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

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Λεβάδειαν: though the oracle is mentioned 1. 46, this is the only passage in Hdt. where the name of the city occurs, the modern Livadia, a place of more importance in Roman and Turkish than in ancient times. Plutarch Lys 52 mentions its capture and sack by Lysander; Strabo 414 marks its position: Λεβάδεια δ᾽ ἐστίν, ὅπου Διὸς Τροφωνίου μαντεῖον ἴδρυται, χάσματος ὑπονόμου κατάβασιν ἔχον, καταβαίνει δ᾽ αὐτὸς ὁ χρηστηριαζόμενος: κεῖται δὲ μεταξὺ τοῦ Ἑλικῶνος καὶ τῆς Χαιρωνείας, Κορωνείας πλησίον. Pausanias 9. 39, 40 describes the ritual from his own experience, and gives the story of the origin of the oracle. The process of consultation was extremely awful, and expensive, and apparently could not be carried on properly by a deputy, or deputy's deputy (as eontemplated in this case). The oracle was, of course, chthonian, and τροφώνιος perhaps originally an epithet of Zeus.

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καταβῆναι παρὰ Τροφώνιον: the grove (ἄλσος) of Trophonios was situate beyond the river Herkyna, which rose out of a cave in a gorge on Helikon. The worshipper crossed the stream and ascended through the grove (ἀναβᾶσι δὲ ἐπὶ τὸ μαντεῖον Pausan. l.c.) to the cave in which the actual rite took place. Several days' preparation and initiation were necessary before the votary was permitted ‘to descend’ (ἐς τοῦ Τροφωνίου κατιέναι), and the privilege was reserved for the male sex (cp. ἄνδρα here, and ἀνδρί Pausanias l.c.). Purifications, divinations, sacrifices, are the order of the day, culminating in the offering of a ram on the night of the actual descent. You are first washed in the Herkyna, a<*> anointed, by two acolytes, or ‘Hermai, the priests then take you in hand, give you to drink of the waters of Oblivion and of Remembrance, display to your adoring gaze the ancient image, and invest you with proper garb, for the dire ordeal. You then essay ‘the descent’ into the house of Trophonios. In the oracular chamber is a mysterious opening, or well, carefully built round and over, about six feet in diameter, and some twelve feet in depth, looking like an oven. Into this pit you descend by a light ladder, introduced for the purpose, taking some honey - buns with you (cp. Aristoph. Clouds 507 f.). Arrived at the bottom, you find a small opening at one side, just large enough to admit you feet foremost: you lie down on your back and work through it; and no sooner have your knees passed the aperture than you find yourself suddenly and irresistibly drawn or sucked down into the Holy of holies. There the secrets of the future are revealed to you in a way over which Pausanias somewhat abruptly drops the curtain. The exit has to be effected by the same entrance (στόμα τὸ ἱερόν), and again feet foremost. By this time you are more dead than alive, but the ordeal is not over. The priests set you on the seat of Remembrance, and question you on what you have seen and heard below: after they have obtained the requisite information, they return you to your anxious relatives or attendants, who convey you, in a state of trance or unconsciousness, back to your apartment at the sign of ‘Good Luck and the Daimon.’ But do not despair: no proper consultant has ever been known to expire under the ordeal, and some have lived to smile again after it.

ἐς Ἄβας: it required some effrontery on the part of the Persian to consuit this oracle of Apollon; cp. c. 33 supra! Blakesley tries to get over the difficulty by supposing that the sack of the shrme was not the work of the division of the army commanded by Mardonios—but according to Blakesley himself Mardonios was commander-in-chief all along; and again, that compensation was now made —of which Hdt. says nothing. The important point is that Hdt. is unconscions of the difficulty, so completely independent are his various stories one of another.

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καὶ δὴ καί: c. 132 supra.

ἐς Θήβας may be taken in a wide sense to cover all the territory subject to Thebes (so Baehr): the temple of Amphiaraos was not in Thebes proper. πρῶτα is rather puzzling; nothing is said of a second visit, though doubtless he had been to Thebes in passing through with the army to and from Athens, and doubtless visited it again in company with Mardonios (cc. 34, 50, 113 supra, 9. 2, 15 ete. infra). The meaning is complicated by τοῦτο μέν: τοῦτο δέ (in the first place, in the second place) immediately following. Stein suggests that πρῶτα ὡς ἀπίκετο equals πρῶτα ἀπίκετο, ἀπικόμενος δέ, but adds that Thebes was the first plaee he visited (coming from Mardonios in Thessaly?). Could Hdt. have meant ὡς πρῶτα (‘as soon as he reaehed Thebes’)? Cp. ὡς τάχιστα 1. 65.

