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

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τῶν τινες Φοινίκων: a thoroughly Herodotean collocation, cp. 7. 143, 146 supra. The men in question would of course be of high position, kings or what not: it is a pity they are anonymous! Cp. 7. 98.

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διεφθάρατο: a pluperfect, and with its full temporal force.

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δἰ ἐκείνους. ‘thanks to them.’ ὡς προδόντων seems to be added as an explanation, not by the Phoenicians, but by the writer; it were as well away, and, but for the change of case, might be bracketed as a gloss. What had the Ionians done? Was it the Ionians who had turned tail? Was it not the Phoenicians who had been leading the van? Were they angry that the Ionians had not made way, when they turned to flight? Or did they suspect the Ionians of collusion with the enemy, and of purposely obstructing the passage? Such questions may seem to treat the anecdote too seriously. It is in any case evidence of a rivalry and friction between Ionian and Phoenician, which was doubtless one of the elements of weakness on the Persian side.

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συνήνεικε: here quite neutral; cp. c. 88 supra. οὕτω, ‘in the following way’—i.q. ὧδε.

Ἰώνων ... τοὺς στρατηγούς: not the Persian admirals, but the (subordinate) Greek captains, or generals of squadrons.

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μισθόν: ironical; cp. c. 117 infra. Hdt. is not a lover of the Ionians, but he prefers them here to Phoenicians; cp. 7. 23 supra.

ἐνέβαλε νηὶ Ἀττικῇ Σαμοθρηικίη νηῦς. The verb is naturally used; cp. c. 87 supra. The involution of Attic, Samothrakian, and Aiginetan vessels is remarkable. The Athenian squadron must have taken up more than half the Greek lines of battle; the Aiginetans may have been posted (or had some of their ships posted) on the extreme left of the Peloponnesian contingent, or wing. The Athenian vessel may have come out left of Psyttaleia, and the Aiginetan on the right. The dramatic transaction, which is probably historical, should take place in the outer, not in the inner waters: the notion that it occurred under the very eyes of Xerxes is perhaps for the sake of the moral, i.e. fabulous.

The Samothrakians are in this anecdote regarded as Ionians: the primitive population was Pelasgian, 2. 51; ‘Thrakian Samos’ (Homer, Il. 13. 12) was very naturally believed to have been colonized by ‘Samians,’ Schol. ad l.c., Pausan. 7. 4. 3; but the story in Pausanias throws some doubt on their Ionism. Blakesley acutely remarks that ‘Ionian’ was the common orientalism for Hellene, and cps. 4. 138, 6. 8, 7 95 supra.

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ἀκοντισταί: armed with the ἀκόντιον, the characteristic weapon of Thrace, of Asia Minor, of the Peltast (cp. Appendix II. § 4), which here proves superior to the panoply of the hoplite. The Samothrakian Peltasts cleared the deck of the heavy infantry, boarded and possessed themselves of the Aiginetan vessel (ἔσχον). The amount of ramming done is remarkable; and if the description is correct—and as early as 494 B.C. the Ionians at least were supposed to be competent in that manœuvre, cp. 6. 12, 15—the battle of Salamis was not simply a land-fight on ‘wooden wall’ or ‘boarded’ field, but a true sea-fight, in which the ship was itself a weapon, and manœuvres were as much the order of the day as simply jamming the ships alongside, and fighting ἐν χειρῶν νόμῳ, cp. c. 89.

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ὡς γὰρ εἶδε σφέας Ξέρξης: if this great feat (ἔργον) really took place as described; if Xerxes with his own eyes saw it; if he was at that moment sitting somewhere on Mount Aigaleos, or on its skirts (see just below), then the scene of the action would more probably lie west of Psyttaleia. The σφέας is rather vaguely referent to τοὺς Ἴωνας. In any case the royal logic was at fault: even if the Samothrakians were Ionians, or passed as such, other Ionians, from Asia and elsewhere, might have deserved all the bad things the Phoenicians were supposed to have said of them. There can be no doubt that σφεων refers to Φοίνικας. Xerxes did not order the Phoenicians to cut off the heads of the Ionians, and when he turned himself to the Phoenicians the act was mental rather than physical. ‘Heading’ was a regular formula, cp. 7. 35 supra, and Phoenicians were accustomed to it—in Ionian story. Hdt. below specifies that the king's orders are executed. ἵνα μὴ ... διαβάλλωσι seems to be a motive supplied by the narrator, not a part of the king's doom.

