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λέγεται δέ κτλ.: probably by some author, or λογογράφος; cp. c. 81 supra, οὐ λέγεται πρὸς οὐδαμῶν. The specificatiou indicates a doubt of the truth of the following story, which is indeed not prima facie very probable, and carries too obvious a tendency and moral. Ξέρξης φεύγων. Xerxes is seldom allowed to leave Hellas except ‘in flight.’ Here the exaggeration serves to make the bequest of his κατασκευή to Mardouios more probable. The κατασκευή might certaiuly include the σκηνή (above described, c. 70, as of Mardonios); the παραπετάσματα, hangings, curtains, tapestries, as well as παρασκευή lower down, support that view; but if the Tegeatai had sacked it on entering the camp, how could Pausanias have seen it in the good order implied by the preseut story? According to Plutarch, Perikles 13 (cp. Pausanias 1. 20. 4), the Oideion was said to have been a copy of the king's tent (εἰκὼν καὶ μίμημα τῆς βασιλέως σκήνης). Vitruvius 5. 9 represents the roof as constructed from the masts and spars of the Persian ships, and names Themistokles as the (first?) erector. (On the subsequent fate of the building cp. Frazer, Pausan. l.c.; E. Gardner, Ancient Athens, pp. 394-5.) That looks as though the king's pavilion had falleu into the hands of the Athenians, a conclusion hardly compatible with c. 70 above. Or did the adoption of that pattern cover a protest or claim?
ἀρτοκόπους ... ὀψοποιούς: cp. Xenoph. Hell. 7. 1. 38 (report of the Arkadian Antiochos to the Myriad, 367 B.C.) ὅτι βασιλεὺς ἀρτοκόπους μὲν καὶ ὀψοποιοὺς καὶ οἰνοχόους καὶ θυρωροὺς παμπληθεῖς ἔχοι, ἄνδ<*>ας δὲ οἳ μάχοιντ̓ ἂν Ἕλλησι, πάνυ ζητῶν οὐκ ἔφη δύνασθαι ἰδεῖν. Hdt. makes ἀρτοκόπος feminine in 1. 51. The males had not all beeu put to the sword at Plataia: cp. c. 81 supra (γυναῖκες). ὀψοποιός is not a pastrycook (μάγειρος, at least originally) but a cook for ὄψα, q.v.
καθώς is anomalous; cp. App. Crit. It occurs ap. Athenaeum 138 C, in quotiug this very passage.
ἐκπλαγέντα, whether of fear, or astonishment, as here, is more usually constructed with the dative; cp. 7. 226, 4. 4, etc. ἐπὶ γέλωτι, of the end or object in view; cp. 6. 67. Pausanias should be credited with a more serious purpose; but the anecdote is a contribution to “the comic Nemesis”; cp. 8. 24. 4 supra. τοὺς ἑωυτοῦ διηκόνους, including the hereditary cooks (6. 60), whose productions were not likely to be triumphs of the culinary art. Athenaeus (4. 16 ff.) 139 follows up his citation of this passage by numerous quotations on various forms of Lakonian banquets, the κοπίς, the αἴκλον, the φειδίτια (e.g. ἔστι δ᾽ ἡ κοπἰς δεῖπνον, μάζα, ἄρτος, κρέας, λάχανον ὠμόν, ζωμός, σῦκον, τράγημα, θέρμος).
θοίνη: food, banquet, 1. 119. τὸ μἐσον, ‘the interval,’ ‘the diflerence’; cp. Index, and 1. 126.
τῶν Ἑλλήνων τοὺς στρατηγούς: he might have been going to entertain them, and perhaps he was, to a banquet à la Perse. The subsequent career of Pausanias seems to suggest that the Persian cooks made a speedy convert; but here Pride—the Pride of Poverty—prevents his fall. No wonder Hdt. doubts the story (λέγεται again), but it was too good a one to throw over. It is apparently an addition, at second or third hand, for it interrupts the natural sequence of cc. 81, 83. Cp. Introduction, § 9.
ὀιζυρός (only here in Hdt.) is a common Homeric epithet of πόλεμος, γόος, νύξ, and βροτοί (human beings, most frequently): ‘miserable,’ woeful, pitiable. A harder epithet could scarcely have been used of the poverty-stricken Laconic fare.
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