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

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οἱ μὲν δὴ *<*>ελληνες ... διαταχθέντες: in the original draft this sentence was perhaps immediately followed by ὁ δὲ ναυτικὸς Ξέρξεω στρατός κτλ., c. 179—a better antithesis. There are other signs that this chapter belongs to Hdt.'s retractation; see below.

The Hellenes had no time to lose if Xerxes was now in Pieria. He had but to push his fleet forward and seize the Euboian channel while they were still discussing τῇ τε στήσονται τὸν πόλεμον καὶ έν οἵοισι χώροισι (c. 175). But, fortunately for the Greeks, Xerxes was no Kyros, to come upon them αὐτὸς ἄγγελος (1. 79), no Caesar (hoc τέρας), to rush the Rubicon horribili vigilantia, celeritate, diligentia (ad Att. 8. 9. 4). Fortunately for them he was wedded to a plan of campaign which bound his army and uavy to advance pari passu, aud they knew it.

The διάταξις in this case may refer primarily to the separate organization of land. and sea-forces on the Greek side. Cp. App. Crit.

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Δελφοὶ δέ: an earlier, perhaps a rival form of this story may be found in the Athenian story, c. 189 infra. The fable here is obviously from a Delphic source, and perhaps obtained by Hdt. an Ort und Stelle, that is in Delphi, or in ‘Thyia’; see below; it is part of the Apologia of Delphi, cp. Appendix III. § 7.

Their voluntary consultation of the god, ‘on behalf of Hellas and themselves,’ was much to the credit of the ‘Delphians’; their craven fear (καταρρωδηκότες） was fully shared by all the Hellenes ‘who had a mind to be free’ (δεινῶς καταρρωδέουσι), at least so the Delphians appear to have said.

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ἐχρήσθη. Clemens Alex. Strom. 6. 753 professes to give the exact words of the response: ὦ Δελφοί, λίσσεσθ᾽ ἀνέμοις καὶ λω<*>ιον ε<*>σται. The winds would not do the army much harm; the oracle concerns the fleet. In itself there is nothing very improbable in such a behest, though it is not a very valiant or creditable one. But in view of the evidences regarding the attitude and position of Delphi before and during the war, and in view of the event, it seems more probable that we have here too an instance of the vaticinium post eventum. Hdt. is sceptical about the powers of the Magi to lay the wind, c. 191 infra; but he has apparently no misgivings as to the ability of the Greeks to raise it.

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δεξάμενοι: not a mere chronological point, nor merely of sensible audition, or mental intelligence, but something stronger, more exalted, ‘accepted with joy,’ thankfulness, gratitude, ‘hailed’; cp. 9. 91.

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ἐξαγγείλαντες ... κατέθεντο is an hexameter, and suggests that this service of the Delphians had been recorded in poem, or epigram, before Hdt. came by it. The testimonial was composed, or at least erected, by the Delphians, in their own honour: one way of writing history! Hdt. is guileless in the matter. The incompleteness of the construction is perhaps further evidence that this verse is a quotation, the full construction being κατατίθεσθαι χάριν παρά τινι (though it must be admitted that the phrase is frequently used without such clear direction; cp. 6. 41 supra, Thuc. 1. 33. 1, etc.).

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μετὰ δὲ ταῦτα: there are four epochs in this legend as told by Hdt. (i.) έν τούτῳ τῷ χρόνῳ, i.e. while the Hellenes were getting them to Thermopylai and Artemision, the consultation and the response. (ii.) πρῶτα μέν, the date of the voluntary communication made by the Delphians to the Hellenes (either already at or en route for Artemision), and the immortal obligation. (iii.) μετὰ δὲ ταῦτα, the date of the erection of the Altar of the Winds at Thyia, and the institution of the Cult; but how loug after? Before the storm? or after the war? Alas, a sad lack of precision! (iv.) ἔτι καὶ νῦν (in next c.), the telltale index of the date of composition, and in any case involving a long interval.

