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

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διαδεξάμενοι: exactly as in Plato Rep. 576 B Ἀνάγκη, ἔφη διαδεξάμενος τὸν λόγον ὁ Γλαύκων. Cp. διάδοχος, διαδοχή.

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ἡμέας δέ: the conjunction is noticeable; here it might almost suggest a suppressed clause: Ἀλέξανδρον μέν κτλ. Cp. 5. 109 ἡμέας δὲ ἀπέπεμψε.

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νεώτερον ποιέειν (τι 5. 35), to do something newer, too new, outrageous, etc., perhaps not a mere euphemism, but an implicit plea for the maxim stare super antiquas vias; and so probably in the first instance referring not to foreign but to domestic affairs. Its use here might be taken to hint that a schism in the Greek ranks would be of the nature of στάσις (cp. c. 3 supra).

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λόγους ἐνδέκεσθαι: 7. 236 supra.

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κόσμον φέρον: cp. c. 60 supra.

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διὰ πάντων: cp. c. 37 supra.

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ἠγείρατε ... οὐδὲν ἡμέων βουλομένων: a statement quite inconsistent with the alleged outrage at Sparta upon the Persian heralds, 7. 133 supra. If we are to go back to the Athentan challenge in 5. 96, why not to the Spartan ‘Hands off’ message in 1. 152?

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περὶ τῆς ὑμετέρης ἀρχῆθεν ὁ ἀγὼν ἐγένετο: sc. γῆς. Cp. the words of Themistokles to the Ionians c. 22 supra: ἀρχῆθεν ἡ ἔχθρη πρὸς τὸν βάρβαρον ἀπ᾽ ὑμέων ἡμῖν γέγονε. The Athenian responsibility is probably conceived as going back to 498 B.C. and the despatch of the twenty ships to Sardes, which were ἀρχὴ κακῶν Ἕλλησί τε καὶ βαρβάροισι 5. 97. The beautiful anachronism ἀρχῆς can hardly be maintained, or it would be extremely serviceable. Blakesley and Rawlinson indeed would maintain it on the ground that one anachronism is already involved in ascribing to the Athenians in 479 B.C. such services on behalf of freedom as are predicated of them in the context: “up to this time they had never taken any part in liberating any nation.” But the Athenians would have cited the cases of (1) Plataia, (2) the Ionians, (3) Marathon, to say nothing of more legendary exploits. Cp. 9. 27 infra; and αἰεὶ καὶ τὸ πάλαι in any case refutes R.'s argument. Baehr also defends ἀρχῆς, quod ipsa sententia loci requirere . . videtur. Cp. App. Crit. If maintained, it would of course be an afterthought tending to bring down the composition of this speech after the Thirty Years' Truce: a date before which the term ἀρχή will hardly have been used of the Athenian Symmachia.

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φέρει ... ἐς, reaches, is threatening, concerns, affects.

ἄλλως τε τούτων ἁπάντων: a desperate crux. Stein5 boldly takes ἄλλως as = χωρίς, though such a use of ἄλλως (he admits) is unprecedented; in 3. 8 (which he cites) ἀμφοτέρων αὐτῶν seems to be constructed with ἐν μέσῳ rather than with ἄλλος. For the various emendations, none of them satisfactory, cp. App. Crit. If the prepositional use of ἄλλως is rejected, τούτων ἁπάντων might be taken ‘of all Hellenes’ (that the Athemans, etc.), τούτων referring to πᾶσαν τὴν Ἑλλάδα just before; but τοῖσι Ἕλλησι just after rather militates against this rendering. The repetition of αἰτίους is very neat, but τούτων ἁπάντων would involve tasteless exaggeration in that case. ἀπαντώντων makes a very poor sense. The insertion of ἄνευ or χωρίς (as in 9. 26, 3. 82) gives a good sense, and an Herodotean formula, but the omission is not easy to account for palaeographically.

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ἀνασχετόν: cp. 7. 163, and ἀνέχεσθαι toler are 7. 87, 149 etc. οἵτινες causal, ‘seeing that ye . .’

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ἀνθρώπων is here used ‘without prejudice’; for instances see 8 above.

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συναχθόμεθα, ‘we sympathize with’; the word is common in Xenophon and the orators of the fourth century, but this appears to be the only place where it is found in any earlier writer. The double καὶ ὅτι gives an air of precision to the statements, which are not in reality exact co-ordinates; cp. below.