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κατήμενος ὑπὸ τῷ ὄρεϊ ... Αἰγάλεως. During at least some part of the day Xerxes may have been seated somewhere on a throne, from which he could witness the fight, “the principal officers of his household standing around him, the imperial parasol held by an attendant over his head, and the scribes by his side, writing down the names of those who had distinguished themselves in the action,” Leake, Athens and the Demi, ii.2 270. From Mount Aigaleos you can overlook the whole bay, and survey the waters both within and beyond the island of Lipsokutali: what a view!— but hardly from a seat ὑπὸ τῷ ὄρει, ‘at the foot of the mountain.’ If the seat of Xerxes was down there, or even down on the lower slopes, but little above the shore, not much would have been seen of the details of a battle, even all confined to the straits and bay of Salamis (Ambelaki).

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The words τὸ καλέεται Αἰγάλεως have a parenthetic, not to say gloss-like appearance, but might easily have been inserted by the author himself, after making acquaintance with the scene. To survey all the possible area of action, to look down into the bay of Eleusis as well as into the bay of Salamis, Xerxes would have needed to ascend high on Mt. Skaramanga: the matter afloat this time was no mere parade, or procession, as in 4. 88, 7. 44 supra. Neither was the king bound to sit still in one spot all the time! He will have ridden to the foot of the ascent, and have moved up and about the high ground, attended by his aides-de-camp and suite, as the evolutions of the battle proceeded. Surely, had he been fixed to one spot, we should have heard how he sprang up from his seat, thrice and three times thrice, δείσαντα περὶ τῇ στρατιῇ (7. 212 supra). If Xerxes had a throne for this occasion its exact site is hard to define. The ancients themselves are not agreed. It first makes its appearance in the poetic source: Aischyl. Pers. 465 ff. ἕδραν γὰρ εἶχε παντὸς εὐαγῆ στρατοῦ ὑψηλὸν ὄχθον ἄγχι πελαγίας ἁλός. In these lines ἕδραν is not necessarily even ‘a seat,’ much less ‘his throne’ (the ἀργυρόπους δίφρος preserved afterwards in the Akropolis and stolen by Glauketes. Demosth. c. Timocr. 24. 129, hence the silence of Pausan. 1. 27. 1). παντὸς στρατοῦ seems to cover army as well as fleet, and some of the army was, if Hdt. is to be trusted, west of Aigaleos (c. 70 supra). ὑψηλὸν ὄχθον would at any rate suit Aigaleos, and the top of Aigaleos, but contradicts Hdt.'s ὑπὸ τῷ ὄρει. πελαγίας ἁλός need not be pressed so as to rule out the straits, as though πέλαγος could only mean the high or open seas; but Aischylos is not anyway in strict accord with Hdt. Phanodemos (ap Plutarch. Themist. 13) placed the seat of Xerxes ὑπὲρ τὸ Ἡράκλειον—which may be the source of Diodoros 11. 18. 2, so far as the king's position is concerned therein—but how far, how much above the Herakleion? The Herakleion apparently occupied the shore end of the ferry, across the narrowest part of the straits (cp. note to c. 97 infra). Akestodoros (Plutarch l.c.) located the king far to the west, beyond Eleusis, ἐν μεθορίῳ τῆς Μεγαρίδος ὑπὲρ τῶν καλουμένων Κεράτων. In that position he would have seen nothing at all of the actual battle described in Hdt., though he might have seen something worth seeing (cp. c. 94 infra). The tradition in Akestodoros deserves, however, less absolute contempt than it has received: the very fact that it is so remote from the apparent necessities of the case should have obtained for it a careful scrutiny. Considering that the army, or a part of the army, had moved in the night before the battle to the west (c. 70 supra); that on the day before the battle Demaratos and Dikaios, eminent members of the king's suite, were on the Thriasian plain (c. 65 supra); that a detachment of the Persian fleet had been sent round Salamis to block the Megarian channel (c. 76 supra); that the Greeks were (perhaps) believed to be in full retreat through the bay of Eleusis (c. 75 supra), a position overlooking the Megarian Sound might not have seemed ill-chosen for a bird's-eye view of the coming encounters. No one would have suggested it as commanding the actual scene of the battle of Salamis. Given the main facts of the battle, granted the obvious supposition that the king witnessed it, and a place was bound to be provided for him ἐναντίον τῆς Σαλαμῖνος, pity that the authorities could not agree whether that place was at the top or the bottom of the mountain! That Xerxes actually ascended the Kerata is incredible. Even if he was at Eleusis on the morning of the battle, he would have hurried eastwards when the true state of the case was revealed by the early light. The greater part of the battle he may have actually overlooked from the heights of Skaramanga. The oddity in Aristodem. 1. 2 (καθεζόμενοι ἐπὶ τοῦ Πάρνηθος ὄρους) is surely a variant for Aigaleos — the whole for the part. Blakesley's ingenious hypothesis that Xerxes began on the top of the mountain and then descended to the neighbourhood of the Herakleion does not really bear out his own conclusion that “all the varying accounts may have some trnth in them,” for it ignores Akestodoros; nor does it square with the probable course of events: for at what hour did Xerxes start on the top of the mountain? Did he spend the night there? If not, the unexpected course of events in the morning would probably have upset the plan of ascent. In any case, you inevitably start at the bottom, not at the top of a mountain: once up, no doubt you are sure to come down. The traditional site of the Throne of Xerxes is on the hill fronting the road to the ferry, a little beyond the supposed site of the Herakleion. Lolling (Baedeker's Greece p. 108) suggested the rocky promontory of Keratópyrgos, which projects into the bay about three-quarters of a mile beyond the chapel of St. George, as the point from which Xerxes witnessed the battle, commanding as it does an admirable survey of the straits. It is now occupied by a powder magazine. The partial coincidence between the modern name of this promontory and the Kerata, in Akestodoros, is curious.

