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

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ἐς Ἄλον δὲ τῆς Ἀχαιίης: cp. c. 173 supra. The position of Alos, or Halos, in ‘Achaia’ is clearly marked by Strabo 433, on a hill to the south, above τὸ Κρόκιον πεδίον, close to the river Amphrysos, 60 stades from Itonos. Its exact site is identified; cp. Bursian, Geogr. d. Griechenl. i. 78; Lolling ap- I. Muller, Handbuch, <*>. 147. The name is probably to be conneeted with a saltspring (still in existence) and not with the eponym, Alos, the faithful handmaid of Athamas, nor with the wanderings (ἄλη) of that hero himself (Steph. B. sub v.).

If Xerxes really passed through Halos, he probably took the coast route from Larissa via Pherai, Thebai, Halos, Ptelion, Alope, Lamia, to Trachis. In that case, if he had all his army with him, they could not have drunk the waters of Onochonos and Apidanos. In fact, Persian eolumns will probably have marched by each route, but it would seem more natural for Xerxes to have taken the main route, via Pharsalos and Thaumakoi. It may be that Hdt. takes Xerxes to halos in order to get an oecasion of repeating the Athamantid legend.

οἱ κατηγεμόνες τῆς ὁδοῦ: cp. e. 128 supra. Here they would be Thessalians (Aehaians); they wish apparently to be leaders all round, to lead the way in everything (τὸ πᾶν, cp. e. 50 supra, ἐπὶ τῷ αἰεὶ ἐπεσφερομένῳ πρήγματι τὸ πᾶν ὀμοίως ἐπιλέγεσθαι); or perhaps to act in a double capacity, not merely as local guides, but as r<*>: <*>ous authorities. ἐξηγέεσθαι is one of <*>'s little ironies (cp. his jest at Aristagoras's expense, 5. 49 ad f. Cp. also 4. 36).

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ἐπιχώριον λόγον: there is nothing in this formula to prove that Hdt. himself visited the spot, or heard the Athamantid legend in loco. Two or three reasons would convince him that it was an ἐπιχώριος λόγος: (a) the nature of the case; (b) the fact that Xerxes (as he believed) heard it at Halos. Also possibly Hdt. was aware that (c) another version of the story was current at Orchomenos, or in Boiotia, where there was an ‘Athamantian’ plain, a shrine of Zeus Laphystios, and various Athamanian or Athamantian settlements (cp. Pausan. 9. 34. 5). Perhaps the Boiotian version had <*>ved most literary attention before <*>, but it is not likely that the Thessalian, or rather AchaioAthamanian, was unreported until Hdt. set it down here: the two, indeed, were ultimately no doubt identical.

Aischylos, Sophokles, and Euripides each wrote tragedies upon this theme, and the first two probably before Hdt.'s composition (cp. Nanck, Trag. Gr. Fragg. Ἀθάμας, Φρίξος, and the reference to Sophokles ap. Aristoph. Clouds, 257). But the dramatists, of course, were not the first to introduce the myth into literature. The Boiotians, Hesiod and Pindar among the poets, and Pherekydes among the ‘logographers,’ had dealt with the myths of Phrixos, Nephele, Ino, Athamas. (Cp. Pherekydes, Fragg. 52-55, F.H.G. i. 86.) Hdt. does not here agree with Pherekydes.

The myth, in its various forms, has, of course, to be detached from the cult of Zeus Laphystios, with which it has been amalgamated, and from which it may, in part, have been ultimately derived. The permanent value of this passage in Hdt. lies in its witness to the cult.

τὰ περὶ τὸ ἱρὸν τοῦ Λαφυστίου Διός. These words supply a floating title, which some would be sorry to athetize as a gloss. The best known Laphystion was in Boiotia (a mountain and a sacrarium), but there was also, no doubt, one at Halos. Λαφύστιος means ‘devourer,’ ‘glutton,’ or ‘spoiler’ (λαφύσσειν, λαφυγμός; also λάφυρα, ‘plunder,’ spoils taken in war: so perhaps a war-god?). Etym. Mag. gives the word as a name of Dionysos. On Chios and Tenedos a man was torn in pieces as a sacrifice to Dionysos ὠμηστής (ὠμἀδιος) in ancient times, Porphyr. de abstin. 2. 55. Themistokles is reported to have immolated three human victims to Dionysos before Salamis, Plutarch, Them. 13. Λαφρία, a title of Artemis (Pausan. 4. 31. 7) and even of Athene (Lycophron 356), as of Hermes (ib. 835 Λάφριος), may be akin to Λαφύστιος. The cult and ritual of Zeus Λυκαῖος in Arkadia comes nearest to that of Zeus Λαφύστιος, and is coupled with it ap. Platon. Minos 5. L. R. Farnell, Cults of the Greek States, i. 93, agrees with J. G. Frazer and Robertson Smith in thinking that “the human offering” was “probably not the primitive fact” in “the Hellenic cults of Zeus.” This view looks like a survival of the idealistic tendency, but might be saved, even for strict historical e<*>iticism, by discovering that the Ἀθαμᾶνες were not ‘Hellenes,’ and that the cult was ‘prae-Hellenic.’ Stein observes that Zeus Λαφύστιος had, “like the Jehovah of the Old Testament and the Moloch and Melkart of the Phoenicians, a right to all the first-fruits, first-born”—mankind not excepted. Zeus Lykaios was probably the wolt-god; but what is there to show that Zeus Laphystios was the ram-god? (except perhaps the cult? cp. 1. 14 infra), or that in eaeh case the human victim is not as primitive as the theanthropic animal?

