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

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ἐς τὴν Ἑλλάδα: the term here seems used with a very definite and concrete geographical reference; cp. c. 101 supra.

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χρήματα: the spoils, chiefly from Mykale—where they had found θησαυρούς τινας χρημάτων c. 106 supra.

καὶ δὴ καί: cp. 8. 132. 10 supra.

τὰ ὅπλα τῶν γεφυρέων: presumably the great cables described in 7. 36 supra. They must have been fetched from Kardia, where they had been deposited by Oiobazos c. 115 supra. Their fresh destination is not quite clear; the temples of Athens were in ruins, but the city was being rebuilt, Thuc. 1. 89. 3.

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κατὰ τὸ ἔτος τοῦτο: the year here indicated could only be either the Attic civil year, or the campaigning year, from spring to spring, such as Thucydides employs after its introduction by Hdt. in the history of this very war; cp. 7. 37, 8. 131 (cp. also the history of the Triennium, Bk. 6). This consideration makes it plain that Hdt. has here in view the campaigning year 479-78 B.C. But there are nevertheless two questions which remain: (a) the date of the return of the Fleet from the Hellespont to Athens; (b) the date of the next expedition, under Pausanias, to Kypros, Thuc. 1. 94. Is there not a reference thereto in this passage?

（a) According to Rawlinson ἐπιχειμάσαντες in Thuc. 1. 89. 2 means not that they passed the winter before Sestos (διαχειμάζειν), but that they just reached winter before taking it; cp. ἐπιπολιοῦσθαι, ἐπιπερκάζειν (inceptives), and ἐπι- as dimin. in composition with adj. (ἐπίπικρος, etc.). It is possible that the Athenian fleet reached home before our New Year (though that cannot be Hdt.'s new ἔτος); and the remark here would be in that case correct, though rather otiose.

（b) The expedition under Pausanias certainly did not start before the spring of 478 B.C., i.e. after Hdt.'s ‘New Year.’ The interpretation of ἐπιχειμάσαντες in Thuc. l.c. as involving the whole winter dated the return of the Athenians to the spring, and led to the start of Pausanias being pushed on into the summer, possibly even over the Athenian New Year. The revision of the meaning of ἐπιχειμάσαντες allows an earlier and normal date for the expedition of 478 B.C., and leaves of course this chronological note of Hdt.'s, if it be indeed his, correct. but again otiose.

I doubt the authenticity of this sentence. It has all the air of being inserted by some one with the history of the Pentekontaeteris before him. It could not, indeed, prove the work of Hdt. to be unfinished, or incomplete; but it lends perhaps some colour to that misconception. Remove it and the story of the war as told by Hdt. attains a finer climax, apart from the colophon, or concluding anecdote, in c. 122. The last item in the annals of the war, that great Biennium (or Τριετηρίς), is the dedication of the cables which had bound Europe to Asia, and paved the way for the barbarous invader of Hellas. The sentence has all the air of a gloss, and it not merely spoils the splendid climax ἐς τὰ ἱρά, but separates unduly the closing anecdote from the peg upon which it depends, the name and fate of Artayktes.