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σπονδὰς ἐποιήσατο: no doubt to the rising sun; cp. c. 54 supra. There Xerxes apparently acted in person.
ἐπισχὼν χρόνον: the participle absolutely; the accusative of duration; cp. 1. 175 ἀντέσχον χρόνον. ἀγορῆς ... πληθώρην: cp. 2. 173, and c. 215 supra. πληθώρη in a different connexion, c. 49 supra.
ἐπέσταλτο ἐξ Ἐπιάλτεω: not an elegant collocation of syllables. The pluperfect is strictly temporal. ἐπιστέλλειν does not appear to connote much authority.
ἡ κατάβασις ... ἡ περίοδός τε καὶ ἀνάβασις: the way down was shorter in actual distance (not merely in time). Leake in one place seems to contravert the truth of this statement (N.G. ii. 54). Rawlinson (ad l.) replies that if the descent by Ai Janni (a monastery) be taken as the track of Hydarnes instead of the more circuitous one preferred by Leake, Hdt.'s statement is correct. But Leake himself (ej op. p. 39) recognizes that ‘the summit’ was nearer to the east end of the ridge than to the Asopian plain, whence (according to him) Hydarnes had begun his march; so that Hdt.'s assertion is true, whatever the precise route followed from the summit (of the pass) to Alpenoi. Dr. Grundy's map unfortunately does not display the path ‘Anopaia’; his report, too, leaves some doubt as to the relative distances from the Asopos to the summit, and from the summit to Thermopylai, G.P.W. p. 302f. The whole distance, which Leake (op. c. 54) estimated at not less than 12 miles, Grundy puts at not much less than 17. The matter is a small one, and not a point on which anything important here turns. The actual time occupied by Hydarnes in descending from the ἀκρωτήριον in c. 217 —which it had taken them all night to reach—to his arrival at the Middle Gate in c. 225 infra, would not be more than 5 or 6 hours. But it is not to be supposed that Hdt. had footed the path.
τὴν ἐπὶ θανάτῳ ἔξοδον: a truly grand phrase, even suggesting the march out from Sparta, or Lakonia, for which ἔξοδος is the regular word; e.g. 9. 19 λείπεσθαι τῆς ἐξόδου: 9. 26 κοινῆς ἐξόδου γινομένης: Thuc. 2. 10. 1 “οἷα εἰκὸς ἐπὶ ἔξοδον ἔκδημον ἔχειν” (also of a mere ‘sally,’ Thuc. 5. 10. 1, etc.). Hdt. uses ἔξοδος 3. 14 (ἐπ᾽ ἑκάστῃ ἐξόδῳ) of men led out to execution (ἡγεόμενον ἐπὶ θάνατον); a law of Solon's enjoined good behaviour ταῖς ἐξόδοις τῶν γυναικῶν καὶ τοῖς πένθεσι καὶ ταῖς ἑορταῖς (Plutarch, Solon 21); and in literary composition, or criticism, the ἔξοδος was the close of the tragedy (Aristot. Poet. 12. 6=1452 B).
