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

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<οἱ> ἤρεσε: cp. 8. 58; App. Crit. Stein defends the aorist κατεργάσασθαι after ὐπέοχετο by reff., c. 134 supra, 5. 106, 6. 2, 1. 24.

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Ὑδάρνεα καὶ τῶν ἐστρατήγεε Ὑ.: cp. cc. 83 and 211 supra. This is probably the first action of ‘the Immortals.’ Does Hdt. avoid the term from its having a touch of profanity for Greek ears? Cp. note c. 211 supra.

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περὶ λύχνων ἁφάς, ‘about the time of lamp-lighting,’ i.c. an hour after sunset, as by our law? Or earlier (as at sea)? At any rate far more graphic than by the clock: yet the phrase is a ἅπαξ λ. in Hdt., but occurs Diodor. 19. 31. It may be nearly equivalent to the posting of the first watch (cp. 9. 51). For a similarly picturesque phrase cp. c. 223 infra.

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τὴν δὲ ἀτραπὸν ταύτην. Naturally the Malians knew the path (presnmably from time immemorial), and it had actually been used in the war between the Thessalians and the Phokians to turn the position of the Phokian wall; cp. c. 176 supra.

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ἐκ τόσου δὴ ... Μηλιεῦσι. The point of this remark is not very obvions, unless it be taken ironically, ‘for all that long time the Malians had been making an ill use of their discovery’ <*> (i.e. the path); or, more simply, ‘it was indeed a long time since that the Malians had demonstrated the ill use the path might be put to.’ Macaulay, following Stein, takes χρηστή to refer not to ἡ ἀτραπός but to ἡ ἐσβολή, which seems formally scarce possible, and materially not less obscure (“so long ago as this had the pass been proved by the Malians to be of no value”). The existence of the path could not render the pass wholly worthless; it is the Phokian wall, rather than the pass, which challenges remark in the previous sentence; but Hdt., having mentioned the two betrayals of the Phokians by Malians (i.) to the Thessalians, (ii.) to the king, might well add that Malians had long been t<*>ning their knowledge of the path to ill account.