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

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ἐξ Ἀβύδου ὁρμώμενοι seems to make Abydos the headquarters of the bridge-building: were the bridges not constructed simultaneously from each end? Bridges (not a bridge merely, pace τὴν γέφυραν c. 10 1. 26 supra) there were already; with τὴν μέν and with τὴν δέ, γέφυραν must be understood, though strictly speaking ‘the bridge’ was not of sparto or of byblos but only a part of it, to wit, the cables. (γέφυραν is approved by Schweighaeuser, Kuehner, Baehr, Rawlinson, Blakesley, and Stein in his later editions; Kruse started the unfortunate notion of a single bridge, and supplied μερίδα τῆς γεφύρης, which Stein followed in his first annotated ed.) The first pair of bridges too were presumably bridges of boats, but are not described in view of the full description of the second pair which follows; only the one respect in which the first structures differed from the second is here specified: whether correctly or not is another question, cp. c. 36 infra.

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ἔστι for εἴσι: cp. 1. 26 (of the same measure!); less violent in construction than in Plato, Rep. 463 A (τί οὖν; ἔστι μέν που καὶ ἐν ταῖς ἄλλαις πόλεσιν ἄρχοντές τε καὶ δῆμος, ἔστι δὲ καὶ ἐν ταύτη̣; ἔστι). The structure used to be called schema Pindaricum (Pyth. 10. 72 κεῖται . . κυβερνάσιες v.l. κεῖνται. ‘de Pindaricis exemplis vix satis constat’).

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ἑπτὰ στάδιοι: the same estimate is given 4. 85; so too Strabo, 125, 591 τὸ ἑπταστάδιον (obviously conventional). Xen. Hell. 4. 8. 5 gives 8 stades as the measurement. It is now considerably wider (by some 3 stades) or about 11/2 E. mile in all. The loss (or gain) has been apparently at the expense of the European shore, and will have reduced the dimensions of the ἀκτὴ πλατέα above mentioned, and made the exact location of the bridges difficult, if not impossible, to identify.