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Ἀθάμας ὁ Αἰόλου: this genealogy is Hesiodic (Fr. 25) but not Homerie. The older tradition, or theory, made Athamas a son of Minyas (cp. Thraemer, Pergamos, 139, 141), i.e. not even an ‘Aiolian.’ Hdt. of course aecepts the Hesiodic genealogy, by which Aiolos is one of the sons of Hellen. (He need not have gone direct to Hesiod therefor; but he was not unacquainted with the Boiotian; cp. 2. 53, 4. 32.) Escher is no doubt right in regarding Athamas as the eponym of the Ἀθαμᾶνες, with FickBechtel, Gr. Personennamen2, 419 (cp. Pauly-Wissowa, ii. 1933). The Athamanes in historic times were a elearly recognizable folk in S. Epeiros, on the western side of Pindos, between the Molossi and Thessaly, on the upper waters of the Aeheloos or Inachos, who, like many of their neighbours, enjoyed more importance, at least for a time, during Roman than during Hellenic history; cp. Bursian, Geogr. v. Griechenl. i. pp. 39 f., Oberhummer, Akarnanien, and ap. PaulyWissowa ii. 1928.

ἐμηχανήσατο Φρίξῳ μόρον σὺν Ἰνοῖ β.: according to this acconnt Athamas himself was the criminal, who plotted with Ino (daughter of Kadmos), his second wife, against Phrixos (and Helle, cp. c. 58 supra), his son (and daughter, by his former wife Nephele). According to Pherekydes, Phrixos offered himself voluntarily as a sacrifice to avert the famine which was afflieting the land. Hdt. seems to say that Phrixos was actually slain. Is ‘Phrixos,’ by the way, the heat (φρυγ-), or the eold (φριγ-), or the ‘corn-spirit’ (frux, fructus), or ‘the fugitive’ (φευγ-)? Or perhaps all four!

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μετέπειτα: the date is purely vague; but a considerable time may, and indeed must be thought to have elapsed; see further below.

ἐκ θεοπροπίου: presumably Delphic, especially as it is obtained by the ‘Achaians.’ This is apparently the second of the two oracles mentioned.

Ἀχαιοί: the significance of this name here has not been appreciated. The ‘Aehaians’ in Thessaly are (in Hdt.'s view) invaders, conquerors, newcomers (cp. c. 196 supra). This ‘Achaian’ proposition, or ordmance, therefore, represents a new departure, and a duty or obligation (ἄεθλος) imposed upon the ‘Aiolian’ stoek (τοῦ γένεος τούτου) for the sins of its ancestor.

That Hdt. (in his source) has fully and correetly understood the nature of the ‘Achaian’ ordinance for the ‘Aiolian’ clan cannot be admitted. Aeeording to this aecount the Aehaians actually desire the human sacrifice of Athamas himself (cp. infra), and, at some subsequent time, ordain a liability of the first-born in the Aiolian, or Athaman, house to be sacrificed. The truth has been inverted. The new departure, made by the Achaians, is plainly a limitation of human sacrifice, not its institution; they make a way to escape; if only a certain ‘taboo’ is observed the victim is safe Perhaps they go even further, and substitute a ‘pomp,’ a ‘ceremony,’ and a vicarious sacrifice (of an animal) for the human victim; but this is not quite clearly indieated.

