately at least the source of this notice in Hdt. A Phayllos is mentioned by Aristophanes, Acharn. 215, Wasps 1206, as a proverbially good runner: the Scholiast calls him an Ὀλυμπιονίκης— which, if correct, wonld forbid identification with the man here in question, for not only does Pausanias expressly gnard against it, bnt Phayllos of Kroton was more distinguished as a ‘pentathlete,’ and most distinguished for his service at Salamis. The name, a diminntive of Φάων, is not nncommon: the most celebrated bearer was undoubtedly the brother of Onomarehos, the Phokian, who plnndered Delphi, Pansan. 10. 2. 6 etc. The passage in Pansanias quoted above suggests to Blakesley that Phayllos and his comrades were exiles, and that his participation in the battle of Salamis was a purely private affair. Had the Krotoniate by any chance come to try his fortunes at the 75th Olympiad?

Κροτωνιῆται δὲ γένος εἰσὶ Ἀχαιοί. To Hdt. the prae-Dorian population of the Peloponnesos was mainly or largely ‘Achaian’ (cp. 5. 72), a theory no doubt in part based upon the Homeric poems. The Achaians of historic Achaia had apparently concentrated in what was previously an Ionian province on the north coast, and expelled the Ionians; cp. 1. 145. From that Peloponnesian Achaia, Achaians had apparently subsequently migrated to southern Italy, and made of it a great or greater Hellas. To the Greeks of the fifth century the Achaians were undoubtedly the most genuine ‘Hellenes’ at least of earlier or prae-Dorian days, and the prae-Dorian culture, the culture of the Homeric poems, of the heroic age, was in their eyes an Achaian culture. The Achaian name is found actually attached to the soil of historic Hellas in two places, south Thessaly and north Peloponnese, and Achaians are with certainty to be found in Krete, in south Italy, and even as far as Kypros. How that could be, if the Achaians were not Greeks at all, but ‘a small Celtic tribe’ (Ridgeway, Early Age of Greece, i. 1901) merged and lost in the Hellenic mass, is an enigma. Prof. Bury, who in his History (1900) appears somewhat to minimize the importance of the Achaians, and even of the Hellenes, in Hellenic culture, nevertheless proved (to my mind) the virtual identity of Hellenes and Achaians originally, and explained thereby the strange origin of the designation of ‘Great Greece’ for the south of Italy, which could only have been so called in distinction to the lesser Hellas from which the Achaian colonists had come— a mere district of Peloponnese, or it may be of Thessaly; cp. J.H.S. xv. (1895) 235 ff.