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ἐτετάχατο: their formation in battle-array had been accomplished—a fresh development, or stage (ἄρα); the pluperfect is temporal. κατὰ ἔθνεα καὶ κατὰ τέλεα: both terms refer alike to the infantry and to the cavalry; cp. 7. 81.
τῇ δευτέρῃ ἡμέρῃ, i.e. the day after the one on which the Greeks had advanced and taken up the position near the Androkrateion and Gargaphia, and on which Mardonios had moved out, and somewhat westwards, to face them. With these words the Journal, or Diary, of Plataia may be said to begin, but unfortunately implicit reliance cannot be placed on the data (cp. Appendix VIII. § 2). Both sides (καὶ ἀμφότεροι, you might not have expected it of the barbarians) had sacrifices offered, with a view to ascertaining whether they should deliver the attack; on each side the signs were unfavourable to the offensive; cp. c. 36 infra. Ancient armies approached each other very nearly before a shot conld be loosed, or a blow dealt. It must often have been necessary to devise some plan for restraining the impatience of the men in such close proximity to the foe from breaking line and charging forward. The necessity for a ‘sign’ conld obvionsly be utilized. In the present case, with the deep Asopos bed, not dry either, between them, a great advantage lay with the side which could induce the other to cross the stream.
Τεισαμενὸς Ἀντιόχου. The proper name Antiochos was both heroic and of common occurrence. One of the Attic tribes (φυλαἱ) was named the Antiochis, from an enchorial hero or ἀρχηγέτης: that Antiochos was a ‘Herakleid’ (ps.-Demosth. Epitaph. 31), and the name recurs at Athens in the fifth century (e.g. Xenoph. Hell. 1. 5. 11). It is fonnd also in Makedonia, Thuc. 2. 80. 6 (a source from which it was destined to spread far and wide), and occnrs throughont Hellas (Messenia, Pausan. 4. 4. 4; Arkadia, Xenoph. Hell. 7. 1. 33, etc. etc.). This Eleian (of whom nothing more is known) is not included in the list of twenty Antiochi, antecedent to Antiochos Soter, in PaulyWissowa, i. 2449 f. The name Teisamenos is first found applied to the son of Orestes, son of Agamemnon, who succeeded his father as king of Lakedaimon, and was driven out by the Herakleids on their ‘restoration,’ Pausan. 2. 18. 6; cp. c. 26 supra. A second Teisamenos, son of Thersandros, son of Polyneikes, appears among the heroic kings of Thebes; cp. 4. 147, 6. 52 supra. A Trachinian of the name appears in Thucydides 3. 92. 2 as an envoy to Sparta in the year 427-426 B.C., and the name was in use at Athens (cp. C.I.A. vol i. pp. 52, 72, No. 133, 414-3 B.C). Of the one here in question little is known except what Hdt. records—for Plutarch, Arist. 11, adds nothing, and Pausanias, 3. 11. 5-8, 6. 14. 13, only some details not affecting the story of Plataia: e.g. his son's and grandson's names, Agelochos and Agias. This Agias was diviner to Lysandros at Aigospotami (405 B.C.), and the diviner Teisamenos, who was implicated in the conspiracy of Kinadon (397 B.C., Xenoph. Hell. 3. 3. 11), was presumably his son, or brother.
Ἰαμιδέων: cp. Pansan. 6. 2. 5 οἱ δ̓ Ἰαμίδαι καλούμενοι μάντεις γεγόνασιν ἀπὸ Ἰάμου: τὸν δὲ εἶναι παῖδα Ἀπόλλωνος καὶ λαβεῖν μαντικήν φησιν ἐν ᾁσματι Πίνδαρος. The reference is to Ol. 6. 43-51. (Perhaps the clan were ‘medicine-men,’ cp. ἰάομαι, followers of Apollo ἰατρός, or παιήων, before they were ‘soothsayers.’） The Iamids, thongh at home perhaps in Elis, were to be found far and wide throughont Hellas; the Pindaric Ode cited was composed in hononr of Agesias, an Iamid of Syracuse (diviner to Hieron), whose branch of the family was rooted in Arkadia (Stymphalos). There were two other mantic families or clans in Elis, the Telliadai, cp. c. 37 infra, and the Κλυτιάδαι; cp. Cicero, de Div. 1. 41. Κλυτιάδην here must be a gloss, and an error. Blakesley's note is ingenious. “Κλυτιἀδην was originally an alternative, both families claiming Tisamenos: Κλυτιάδου was an harmonistic improvement in S. or the archetype of S.”; cp. App. Crit.
