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ἄνεσις, ‘afterwards there was a respite from evil for no long time.’ H. apparently was ignorant of the length of this brief interval of peace. His vagueness on the point makes the chronology of the reign of Darius in general, and of the Scythian expedition in particular, uncertain.

τὸ δεύτερον. The first occasion would seem to be rather the conquest under Cyrus (i. 161 f.; cf. vi. 32) than the recent operations, which did not affect Ionia.

κατὰ τὸν αὐτὸν χρόνον. Herodotus clearly makes the acme of Milesian prosperity fall in the days of Histiaeus, and synchronize with the prosperity of Naxos (circ. 510 B. C.). The Eusebian list, as given by Jerome, dates her thalassocracy 748-730 B. C. in the supposed era of colonization (cf. Busolt, i. 465 f.), but Myres would transfer it to 604-586 B. C. (J. H. S. xxvi. 110-15), the days of the great tyrant Thrasybulus, Periander's friend and ally (i. 20, v. 92), whose sea-power and greatness H. recognizes. Thrasybulus may have owed his power in part to an uprising of the poor subject Carians, known as Gergithes (Athenaeus, p. 524 a, b), against the dominant Hellenic immigrants. The ‘two generations’ of faction represent the interval between the two tyrannies, when Miletus and the other Ionic cities made little resistance to Croesus. Yet Miletus would seem to have been fairly prosperous in the days of Cyrus (i. 141).

κατήρτισαν: to set right that which is out of order, Lat. reconcinnare; cf. 106. 5. The essence of the alleged re-settlement is the re-arrangement of office, just as in that of Demonax at Cyrene (iv. 161) it is the re-arrangement of the tribal divisions. There, too, the arbitration is between parties; for arbitration between cities cf. v. 95; vi. 108; vii. 145, 154. Some see in this re-settlement the establishment of a moderate oligarchy of yeomen farmers; but is not the story a political parable inserted here for some unknown reason?

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