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ἐνθαῦτα ... οὐκ ἐπισχήσω. This passage, and indeed the whole chapter, is polemical, argumentative, apologetic, a brief on behalf of Athens: generally supposed to have been written about the time of the outbreak of the Peloponnesian war (so Baehr, Rawlinson, Stein et al.) and certainly well suitmg the circumstances of that time. In that case, however, it must be regarded as among the passages last added to these Books, by the author's hand, unless we endorse the theory of Kirchhoff, which assumes that such notices of contemporary events mark just the points respectively reached, at the time of their occurrence, by the author, in the single and continuous composition of the work. It would also probably in that case have been composed at Athens, and for an Athenian audience. An insertion the whole chapter might be; for though the next chapter grows apparently out of the argument and conclusion of this one, that appearance might be a result of clever dove-tailing and revision. The tone of the chapter, however, seems addressed rather to a non-Athenian than to an Athenian public—unless we suppose Hdt. to be trying to win a very cheap cheer from his audience; and the positive ascription of the passage to the date of the Archidamian war assumes that the unpopularity of Athens dated only from the ‘thirties,’ and was a growth of ‘the years of Peace.’ Such a view implies a complete misreading of the history of the Pentekontaëteris. This passage might have been written opportunely any time between the breach with Sparta in 462 B.C. and the Thirty Years' Peace, as well as in the ‘thirties.’ It might belong to the first draft of the work; or, if an addition, it may have been added in the second period of composition, either in Greece or even at Thurii. Least of all need we locate its composition and publication in Athens: Hdt. is addressing a hostile world, not a jury packed in his favour. Cp. the Apology for the Argives, e. 152 infra, and Introduction, § 9. ἐνθαῦτα: here, ‘at this point of my work’; cp. Plato's ἐνταῦθα τοῦ λόγου, Krat. 412 E, Theait. 177 C. ἀναγκαίῃ ἐξέργομαι: cp. c. 96 supra.
ἐπίφθονον, ‘unpopular,’ ‘calculated to give offence,’ cp. Cicero, ad Att. 8. 3. 6 “(nonne) accipere (sc. triumphum) invidiosum ad bonos?” πρὸς τῶν πλεόνων ἀνθρώπων: πρός, ‘in the eyes of,’ cp. c. 138 supra, and especially 4. 205 πρὸς θεῶν ἐπίφθονοι. The φθόνος here is of the earth, earthy. ἀνθρώπων is not complimentary, and might suit ‘barbarians,’ Ionians, and such like, without excluding Spartans and other Dorians.
οὐκ ἐπισχήσω, sc. τὴν γνώμην, or ἀποδέξασθαι τὴν γνώμην. Either Hdt. is a hypocrite, or for this passage he deserves an echo of Heine's praise of Luther: er konnte Alles für die Wahrheit thun, nur nicht lügen! This formal and judicial utterance on Athens shows Hdt. in the most favourable light, whether as regards heart or head. The asyndeton (οὐκ ἐπισχήσω. εἰ κτλ.) gives it an added gravity.
εἰ ... ἐξέλιπον τὴν σφετέρην: but they did evacuate their land and city. What, then, does Hdt. mean? That Salamis was theirs, so that they did not clear completely out? Or is καταρρωδήσαντες the real predicate? It was not fear (but policy, strategy) that caused them to abandon their country. Or has Hdt. started by saying a little too much? He at once proceeds to qualify: ἢ καὶ μὴ ἐκλιπόντες, which implies the evacuation! What was in his mind, perhaps, was not so much the evacuation of Athens and Attica, as the complete abandonment of the Greek cause, and the departure to seek a new home elsewhere (cp. 8, 62, and here just below ἐκλιπεῖν τὴν Ἑλλάδα). The excitement of the moment produces some clumsiness, or inadequacy of thought and expression, as not seldom with Hdt. Cp. Introduction, § 11. τὸν ἐπιόντα: line 28 infra, and c. 138 supra; once or twice too often.
ἐπειρῶντο ἀντιούμενοι. Hdt. constructs πειρᾶσθαι with participles, e.g. cc. 148, 172 infra.
τειχέων κιθῶνες, perhaps a technical, not merely an Herodotean metaphor. We say not ‘tunic’ but ‘mantle’ or ‘curtain.’ Stein thinks it is a purely poetical phrase “perhaps out of an oracle.” The λάινος χιτών with which Hektor threatens Paris, Il. 2. 57 (not, surely, a ‘Stemgrab’ but ‘death by stoning’), is a purely poetical metaphor. So, too, Xenoph. Sym. 4. 38 (ἐν τῇ οἰκίᾳ） πάνυ μὲν ἀλεεινοὶ χιτῶνες οἱ τοῖχοί μοι δοκοῦσιν εἶναι, πάνυ δὲ παχεῖαι ἐφεστρίδες οἱ ὄροφοι. Baehr also quotes 1. 181 τὸ τεῖχος θώρηξ ἐστί. Athenaeus 99 d preserves a phrase of the orator Demades: τὸ δὲ τεῖχος “ἐσθῆτα τῆς πόλεως.” ‘If the Isthmus had been clothed (dressed, curtained, mantled) with a multitude (καὶ πολλοί) of walls built right across it . .’; τεῖχος ἐλαύνειν 9. 9.
