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λέγεται δὲ καί: the formula itself expresses a doubt; Hdt. has, indeed, already committed himself to the previous story, apparently representing the departure of the troops as an act of insubordination or desertion. He proceeds to harmonize the two λόγοι within certain limits. That neither story explained the retreat of some of the troops, the larger portion, and the retention of others, the lesser portion, or that there was any alternative explanation possible, does not seem to have occurred to Hdt. He appears to think that Leonidas would have had the whole forces under his lead stay and share his inevitable fate; and the more the better. The solid fact, that the hundreds were cut to pieces at Thermopylai, while the thousands lived to fight at Plataiai, appears to have made no impression upon our author's mind.
μὴ ἀπόλωνται κηδόμενος: certainly the part of a rational commander, it being admitted that their remaining at Thermopylai meant certain death, without any adequate return of loss inflicted on the Persian. αὐτῷ δὲ καὶ Σπαρτιητέων τοῖσι παρεοῦσι. The construction here is rather ambiguous. Strictly αὐτῷ cannot be reflexive, and therefore simply reports a matter of fact, asserted in the λόγος, or, as below, in the γνώμη. But Kueliner and Baehr take this αὐτῷ as ‘for himself,’ though ‘not for ἑαυτῷ,’ but after an ἔφη, or φάναι (λέγεται), or after an ἐνόμιζε (out of κηδόμενος), and so too below. In regard to the substance, Leonidas perhaps sent the Λακεδαιμόνιοι away, and only retained his own bodyguard, together, of course, with the Boiotian contingent, and possibly others (Lokrians?). The heroism of the king's decision is not cheapened if we suppose it dictated not by mere blind loyalty to the real or supposed maxims of Spartan warfare, but by a well-considered plan of action, designed to save the situation, or at least to save as many fighting men for Greece as possible. That the king and the Spartans were bound to stay to the last is obvious: their retreat must have meant a panic flight for most of the others.
ταύτῃ καὶ αὐτὸς τὴν γνώμηυ πλεῖστος εἰμί: with the form of expression cp. 1. 120 (Astyage loq.) καὶ αὐτός, ὦ μάγοι, ταύτῃ πλεῖστος γνώμην εἰμί. Also 5. 126 αὐτῷ δὲ Ἀρισταγόρη̣ ἡ πλείστη γνώμη ἦν ἐς τὴν Μύρκινον ἀπάγειν. Cp. also Thuo. 3. 31. 2 τὸ πλεῖστον τῆς γνώμης εἶχεν (sc. ὁ Α᾿λκίδας) ὅτι τάχιστα τῆ̣ Πελοποννήσῳ πάλιν προς μεῖζαι. But cp. App. Crit. With a very careful writer the superlative adjective would imply the existence of more than two alternatives: so in the cases of Alkidas and Aristagoras. But here μᾶλλον (if read) would counteract that inference, which would in any case be too much for Hdt., and there is no sign here of ‘three courses’: the problem being merely whether the allies had or had not orders from Leonidas to depart.
ἐλείπετο ... οὐκ ἐξηλείφετο. The jingle is not pleasing. Stein, who takes αὐτῷ supra as strictly objective and constructed with λέγεται direct, observes that these verbs are in the imperfect, because they are intended to convey what, according to Hdt.'s opinion, was in the mind of Leonidas.
ἐκέχρηστο ... αὐτίκα κατ᾽ ἀρχάς. The pluperfeet is a genuine temporal pluperfect; but the actual date intended is only vaguely signified. It seems to coincide with the date of the Argive intelligence (c. 148 supra πυθέσθαι γὰρ αὐτίκα κατ᾽ ἀρχὰς τὰ ἐκ τοῦ βαρβάρου ε<*>γειρόμενα ἐπὶ τὴν Ἑλλάδα): but how does it stand in relation to the (supposed) date of the oracles to Athens, cc. 140-1, with which the tenor of this response is wholly inconsistent? (This observation only convicts Hdt. of an oversight, and might become a fresh argument against the ostensible date of the responses to Athens, if only the story here could be accepted as historical.)
ἢ Λακεδαίμονα ... ἢ ... ἀπολέσφαι. This appears to be a brief and lucid explanation of the verses which follow: rarely did Delphi put the future alternatives so clearly before the consultants. In this case both the verses and the gloss appear to be ex eventu. They serve a double purpose: (1) Delphi finds in this story a part of its apology, or rehabilitation; (2) Sparta finds a consolation, a justification for the apparent failure at Thermopylai. The story is intrinsically improbable, and its historical eredibility is further damaged by the preservation of a variant in Diodoros 11. 4, which, however, only puts the ‘devotio’ of Leonidas and his men in its proper perspective, if any such oracle had really been obtained by Sparta before the war. There Leonidas leaves Sparta, with full knowledge and deliberate intention of incurring his fate, in order to compass the prediction, the Ephors being fully cognizant of his purpose. The earlier and more tentative form of the legend in Hdt. appears as an alternative to the historical traditions, which represent the defence of Thermopylai as a serious undertaking, intended and expected to succeed. Hdt. has combined, or at least ‘contaminated,’ the two traditions, the fact and the fable; but has preserved, or obtained, neither in its full form. More might surely have been ascertained of the true story of Thermopylai-Artemision in his day than he has either consciously or implieitly presented: by a sort of nemesis he is diverted from the investigation of the human facts by his partiality for divine fictions.
