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

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ταῦτα: what? the fate of the three ships? and how much of the details? It is hardly possible that they should have been known at Skiathos, or communicated by πυρσοί. On the use of such telegraphy cp. 9. 3 infra, Thuc. 2. 94. 1, 3. 22. 7, 3. 80. 2, etc. Perhaps the advance of the ten Sidonian ships was telegraphed, or the disappearance of the three Greek.

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καταρρωδήσαντες: cp. c. 178. The incident here reported is absurd and impossible. The loss of three ships, the advance of ten, could not have overwhelmed the Greek fleet at Artemision with terror; and the evacuation of Artemision, in fair weather, while Thermopylai was being defended, is a strategic inconceivability; cp. Appendix V. § 1. This whole paragraph (ταῦπα ... Εὐβοίης） must be regarded as quite unhistorical. It is not possible to reduce the imperf. middle μετορμίζοντο to a mere inceptive or deliberative meaning; the material context seems to forbid that, especially the sconts they were leaving on the heights of Enboia (“statione mutata ... se receperunt,” Baehr).

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ἡμεροσκόπους, to be distinguished perhaps from νυκτοφύλακες (Xenophon). σκοπός is the usual word, and the ἡμερο- is obviously de trop: but cp. ἡμεροδρόμος. No doubt a good look-out was kept from Euboia's high places, not merely to mark the advance of the king's fleet, but to report any attempt to circumnavigate the island.

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τρεῖς ἐπἠλασαν περὶ τὸ ἕρμα: do the words mean that three were wrecked on the reef in question? Surely not, but simply that they deliberately went aground on it, in order to be able to erect the beacon of white marble, described immediately after. The exact position of the obstacle was explained to them by Pammon of Skyros: these three ships were apparently commissioned for this work. Hdt.'s narrative is not perhaps as clear as it might be, or would be, if the sentence τὸ δὲ ἕρμα σφι . . Σκύριος stood in its natural sequence, between Μύρμηκα and ἐνθαῦπα. The three ships which are specially commissioned are here clumsily included in the βάρβαροι, just as in c. 178 the ten ships especially commissioned in the ναυτικὸς στρατός: and on the principle of the whole and the part being equivalent, the ναυτικὸς στρατός there starts and the βάρβαροι here erect the beacon before starting!

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Μύρμηκα: the ‘Ant’ is identified with the modern Leftari, exactly midway between the coast of Magnesia and the SW. promontory of the island. On ‘Magnesia’ see c. 176 supra.

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τὸ ἐμποδὼν ἐγεγόνεε καθαρόν, ‘their way had been cleared’: by the destruction of the three Greek guardships, by the erection of the beacon on the Ant, by the lapse of the appointed number of days, since the departure of the king from Therme. Stein understands τὸ ἐμποδών precisely of the Ant, the obstacle, in the way; in which case καθαρόν is rather quaint. I take ἐμποδών to be used of anything that is ‘in the way,’ as we say, not necessarily as ‘obstacles’; cp. cc. 108 supra, 206 infra, etc.

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ἕνδεκα ... Θέρμης: this attractive bit of chronology is the first item in the Journal or Log of the ThermopylaiArtemision operations which meets us in Hdt., but historians have made a mistake in taking it as the point of departure for the reconstruction of the Journal as a whole. It is by no means the best ascertained item recoverable, and it is the wrong terminus a quo. The mere observation that we cannot ipso verbo be sure whether the eleven days are to be reckoned inclusively or exclusively, bars the approach here. But that the ‘eleven days' start’ of the army is a genuine bit of tradition, who can doubt? Had it been merely ‘a week,’ i.e. a conventional formula, we should have had δέκα: cp. 9. 8, and Appendix V. § 4.

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τὴν βασιλέος ἐξέλασιν ἐκ Θέρμης. Hdt. can hardly reckon Therme to Pieria, and therefore there is an inconsistency between this passage and c. 131. It is more probable that the king was in Therme than in Pieria until the actual march began; and this view is supported by cc. 128, 130, where Therme is made his headquarters. Such discrepancies are easily to be explained by a difference of sources, and an indifference of the author.

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Πάμμων Σκύριος. No doubt a local expert, from the island of Skyros (only here referred to by Hdt.), and perhaps a man of wealth (cp. πᾶμα *πάομαι) and position. He has an heroic name; cp. Il. 24. 250 (a Trojan, one of Priam's sons); and was, perhaps, a Δόλοψ, Thuc. 1. 98. 2.

πανημερὸν ... ἐξανύουσι: the direct distance between Therme and Sepias is probably a little over 100 E. miles (about 900 stades). A ship might be reckoned to make 700 stades ἐν μακρημερίῃ 4. 86. Sepias here may mark the general objective; but the king's fleet cannot have been expected to make the promontory before night: it must have been the deliberate plan to rest a night at sea.

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Σηπιάδα, clearly identified from Hdt. as the modern Aio Ghiorghi, opposite Skiathos. Strabo 443 confirms it as the scene of the Herodotean story (ἡ μέντοι Σηπιὰς άκτὴ καὶ τετραγῴδηται μετὰ ταῦτα (Homeric times) καὶ ἐξύμνηται διὰ τὸν ἐνταῦθα άφανισμὸν τοῦ Περσικοῦ στολοῦ κτλ.). The name is derived from the cuttle-fish (σηπια), Tozer, Geogr. of G. 348; Grasberger, Ortsnamen, 108.

Κασθαναίης τε πόλιος: cp. κὠμης ὑπὸ τῷ Πηλίῳ κειμένης ap. Strabon. l.c. The statement of Scholiast and Etym. Mag. that chestnuts (κάστανος: κάστανα） were named therefrom is a hysteronproteron; but the name suggests the chestnut woods of Pelion (cp. Tozer, Highlands ii. 122, on the varied vegetation of Pelion) and the cult of Aphrodite (Artemis?) Καστνιῆτις (Strabo 438), to whom the pig was an acceptable offering.