This eorrection of the Herodotean account is justified (a) by the general analysis of religious history, (b) by the myth of Phrixos and Helle itself, which (i.) presupposes the earlier existence of such human sacrifices; (ii.) eontains the datum of the substituted animal (the ram). The antitheses, however, between Aiolian and Achaian we cannot accept (any more than the antithesis between Achaian and Hellenic); and though undoubtedly Thessaly (and Boiotia) witnessed the immigration of foreigners, and various ehanges or mixtures of population, the incomers will hardly have been more civilized and humane than the pre-existing population. In any case we are not (at present) justified in regarding the ameliorations introdueed into the cult of Zeus Laphystios as proof of race-differences, or as more than illustrations of the general improvement of ideas and institutions during the ‘Helleme’ period.

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ἔργεσθαι τοῦ ληίτου: there seems to be something ‘political’ in this taboo or excommunication of the first-born from the Prytaneion (λήιτον, cf. ληός, ληιτουργία, etc.; the Achaians would probahly have called it λάι<*>τον). Is it possible that the modification of custom, by which the first-born was allowed to live, on condition of keeping out of the Prytaneion, was conneeted with a political revolution, or change, the abolition, perhaps, of monarchy, or the limitation of the rights and privileges of some house, or houses, in the community, which had indeed furnished the victims, but also enjoyed other and material advantages?

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ἢν δὲ ἐσέλθῃ ... σὺν πομπῇ ἐξαχθείς: this whole passage is obseure, and apparently unsound. (a) The maintenance of the oratio obliqua, or rather its resumption, confuses the expression: ὡς (bis or ter), ἐξηγέοντο, resuming apparently τὸ πᾶν ἐξηγέεσθαι supra, in the sense ‘they related,’ and thrown in parenthetieally; (b) the ambiguity of the phrases. πρὶν ἢ θύσεσθαι μέλλῃ and πολλοὶ τούτων τῶν μελλόντων θύσεσθαι: (c) the apparent inconsequence that the victim is merely bound τοῦ ληίτου ἔργεσθαι, and yet that many have fled the country, and on their return have been caught and taken to the Prytaneion (and apparently thereafter sacrificed). There are other obscurities, but nothing more perplexing than (d) the absence of any reason or motive why the victim should not keep clear of the Prytaneion, or why, if he has fled the country, he should return and be caught. Had Hdt. himself visited Halos, and studied the cult an Ort und Stelle, one might expect a less perplexing muddle.

Stein has found a way out of the wood. He supposes that the first-born was bound (if he wished to be recognized as a fellowcitizen) to try to get in without being caught (on his coming of age?) This was the ἆθλος. If he succeeded, well and good; his franehise was secure. But if he failed, and fell into the hands of the guards, then he was kept till the next festival of the god, solemnly led out to the altar, there and then a ram was substituted, and the man allowed to es<*>.

<*> undoubtedly says that in certain cases the man is saerificed, and says nothing about the substituted ram. Human sacrifice is well attested for various parts of Greece in the historic period: Ps.-Plato, Minos 315 c, speaks of the Athaman sacrifice as real and subsisting. Cp. also Aristoph. Clouds 257.

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τῶν μελλόντων θύσεσθαι: after what has just gone before, this phrase seems to imply that the men have entered the λήιτον notwithstanding the taboo. But if so, as there is no getting out πρὶν ἢ θύσεσθαι μέλλῃ, how do οἱ μέλλοντες θύσεσθαι (passive, of eourse) manage after their fright (δείσαντες) to get them away into another eountry? Does terror give them wings, and do they break out of the λἡιτον? Or do they give their guards the slip as they are led to the altar? And is this escape, perhaps, connived at? is it only if caught a second time that the Athaman is saerificed in grim reality?

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στέμμασι πᾶς πυκασθείς, ‘thickly enveloped in wool-fillets’—perhaps to represent the ram; though Hdt. does not seem to make the point.

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Κυτισσώρου τοῦ Φρίξου: as Phrixos has a son, the plot of Ino and Athamas had failed. Hdt. has left out the miraculous preservation of Phrixos (and Helle). However, lower down is implied the story of Phrixos' <*>t to Aia, as he returns thence to Haios in time to reseue his grandfather. Phrixos had escaped on the ram to Kolchis; his sister Helle dropped off into the Hellespont. (We must come down to Apollod. Biblioth. 1. 9 for all this, who tells it as a Boiotian tale.) There he offered the ram to Ζεὺς Φύξιος, gave the golden fleece (cp. τὸ κῶας c. 193 supra) to Aietes, and married the king's daughter (not Medeia, but) Chalkiope (χρύσεα χαλκείων!) and had by her (four sons, Argos, Melas, Phroutis, and the youngest) ‘Kytisoros.’ Κύτα, Κύταια, ep. Steph. B. sub v. πόλις Κολχικὴ πατρἱς Μηδείας. Identified with Khutaissi, capital of the provinee of Imireti, in Pauly, Encykl. ii. (1842) p. 806, i.e. in Latin, Cutatisium. Here Hdt. sets in again.

