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

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σχιζομένης τῆς ὁδοῦ κτλ.: the particularity and precision of this description might suggest the historian's autopsy; but the Halikarnassian must have conversed with many travellers by these roads, and more probably their autopsy shines through his language, which indeed immediately becomes a little involved, as though he were reporting (τῇ καὶ—ποιεῦσι).

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διαβῆναι τὸν Μαίανδρον π. There was probably a bridge, though Hdt. does not say so.

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Καλλάτηβον πόλιν. Rawlinson would place on the site of the subsequent Philadelphia (Alashehr), no doubt an important position; but Radet (l.c. supra) confirms Hamilton's identification of Kallataboi (epigraphic) with AinehGheul, higher up the Kogamos valley than Philadelphia.

μέλι ... ἐκ μυρίκης τε καὶ πυροῦ, that is, in combination; cp 4. 194, 1. 193. Stein and Abicht take this μέλι for a kind of syrup: was it not rather a sweetmeat, like the Rahat Lakum? Could not the women and children be trusted to make it, that it was manufactured by men, ἄνδρες δημιοεργοί? Athenaeus 4. 172 states that pastry-cooks were called of yore δημιουργοί.

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πλατάνιστον. Plane-trees and tamarisk are still characteristic of the Kogamos-valley (Hamilton). The anecdote of Xerxes gives a curious illustration of Baum-cultus. Rawlinson and Blakesley understand the custos (μελεδωνός, cp. c. 38 infra) to have been one of the ‘Immortals’; Abicht explains the term by the analogy: there was always a man to be in charge of this plane-tree. That seems to be Schweighaeuser's idea, which Baehr condemned as far-fetched: why? Stein brackets ἀθανάτῳ, regarding it as inserted from c. 83 infra, and so cuts the knot. Cobet's emendation gives Abicht's interpretation.

XERXES IN SARDES.