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

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οἱ δὲ Θηβαῖοι: Hdt. expresses no doubt, and reports no variant, of this story—which is nevertheless, as Plutarch (Mor. 866 D, E, 867 A=de Malig. 33) points out, manifestly absurd and incredible. Plutarch's arguments are not all equally convincing, but those which arise from the admissions of Hdt. and the nature of the case are sufficiently strong, apart from the conflict of evidence as to matters of fact. They may be enumerated briefly: (i.) Leonidas would not have kept with him men suspected of medism or treachery at the supreme hour; (ii.) he would have given them ‘as hostages’ to the departing Greeks; (iii.) he could not, with 300 men, have detained them, 400 strong, against their will; (iv.) their detention would have been inconsistent with his object, as reported by Hdt. (c. 220), to secure the glory for the Spartans alone; (v.) the battle-field was no place for such an appeal as that made by the Thebans (weak!); (vi.) the Thebans would not have asked support from the Thessalians. with whom they were at enmity, had just been at war (a question of evidence! the ‘silence’ of Hdt. does not disprove Plutarch's statement); (vii.) the stigmata would have been an honour to the Thebans: the bodies of Leontiades and of Leonidas were alike despitefully used by Xerxes; (viii.) as a matter of fact, Leontiades was not the commander of the Thebans on this occasion. See below.

τέως: demonstrative, ‘for a time.’

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ὑπ᾽ ἀναγκαίης ἐχόμενοι: this assertion is manifestly absurd.

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πρός, ‘against’; cp. c. 145.

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Ἑλλήνων: the word chosen, presumably, to include the Thespians. It suggests, at any rate, more than the 300 Spartiatai.

ἐπειγομένων ἐπὶ τὸν κολωνόν: the exact moment at which the Thebans separate themselves from ‘the Hellenes’ is marked. Leonidas is already dead (notwithstanding τῶν σὺν Αεωνίδῃ, but they had his body, which is hardly what Hdt. means), and word has been brought to the officer who succeeded him in command that τοὺς σὺν Ἐπιάλτῃ ἥκειν (the message cannot have been exactly in that form!), c. 225. The ‘schism’ among the Greeks is a part, or might be, of the ἐτεροίωσις τοῦ νείκεος there reported; but was it any part of the regulai story of Thermopylai, any part of the Spartan tradition? οἱ ἄλλοι πλὴν Θηβαίων looks there as if it had come in to pave the way for this appendix.

ἀποσχισθέντες τούτων: strictly speaking, it would seem, on Hdt's. own showing, that it is the retirement of ‘those with Leonidas’ which causes the material ‘schism’; then the Thebans move forward in suppliant guise. ἆσσον is a noticeable word; itself a comparative (ἄγχι), and used as such in the Iliad, it receives in the Odyssey a new comparative ἀσσοτέρω, 17. 572, 19. 506.

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λέγοντες τὸν ἀληθέστατον τῶν λόγων: cp. c. 104 supra, ‘the truest of true speeches’ or ‘statements’—a very suspicious formula in this connexion.

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ἐν πρώτοισι ἔδοσαν, ‘had been among the first to give’; cp. c. 132 supra. The Thebans as a matter of fact probably surrendered after Thermopylai.

ὑπὸ δὲ ἀναγκαίης ἐχόμενοι: cp. just above, where Herodotus has borrowed the phrase, as it is so true! What was sauce for the goose was to be sauce for the gander: necessity is a sound plea or king or for council (cp. μὴ ἀναγκασθέντες c. 132 supra).

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τοῦ τρώματος: a definite, a serious, but not necessarily a fatal blow, 6. 132 (Marathon); cp. 8. 66. If there had been fighting on both the first and second days the plural might perhaps have been used.

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ὥστε, ‘and so . .’; cp. c. 187.

