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τὴν αὐτήν (sc. στολήν): as in ch. 72, 84. For this dress cf. i. 135 n. Τιγράνης fell at the head of the Persian army at Mycale (ix. 96, 102). Ἄριοι. To be distinguished from the Ἄριοι or Ἄρειοι of ch. 66. 1 n. (cf. iii. 93. 3 n.). The word used here in Aesch. Choeph. 423 = Persian ariya, Zend airya, Sansk. ârya = the worthy, noble (cf. E. Meyer, i. 572 n.), and would apply to all Iranian races who thus distinguished themselves from the unclean barbarians (Zend anairya). So Darius calls himself on his tomb at Nak-shi-Rustam ‘an Achaemenid, a Persian, the son of a Persian, an Arian of Arian race’. In Vend. i. 3. 6, Airyana-Vaego, the first land created is the garden of Eden and paradise of the Iranian religion. Μηδείης. This legend, which arises from yet wilder etymological guesswork than that of Perses, seems to be old; cf. Hesiod, Theog. 1000 ἥ γε δμηθεῖσ᾽ ὑπ᾽ Ἰήσονι ποιμένι λαῶν ι Μηδεῖον τέκε παῖδα, and the use of Μηδεῖοι for Μῆδοι in Pind. Pyth. i. 78. For its developed form cf. Paus. ii. 3. 8; Apollod. i. 9. 28. The authority of the Medes can hardly vouch for more than the existence of the name Ἄριοι; but H. clearly believed that the Oriental nations claimed, or at least accepted, these mythical connexions with Greece, so the Persians (i. 1 n.; vii. 61, 150; vi. 54), the Egyptians (ii. 91, 98. 2, 113 f.), &c. Yet only Hellenized interpreters can have done so.
Κίσσιοι: cf. iii. 91. 4 n. ἀντὶ δὲ τῶν πίλων: idiomatic for ἀντὶ τοῦ εἶναι πιλοφόροι. Cf. Arist. Poet. 4 ἀντὶ τῶν ἰάμβων κωμῳδοποιοὶ ἐγένοντο. μιτρηφόροι. The mitra seems to have been a kind of turban, covering the head from the forehead to the nape of the neck and the chin, under which it passed, as seen on a Persian in the Pompeian mosaic of Issus. Rawlinson, however, thinks it may have been a mere fillet, as seen on Assyrian bas-reliefs and on the frieze from Susa. Ὀτάνεω. Stein distinguishes Otanes, father of Amestris (ch. 40, 61, 82), not only from the son of Sisamnes (v. 25, &c.), but also from the conspirator of Bk. III (cf. vi. 43). The latter would no doubt have been old for a command, as he must have been about eighty in 480 B. C., since he had a marriageable daughter in 522 B. C. (iii. 68). But probably Stein is wrong. The Otanes here must have been a person of great importance, since he was the king's fatherin-law, and he may have been only nominally general of the Persians, like the colonels of English regiments. His sons, too, have high commands, and one of them, Anaphes or Onophas, has the same name as the son of the conspirator (cf. iii. 68 n.). Macan suggests that the fact that H. seems only to know of one Otanes in Bk. VII, as contrasted with the full knowledge in Bks. III and V, points to the earlier composition of Bk. VII. Ὑρκάνιοι: cf. iii. 92. 2 n.
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