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

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διείλοντο, ἔθαπτον: the sequence of tenses seems to warrant the conclusion, strange as it may appear that the Greeks postponed the burial of their own dead to the division of the spoil.

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χωρὶς ἕκαστοι: each set, each state, its own apart from those of the others. Pausanias 9. 2. 5 locates the tombs ou the road, after the junction of the routes from Eleutherai and from Megara, and just at the entrance to the city: κατὰ δὲ τὴν ἔσοδον μάλιστα τὴν ἐς Πλάταιαν τάφοι τῶν πρὸς Μήδους μαχεσαμένων εἰσί. Such is the precision of the actual Periegete; but even he has uot quite accurately described the tombs themselves: τοῖς μὲν οὖν λοιποῖς ἐστὶν Ἔλλησι μνῆμα κοινόν. If this is correct, the statement of Hdt. below in regard to the tombs of the Tegeatai, of the Megarians aud Phleiasians, to say uothing of the alleged kenotaphs, must be incorrect. Blakesley suggests that Pausanias mistook the barrow of the Helots for ‘the common sepulture of all the Greeks.’ Or was it the MegaroPhleiasian? Pausanias proceeds: Λακεδαιμονίων δὲ καὶ Ἀθηναίων τοῖς πεσοῦσιν ἰδίᾳ τέ εἰσιν οἱ τάφοι, καὶ ἐλεγεῖά ἐστι Σιμωνίδου γεγραμμένα ἐπ᾽ αὐτοῖς. Pausanias unfortunately does not quote the epigrams; for possible texts cp. Hauvette, sur l'authenticité etc., Nos. 28, 29. Dr. Frazer is doubtless right in decliniug to see in the rock-cut graves, a little SE. of the plateau of the city, auy remains of the θῆκαι, χώματα, or πολυάνδρια which contaiued the bodies of the slain in 479 B.C., Pausanias, v. p. 15.

Λακεδαιμόνιοι μέν. The Lakedaimonians made them three graves, or tombs, τριξὰς θήκας, or as Dr. Frazer l.c., harmonizing Pausanias with Hdt., suggests, a triple grave, a commou receptacle for three groups of dead meu. That is, indeed, very probably what they did; but Hdt. speaks of three τάφοι for the Lakedaimouians, in each of which a separate group is deposited, and, though the τάφοι may uot be χωρίς, they appear to be quite distinct. If Hdt is mistaken ou this point, it is not the only mistake he makes in this passage. τριξός, as in 4. 192.

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τοὺς ἰρένας: a conjecture by Valckenaer for ἱρέας, but a certain one. The Λέξεις contains the word εἰρήν (cp. Stein ed. maj. ii. 465), but this is the only place in the text where it can occur; the burial of ἱρέες by themselves is iuadmissible, and who were the ἱρέες? So great an error iu Greek or Spartan institutions Hdt. could not incur. The ἰρήν (ἴρην, εἴρην, ἴραν, Ϝίραν) was the Spartiate warrior from twenty to thirty years of age, Plutarch, Lyk. 17; cp. G. Gilbert, Gr. Staatsalt. 1.2 70; but it is not credible that Spartan citizens of that age occupied high military or civil posts, uor is it credible that Poseidonios, Amompharetos, Philokyon (cp. c. 71 supra), and Kallikrates (cp. c. 72 supra） were merely ἴρανες, least of all Amompharetos. Neither is it to be admitted (with L. & S. sub v.) that the word in this passage denotes ‘officers of all ranks’; the glosses in Hesychios (ἰρένες: οἱ ἄρχοντες ἡλικιωτῶν aud είρηνἁζει: κρατεῖ) do uot go beyoud Plutarch l.c. οὗτος οὖν ὁ εἴρην εἰκόσι ἔτη γεγονὼς ἄρχει τε τῶν ὑποτεταγμένων ἐν ταῖς μάχαις καὶ κατ᾽ οἶκον ὑπηρέταις χρῆται πρὸς τὸ δεῖπνον. (Plutarch may be following ‘Aristotle’ Λακ. πολιτεία.) Rawlinson's assertion that ‘at the age of twenty the Spartiate acquired the right to speak in the Assembly and to have a commaud’ is a bit of constitutional lore due to combiuing the pseudo-etymology (εἴρην from ἐρέω) in Etym. Mag. with the misunderstaudiug of the gloss of Hesychios above cited. It appears that Hdt., though he employs the technical term ἰρένες, has not understood it when he puts the ἰρένες in one grave, ‘the rest of the Spartiates’ in another, and the Helots in a third. That arrangement, indeed, takes no account of the ‘Lakedaimoniaus,’ or Perioikoi. Probably the three trenches, or mouuds, covered (i.) Spartiates—a majority of whom would be ἰράνες, (ii.) Lakedaimonians, (iii.) Helots. Of the first, ninety-one had fallen, c. 70 supra; the figures for the others are not given. The error shown in the passage makes it unlikely that Hdt. derived this passage from a Spartan sonrce, least of all one iu Sparta itself.