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τῷ Ἰσμηνίῳ Ἀπόλλωνι: cp. 5. 59, a passage which proves that Hdt. himself had at some time visited this shrine. It was perhaps subsequently, and after his visit, that he added the gloss-like note immediately suceeeding ἔστι δὲ ... χρηστηριάζεσθαι. The procuration of a χρηστήριον by ‘pyromancy’ appears to be a special form of Divination developed by the Iamidai (cp. 9. 33 infra) of Elis; Pindar Ol. 8. 2 μάντιες ἄνδρες ἐμπύροις τεκμαιρόμενοι παραπειρῶνται Διὸς ἀργικεραύνου. Cp. Bouchè-Leclerq ap. Darenberg et Saglio, Dict. ii. 298, 299. It was practised also in Thebes; cp. Sophok. O.T. 21 “ἐπ᾽ Ἰσμήνου τὲ μαντείᾳ σποδῷ”.

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ξεῖνον τινὰ ... κατεκοίμησε: Plutareh Aristeid. 19 reports the actual dream which visited the ‘Lydian,’ and which exactly prefigured the death of Mardonios.

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ἐς Ἀμφιάρεω: this oraele too figures in the list of Kroisos (ep. 1. 46, 49, 52), who, πυθόμενος αὐτοῦ τήν τε ἀρετὴν καὶ τὴν πάθην, made presents to him, which in Hdt.'s time had been transferred to the temple of Ismenian Apollo (1 52), perhaps to prevent their passing under Athenian dominion. The actual shrine of Amphiaraos himself was at Oropos, Pausan. 1. 34. His valour had been shown in his slaughter of Melanippos (in return for the deaths of Mekisteus and Tydeus; cp 5. 67); his ‘passion’ in his terrible fate, the earth opening and swallowing him up, chariot and all, Pindar Nem. 9. 24, Aischyl. Septem 568 ff. The cult was confined practically to Peloponuesos and Central Greece, espeeially Boiotia (Bethe ap. PaulyWissowa, i. 1887), and the departed seen is really ‘a chthonian deity of praehistoric Greece,’ who, in the person of his son Amphilochos (cp. Thuc. 2. 68. 3), draws one step nearer to historic verisimilitude. The oracle was a dreamdivination (Pausanias 1. 34. 5): the consultant, after due purification and sacrifice, sacrifiees also a ram, goes to sleep upon its fell, and awaits a dreamrevelation (ἀναμένοντες δήλωσιν ὀνείρατος). Amphiaraos is in some respects a repliea of Trophonios (both being also distinctly of the Asklepios-type), perhaps because both are forms of chthonian Zeus.

Θηβαίων δὲ οὐδενὶ ἔξεστι: this taboo, or excommunieation, is interesting. Was it restricted to Oropos (αὐτόθι bis), or were Thebans universally exeluded from the cult of Amphiaraos? There was another Boiotian shrine of Amphiaraos near Potniai (Pausan. 9. 8, 3), but Pausanias does not record any divination there; at Harma, however, near Mykalessos, there was a temple (Strabo 404) in which, at least in later times, oraeles were to be had (Bethe, l.c supra). The context here might seem to imply that Thebans had once had oraeles, or at least one response, of their ally.

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διὰ τόδε: the taboo is obviously a mueh more certain fact than the reason given for it. The true reason might perhaps be sought in the difference of race between the Boiotians of Thebes and the pre-Bototian population to the south, and on the Attic border. Cult is stiffer than myth: the Boiotians of Thebes might appropriate the story of Amphiaraos and make him their friend and ally, but they conld not get rid of the religious interdict. They then invented this reason to account for the fact.

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διὰ χρηστηρίων ποιεύμενος: per oraculum cum iis agens, Baehr: apparently a spontaneous act. τούτων refers irregularly to the following alternatives.

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ἀπεχομένους is strong middle. ἐγκατακοιμηθῆναι=μαντεύεσθαι supra.