That the Cult of the Winds at Thyia dated from, or after, the Persian invasion is plainly asserted in this passage; but this new departure can hardly have been the first institution of Windworship, but was rather an attempt to give Pan-hellenic significance, or at least Delphic sanction, to much more ancient practices. The sacrifice of the Magi to the Wind in c. 191 infra is connected indirectly with Ionian, or rather ‘Aiolian’ legend, and the Wmds of ‘the Thrakian sea’ (cp. c. 176. 2 supra), Boreas and Zephyros, are Homeric personalities in the Iliad (9. 5, 23, 229 f.), while in the Odyssey, if they are treated with less respect, yet Aiolos, their keeper, is a decidedly supernatural person (Od. 10. 1 ff.). It is not, however, in the Olympian direction that the origines of the cult is to be found: the winds, ἄνεμοι, ἄελλαι, or θύελλαι, are primitively connected with the dead, the departed ‘spirits,’ the chthonian cults. Thus even in the Patrokleia Acbilles invokes Boreas and Zephyros, καὶ ὐπίσχετο ἱερὰ καλά, πολλὰ δὲ καὶ σπένδων χρυσέῳ δέπαι<*> λιτάνευεν (Il. 23. 195 f.), and in the legend of Menelaos preserved by Hdt. 2. 119 the winds are propitiated by human sacrifice (ἔντομα: κυρίως τὰ τοῖς νεκροῖς ἐναγιζόμενα Schol. Apoll. Rhod. quoted by Wiedemann, Herodots Zweites Buch, ad l.), and though the sacrifice of Iphigeneia is not Homeric, and is, in its earliest litcrary form, a homage not to the Winds, but to Artemis, yet the Vergilian formula, “Sanguine placastis ventos et virgine caesa, etc.,” Aen. 2. 116 ff., probably comes nearer to the primitive idea and cult. The intention of the Herodotean stories seems, at first sight, not to go much beyond raising (or quelling) a storm, and so, indirectly, causing a destruction of the enemy, or vice versa; but the terminology nevertheless snggests a chthonian cult (c. 192), and the notion that the Winds are summoned to dissipate or carry to the underworld the ghosts of the combatants is not to be wholly rejected. (The chtbonian origin of the Wind-cult has been detected and developed by three scholars: Stengel, Hermes, 16 (1881), 349 ff.; Rohde, Psyche, 1890-4; Tumpel, ap. Pauly-Wissowa i. (1894) 2176 ff.)

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ἐν Θυίῃ: a place (ὁ χῶρος οὖτος), in which was a sacred Close (τέμενος), apparently in the neighbourhood of Delphi. It seems that the cult of ‘Thyia’ in Thyie is older than the erection of the altai to the Anemoi in Thyie (see below); but the selection of the spot for the dedication seems to show a clear consciousness of the original signification of the cult of the Thyiades, or Valkyries (cp. L. & S. sub v. θύω, where θυιάς is given, but not θυία, or θυίη).

τὴς Κηφισοῦ θυλατρὸς Θυίης: a variant appears ap. Pausan. 10. 6. 4 “οἱ δὲ Καστάλιόν τε ἄνδρα αὐτόχθονα καὶ θυγατέρα ἐθέλουσιν αὐτῷ γενέσθαι Θυίαν, καὶ ἱερᾶσθαί τε τὴν Θυίαν Διονύσῳ πρῶτον καὶ ὄργια ἀγαγεῖν τῷ θεῶ:ι ἀπὸ ταύτης δὲ καὶ ὕστερον ὅσαι τῷ Διονύσῳ μαίνονται Θυιάδας καλεῖσθαί φασιν ὑπὸ ἀνθρώπων: Ἀπόλλωνος δ᾽ οὖν παῖδα καὶ Θυίασ`νομίζουσιν εἶναι Δελφόν”. The connexion of Θυία with Dionysos is further illustrated by the Eleian θυῖα, Pansan. 6. 26. 1, and even more pertinently by the Attic Thyiades, 10. 4. 3 αἱ δὲ Θυιάδες γυναῖκες μέν είσιν Ἀττικαί, φοιτῶσαι δὲ ἐς τὸν Παρνασὸν παρὰ ἔτος αὐταί τε καὶ αἱ γυναῖκες Δελφῶν ἀ̔γουσιν ὄργια Διονύσῳ. Cp Bakehos Thyoneus.

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θυσίῃσι is perhaps most strictly to be referred to gods; while the word ἱλάσκονται below, like ἔντομα ποιεῦντες c. 191 infra, belongs to the terminology of ‘heroic’ cult; Stengel, Hermes, xvi. (1881) 349.