προδοθέντες ὑπό, not quite of the same sense as in c. 137 supra (except as we might say, vulgo, ‘given away’).
οὐκ ἑκόντων ἀλλ᾽ ὑπ᾽ ἀναγκαίης: cp. c. 132 supra.
κατὰ πόλις ... στρατοῦ: κατὰ distributive. The Athenian orator ap. Thuc. 1, 73. 4 puts exactly the same point: it is strange that a point so obvious should seem to have required so much insistence.
καὶ ἀποδεξάμενοι ἔργα μεγάλα: καί not a eopula, but an intensive; vel, Baehr; quamvis, Stein. The sentence is a homage to Thermopylai, but the suggestion that, not merely a given body of Spartans on the battle-field, but the whole number of able-bodied citizens would have died the death, is so extreme that it naturally suggests the alternative of a conditional submission, which follows.
πρὸ τοῦ, chronological, cp. 8. 108 πρὸ τούτου, yet has the force of a logical alternative, which really excludes the preceding supposition.
ὁμολογίῃ ἂν ἐχρήσαντο contradicts flatly the words of Demaratos c. 102, and also spoils the effect of the heroic alternative just formulated; but it curiously anticipates the speech put into the month of Eurybiades 8. 108, and the action threatened by the Athenians themselves, 9. 11. Chileus too, 9. 9, repeats or anticipates points in this passage.
ἐπ᾽ ἀμφότερα is ambiguous, and may mean (a) ‘in both cases alike,’ ‘in either case,’ i.e. whether they died to the last man, or made terms with Xerxes, cp. 9. 97, 3. 87 (Sitzler and others); (b) ‘on both elements,’ ‘by sea and by land’: thus Stern; cp. c. 10 supra. Or (c), coming much to the same thing in sense as (b), though derived from the sense of (a), ‘both as respects the case of the Athenians and as respects the case of Lakedaimonians.’ (b) or (c） would be quite consistent with regarding the sentence ἢ ταῦτα ... πρὸς Ξέρξην as a later insertion. ὑπό with dat., ‘in subjection to.’ τὴν γὰρ ὠφελίην ... τῆς θαλάσσης only repeats the point already made above εἰ τοίνυν κτλ. The argument is also put into the mouth of Chileus the Tegeatan, 9. 9. infra, and is virtually conveyed in the advice of Demaratos, c. 235 infra.
ἁμαρτάνοι τὸ ἀληθές. The accnsative is peculiar, cp. App. Crit. Stein defends it on the analogy of ὁδὸν ἠμέλησε, c. 163 infra, et simil., where a word is anomalously constructed by the analogy of a synonym; and the number of such anomalies in Hdt. is altogether not inconsiderable. A substituted accusative is especially easy to forgi<*>e, and is here especially forcible.
τῶν πρηγμάτων, ‘sides,’ ‘interests.’ ῥέψειν, of course metaphorical, from the balance; cp. Il. 22. 43.
<*>μενοι .. ἐπεγείραντες. Blakesley wished to rewrite this passage; the readings are doubtful, τοῦτο and αὐτοί being the chief cruces, cp. App. Crit. Hdt. was undoubtedly somewhat excited when writing this chapter, and the order, or disorder, of his words shows it. τὸ Ἑλληνικόν: cp. 8. 144.
μετά γε θεούς: “post deos quidem.” Baehr, ‘next after’; cp. c. 168 infra. Not ‘if only the gods would let them.’ The victory of the Greeks is to Hdt. primarily a work of special intervention from above; cp. 8. 109.
οὐδὲ σφέας . ., ‘it was not they that . .’ χρηστήρια φοβερὰ ... καὶ ἐς δεῖμα βαλόντα. If φοβερά is taken in the active sense, then ἐς δεῖμα β. Is tautologous. A stronger sense seems gained by viewing the responses as effects and causes of fear: panic-stricken and panic-striking. The description of the oracular responses, ἐλθόντα ἐκ Δελφῶν, not, as it turns out, spontaneously, but in answer to inquiries, and their calculated effect (ἔπεισε ἐκλ. τ. Ἑλ.) seems to show an unusual detachment on Hdt.'s part, as though, when he wrote this passage, the glamour of Delphi had somewhat faded. (Is he regretting that he himself had been persuaded ἐκλιπεῖν τὴν Ἑλλάδα for a home in the west?)
ἀνέσχοντο ... δέξασθαι: ἀνέχεσθαι with infin. (or partic. 5. 19 ἀνέχευ ὁρέων) in the sense of τλῆναι, sustinere (eine sehr seltene Bedeutung, Stein).
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