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

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ἐκ Κριτάλλων ... τῶν ἐκ Καππαδοκίῃ. The identification of Kritalla is still a problem in Anatolian geography. It is generally assumed (e.g. by Baehr, Rawlinson, Stein) that (1) Xerxes advanced by the Royal Road (5. 52 f., cp. Hdt. IV.-VI. Appendix XIII.) and (2) that the Royal Road did not pass through the Kilikian Gates. On these principles Rennel's proposed identification of Kritalla with Archelais (Erekli） falls to the ground; but cp. Appendix II. § 3. Blakesley suggested that the name contains the cert- or crit- (seen in Tigrano certa) =castra and Halys (-alla), note to 5. 52, but supposed that the Halys in question is not the well-known Halys, but another river of the same name. Kritalla must represent some important station and junction (‘Knotenpunkt’） between the Euphrates and the Halys, but it is possible that Hdt. is mistaken in thinking that the king actually crossed the Halys on his march westwards. Cp. Appendix II. § 3.

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πάντα τὸν κ. ἤ. μ. ἅμα αὐτῷ Ξ. π. στ. Hdt. has said just before that ὁ πεζὸς ἄπας (including presumably ἡ ἵππος) was under march with the king. It is only much later (c. 121 infra) that Hdt. distinguishes a column of the army especially attached to the king. The words, however, above cited involve an important (though perhaps not fully designed) limitation, and confine the muster at Kritalla (as indeed common sense requires) to the eastern contingents from beyond Euphrates, or to a part of them. Cp. Appendix II. § 5. The Anatolian levies presumably mustered at Sardes, or at Abydos, and only in the next spring.

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ὑπάρχων: lieutenant-governors, or satraps (cp. c. 19 supra), though here commanders, lieutenant-generals seem rather required by the sense. The two offices were not identical in Persian organization; cp. c. 135 infra.

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τὰ ... δῶρα: cc. 8, 19 supra.

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οὐδὲ ... οἶδα. This admission tends to discredit the record above of the king's promise and speech. It would, indeed, have been no easy matter to adjudicate such a prize among competitors of such various and motley array; nor can we well imagine its having been given save to some governor or leader of the ‘home provinces’ (Persis, Kissia, Media), or to Hydarnes for his Immortals (cc. 40, 83 infra). If gifts, rewards, and so forth, were given on this occasion, were they not more widely distributed?

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διαβάντες τὸν Ἅλυν ποταμόν. Hdt. apparently conceived the Halys as flowing, in a straight line N., across Asia Minor, cp. 1. 72; on that plan you could hardly come westward at all without crossing it. If the king really crossed the Halys (here as elsewhere plainly the boundary between ‘Phrygia’ and ‘Kappadokia’) it would no doubt have been by the bridge on the Royal Road near Pteria (cp. Hdt. IV.-VI. Appendix XIII.); but as we next find the king far to the south at Kelainai it is permissible to doubt whether his route lay across the true Halys at all. ὡμίλησαν, c. 214. οἳ δέ just before shows δέ with the resumed subject, though the subject, strictly speaking, is in this case a fresh one.

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Κελαινάς. Of the practical identity of Kelainai with Apameia (Dineir) there is no doubt (Hamilton, Asia Minor, i. 498 ff.; Hirschfeld, Abh. d. Akad. Berl. 1875; Hogarth in J.H.S. ix. (1888) pp. 343 ff.); Murray's Handbook for Asia Minor (1895), p. 106; Ramsay, Asia Mi. (1890), p. 41.