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Θεσσάλους: Plutarch, l.c., asserts that not long before (ἔναγχος) the Thessalians had been lords of Greece down to Thespiai, and that the Thebans had expelled them after a battle in which the Thessalian (tagos), by name Λατταμύας, had been killed; but that sounds very ancient history<*>

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ὠς γὰρ ... προσιόντας: Plutarch naturally makes the most of this detail: speechifying, slaying, advancing against the Spartans, Thessalians bearing witness (possibly ‘interpreting’?), and all the hurry and scnrry of the battle-field at once: a cumulation of improbability.

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ἔστιζον στίγματα βασιλήια: as slaves, cp. στιγματίας, and δραπέτης ἐστιγμένος, Aristoph. Bds. 760. Blakesley here talks of ‘tattooing,’ Rawlinson of ‘branding,’ both referring to 2. 13 (cp. Galatians 6. 17) which, of course, does not approve either method. In 5. 6 and 35 no doubt the στίγματα are produccd by the process of tattooing; but in the case of slaves, and such like, and for punishment, ‘branding’ is the probable process; cp. c. 18 supra (where the branding is to end in blindness). The Samian ‘stigma’ on the Athenian prisoners (Plutarch, Perikl. 26), and the Syracusan (Nikias 29), are stricter parallels. What was the Persian king's ‘stigma’? Not the ‘broad arrow’? Plutarch says that Hdt. was the first historian to record the branding of the Thebans: a remarkable observation, not as discrediting Hdt., but as suggesting a more or less copious literature on the Persian war of older date than the work of Hdt. Cp. Introduction, § 10.

ἀρξάμενοι ἀπό, ‘beginning from,’ or, as we should say, ‘with’; cp. 3. 12 ἀπὸ παιδίων ἀρξ.

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τοῦ ... τὸ Πλαταιέων. This sentence at least cannot date before the year 431 B.C., and, if from Hdt.'s own hand, may have been inserted by him among the batch of final revisions of the work. This observation does not, however, of necessity extend to the whole anecdote, the whole chapter. Even if the source of the scandal against the The bans is an Athenian or atticizing (e.g. Plataian) one, there was plenty of bad blood all along, and there were even special occasions, during the Pentekontaeteris, to account for the story of the Theban conduct at Thermopylai, without supposing that the whole story dates after the surprise of Plataiai in 431 B.C. by Eurymachos, son of Leontiades. Plutarch indeed (l.c.) asserts that the commander of the Thebans at Thermopylai was not Leontiades at all, but Anaxandros; and as he quotes the authority of Aristophanes (of Boiotia) and Nikandros of Kolophon for the fact, it cannot be easily discredited; but the insertions in Hdt. might easily extend to the name of Leontiades in this chapter, and in c. 205 supra. It is more certain that Eurymachos, son of Leontiades, commanded the Thebans at Plataiai in 431 B.C. (Thucyd. 2. 2. 3), than that Leontiades, son of Eurymachos, commanded the Thebans at Thermopylai in 480 B.C.

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στρατηγήσαντα. The tense (equivalent to a pluperfect) because his death has been before mentioned. Thucyd. 2. 2. 3 and 2. 5. 7 does not call him στρατηγός (e.g. Εὐρύμαχος εἶς αὐτῶν ἦν, πρὸς ὃν ἔπραξαν οἱ προδιδόντες).

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τετρακοσίων: a coincidence, and a suspicious one, for Thucyd. 2. 2. 1 gives Θηβαίων ἄνδρες ὀλίγῳ πλείους τριακοσίων (of whom 180 fell into the hauds of the Plataians and were put to death, 2. 5. 7).

σχόντα τὸ ἄστυ: cp. c. 164 supra (ἔσχε). It is very doubtful whether Plataiai in 431 B.C. had anything which could be called an Akropolis; the Thebans piled their arms in the Agora (Thuc. 2. 2. 4), and there is nothing said of a citadel, either there or in the story of the siege 429-427 B.C.