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

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οἳ ... νικῶντες, ‘the victors’ —primarily the Lakedaimonians; cp. the message reported just below.

τοὺς Ξέρξεω: i.e. the barbarians (the term hardly includes τοὺς μετὰ βασιλέος Ἕλληνας). Mardonios is no more; but the phrase is perhaps merely conventional, and hardly chosen expressly with that referenee.

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ἐν δὲ τούτῳ ... φόβῳ, ‘at the beginning of this rout.’ ἐν, temporal, cp. c. 60 supra.

φόβος = φογή, “the only sense in Homer” (L. & S.).

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τοῖσι ... περὶ τὸ Ἥραιον: cp. c. 52 supra; it is admitted here too that they were τεταγμένοι. The whole centre, both right and left, is here apparently involved; see below.

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ἀπογενομένοισι τῆς μάχης: quí pugnae non interfuerunt (Baehr). In 2. 85, 136, 3. 111, 5. 4 ἀπογίγνεσθαι means ‘to die.’

μάχη τε γέγονε καὶ νικῷεν οἱ μετὰ Παυσανίεω, ‘a battle has taken place, Pausanias and his men being victorions.’ The combination of moods and tenses in this message is remarkable; the indicative and optative in somewhat similar fashion 8. 100 δώσει δίκην . . καί οἱ κρέσσον εἴη, 8. 111 ἦσαν ἄρα αἱ Ἀθῆναι μεγάλαι τε καὶ εὐδαίμονες, αἳ καὶ θεῶν χρηστῶν ἥκοιεν εὖ. The present optative here is remarkable: even in this context, with the antecedent perfect, it could hardly be imperfect (γέγονε can hardly mean merely ‘has begun’). Just about the same moment, or a little later in the day, ex hypothesi, substantially the same news was spread through the army on the strand at Mykale, c. 100 infra; but here οἱ μετὰ Π. is emphatic, and does not include the Athenians.

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οὐδένα κόσμον ταχθἐντες: a suspicions assertion, redncing them almost to the level of the barbarians in c. 59 supra.

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οἱ μὲν ἀμφὶ Κορινθίους: Schweighaeuser, Krueger, Baehr, and others, have interpreted this merely of the Korinthians, and so the corresponding phrase below merely of the Megarians and Phleiasians. This interpretation is neither grammatically nor materially tenable. The phrase means ‘the Korinthians and those with them,’ and plainly covers ‘the right centre’ as enumerated in c. 28 supra, comprising some 11,300 hoplites, in six (or eight) divisions, from the Korinthians on the extreme left (next the Lakedaimonians and Tegeatai) to the Mykenaians and Tirynthians on the right, i.e. just at the very middle of the Greek line.

This body, the right centre, is here dimly reported as betaking itself from the Heraion, where it had been duly disposed and drawn up in order (of battle), through, or over, the skirts of the mountain and the ridgeland, by the way leading up to the temple of Demeter.

This notice at first sight suggests that they are going to the help of Pausanias in the position of the Lakedaimonians as described in cc. 56, 57 supra. But Pansanias is ex hypothesi already victorious, and does not need their assistance; and in fact nothing more is heard of this body of men and their ill-starred movement, οὐδένα κόσμον ταχθέντες, started without waiting for any orders

There is the same ambiguity here as elsewhere in regard to the exact extent of the ὑπωρέη, in regard to the identity of the κολωνοί, in regard to the precise one of three Demetria which may have been involved in the movement; perhaps also as to the exact point of time at which this movement of the right centre took place. It is curious, too, that no message reaches this body of men summoning them (like the Athenians c. 60 supra) to the aid of Pausanias. (But cp. note to c. 61. 14 supra.) The precise sequence and chronology of the orders, messages, movements in various parts of the field of battle are not coherently presented by Hdt. Perhaps the division of the Greek army forming the right centre had been detached and deployed on to the road from Plataia to Athens (Dryoskephalai) for the purpose of holding it against the Persian cavalry, and was actually so engaged, while the Lakedaimonians were resisting the onset of the Persian infantry, lower down the slope, or had even already put the Persians to flight. In any case the line of march here indicated for the right centre is uphill from Plataia, and its objective cannot be marked by the present church of St. Demetrion, the site of which is far below the Heraion.

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οἱ δὲ ἀμφὶ Μεγαρέας τε καὶ Φλειασίους. The left centre, comprising the Megarians, Phleiasians, and those in their division, a force of 7300 hoplites, cp. c. 78 supra Of them it might have been said that they ἤισαν τὰ ἔμπαλιν ἢ οἱ ἀμφὶ Κορινθίους (cp. c. 56 supra). As the right centre has moved, apparently E., or SE., to support, or cover, the right wing, so the left centre moves N., or NW., to support the left wing: διὰ τοῦ πεδίου τὴν λειοτάτην τῶν ὁδῶν, words which seem to carry a disparaging reflexion with them! Of course for the left centre to advance down hill, on to the plain, over which the road from Plataia to Thebes ran, to the support of the Athenians, who were evidently in difficulties (cp. c. 61 supra), was a gallant enough proceeding; but the Athenians do not appear to have been very grateful therefor.

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ἀπιδόντες: cp. 8. 37.

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τῶν ἱππάρχεε: cp. c. 20 supra; the τῶν should be referred to ἱππόται.

Ἀσωπόδωρος ὁ Τιμάνδρου. Of Timandros the father nothing more is known, but this Asopodoros may well be the father of that Herodotos, of Thebes, in whose honour Pindar composed an Epinikion, Isth. 1. The family, which was, of course, aristocratic and medizing, had some connexion with Orchomenos (op. c. 35); cp. e. 16 supra. To these circumstances may be due the remembrance of the exploit here recorded.

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κατεστόρεσαν αὐτῶν ἑξακοσίους. This heavy loss, and the consequent flight of the left centre ἐς τὸν Κιθαιρῶνα, can hardly have taken place after the victory of the Athenians over the Boiotians already recounted in c. 67 supra; it was more probably its antecedent, or concomitant, at least in part; in other words, the support afforded to the Athenians, on the extreme left, by the left centre, enabled them to claim a success over the Thebans.