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

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δικαιεῦντος: a favourite word with Hdt. = ἀξιοῦν, cp. 8. 126.

ὥστε, ‘and so,’ cp. 7. 118.

τὸ γὰρ κράτος εἶχε κτλ.: the statement that Mardonios but not (ἀλλ̓ οὐ) Artabazos was commander-in-chief of the army by the king's commission (ἐκ), still leaves the exact relations of Mardonios and Artabazos an obscure problem. (a) 8. 126 supra looks as though Artabazos held a post directly subordinate to Mardonios, inasmuch as he was in command of 60,000 of Mardonios' own select soldiers; but that passage is not convincing, and if 300,000 is really the figure, not for the force of Mardonios but for the king's grand army itself (cp. c. 32 supra), the passage must really tell quite the other way. (b) The service on which Artabazos is there engaged points to an independent command, as does also (c) his subsequent conduct towards Mardonios c. 66 infra, and (d) the reception which he afterwards enjoys at home; had he been in a position actually subordinate to Mardonios his reception could hardly have been so good. Moreover (e) this passage itself, closely considered, lends weight to the supposition that the two commanders were independent of each other; Hdt. at any rate has avoided saying that Artabazos had to take his orders from Mardonios. Is it not possible that the exact position of neither general is fully or clearly stated? Was the command of Artabazos primarily a command in Thrace, and the command of Mardonios a command in Hellas, south of Olympos? Was Mardonios at least more than mere ‘commander’? was he governor, or satrap of Hellas, for the time being? His Greek ‘allies’ (cp. cc. 31, 32 supra) were certainly the king's subjects. It was only their presence which gave the army of Mardonios its numerical superiority to that of Artabazos. Mardonios is perhaps to be thought of as defending his own province from an Hellenic invasion!

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μεταπεμψάμενος ὦν: so far the two Persian commanders have been having a private conversation; but that implication is in itself improbable, and conflicts with other indications in the text, viz. (a) the set speech ascribed to Artabazos; (b) the term βουλευομένων above; (c) the purely madequate and dummy rôle assigued to the ἐπίκλητοι when now at last summoued; (d) the obvious probability, and iudeed certainty, that the commander would coufer with his officers. We may fairly conclude that the Council has really been sitting through c. 41, or at least that the arguments already given represent speeches made at the Council, even if the two chiefs had previously held a private eolloquy.

τοὺς ταξιάρχους τῶν τελέων: the term τελέαρχος (cp. τελάρχης) is hardly found; the ‘taxiarchs,’ or captains, of the τέλη, or squadrons, are here apparently the Persiau and other native officers, cp. 8. 67, the ἄρχοντες of the army - list in Bk. 7, cp. 7. 81, as distinguished from the Strategoi of the Greeks, i.e. the Boiotarehs, the Aleuadai, Alexander of Makedon, Harmokydes the Phokian, and so forth.

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εἰρώτα εἴ τι κτλ.: this inquiry by Mardonios would have been singularly tactless in form and in substance, if it had really been addressed to the officers above indicated, Persian as well as Greek, summoned ad hoc. ‘Know ye any prediction that we Persians are to be utterly destroyed here in Hellas?’ Stein5 accordingly would emend the passage, cp. App. Crit. But did Hdt. reason so closely?

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τῶν ἐπικλήτων: well rendered by Macaulay, ‘those summoned to council,’ cp. 7. 8, 8. 101. The general, or governor, has his ἐπίκλητοι, like the king. (The word cannot here be evacuated of meaning. or reduced to ἐπικληθέντων or ἐπικλήτων γενομένων.) The Persians (τῶν μέν) would mostly be ignorant of the Greek oracles, the Greeks (τῶν δέ) might know them, but ‘did not consider it safe’ (ἐν ἀδείῃ δὲ οὐ ποιευμένων) to say so.

