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

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ἕτερος λεγόμενος λόγος: this story may have been taken by Hdt. from a literary authority (cp. 4. 11, 12), making two traitors, a man of Karystos and a man of Antikyra. How should the man of Karystos have known the path? (see below); or with whom was this story in favour? (Athenians, possibly?) A third story is told by Ktesias, Persika 24, which Stein well signalizes as more attractive. Thorax the Thessalian, and the two most important men in Trachis, Kalliades and Timaphernes, together with Demaratos and Hegias of Ephesos, advise the king to attempt a flank movement, and the two Trachinians act as guides. This version is perhaps Asianic.

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Ὀνήτης ὁ Φαναγόρεω: the only other man of this name known to fame is the celebrated sculptor, Onatas, son of Mikon, of Aigina, a contemporary of the Karystian. Nor is the father's name found elsewhere (except as that of the supposed founder of Phanagoreia, Steph. B. ὡς Ἑκαταῖος Ἀσίᾳ). For Karystos cp. 8. 121.

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Κορυδαλλός, here, and here only, a man's name, is better known as the name of an Attic deme (one of the ‘periastic’ demes of the tribe Hippothoontis; cp. Milchhoeffer, Demenordnung, 31; Pauly-Wissowa, ii. 2230). κορυδός, κορυδαλλός is a lark: cp. L. & S. sub v. For Antikyra, c. 198 supra.

εἰσί may be simply graphic, or historic present, and cannot be taken to mean that the men in question are still alive at the date of composition. Cp. ἐστί infra of Epialtes, who is admittedly dead.

τούτους τοὺς λόγους: rather curious, for what λόγοι have been specified? The phrase may be taken as resuming ἦλθέ οἱ ἐς λόγους, c. 213, but is a trifle slipshod.

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περιηγησάμενοι: the construction, τινί τι, is observable; cp. κατηγήσαντο, c. 215.

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οὐδαμῶς ἔμοιγε πιστός. Hdt. gives two reasons (τοῦτο μὲν ... τοῦτο δέ) for his incredulity: (i.) the authority of the Pylagoroi, who put the price on the head of Epialtes; (ii.) the fact that <*>ltes was banished (or went into ex<*>e), “and on this account.” Hdt.'s reasons are not conclusive. It is not the action of the Pylagoroi (who mostly came from medized states) so much as the inveterate hostility of Sparta that argues Epialtes the wretch who betrayed Leonidas and his men; yet that might have been a colourable excuse for a hostility based on other causes. Hdt.'s second argument is still poorer, for (1) he has represented Epialtes' exile as having preceded, at least, his condemnation by the Pylagoroi (notwithstanding Stein's emendation; cp. App. Crit.); (2) he shows that Epialtes had a desperate feud with another powerful man in Trachis. That a man of Karystos (a fortiori a man of Antikyra) might know the path Hdt. admits below.

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οἴδαμεν. Hdt. also uses the form ἴδμεν (most frequently in the colloquial expression τῶν ἡμεῖς ἴδμεν), but prefers the fuller form in giving a deliberate opinion of his own knowledge, as in 2. 17, 4. 46, and here. How he ‘knew’ the particular facts here alleged he does not say; cp. Introduction, § 11.

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ἐὼν μὴ Μηλιεύς: a curious phrase in two or three respects: as he was a Karystian we might expect οὐ; the negative should be rather with the participle than with the adjective, and the literal coincidence in μὴ Μηλιεύς is especially unfortunate. Certainly a man need not have been a Malian to know the path; yet it remains a problem how the Karystian came by his knowledge.

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τοῦτον αἴτιον γράφω: not ‘indict’ (γράφομαι), but simply ‘record’ in writing, write down; that is, as he has just done. αἴτιον surely means ‘guilty’ (not simply ‘reum,’ Baehr). Hdt. seems to realize that by writing the man down guilty he is handing him over to oternal obloquy. The fuss made over the matter is what astonishes us. Numbers of men must have known of this path, and in any case there was a longer route (ἠ διὰ Τρηχῖνος ἔσοδος ἐς τὴν Ἑλλάδα, c. 176) by which Thermopylai could be turned as soon as Xerxes made up his mind to abandon the merely frontal attack.