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

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τριήρεας ... πεντηκοντέρους. The ‘pentekonter’ was a war-galley, no doubt open throughout, with 50 oars (25 each side), and probably not less than 100 feet long (120 feet, cp. Torr, Ancient Ships, p. 21). Its construction in Greece dated to the beginning of the seventh century if Thuc. 1. 13 is to be trusted (see C. Torr, op. cit. p. 4); the Phaiakians, however, in the Odyssey (8. 34 ff.) had such a vessel. It was in pentekonters, according to Hdt. 1 163, that the Phokaians made their long voyages in the west, and that the Theraians crossed to Libya to found Kyrene in 630 B.C.; and in pentekonters, according to Thuc. 1. 13. 6, the Phokaians defeated the Carthaginians off Massalia about 600 B.C. Even the Athenian and Aiginetan navies at the beginning of the fifth century were mainly composed of pentekonters, according to Thuc. 1. 14. 3, and he even declares that most of the vessels in which the Athenians fought at Salamis were not fully decked, ib., a statement which ill accords with the large number of Epibatai carried. He does not, however, expressly deny that they were triremes.

Triremes were the rule in 480 B.C., according to Hdt. in this passage. He elsewhere reckons 200 men as the crew, or complement of rowers; cp. 7. 184 supra. (The actual number of oars used on the thre banks(?) of an Attic trireme was 170 to 74, cp. Torr, op. cit. p 10 f., and there night be thirty in reserve, or supplement; for the precise allocation of the oars cp. op. cit.) The trireme was something less than 150 feet long, and less than 20 feet broad (cp. Torr, p. 22)—measurements which may not be quite precise for 480 B.C. Cp. also M. A. Caitault, La trière Athénienne, 1881; J. Kopecky, Die attischen Trieren, 1890.

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Μήλιοι ... γένος ἐόντες ἀπὸ Λακεδαίμονος. Hdt. says the Melians were from Lakedaimon; he does not expressly say that they were Dorian. Thuc. 5. 84, 2. 89, 106, fully recognizes them as Λακεδαιμονίων ἄποικοι, and seems to give 1116 B.C. as an approximate date for the colonization in c 112 (416 + 700). Judging by the parallel case of Thera (Hdt. 4 148), the genuinely ‘Dorian’ element in the emigration will have been very small; yet, like Thera, Melos used a ‘Dorian’ alphabet and dialect (cp. Roberts, Greek Epigraphy, §§ 19-23), a fact which no doubt would favour the ‘Lakedaimonian’ legend.

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πάρεξ τῶν πεντηκοντέρων, of which there were all told seven: two from Keos, two from Melos, and one each from Kythnos, Seriphos, and Siphnos.

τριηκόσιαι καὶ ἑβδομήκοντα καὶ ὀκτώ. This total is repeated (virtually) and raised to 380 by the addition of the Tenian vessel which joined at Salamis, and the Lemnian vessel which had joined at Artemision, c. 82 infra; the total here is therefore certain. Yet it exceeds the items, which amount only to 366, by 12. There is therefore something wrong with the items. Valckenaer would have read 42 for the Aiginetans, c. 46 supra; this agrees with the statement of Pausanias that next to the Athenians the Aiginetans supplied most ships. The repetition of the τριήκοντα need not bar this emendation; if the figure was once corrupted, it would be corrected in the other case in the light of the corruption. Moreover, this bolder emendation is preferable to the insertion of 12 for the ἄλλαι νέες, first because the list is not a list of all the ships in commission, but only of those which fought at Salamis; secondly, because 42 is rather a low figure for the absolute sum of the Aiginetan navy, all told; while if 42 were at Salamis, and 18 in service at home, we get a total of 60 ships in commission, which is a more probable figure for Aigina at this time. If the Aiginetan 30 were to be maintained for Salamis we should have to tinker one or more of the other items. K. O. Mueller, Aeginetica, p. 122, suggested reading Σικυώνιοι δὲ πεντεκαίδεκα παρείχοντο πλεῦνας, i.e. 12 + 15, raising the Sikyonian contingent from 12 (Artemision) to 27, which is less ingenious than Gutschmid's compromise to raisc Troizen from 5 to 7, and the Aiginetans from 30 to 40.

Hdt. evidently finds it necessary to account for the smallness of the Aiginetan contingent by the remark that it was by no means all the ships they had in commission; but Rawlinson, in supposing that they had 40 on guard off their own island, while maintaining 30 at Salamis, seems to go too far; the majority of the Aiginetan navy, like that of every other Greek state, was at Salamis. The variant 358 is quite worthless; cp. App. Crit.

With Hdt.'s total of 378 (or 380) for the Greek navy at Salamis is to be compared Aischylos' 300 (Pers. 339), Thucydides' 400 (1. 74. 1), Demosthenes' 300 (de cor. 238). If Demosthenes did not find this figure in his copy of Thucydides (Stahl; “ex aliquot deterioribus,” Hude) the two historians virtually agree as against the poet and the orator. Ktesias (ed. Gilmore, § 57), from the Persian point of view, makes it 700 (of which apparently only 110 are Athenian). Tzetzes' 271 (ad Lycoph. 1432) is surely only a confusion with the numbers given by Hdt. for Artemision.

The phrase repeated ἐν Σαλαμῖνι ἐναυμάχησαν suggests that the list is compiled not from documents drawn up for working purposes beforehand, but from memorial lists and commemorative offerings—an inference further supported by the mention of Demokritos and Phayllos.