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

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ὡμολόγησαν ἐπὶ τούτοισι. The terms upon which (ἐπί) Thebes surrendered cannot have been confined to the extradition of Timagenidas, Attaginos, and a few others; the depression of Thebes for the next twenty years could hardly be accounted for on that hypothesis. The ὁμολογία must have included further terms: the break-up of the Boiotian confederacy, the ‘autonomy’ of the Boiotian cities, the overthrow of Theban hegemony, possibly some revision of the Theban constitution itself, possibly a fine. Nothing exhibits the position of affairs during the period so well as the coinage of Boiotia; cp. B. Head, Coins of Boiotia (1881) pp. 20 ff., Hist. Num. (1887) pp. 291 ff., while the occasion and rationale of the Spartan expedition of 457 B.C. (cp. c. 35 supra） supplies an argument e contrario.

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Παυσανίης ἀπέλυσε: another tribute to the magnanimity of the Spartan general, unqualified by any insinuation of bribery or corruption. In thus distinguishing between the guilt of various members of one family, and refusing to hold the children responsible for the father's crimes, Pausanias exhibits an advance upon the good old morality of the fable ex hypothesi related by his contemporary Leotychidas at Athens some ten years earlier; cp. 6. 86. Baehr extols Pausaniae animum vere sublimem et a ... superbia ... alienum. Blakesley remarks that Attaginos was at large, and therefore formidable, and suspects Pausanias of medism already! We may be content to note the hint of a growing consciousness of individual responsibility, proper to an age of reflexion and liberty.

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τοὺς δὲ ἄλλους ἄνδρας: the omission of their number and names, the anomaly of the grammatical construction, the violence of the proceeding itself, all point to an unresolved problem behind this passage. The anacoluthon may be softened by referring οἳ μέν to οἱ Θηβαῖοι, but the historical situation is not thereby lightened.

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ἐδόκεον ἀντιλογίης τε κυρήσειν, ‘were expecting to be put on trial,’ or, to be called upon for a defence; Blakesley renders ἀντ. “pleadings on each side.” The τε should naturally follow the verb, and relates to καὶ δὴ ... ἐπεποίθεσαν. The 2nd perf. πέποιθα serves as “present middle” (Veitch, Gk. Verbs sub v. Il. 4. 325 etc. “rare in Attic prose,” Thuc. 2. 42. 4 ἐλπίδι μὲν τὸ ἀφανὲς τοῦ κατορθώσειν ἐπιτρέψαντες, ἔργῳ δὲ περὶ τοῦ ἤδη ὁρωμένου σφίσιν αὐτοῖς ἀξιοῦντες πεποιθέναι), and the pl. p. as an imperfect.

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διωθέεσθαι: the word has caused the commentators trouble; the use of the present is anomalous, and there is no clear object expressed. For suggested emendations cp. App. Crit. Baehr supplies τὴν αἰτίην out of the preceding, i.e. crimen pecuniis amoliri.

The verb διωθέεσθαι is used 4. 102 (τὸν Δαρείου στρατὸν ίθυμαχίῃ διώσασθαι） simply as a strengthened form of <*>θέεσθαι (cp. c. 25 supra), and so in Demosthenes 21. 124 (διεωσάμην ... ψευδῆ λόγον καὶ συκοφαντίαν), but also ‘to push through,’ to push apart, to break one's way through, as in c. 102 infra διωσάμενοι γὰρ τὰ γέρρα Might it not here be used without an object, in an absolute way: ‘to push their way through,’ ‘to pull through’ (as we say), i.c. to get off? (The anomaly of the present is eased a little by referring οἳ μέν to οἱ Θηβαῖοι, who then believed the men were making their escape by means of bribery.)

ὡς παρέλαβε: sc. αὐτούς, i.e. τοὺς ἄνδρας παραλαβών.

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αὐτὰ ταῦτα ὑπονοέων, ‘suspecting (cp. ὑπονοήσαντες c. 99 infra) their intentions,’ or ‘just that very course.’

τὴν στρατιὴν ... ἅπασαν ἀπῆκε. Pausanias may have disbanded, or dismissed to their homes, from Thebes, the Athenians, and perhaps the Aiginetaus, and one or two other contingents; but it is very unlikely that the rest of the allied forces will have been disbanded at Thebes, or before reaching the Isthmos. There appears to be a tendency in this passage, i.e. in the source followed by Hdt. for the story, to make Pausanias himself wholly and solely responsible for the execution of (Timagenidas and) the anonymous Theban dévoués (was Asopodoros, c. 69 supra, among them? was Leontiades, 7. 233?). They are not tried by a Spartan court (like the Plataians fo<*> ‘atticism’ in 427 B.C., Thuc. 3. 5<*>-68), nor brought before a jury of the allies; Pausanias puts them to death out of hand. This appears to be a very arbitrary proceeding, just such as might be ascribed to him after his fall, at a time when various parties might be glad to wash their hands, at his expense, of anti-Theban conduct. Blakesley goes a long step further in damning the memory of Pausanias: he accepts this story just as it stands, for the facts, and suggests, as the explanation, that Pausanias had been already intriguing with the Persians, and “put the Theban oligarchs to death in order to conceal the evidenee which they might have given against him, had they been brought to trial.” But then Blakesley (with Ktesias) also believed that the battle of Plataia took place before the battle of Salamis, and was quite a small and trifling affair (virtually, indeed, a defeat for the Greeks). It is at least possible that the Theban prisoners were duly, or at least pro forma, put upon their trial at the Isthmos, and that this was indeed one of the conditions of their surrender (ἡμεῖς ἡμέας αὐτοὺς ἐς ἀντιλογίην παρέξομεν): Pausanias merely executed the sentence of the court.

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ἐς Κόρινθον = ἐς τὴν Κορινθιάδα, cp. c. 17 supra, probably an inaccuracy for ἐς τὸν Κορινθίων Ἰσθμόν, cp. 7. 195. There was probably a meeting, perhaps a final meeting, of the allies, at which the awards were made, offerings voted, immunities conferred, and the alliance perhaps reconstituted; cp. 8. 123 and c. 85 supra.