καρπῶν ἐστερήθητε διξῶν ἤδη. This assertion raises a slight chronological difficulty: the scene is laid at Athens in the winter or early spring of 479 B.C. How have the Athenians already lost two harvests? Are they the harvests of two years, or the two harvests of one year? Presumably the former: but if so, the years being 480, 479 B.C., how had the Athenians already lost the harvest of 479? Had they failed to follow the directions of Themistokles σπόρου ἀνακῶς ἔχειν c. 109 supra, and so lost a harvest by anticipation? Or is not the expression here really a slight anachronism, the two harvests which the Athenians ultimately lost, one in 480 B.C. by the devastation of Xerxes, the other in 479 B.C. by the devastation of Mardonios, having been ‘telescoped’ by the writer (or his source) in the light of later events, from the point of view of the hypothetical orator? (The anachronism remains the same if Archontic years are understood; or, for that matter, Spartan.) The apparent co-ordination of the aorist (ἐστερήθητε) and the perfect (οἰκοφθόρησθε） is grammatically interesting; yet a shade of difference belongs to them. The καρπῶν στέρησις is a precise and limited fact; the οἰκοφθορία is a process, which, though now perfectly complete, has been a long time going on. Thus the tenses of the two verbs here could not be simply interchanged without a loss of significance.

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ἀντὶ τούτων δέ: the δέ is emphatic; cp. l. 2 supra, ‘in return therefor’— to compensate or console you.

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Λακεδαιμόνιοί τε καὶ οἱ σύμμαχοι: i.e. the Peloponnesians; it may include Aigina and Megara, but at least the Athenians are conceived as excluded from the title: this is a symmachy within the symmachy ἐπὶ τῷ Μήδῳ.

ἐπαγγέλλονται, ‘make you this offer’; cp. 7. 1.

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γυναῖκάς τε καὶ ... οἰκετέων ἐχόμενα: οἰκ. ἐχ. = οἰκέτας c. 144 infra; cp. cc. 44, 106 supra. This phrase here is an elaborate periphrasis; cp. 1. 120, 193. The children are of course included, as ἐπι-θρέψειν would also suggest.

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ἔστ᾽ ἂν ὁ πόλεμος ὅδε συνεστήκῃ: for the phrase (συστῆναι) cp. 7. 144, 225, ‘while, so long as, this war obtain.’ The perfect subjunctive is noticeable, but the word is only ‘perfect’ in grammatical form, and practically present, or rather aoristic, in sense.

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λεήνας: cp. 7. 10 supra.

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τύραννος γὰρ ἐὼν τυράννῳ συγκατεργάζεται: an obvious gnome, probably much older than the ostensible occasion, and perhaps even inherited from ‘the age of the Despots.’ Not but what tyrant at times would work not with but against his fellow. ‘Birds of a feather fly together,’ ‘thieves work in pairs,’ etc. etc., were proverbs a little hard on Alexander and Mardonios. Alexander was not a ‘tyrant’ in the proper sense (cp. c. 137 supra), and Mardonios was not technically a ‘tyrant’ at all. The gnome might have worked better, especially as illustrating the co-operation of the tyranny and the Mede, if applied to the Ionians on the Ister (4. 137 f.), or Hippias at Sardes (5. 96), or the Greek exiles in the train of Xerxes (7. 6 supra). The point here, however, put forward is not primarily the connexion of ‘medism’ and ‘tyranny,’ but the tendency of tyrant to stand by tyrant against the Republics. The Republics, Sparta herself, did not go into this matter with clean hands: she had worked for the restoration of Hippias (5. 91), she would have accepted the aid of Gelon upon conditions (7. 157 supra), as she was afterwards glad to accept the aid of Dionysios, or for that matter of Persia itself. But there is a certain amount of truth in the solidarity of constitutional sentiment. All states are forced from time to time into strange or unnatural alliances by necessity or interest: nor is identity of constitution between neighbours any great security for peace. Monarchy will war against Monarchy, Republic against Republic, for the sake of territory, or commerce, or honour, or adventure, or existence, and will seek or accept any alliance that may serve its turn; but still all the same one form of constitution has an ‘elective affinity’ for its like, and other things being equal, tolerates or cooperates with it more easily. A Bundesstaat could never arise between states of diverse constitution, and it may be doubted whether diversely constituted units can permanently maintain a Staaten-Bund.

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βαρβάροισι ἐστὶ οὔτε πιστὸν οὔτε ἀληθὲς οὐδέν. Is this monstrous utterance in place here as a common Hellenic sentiment? Or is it put into the mouth of the speaker as a satirical sample of Spartan philosophy? Does it simply prepare the way for the magnificent pan-Hellenism of the Athenian reply? Does it reflect upon the subsequent duplicity and bad faith of the Spartans themselves? It is certainly not the opinion of the historian, whether he has taken it over from his source or dramatically devised it to give point to the piece: his whole work belies it, and in particular his account of Persian παιδεία, 1. 136.