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αὐτὸς Μαρδόνιος ἔλεγε: did he speak in Persian, or in Greek? The speech ascribed to him still further complicates the situation. ‘There is a prophecy to the effect that the Persians after coming to Greece must sack the temple in Delphi, and thereafter perish to the last man. We shall not sack the temple: as far as that is concerned, then, we are safe enough.’ Mardonios might have gone on to show some positive cause for expecting a victory; he has done that (privately!) already to Artabazos, viz. (1) the Persian army is superior to the Greek; (2) there is no time to be lost, for the Greek army is increasing day by day; (3) it is the Persian way to assume the offensive, to deliver the attack.

The present anecdote has very little to say to the situation at Plataia; it is not so much part of the story of Plataia, as part of the Apology of Delphi. It explains the fact—a fact so very awkward for Delphi by and by — that Delphi escaped pillage at the hands of the Persians. The explanation is good in itself, but it is completely at variance with the other and more brilliant explanation and apology already given, viz. the story of the Persian attack on Delphi, and the miraculous preservation of the temple and its contents, 8. 35-39. Both stories cannot be true, though both may be false. To suppose that if the Persians, a year before, had done their best to plunder Delphi, Mardonios would have urged this line of argument, in order to cheer and encourage his Council of War, is absurd (the rather, as the Delphic god takes the will for the deed, 6. 86). But this critique might only be one point more against the story in Bk. 8, in itself already incredible. Is the story here true? It is improbable. Its apologetic tendency condemns it. The improbability of the Persian commander-in-chief urging such a line of argument in any case remains. Hdt. himself adds that there was no such oracle: the oracle cited he refers to another connexion. Last, not least, considering the real situation in 480-79 B.C., there is hardly room or occasion for such an oracle, much less for such a scene in the Persian camp as this anecdote involves; it is, in the truest sense, a huge anachronism. Delphi, if not actually on the Persian side, was on the side of the Greeks who were on the Persian side, cp. 7. 132. The question of a Persian sack of Delphi can hardly have been a real question at the time; Xerxes and Mardonios were more likely to be making offerings at Delphi—like Datis at Delos in 490 B.C., cp. 6. 97— than plundering the shrine. It may fairly be concluded that this anecdote, though not involving physical impossibtlities, is not more true, in a strictly historical sense, than the other.

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λόγιον is prima facie a prose utterance (yet cp. πεποιημένον in next c.); the oracle, then, will hardly be a Delphic response. It cannot, however, be (as Stein suggests) due to Onomakritos (cp. 7. 6), for he communicated no oracle σφάλμα φέρον τῷ βαρβάρῳ. Mardonios might be supposed to have had it through Mys his commissioner. Cp. 8. 133 ff. Baehr points out that Euripides, Bakch. 1336, has this oracle (or this anecdote?) in view: ὅταν δὲ Λοξίου χρηστήριον διαρπάσωσι, νόστον ἄθλιον πάλιν σχήσουσι (sc. οἱ βάρβαροι). If so, he has ‘harmonized’ it with the story in 8. 35 ff. Here there is no νόστος.

χρεόν ἐστι after ἔστι λόγιον is a little curious and clumsy: if maintained, it would show that the original significance of χρεών was virtually forgotten. But alas for thee, Mardonios! οὔτε ἐς τὸ μετέπειτα οὔτε ἐς τὸ παραυτίκα νῦν καταπροΐξεαι ἀποτράπων τὸ χρεὸν γενέσθαι (cp. 7. 17).

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ταύτης τε εἵνεκα τῆς αἰτίης seems to admit that there might be other grounds for apprehension—which Mardonios would of course, if this story were true, have proceeded to remove. Cp. τοῦδε εἴνεκα just below.

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εὐκρινέα ποιέεσθαι: apparently in a physical, not a merely psychical sense. Our naval order ‘to clear the decks for action’ is superficially analogous. Xenophon, Oikon. 8. 19, makes Isehomachos say that ‘there should be a place for everything and everything in its place,’ ὅτι καὶ χύτρας φημὶ εὔρυθμον φαίνεσθαι εὐκρινῶς κειμένας.

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ἡμέρῃ τῇ ἐπιούσῃ: i.e. the 12th. Cp. c. 41 supra.