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

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κατὰ τὠυτὸ τούτοισι, of a synchronism; cp. c. 206 infra. How far the date is correct is another question; but Ktesias 23 is not to be followed as against Hdt. The flight of Demaratos fell apparently 491 B C., some time after his deposition (here mentioned as equivalent). The absence of any reference to the story told in Bk. 6, and the use of the patronymic, are significant for the problem of composition: the latter indeed doubly significant, as Hdt. here specifies his paternity without a hint of suspicion. Otherwise the reference is not especially favourable to Demaratos; Hdt. gives it as his own opinion that the Spartan exile had not much in reality to say to the accession of Xerxes. On the possible source of the anecdote cp. Introduction, §. 10.

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ὡς ἡ φάτις μιν ἔχει: Blakesley cps. 8. 94, 9. 84. The phrase is depreciatory, and points to the vox viva; cp. Introduction, § 10.

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πρὸς τοῖσι: subaud. τὰ (ἔλεγε).

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πρό, ‘before,’ ‘instead of’; cp. Index Verb.

ἐν Σπάρτῃ ... οὕτω νομίζεσθαι. This νόμος goes far beyond the mere law of primogeniture above noticed; Hdt. seems to have some misgiving about it. The supposed law looks rather like an inference from the case of Euryanax, 9. 10 infra. Leonidas succeeded his brother, Kleomenes, and was succeeded by his son Pleistarchos (in 480 B.C.), although there was a son of Dorieus in Sparta at the time, the said Euryanax, who may have been excluded from the succession on the ground that Dorieus, his father, and elder brother to Leonidas, had never actnally been king at all. The accession of a cadet branch does not well accord with the supposed rule (cp. case of Leotychidas, 6. 65). Maspero, iii. 655 (E.T.), seems to admit the law as genuine Persian—rather gratuitously.

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ἔκδεξις, apparently an ἅπαξ λ., although ἐκδέκεσθαι, ‘to succeed,’ whether in place (4. 39) or in time (1. 185), is not rare.