The position has been (and might perhaps again be) one of great commercial and strategic importance, “commanding the great road from the Lycus valley to the interior.” The natural features of the landscape have also made the spot a centre of romance and history. Xerxes built a palace there on his return journey, if we may trust Xen. Anab. 1. 2. 9. Kyros the younger also had a palace and a paradise there, Xen. 1. 2. 7. Alexander visited and reduced the stronghold in 334-3, Arrian, Anab. 1. 29. 1. It was also an important centre in Roman times. “The most striking feature of Dineir is the group of springs that form the headwaters of the Maeander.” A famous coin of Apameia shows the local goddess surrounded by four river-gods with the legend MAI: MAP: ΘER: OR: that is, Μαίανδρος, Μαρσύας, Θέρμα, Ὀργάς. The third can only mean the modern Ilidja, the single hot spring of Dineir (wrongly identified by Hirschfeld with the Marsyas), Hogarth, l.c. p. 348, identifying it with “the lost Obrimas of Pliny” (Nat. Hist. 5. 29), who does not mention a Therma. The Orgas is found in the Sheikh Arab Chai (Murray, op. c. p. 106), which rises in the S. and winds round a hill to join the ‘Maeander’ or the ‘Marsyas,’ according to the identification of those names with the two remaining streams of the locality. On this point Hogarth is at issue with Hirschfeld, a difference arising from the fact that Hirschfeld has followed Strabo 835 in the identification of the Maeander with “the central and most striking source,” the Hudaverdy, while Hogarth shows that Xenophon identified that stream with the Marsyas, and gives some reason to think that the name of the Maeandei might have shifted from the one source to the other between the time of Xenophon and Strabo. This hypothesis seems preferable to the alternative supposition, that there have been violent natural convulsions in the landscape, in order to explain the failure of any other stream but the Hudaverdy, or Maeander, of Strabo and Hirschfeld, to correspond with the ancient descriptions of the Marsyas. Mr. Hogarth's solution of the whole difficulty is that “the Maeander had ... no distinct source ... but was simply the united river formed by the junction of the Marsyas, Obrimas (or Therma), and Orgas.”

Hdt.'s description of the place makes it pretty certain that he is not writing from autopsy. He mentions only two streams, and, though he refers to the legend of Marsyas, he names the second stream, “as big as the Marandros,” the καταρρήκτης—rather a descriptive epithet than a proper name; nor did the stream rise in the market-place (prohably), though the Agora may have been just under the Akropolis, from a cave on which the Marsyas apparently flowed (Xenophon l.c.). Moreover Hdt. makes no mention of the palace built by Xerxes. (Blakesley's idea that the palace, though ascribed to Xerxes, was post-Herodotean is the more violent hypothesis.)

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ὁ τοῦ Σιληνοῦ Μαρσύεω ἀσκός. Xenophon (Anab. 1. 2. 8) also tells the story: ἐνταῦθα λέγεται Ἀπόλλων ἐκδεῖραι Μαρσύαν, νικήσας ἐρίζοντά οἰ περἰ σοφίας, καὶ τὸ δέρμα κρεμάσαι ἐν τῷ ἄντρῳ ὅθεν αἱ πηγαί: διὰ δὲ τοῦτο ὸ ποταμὸς καλεῖται Μαρσύας. Diodor. 3.58 and Apollodoros 1. 4. 2 give the myth in more elaborate forms, but perhaps Solon was already acquainted therewith (ἀσκὸς δεδάρθαι Frag. 33. 7; Bergk, ii.4 p. 54, apparently as a proverbial expression). The motif was frequently used for the plot of satyrdramas (Jessen in Roscher's Lexikon, 2440). That the actual story is of ‘Phrygian’ origin (as Hdt. asserts) appears very improbable; it is thoroughly Greek in tendency, and signifies the victory of the Hellenic god and his instrument or his art over the barbarian and his blow-pipes. The formula ὑπὸ Φρυγῶν λόγος ἔχει shows, indeed, how little weight can be attached to such ‘Quellen-citate’; cp. Introduction, § 10. The ‘flaying’ may be ‘Phrygian’ (a ‘barbarous’ punishment, cp. Hastings, Dict. of Bible, i. (1898) 525), as the figure of Marsyas himself, ‘the spring-demon and piper,’ is originally. But perhaps the ἀσκός in the first instance was only the bellows of the bag-pipes? Stein sees in it a symbol of the Source. The native name of the river at Kelainai was Masnes or Masses (F. H. G. iv. 629): when the Masses was converted into the Marsyas (cp. Hdt. 5 118) the symbol was converted into the piper's own skin. But this exegesis presupposes the myth. It is more natural to think of the ἀσκός as a wine-skin and to connect it with the ‘Silenos.’ In regard to ‘Silenos’ Stein notes that others made him a ‘Satyr’; Rawlinson shows that ‘Silenos’ was originally the chief Satyr. Marsyas, in opposition to Apollo and Athene, is associated with Dionysos (Silenos) and with Kybele (flute-music). The contest was a favourite subject in Greek literature and art, of which one classic example is to be seen on the celebrated Manti<*>eian frieze (now in Athens), another on one of the Sidonian sarcophagi (now in Constantinople); see further on the myth and its representations Jessen in Roscher's Lexikon, sub v.