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καθαρμόν, a ‘purification’ or purificatory sacrifice. The scholiast on Aristophanes, Knts. 1133 ἔτρεφον γάρ τινας Ἁθηναῖοι λίαν ἀγεννεῖς καἱ ἀχρήστους καἱ ἐν καιρῷ συμφορᾶς τινος ἐπελθούσης τῇ πόλει, λοιμοῦ λέγω ἢ τοιούτου τινός, ἔθυον τούτους ἕνεκα τοῦ καθαρθῆναι τοῦ μιάσματος. ου<*>ς καὶ ἐπωνόμαζον καθάρματα. If at Athens, why not at Halos, where, however, they offered of their best? This, by the way, is an ‘Achaian’ rite.

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ἐκ θεοπροπίου: Delphi, presumably, again. This is hardly the same response as the one above, but apparently prior to that; and so in the narrative a πρότερον ὕστερον.

Ἀθάμαντα τὸν Αἰόλου: the repetition of the patronymic is here natural, for we are here in the third generation, and without the patronymic might easily suppose a second Athamas. Athamas, the father of Phrixos, is now himself the victim. How this has come about Hdt. does not explain. Either there was a variant, aeeording to which Athamas himself was the original victim; or there has been a renewed curse on the country, for which Athamas himself is to suffer; or this is really another Athamas, the head of the clan for the time being, and the patronymic is misleading.

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ἐρρύσατο (in the Athamas of Sophokles Herakles rescued Athamas: Schol. Aristoph. Clds. 257). How this deliverance was effeeted, by force or fraud, no one seems to know; anyway, it provoked a μῆνις, and it is hereon, or hereafter, that ἐκ θεοπροπίου Ἀχαιοἱ προτιθεῖσι τοῖσι ἐκείνου ἀπογόνοισι ἀέθλους τοιούσδε, vide 1. 5 supra. Hdt.'s method of narrating the myth is not clear, but it is not quite so desperately confused as his deseription of the cult. For the myth he no doubt had literary authority; for the eult he may have had merely second-hand oral report.

τοῖσι ἐπιγενομένοισι ἐξ ἑωυτοῦ: as Kytissoros is son of Phrixos, son of Athamas, son of Aiolos, the epigonoi here are identical with the apogonoi of Athamas above.

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μῆνιν τοῦ θεοῦ: sc. τοῦ Λαφυστίου Διός, which Kytissoros drew down upon the family by his rescue of Athamas, the original sinner. The Wrath (cp. c. 134 supra) must have shown itself in a fresh visitation of the land, as the Achaians consult the oracle; and it is after this Wrath that the rite, as described above, is instituted, or is modified; so that perhaps, after all, what Kytissoros did was to arrange the terms of a compromise (Athamas was rescued, and for the future a way of eseape was left to the first-born). Was Kytissoros, then, the Achaian who effected a reform in the Athaman institution?

Ξέρξης δέ: in consequenee of what he heard Xerxes avoided the Grove (τὸ ἄλσος), and showed a like respect for the palace (τὴν οἰκίην) of the Athamans as for the Close (τὸ τέμενος) of the god. Rawlinson (against Larcher) denies that there was any temple of Laphystian Zeus at Alos, and refers this passage to the temple in Boiotia, between Koroneia and Orchomenos (Pausan. 9. 34. 4). Xerxes heard the tale at Alos, and afterwards, “on his passage through Boiotia,” spared the shrine and grove in consequence.

Rawlinson probably is right in the main, and that the words ὡς κατὰ τὸ ἄλσος ἐγίνετο ought to be referred to the Boiotian Laphystion. But it ean hardly be maintained that such is Hdt.'s meaning. He says not a word of a Laphystion in Boiotia, and as far as his text is concerned there is nothing to suggest that τὸ ι<*>ρόν, τὸ ἄλσος, τὸ τέμενος, and ἡ οἰκίη are not all in the same place, and that place Halos. But in all probability Xerxes never was at ‘Alos’ (cp. note 1. 1 supra); the words above, τὰ περὶ τὸ ἱρὸν τοῦ Λαφυστίου Διός, are perhaps a gloss: Hdt. has heard of Xerxes ‘sparing’ and ‘respecting’ the shrine of (Laphystian) Zeus in Boiotia (cp. 8. 34, 50); he himself associates the Athaman legend with Halos, and has taken Xerxes thither in order to relate it, and still more, to deseribe the strange cult. But here he does not speak of a ἱρόν but only of an α<*>λσος and τέμενος: that much there probably was at Halos, even though Hdt. is the only authority therefor.