οἱ γραμματισταὶ ἀνέγραφον: we have seen these historiographers at work, under more favourable circumstances, before, 7. 100 supra. Possibly the royal Anagraphai may have contained the names of Theomestor and Phylakos, but Hdt. will scarcely have consulted them; cp. c. 85 supra.

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πατρόθεν: cp. 6. 14, but not necessarily a Greek touch; the patronymic plays a prominent part in the Persian lists, e.g. 7. 61 ff. But τὸν τριήραρχον καὶ τὴν πόλιν sounds calculated mainly for the case of Greeks; what if not a πόλις but an ἔθνος were concerned? The whole sentence ὅκως γὰρ ... τὴν πόλιν comes in very curiously here, and would be better placed at the end of c. 85 after πολλῇ.

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πρὸς δέ κτλ. This is a further explanation of the escape of the Ionians and of the doom (πάθος) of the Phoenicians, but the phraseology is peculiar, and the text perhaps corrupt; cp. App. Crit. The texts vary between τι and ἔτι. προσεβάλετο is of doubtful sense and reading; see below.

φίλος ἐών is obscure: whose friend was Ariaramnes? Ἴωσι is conjectural. The last clause, too, οἳ μὲν δή κτλ., appears incomplete. Does the corruption extend perhaps much further than hitherto suspected? See following note.

προσεβάλετο might be a middle, or a passive, although if Ariaramnes is its subject it is presumably middle, and may be interpreted ‘contributed somewhat (τι) to the disaster of the Phoenicians’; contulit ad illam Phoenicum cladem; Schafer ap. Baehr: Stein compares Eurip. Med. 284 συμβάλλεται (sic) δὲ πολλὰ τοῦδε δείματος. Baehr himself prefers (with Lange) to take προσεβάλετό τι absolutely, and παρεών with τούτου ... πάθεος, ‘present at this disaster’ (surely wrong!). (Blakesley reads προσελάβετο and understands Ariaramnes to have shared the fate of the Phoenicians.) φίλος has been taken in three ways: τῶν Ἰώνων (Baehr), amicus regis (Valla), of the Phoenicians (Blakesley).

I am inclined to suspect that the real verb has here disappeared, and that προσεβάλετο may have come in from lower down, where τοῖσι προσεβάλετο αὑτὴ ἡ ἄχαρις τιμή (7. 36 supra), or some similar phrase, seems to have dropped out after οἳ μὲν δή. Perhaps the text in this passage ran πρὸς δὲ (ἔτι） καὶ ἐπελάβετο φίλος ἐών κτλ., in which case Ariaramnes was a friend of the Phoenicians, and the conjectural Ὤσι must be omitted. With ἐπιλαμβάνεσθαί τινος cp. 1. 127 (προστάτεω), 6. 49 (προφάσιος), 9. 99 (δυνάμιος), though it must be confessed that πάθεος is not in the same category.

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Ἀριαράμνης. His name suggests that he was an Achaimenid; cp. 7. 11 supra.