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καὶ Ἀργείων ἄγγελοι . . φιλίης inight easily have been inserted (with the τε after Ξέρξης) in a revision of the work. This chapter contains more than one undesigned evidence to show that it was written originally before the thirty years' truce. (1) The apology for Argos has been very generally taken to refer to a time when the sins of Argos in the Persian war were in a fair way to be condoned, and the alliance of Argos was being courted on this side or that. After the thirty years' truce between Argos and Sparta concluded in 451 B.C. no such situation recurs until towards the close of the Archidamian war—which is altogether too late a date for this passage. The period between 462-51 B.C. supplies the most obviously suitable date for this Apology, and also for the Argive λόγος above related in cc. 148, 149. (2) Even more remarkable and characteristic of an early date for the composition of this passage is the critical maxim formulated by Hdt. for his own historiography: ἐγὼ δὲ ὀφείλω ... ἐς πάντα λόγον. It would be rather late in the day for Hdt. to be announcing so fundamental an axiom of his composition, if he had already composed the greater part of his work, or if all that now precedes this passage in the work were of earlier date in production. One expression in the chapter might admit of a contrary interpretation, suggesting that the object here in view is not to whitewash Argos but to censure Athens; but that expression also admits of an interpretation conformable with the previous argument, cp. note infra on αἴσχιστα πεποίηται.
οὐκ ἔχω ἀτρεκεως εἰπεῖν. It is almost inconceivable that Hdt. with his Athenian sources and connexions should be <*>nable to ascertain whether the embassy of Kallias to Susa was accompanied by Argive ambassadors, asking friendship of the king. It is probable, therefore, that originally this uncertainty only applied to the problem of the negotiations of the Argives with Xerxes, and that the words have received an extension, not originally intended, by the insertion of the clause τε ... καὶ Ἀργείων ... φιλίης, itself rendered necessary by the insertion of c. 151 into the previous draft of the Book. This suggestion is confirmed by the observation that the vague αὐτῶν which immediately follows can only refer properly to the negotiations between Xerxes and the Argives, for Hdt. has not reported any statement or story of Argive provenience relative to negotiations with Artaxerxes.
ἐπίσταμαι δὲ ... αἴσχιστα πεποίηται. This passage has not (so far as I know) received a correct interpretation so far. The commentators are divided in their rendering of κακά. Baehr and others make it infortunia, mala; and this is certainly right (cp. for οἰκήια κακά 1. 153, 3. 14, 6. 21). Stein and others, however, make κακά here=αἰσχρά, presumably in the supposed interests of the argument, and Blakesley, not apparently prepared for such an interpretation, yet believing that the remark “relates to the crimes which people [sic] impute to each other, not to the troubles of which they complain,” regards the passage as spurious, and brackets all the words from ἐπίσταμαι down to ἐσενείκαντο (sic). The com mentators have not perceived that there is a confusion of ideas in the passage, not unparalleled in Hdt.: (a) the case of men (peoples, folks) who believe themselves to be ‘worse off’ (more miserable) than their neighbours; (b) the case of men (peoples, folks) who believe their neighbours to be ‘worse’ (more wicked) than themselves. In the first case a study of their neighbours' case, in comparison with their own, would convince each such set of persons that their neighbours' lot was not really preferable to their own; in the second case, that their neighbours' vices were not worse than their own. These two cases are both alike absolute commonplaces of the proverbial moralist and satirist. For example, the first is the theme of Horace in Satire i. 1 “qui fit, Maecenas, ut nemo, quam sibi sortem seu ratio dederit seu fors objecerit, illa contentus vivat, laudet diversa sequentes?” The second is to some extent the theme of Satire i. 3 “cum tua pervideas oculis mala lippus inunctis, cur in ami<*>orum vitiis tam cernis acutum, quam aut