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Τεγεῆται. The Tegeatai buried their sixteen (c. 70 supra) all together, in a separate place, and grave, probably next the Lakedaimonians (cp. c. 28 supra). Pausanias does not notice the Tegean grave.

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Ἀθηναῖοι had fifty-two slain (c. 70 supra). One might have expected them to have buried their dead down on the plain, where, presumably, they had fallen (c. 67 supra), but Pausanias l.c. appears to put the grave in the neighbourhood of the Spartan. (Could he have made a mistake?) Stein sees in Thucydides 2. 34. 5 an intentional contradiction of this passage in Hdt. Kruger proposed to reconcile the two by supposing that the Athenian tomb at Plataia was a kenotaph; Baehr boldly regards Thucydides as in the wrong.

Μεγαρέες τε καὶ Φλειάσιοι This formula denotes the left centre of the Greek army (ep. c. 69 supra), and probably only one grave or Polyandrion is here indicated, in which those of the right centre, who fell in conflict with the Thebans, were interred, to the number of 600; cp. c. 69 supra. That figure is not, indeed, convincing. It should perhaps be taken to represent the total losses of the Greeks other than the figures for the Lakedaimonians, Tegeatai, and Athenians, in fact to cover also the losses of the right centre of the Greek army (which Hdt. appears to think was not engaged at all). If so, then this tumulus is the first of the τάφοι described by Pausanias, the μνῆμα κοινόν for all the Greeks (i.e. the whole centre), distinguished from the separate τάφοι for the Lakedaimonians and for the Athenians.

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τῶν δὲ ἄλλων: sc. Ἑλλήνων.

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φαίνονται ἐν Πλαταιῇσι ἐόντες, ‘are to be seen at Plataia,’ i.e. in the land of Plataia (cp. c. 16 etc.). It does not follow that Hdt. had seen them before writing; indeed, what ensues is based on hearsay, or correspondence (πυνθάνομαι, ἀκούω); and, if Hdt. had been writing from his own personal inspection and remembrance, the imperfect tense would have been more naturally employed (ἐφαίνοντο).

τούτους δέ: a true δέ in apodosi; τούτους is better referred to τάφοι than to τῶν ἄλλων, and taken as in virtual opposition to χώματα, ἑκάστους (the several states) being subject of the verb. There is still a slight confusion in the construction, which is in oratio obliqua, the ὡς in ὡς ἐγὠ πυνθάνομαι notwithstanding.

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ἀπεστοῖ = ἀπουσίᾳ. Hesychios gives the form ἀπεστύς as well as ἀπεστώ, Ionic forms. Cp. εὐεστώ 1. 85. τῆς μἀχης, on the 13th.

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τῶν ἐπιγινομένων εἵνεκεν, ‘for the sake of (deceiving) posterity’!

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καὶ Αἰγινητέων: a particular case but an unfortunate one to have selected, as upon Hdt.'s own showing the Aiginetaus, being included in the left centre, οἱ ἀμφὶ Μεγαρέας τε καὶ Φλειασίους, were at least engaged with the Theban cavalry on the 13th. Cp. cc. 69, 28 supra. If they erected subsequeutly a kenotaph (χῶμα κεινόν or τάφος κεινός), it might be because their actual dead had been interred in the common grave, the ‘Megaro-Phleiasiau’ grave, or κοινὸν μνῆμα, and they wished, as time weut on, to commemorate their own separately. A similar consideration would accouut for any other kenotaphs on the field.

ἐγὼ ἀκούω: uot very couvincing evidence, nor very critically received by Hdt. The use of the present is perhaps rhetorical, or is he writing in Atheus, where he would be hearing such things said? Cp. Introduction, § 10.

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καὶ δέκα ἔτεσι ὕστερον μετὰ ταῦτα, ‘as much as ten years subsequently after the war’ (καί etiam); i.e. in 469 B.C. For μετὰ ταῦτα cp. c. 83 supra. (Plutarch de malig. Hdti 42 = Mor. 873 paraphrases ἔτεσι δέκα ὕστερον τῶν Μηδικῶν.) As the dative of time marks a point, the date here given must be meant to be exact.

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Κλεάδην τὸν Αὐτοδίκου: only mentioned again in Plutarch l.c. quoting this passage. The name Kleades is known at Sparta and Argos; the name Autodikos only elsewhere at Atheus (cp. Pape-Benseler sub vv.). As πρόξεινος of the Aiginetans this Plataian might not be a very popular person in Athens, whence Hdt. directly or indirectly ‘heard’ this scaudal. Plutarch l.c. makes oue of his bitter points against Hdt. à propos of these kenotaphs; yet, like most of his arguments, it is wide of the mark. The ‘trophies and colossi’ on which the names were inscribed were commemorative of the war rather than of the particular battle of Plataia (on the 13th); moreover, as above shown, there might be kenotaphs on the field of battle iu honour of warriors buried elsewhere. On the προξενία cp. 8. 136, 143.