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

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ἀκηκοὼς ... ἐλπόμενος: the former participle is clearly stronger than άκούσας, the latter is clearly not ‘hoping.’

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διεφθαρμένην, ‘utterly ruined’ (but not necessarily ‘dead’); cp. 1. 34 οὕτερος μὲν διέφθαρτο, ἦν γὰρ δὴ κωφός, 38 τὸν γὰρ δὴ ἕτερον διεφθαρμένον τὴν άκοὴν οὐκ εἶναί μοι λογίζομαι. But obviously the miserable woman could not long survive such treatment.

αὐτίκα μετὰ ταῦτα introduces the last scene (shifted to Baktria), where, after conspiring with his sons, Masistes raises the flag of revolt in his satrapy, and falls, his brave boys fighting round him, at the head of an army of devoted adherents, in battle against the all too loyal subjects of the feeble tyrant.

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Βάκτρα, the city of Balkh, capital of the Βάκτριος νομός, or Baktrian satrapy (3. 93), of which he was governor (ὕπαρχος τῶν Βακτρίων = Βακτριανῶν l.c.). The city is mentioned 6. 9 (as a sort of ultima Thule of the Persian Empire from the Greek point of view; but cp. 4. 204). On the Baktrians cp. 7. 64 supra, where the Σάκαι are associated with them, as here.

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τά περ ἂν καὶ ἐγένετο, but did not, for Xerxes took measures to crush him. Hdt. implies that Masistes did not reach Baktra, or the Baktrian land, but was overtaken on the way thither, and came to an end. The mention of his army, however (καὶ τὴν στρατιὴν τὴν ἐκείνου), seems hardly consistent with that view, which is also not in itself probable; Masistes and his sons would have reached Baktria long before the army collected and sent against them by Xerxes. Hdt. is led into the inconsistency and error apparently by his own notion (ὡς ἐμοὶ δοκέειν) that, if Masistes had once succeeded in raising a revolt in Baktria, he would have wrought the king no end of woe; in other words, the ease with which Masistes was suppressed convinced Hdt. that he had not actually raised a rebellion in Baktria, and as the Baktrians were devoted to Masistes, he cannot have reached Balkh, or he would have raised a rebellion.

Probably Masistes, as satrap of Baktria, did raise the province, and fell fighting at the head of the eastern levies of the empire. The gruesome story just related was an attempt to explain the cause of the revolt in terms acceptable to Hellenic romance. There may have been a set of more political factors at work. There was a constant possibility in the Achaimenid Empire of a rupture between the eastern and western halves, the Iranian highland, and the older centres and areas of secular civilization The weakness of Xerxes, and the ignominious failure of the European expedition, were calculated to provoke disloyalty. Masistes, his brother, was but re-enacting the rôle of Bardiya, the son of Kyros the Great; Xerxes, or his servants, succeeded, as Kambyses, or again as Dareios had succeeded, in reasserting the unity of the empire. Masistes, who like Xerxes himself united both strains in the Achaimenid pedigree (cp. 7. 11 supra), was a very formidable Pretender, and a far better man evidently than his brother. Rawlinson (ad l.) seems to underestimate the possibilities of a Baktrian secession, or Home-rule movement, though he is justified in correcting the excesses of Blakesley in the other direction. The loyalty of the Baktrians to Dareios and their general loyalty to the Achaimenid House (based upon the argumentum a silentio) might not prevent their preferring a Masistes to a Xerxes. The failure of Masistes in the end may have been due to the fact that the flower of the Baktrians had been culled by Mardonios (cp. 8. 113 supra), and their bones were now enriching the plain of Boiotia. The exact date of Masistes' attempt is problematic; but it falls, no doubt, into the Pentekontaeteris.