λεωσφέτερον: an hapaxlegomenon absolutely. Two etymologies have been proposed: (1) λέως, λείως, Ion. adv. = τελέως, ‘completely their own’; cp. L. & S. (2) λεώς (Attic) = λαός populus, popularis. The Ionic form points to (1), though λεώς is found in Hdt. (e.g. 8. 136). In neither case is the word in form a laconism. On λείως cp. Weir Smyth, Ionic, § 716, p. 614. γάρ: digressive. Hdt. here inserts a pure digression on the biography of Teisamenos, which, though interrupting the story of Plataia, contains very important matters bearing upon Laconian law, the history of the Pentekontaeteris, the date of the composition of his own work, and other matters. μαντεύεσθαι is used by Hdt. indifferently (a) of the consultant as here, cp. 8. 36, etc.: (b) of the diviner, c. 35 infra, etc.; and even (c) of the god, as in 1. 65. ἐν Δελφοῖσι: the notice suggests a possible source, and, if the story was picked up by Hdt. in Delphi, the digression might well belong to the second draft of the work, and be an insertion after his visit to Greece. The last date involved in the story is the year of the battle of Tanagra, 457 B.C. See below.
περὶ γόνου: cp. 5. 92 ἐστάλη ὦν ἐς Δελφοὺς περὶ γόνου. Schweighaeuser doubted the reading here. The answer looks like a bad pun (γόνον, άγῶνα). Teisamenos had a son Agelochos, Pausan. 3. 11. 5. ἀνεῖλε: ἀναιρέειν edere (responsum), cp. 1. 13 τὸ χρηστήριον (subj.), 2. 52 τὸ μαντήιον, 6. 69 οἱ μάντιες.
ἀναιρήσεσθαι: cp. c. 64 infra νίκην ἀναιρέεται καλλίστην, and with ἀγῶνα per metonymiam, 6. 70, 103, cp. 5. 102 (active).
ἀσκέων δὲ πεντάεθλον: cp. 6. 92 ἀνὴρ πεντάεθλον ἐπασκήσας. The fivefold contest consisted of ‘Jump, Race, Quoit, Javelin, Wrestling’ according to the epigram ascribed to Simonides, 153 (Bergk iii.4 500): Ἴσθμια καὶ Πυθοῖ Διοφῶν ὁ Φίλωνος ἐνίκα, ἄλμα ποδωκείην δίσκον ἄκοντα πάλην, perhaps in the order of the said pentameter. Pansan. 5. 8. 3 dates its introduction at Olympia to Ol. 18. παρ<*> ἓν παλαισμα ἔδραμε: an odd combination, ‘he only missed running an Olympic victory in the Pentathlon by one bout, or fall, in the wrestling.’ One may take ἔδραμε as mere metaphor (‘scoring,’ cp. 7. 57). παρά, ‘exclusive’; cp. Thuc. 7. 2. 4 “παρὰ τοσοῦτον” (‘by so little’) μὲν αἱ Συράκουσαι ἦλθον κινδύνου (of being surrounded and taken). Teisamenos had presumably scored victories in two out of the five events, but was thrown twice in the final event by one of the other competitors. It surely was never necessary for victory in the Pentathlon to win all five events: three out of the five must have scored a win. Thus it would not always be necessary to hold all five, cp. Plutarch, Symp. 9. 2. 2 ταῖς τρισίν, ὥσπερ οἱ πένταθλοι, περίεστι καὶ νικᾷ. Cp. also Aischyl. Agam. 181 “τριακτῆρος οἴχεται τυχών” and note ad l. ap. Weeklein, Orestie (1888); esp. Pollux, 3. 30 ἐπὶ πεντάθλου τὸ νικῆσαι ἀποτριάξαι λέγουσι. Cp. further the next note.
Ἱερωνύμῳ τῷ Ἀνδρίῳ: the name Hieronymos was in use at Athens (cp. Aristoph. Ach. 386, Eccl. 201), Elis (Xenoph. Anab. 3, 1. 34), Syracuse (Diod. 26. 15. 1-2), and elsewhere. The Andrian too had perhaps claims to a sacral character. Pausanias (6. 14. 13） saw a statue of him at Olympia, where his victory over Teisamenos was memorable; and also (3. 11. 6) mentions that he was defeated by the Eleian in running and leaping, though successful in the wrestling; he omits the disk and the javelin, in which also he must have been victorions; cp. the previous note. The Pentathlon must have been conducted in ‘heats,’ and the heats in wrestling, from the nature of the case, κατὰ λόγον μουνομαχίης, but we need not conclude that Hieronymos was the only other competitor on this occasion. The Olympiad of Teisamenos and Hieronymos is not specified; it can hardly have been so recent as the 75th (=480 B.C.), but as Plataia is the first of the μέγιστοι ἀγῶνες it may have been the 74th = 484 B.C. Λακεδαιμόνιοι δέ: the overtures apparently come from the Spartan side, inspired perhaps by Delphi, or by friends of the Eleian himself.
