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

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Μηλίδα: this designation is here used for the first time by Hdt., though the folk-name, Μηλιέες, has oecurred cc. 132, 196 supra, in the list of medizing peoples, a later insertion, as shown in the notes there. Μηλίς is a wider word than Τρηχινίη, cp. e. 201 infra. Thuc. 3. 92. 2 distinguishes three sets of Malians （Μηλιῆς οἱ ξύμπαντες), Παράλιοι, Ἰριῆς, Τραχίνιοι. The first name is purely topographical, and speaks for itself: as Antikyra, just below here, is the first city on the gulf, as you come from Achaia, it may be regarded as the ehief seat of the Paralioi; and their strip of land would extend round the gulf and include Anthela (Bursian, Geogr. v. Griechenl. i. 96), and, indeed, Thermopylai itself. The third name is obviously taken from the city Trachis, of which more below, its territory being situate away from the sea, under the horseshoe mountains or cliffs. The third name and division is not indicated in Hdt., and Ἰριῆς is, indeed, an emendation (by Bursian, op. c. p. 95) for the Ἱερῆς of the MSS. based upon Steph. B. sub v. Ἰρά, a city, the site of which is lost. (The Ἱερῆς were naturally eonnected with the sacred places at Anthela and Thermopylai, and their loss is not all pure gain.) river in the land of Achilles, Il. 23. 144, cp. 16. 174. Pherekydes (Frag. 23) connected it with the Dryopes; Aischylos (l.c. supra) with the plain round the Malian gulf. Strabo 433 makes it rise on Mount Typhrestos (modern Veluchi, upwards of 7000 ft. high, Bursian, op. c. i. 87), and flow through a broad and potentially fertile valley some twentyfive to thirty miles long, and from three to five miles wide, until it emerges into the more open Malian plain The lower course of the Spereheios (Elladha) has ehanged in modern times, and the mouth is some seven to eight miles further east than in Hdt.'s day, one result being that the minor streams mentioned by Hdt. about Thermopylai have all beeome its tributaries (instead of flowing into the sea, or the Asopos).

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Ἐνιήνων: cp. cc. 132, 185 supra. Their geographieal position in the valley of the Spercheios is sufficiently clearly marked; their earlier home in ‘Thessaly’ by the Homerie testimony; and likewise also their Hellenie eharaeter. How little there is to add to Bursian, op. cit. and ap Pauly, i. (1864) 390, on the subjeet may be seen by comparing Pauly-Wissowa i. (1893) 1023. The ‘Ainianes’ flit across the pages of Greek historiography from Homer to Strabo, who, perhaps wrongly (Hirsehfeld ap. P.-W. l.c.), says they had been completely destroyed between the Aitolians and the Athamanes (427 ἐξέφθειραν Αἰτωλοί τε καὶ Ἀθαμᾶνες). They play little part in the Persian war, except that, in eommon with nearly all the Amphiktyonic folks, they are reckoned among the traitors: c. 132 supra.

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Δύρας, the modern Gurgopotamo, the more easily identified from its connexion with the Herakleid legend as the stream rising from the highest block of Oita, which was the seene of Herakles' end. Bursian, i. 88, 91. The stream now flows into the Spereheios (Elladha). (Is the aneient name=Τύρας, 4. 11 etc.?)

τῷ Ἡρακλέι καιομένῳ: the scene of the Herakleian auto-da-fè was the top of Oita, named Πυρά or Φρυγία (Bursian, i. 88), a detail not given by Sophokles in the Trachiniai.

Bursian places the height at the juncture of Ainianis, Malis, and Doris, raising it 6673 ft. in air. On the association of Herakles with the district and its waters ep. notes c. 176 supra.

λόγος ἐστί: an expression, probably, of some degree of incredulity. The story was no doubt already a literary one. Strabo 428 (ὁ Δύρας—ὅν φασιν ἐπιχειρῆσαι τὴν Ἡρακλέους σβέσαι πυράν） may be merely quoting this passage.

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Μέλας, the modern Mavro-nero, (‘Blackwater’), now a tributary of the Gurgopotamo: Bursian, i. 91, who rightly points out that this passage in Hdt. implies a very different state of things, the three streams being eonceived here as flowing parallel to one another into the gulf at intervals of twenty stades.