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

---

---

μηδένα ἅπτεσθαι τῆς ληίης: no one was to touch the spoil, in order that it might be duly collected and divided. As implied above, c. 70, the Tegeatai disregarded this order, unless indeed its issue was subsequent to their plunder of the tent of Mardonios, or uuless the implication in that passage is unjust.

---

τοὺς εἵλωτας: but surely not to the number of 40,000, c. 29 supra.

ἀνά: passim per . .

τὸ στρατόπεδον: sc. Περσέων.

σκιδνάμενοι: cp. 8. 23.

---

ἐπιχρύσους: i.e. ‘gilt,’ cp. 1. 50. In the following inveutory of treasure κρητῆρας are large mixing bowls; φιάλας smaller vessels, primarily for pouring, cp. 8. 54 (χεϝ, FUD, cp. Curt. Gr. Etym.2 p. 186); ἐκπώματα drinking vessels; ἄλλα beiug idiomatic, ‘as well,’ cp. 3. 55. 5 supra. The Persians were hard drinkers, cp. 1. 133.

---

λέβητες: cauldrons, or pots, not primarily connected with drinking; why these were already packed in baize or bags (σάκκους) ready for departure, and the others not so, is obscure.

---

ψέλια, στρεπτούς: cp. 8. 113. Possibly only the ‘Persiaus’ were so decorated. τοὺς ἀκινάκας, ‘their swords,’ referring, as the article shows, especially to the notorious ‘Persian’ weapon; cp. 7. 54. The hilt and sheath might have been of gold, or covered therewith: or were the blades damascened?

---

ἐπεί, in an adversative seuse, implyiug a suppressed sentence (‘of mere clothing I say nothing,’ or sim.); cp. L. & S. sub v. B. 4.

---

λόγος ἐγίνετο οὐδείς, ‘uo account was (being) taken’—embroidered robes, etc., were at a discouut. λόγος, cp. 4. 135.

---

πρὸς τοὺς Αἰγινήτας: not necessarily the 500 hoplites, or the survivors of them (cp. cc. 28, 69 supra); but the animus of the story is obvious; see previous chapter.

ἀπεδείκνυσαν, duly reported or ‘accounted for’; cp. 8. 35.

---

ὥστε ... ἐγένοντο: a trausparent scandal, perhaps of Attic origin, which Hdt. could hardly have thus accepted, or endorsed, had he known as much about the Aiginetans when he first penned this passage as he afterwards came to know; cp. 2. 178 etc. It is very unlikely that this scandal is to be dated (as Stein suggests) after the expulsion of the Aiginetans from their island in 431 B.C. Aiginetan wealth and greatness was a thing of the past after 457 B.C., but the scandal in regard to their origin does not necessitate even the inference that they were no more when it circulated; rather indeed the reverse: φθόνος dealt with the living present; cp. 7. 236 and note to previous chapter, l. 8.

---

ἀρχήν, ‘originally,’ cp. Index. The plural πλοῦτοι, perhaps because the wealth was not ἐν τῷ κοινῷ, but distributed in several holdings (not like the Latin divitiae, fortunae, bona, opes, etc.); cp. Plato Rep. 618 B. The article, as with ἀκινάκας above.

ἐνθεῦτεν: neither temporal nor local, but causal; cp. Thuc. 1. 5. 1 “τον πλεῖστον τοῦ βίου ἐντεῦθεν ἐποιοῦντο”, Aristot. Eth. N. 5. 3. 6 = 1131 a 23 ἐντεῦθεν αἱ μάχαι καὶ τὰ ἐγκλήματα ὅταν κτλ.

οἵ, ‘for they . .’ exchanged on the χρύσεα χαλκείων principle: ἅτε ἐόντα χαλκὸν δῆθεν. With the innocence of the helots (who, however, in this case were only robbers robbed) Wesseling and many commentators since have compared what Philippe de Comines, 5. 2, has to say of the Helvetians and their treatment of the spoil after the defeat of Charles the Bold at Granson, A.D. 1476. The anecdote in Hdt. may be intended not merely to discredit the Aiginetans but to raise a laugh at the expense of Sparta, with its iron money and so on. As a matter of fact the glint of gold was as recognizable in Sparta as anywhere in the Greek world (cp. 1. 69, 3. 148, 5. 51); if there was any pilfering on the field, and selling of stolen goods, no doubt the thieves sold cheap, not so much because they did not know the difference between gold and brass, as because they had to get rid of stolen goods as quickly as possible.