φέρον ἐς, ‘bearing on,’ as we say; cp. 6. 19 τὸ χρηστήριον ἐς τοὺς Ἀργείους φέρον. ἐπειρῶντο πείσαντες: i.e. μισθῷ πείσαντες ἐπειρῶντο ποιέεσθαι ... ἡγεμόνα τῶν πολέμων. These words need not be taken to imply a limitation of the royal prerogative, least of all in the actual conduct of war operations. The phrase comes not from an official Spartan source, and Xenophon (Lac. Rep. 13） takes no account of any infringement of the king's functions in war as ἱερεὺς μὲν τὰ πρὸς τοὺς θεοὺς ... στρατηγὸς δὲ τὰ πρὸς τοὺς ἀνθρώπους. But the king was not a μάντις, and this position in the royal suite was no doubt offered to the Eleian.
Ἡρακλειδέων: there were of course many Herakleids in Sparta beside the two kings (which accounts for the genitive), but the introduction of the word here is curious: it can hardly be a limitation, an emphatically partitive genitive, but must rather have been meant to suggest that the Iamidai and the Herakleidai were, so to speak, in one class; or the Iamids even a step higher, as co-ordinate with those of the Herakleids who were actually in the royal office.
ὁρέων: not so much a case of literal vision, ὄψις, as of perception by various channels, cp. μαθών just below. Hdt. does not always employ the terminology of sense perceptions with prosaic literalness or scientific accuracy; cp. 8. 12. 6, 88. 9, etc. περὶ πολλοῦ ποιευμένους: cp. 7. 181, 8. 40; also δεινὰ ἐποιεῦντο just below.
Σπαρτιήτας: i.e. citizens of Sparta. φίλον προσθέσθαι: cp. 3. 74. ἀνετίμα, ‘kept putting the price up,’ a good imperfect; the word is rare in literature (as the language of the market!), but cp. Pollux 3. 125 ἐπὶ δὲ τῶν πολλοῦ πιπρασκόντων εἴποις ἂν ἐπιτιμῶσιν, ἀνατιμῶνται, ἐπιτείνουσι τὰς τιμάς, ὡς τὸ ἐναντίον ἐπευωνίζουσιν, ἄξια πιπράσκουσιν.
δεινὰ ἐποιεῦντο καὶ μετίεσαν τῆς χρησμοσύνης: the text is in some donbt; καὶ μετίεσαν appears to me de trop, without it τῆς χρ. were plainly ‘his demand.’ χρησμοσύνη is a curious word. Schweighaeuser misunderstood it as = μαντοσύνη. It has nothing to do with χρησμός, but was used by Herakleitos (Bywater, No. xxiv p. 11) as opposed to κόρος. Cp. χρηίζειν. The form χρημοσύνη is found in Tyrtaios and Theognis; cp. L. & S. sub v. μετίεσαν τῆς χρησμοσύνης must mean ‘abandoned their desire, or request’— relaxed (of) their need—the usual construction being with the accus. rei, but the gen. being also found; e.g. Il. 6. 330 “ὅν τινά που μεθιέντα ἴδοις στυγεροῦ πολέμοιο”. The occurrence of μετιόντες just below makes an inelegancy by ‘unconscious iteration’: καταίνεον μετιόντες, ‘they went after him and agreed,’ consented (imperf.): though μετιέντες would be worse.
γνούς: cp. μαθών, ὁρέων above. τετραμμένους σφέας, ‘their change of mind’; repeated c. 34 infra, cp. 7. 15 τετραμμένῳ γὰρ δὴ καὶ μετεγνωκότι κτλ.
οὕτω ... τούτοισι μούνοισι looks pleonastie; cp. ταῦτα οὕτω 8. 199. ἀρκέεσθαι, pass. ‘to be satisfied with’ is observable; cp. Aristot. Eth. N. 2. 7. 5 = 1107 B ἀρκούμενοι αὐτῷ τούτῳ. τὸν ἀδελφεὸν ἑωυτοῦ Ἡγίην. Stein seems to think that the man's childlessness led him to secure for his brother (and family) a position in Sparta. But the Delphian response περὶ γόνου may have been as favonrable in his case as in that of Eetion, 5. 92. Pansanias reports descendants of his in Sparta (l.c. supra); they may, of conrse, have been his brother's (or his own by adoption). The form Hegias is Ionic (and Attic) for Ἁγίας or Ἀγίας, a name perhaps identical with Ἆγις. (It cannot even in this family be connected with ἅγιος, Ἁγίων, the α in which is short.) The name recurs in the pedigree, Teisamenos, Agelochos, Agias, Pausan. 3. 11. 5.
Σπαρτιήτην, ‘a full eitizen’; cp. πολιήτην σφέτερον and λεωσφέτερον above.
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