aquila aut serpens Epidaurius?” The cure for discontent is more knowledge of one's neighbour's lot; the cure for Pharisaism, or censoriousness, more knowledge of one's self. There is a skeleton in every cupboard, and those who live in glass houses should not throw stones. The heart knoweth its own bitterness, and there's no point in the pot calling the kettle black. It is perhaps especially easy for Hdt. to fall into the confusion of thought between κακά as wickedness and κακά as wretchedness, from his fatal tendency to regard all misery as due to sin, and every misfortune as a divine judgement. But in the present case he may have been misled by a certain delicacy, or courtesy, into substituting in the first instance the οἰκήια κακά for the αἰσχρῶς πεποιημένα, yet it must be admitted that there are at least two other cases of mere confusion of thought, very like the present one: the one in c. 162 infra, ubi vid., the other in 3. 46, where the metaphor of the meal-bag has absolutely no point in the application of the Samian ohgarchs. (It really belongs to an application made by the Chianswhen famine-stricken, cp. Sext. Emp. Adv. Math. 2. 23 ed. Bekker, p. 679.) In fact Hdt. is liable to put a fable (or metaphor) and a moral together which do not strietly belong to each other. The point of the present passage lies, however, not in the οἰκήια κακά and the class of gnomes which those words suggest, but in the αι<*>σχιστα πεποίηται, and these words, in connexion with the previous chapter and the reference to the embassy of Kallias, might be thought to convey a censure of Perikles and of the policy of Athens in having made peace with Persia; in which case the passage as a whole would all be of one date, and that after the thirty years' truce, and its object would be not so much to whitewash Argos as to censure Athens. For several reasons we may reject this hypothesis. (i.) It would represent a fanatical attitude on the part of Hdt. which is ill in accord with his usual temper. (ii.) Had he desired to point such a moral he must have specified above the object of the mission of Kallias. (iii.) Athens does not escape quite with its ‘withers unwrung,’ for Athens was responsible in the very first instance, long before Argos or any other Greek state, for something very like ‘medism,’ cp. 5. 73. The moral of Hdt., in fact, applied pretty well all round at the time it was drawn. There was hardly a Greek state which had not compromised itself at one time or another with Persia; they were all more or less tarred with the same brush. Even Sparta had been compromised to some extent by the medism of Pausanias, though she resisted the blandishments of Megabazos in 457 B.C.; Thuc. 1. 109. 2 (cp. Busolt, iii. 1. 328). ‘I am convinced of this much, that if all mankind were to bring each folk its own grievous burden into one place, with a view to exchange with their neighbours: after examining carefully their neighbours' burdens, each would be glad to carry away again home the burden they had brought in. Thus the conduct of the Argives is not so very much worse than that of others.’ With Hdt.'s philosophy in this passage cp. Chamisso's poem Die Kreutzschau. We can even suggest a poetic origin for Hdt.'s mot: Pausan. 10. 22. 9 “καί μοι φαίνεται Πίνδαρος ἀληθῆ καὶ ἐν τῷδε εἰπεῖν, ὃς πάντα τινὰ ὑπὸ κακῶν οἰκείων ἔφη πιέζεσθαι, ἐπὶ δὲ ἀλλοτρίοις κήδεσιν ὰπήμαντον εἷναι”.
ἐγὼ δὲ ὀφείλω ... πάντα λόγον: the significance of this Herodotean ἔπος for the problem of composition has been indicated above. It is also one of the ‘first principles’ of Hdt.'s historiography. παντάπασι may be neuter (sc. τοῖς λεγομένοις); but cp. App. Crit.
ἔχειν ἐς: cp. c. 143 supra. πάντα λόγον, ‘every story,’ or here, with reference to λόγος c. 151, ‘every transaction.’
ἐπεὶ καὶ ταῦτα λέγεται: an extreme instance of the principle just laid down, λέγειν τὰ λεγόμενα, even when incredible to himself. ἄρα introduces the improbable; cp. c. 10 supra.
πρός, ‘against’; cp. c. 145 supra. ἡ αἰχμή: cp. ὁμαιχμίη ibid.
πρό, ‘in front of,’ ‘instead of,’ ‘in preference to’; cp. 6. 12, 9. 22. τῆς παρεούσης λύπης: a very obscure reference to their οἰκήιον κακόν, the so-called servile régime, 6. 83.
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