κατ᾽ ἀρχάς: on the first and second day, perhaps, thongh there had been little if any fighting on the second; cp. c. 212 supra. ἐπεξήισαν resumes ἔξοδος. τὸ εὐρύτερον τοῦ αὐχένος. The phrase is obscure. αὐχήν suggests rather a convexity than a concavity, rather a hill than a hollow, rather an isthmus than a tunnel; cp. 1. 72 (neck of Anatolia), 6. 37 (of Thrakian Chersonese). But Hdt. also uses the word in applica tion to waterways, 4. 85, 118 (Bosporos), 4. 89 (Istros). So here the neck might stand (a) for the pass as a whole, connecting the head and body of Hellas. But in this case Hdt. would be (erroneously) representing the Hellenes as advancing beyond the West Gate. Or again (b) the term might be applied to a section of the pass, to wit, ‘the Middle Gate’ itself, at which the Greeks were posted, and which they were defending. What then was the ‘neck’ of the Middle Gate? (i.) If the Gate is correctly conceived as a col, the road rising here up over a projecting spur of the mountain (Kallidromos), it would not be by nature the narrowest, or even a very narrow section of the pass, hence, indeed, the wall built across it (τὸ ἔρυμα τοῦ τείχεος, cp. c. 176). But this ‘spur,’ or the ‘saddle’ itself, might perhaps be called a ‘neck’; or again (ii.) the road here, as connecting the two semicircular theatres, behind and before ‘the Middle Gate,’ might perhaps be so designated. In either case the Spartans are here to bc thought advancing down the slope in front of the Phokian wall. But more probably (iii.) ‘the Middle Gate’ may be held to include a narrow stretch of roadway below the hill, and between Kallidromos and the sea, which, as Dr. Grundy has fairly shown (G.P.W. p. 286), connected in ancient times the hill, on which he places the Phokian wall, with the more open ground in the neigh bourhood of the hot springs. If so, that passage to the west, below the hill, might be the αὐχήν, the hill itself being presumably the head. (Dr. Grundy himself uses the term ‘neck’ of the ridge connecting the mound of the Middle Gate with the mouutain side, op. c. p. 288 bis, p. 289 bis, and also carries the ancient road over this very ‘neck.’) If the αὐχήν is this stretch of straight road below the mound or col, and flanked on the south by Kallidromos, on the north by the sea, then the Lakedaimonians must be conceived as advancing not merely beyond the wall and down the hill, but through this ‘neck’ into the more open theatre about the hot springs (τὸ εὐρύτερον: ἔξω τῶν στεινῶν). But in this case τὸ εὐρύτερον is hardly a part of the αὐχήν.
οἱ ἡγεμόνες τῶν τελέων: c. 82 supra, σημάντορες. On this idea that the ‘barbarians’ had to be flogged into battle (ἔχοντες μάστιγας ἐρράπιζον π. ἄν.) cp. c. 22 supra. It is an exaggeration that defeats its own purpose, diminishing the heroism of the Hellenes in proportion to the pusillanimity of their foe. Had Aristotle, Eth. N. 3. 8. 4=1116A, this story in view?
ἐσέπιπτον ... ἐς τὴν θάλασσαν: this they could not have done, unless the sea had been close in to the scene of action, the water fairly deep, and the fighting (if ἐσέπιπτον retain any sense of ‘falling,’ which is not the usual force of the word) on somewhat elevated ground. These conditions would have been better realized in immediate proximity to the Middle Gate itself than at some distance in front of it, and ἔξω τῶν στεινῶν. This observation supports Stein's view that there is a lacuna here after στεινῶν, and that the sentence ἔπιπτον ... ἀπολλυμἐνου should have found room in c. 210 (or perhaps, rather, in c. 212?). The change of subject from συμμίσγοντες (sc. οὶ Ελληνες by the previous context) to ἔπιπτον is almost intolerable.
ἦν δὲ λόγοσοὐδεὶς τοῦ ἀπολλυμένου: cp. 4. 135 τῶν ἦν ἐλάχιοτος ἀπολλυ- μένων λόγος. τὸ ἀπολλύμενον is here collective. How different the case of the free citizens of Hellas, c. 224 infra, all whose names were known and memorable!
ἐπιστάμενοι: perhaps merely ‘expecting’; cp. c. 152 and 8. 132. The latter part of this chapter is badly in want of a subject (cp. App. Crit.) but the want were best met by the transfer of the previous sentences; cp. l. 14 supra.
παραχρεὠμενοἰ τε καὶ ἀτέοντες: παραχρᾶσθαι, to despise, negleet, set at naught; cp. 8. 20, 4. 159, etc. On χρέωμαι as “the genuine Ionic form” cp. Weir Smyth, § 289. 3, p. 260. Whether we should understand τοὺς ἐχθρούς, or take the word as middle and absolute, is not clear. ἀτέειν is not used by Hdt. elsewhere; and only once in Homer, Il. 20. 332, in participle, as here (of the madness, wildness, of faeing hopeless odds).
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