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

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καὶ Θεσπιέων. If Thespians were with the ‘Lakedaimonians’ until the bitter end, and if there were 700 Thespians (or the remains) to 300 Lakedaimonians, how comes it that Sparta has ever since reaped all the glory, or almost all? Is it simply that Sparta was respousible? that a Spartan king fell? Is it that the blow which but stimulated Sparta, annihilated Thespiai? But that was not so. It is at least arguable that there were many more than 300 ‘Lakedaimonians’ at Thermopylai first and last; and also that the Thespians, however gallantly they may have behaved, were not on ‘the hill’ in Thermopylai at the last. Cp. Appendix V. § 5.

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λέγεται: by whom? where? The anonymous Trachinian stranger might be source of the anecdote, which might then have come to the ears of many in the Persian camp, but would the Trachinian have known the Spartiate's name? Did Demaratos supply the omission? (What a pilgrimage was his to that hill of slaughter! Every dead Spartiate face known to him!) Or were these anecdotes picked up by Hdt. in Sparta, and additions to his original draft? Or was the practice of collecting laconic apophthegms already in fashion? Could he draw upon literary sources for such bon-mots? Hdt. does not seem to guarantee the truth of the anecdote: λἐγεται, φασί, if anything, suggest a doubt. Why does not Hdt. preserve the much grander bon-mot of Leonidas? Pergite, animo forti, Lacedaemonii: hodie apud inferos fortasse cenabimus (Cicero, Tusc. D. 1. 42. 101). Cp. Introduction, § 10.

Διηνέκης: Hdt. might have supplied his patronymic from the stele in Sparta, were he much given to putting such materials together. The mention of the Trachinian can hardly be held to prove that Leonidas began by occupying Trachis; cp. c. 203 supra.