λέγοντα ω<*>῀δε: this use of λέγειν for the written response should save the least alert reader of Hdt. from the wild inferences regarding the purely oral character of his sources, which have been largely based upon his use of such formulae of the vox viva. Cp. Introduction, § 10, and c. 228 infra.
ὑμῖν δ᾽: is this response conceived as a contrast, or continuation, of the one to the Athenians in c. 140? οἰκήτορες: a word used with strict appropriateness of the Spartans; cp. c. 153 supra.
Περσεἰδῃσι. Περσείδης is a son or descendant of Perseus as in Thuc. 1. 9. 2. Had the Delphic Oracle adopted the theory (from Argos) given cc. 61, 150 supra, according to which Πέρσης is the son of Περσεύς? In 1. 125 Hdt. himself speaks of the Achaimenid clan (φρήτρη) as the source of οἱ βασιλέες οἱ Περσεῖδαι, a text which passes unchallenged. Was this oracle older than the prose interpretation. above given, and intended to do duty in a war between Sparta and Argos? Certainly it might have been fulfilled by the fall of a Spartan Heraklei<*> in an Argive war, even though the Herakleids and Perseids alike had been long dethroned in Argos. But more probably metrical convenience and the fables of the logographers determined the use of the word here, the response itself being coined ex eventu for the case of Leonidas.
Λακεδαίμονος οὖρος. The proper name here is masculine; cp. Κέκροπος οὖρος c. 141 supra. There was a hero Lakedaimon, son of Zeus and Taÿgete, who wedded Sparta, daughter of Eurotas, Pausan, 3. 1. 2: his shrine was at Alesiai near Therapne, ib. 20. 2. Amyklas was his son, 7. 18. 5, and a Eurydike his daughter, 3. 13. 8. On the way from Sparta to Amyklai was a sanctuary of the Graces, of which he was reputed founder, 3. 18. 6; cp. 9. 35. 1. For further reff. Roscher, Lexikon, 1812. (Therapne 6. 61 supra.）
τόν is finely demonstrative, but grammatically obscure, obviously not referring to βασιλῆ nor to Ἡρακλέους much less to Λακεδαίμονος, but apparently to some one like the ὀξὺς Ἄρης of the Athenian oracle, c. 140 supra. ταύρων ... οὐδὲ λεόντων: Stein, after Baehr, sees a reference to the λέοντες πολλοὶ καὶ βόες ἄγριοι in c. 126 supra; but Hdt. has not composed the oracle, nor had the Pythia perused his work. The reference is to the name and the lion of Leonidas, c. 225 infra. The bulls are thrown in. σχήσει μένος ... ἔχει μένος . . σχήσεσθαι exhibit the varying force of ἔχειν (cp. c. 164 supra), and the poverty of the Delphic poet's dictionary.
τῶνδ᾽ ἕτερον: i.e. ἢ ἄστν ἢ βασιλῆ. διὰ ... δάσηται, a tmesis; διαδατέεσθαι 8. 121 infra, 4. 145.
ταῦτα ... ἐπιλεγόμενον resumes the construction interrupted by the insertion of the oracle. Perhaps the versified oracle was not in the first draft of Hdt.'s work. (1) The rendering of the oracle in both prose and verse, and first in prose, is unusual; (2) the suspension and resumption of the construction is observable; (3) ταῦτά τε δή here just marks the point of insertion above, ταυ<*>τα δέ σφι. But perhaps the process of insertion began with the record of the oracle in prose, and this ταῦτά τε δή originally followed immediately on ἐξηλεἰφετο. We should then have in this passage three strata of deposit, representing the three drafts in which these Books (7-9) seem to have been composed. Cp. Introduction, § 9. κλέος καταθέσθαι: cp. 9. 78.
μούνων: Plutarch (de Malign. 31) gives μούνων. The MSS. here have μοῦνον, which might come to the same thing if it be taken (with Blakesley) to agree with κλέος, but not if interpreted with him, ‘pure, unmixed with any discordant incidents.’ As agreeing with Λεωνίδην it would give an absurd sense.
οὕτω, with ἀκόσμως.
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