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

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ἐποιέετο ... τὴν ὁδόν, ‘marched,’ or, as we might say, ‘made (or was making) its way.’ Three stages, of widely varying length, are specified in this chapter. I. Out of Lydia into Mysia, or from Sardes to the Kaikos. The route is but vaguely indicated: did the forces go from Sardes to Smyrna? or by a more northerly road, down the Hermos valley? or by a still more northerly route such as afterwards led from Pergamum to Sardes? or a part by one, a part by another way? Whatever the route, this stage would have occupied not less than five to six days. II. From the Kaikos, through Atarneus, to the city of Karene, leaving Mount Kane on the left hand. The route is here clearly given; the distance would only be some twenty R. miles, perhaps a march of two days. III. From Karene into the Troad, and Ilion, a march of several days. The route is indicated, but is not free from obscurity; there is difficulty, for example, in understanding how the column could leave Ida on the left hand if it marched via Antandros. Is ‘left’ a slip for ‘right’? Or is the point of view not that of the column en route but of a reporter farther north, e.g. at Abydos? Or did a part of the foree really cut across inland, while the main part took the coast route (as Blakesley suggested)? Anyway, from Karene to Adramyttion would be a long day's march; from Adramyttion to Antandros another; from Antandros to Ilion would take at least three days more. Xenophon and his remnant made this very march in the opposite direction: Anab. 7. 8. 7 ἐντεῦθεν ἐπορεύοντο διὰ τῆς Τρῳάδος, καὶ ὑπερβάντες τὴν Ἰδὴν εἰς Ἄντανδρον ἀφικνοῦνται πρῶτον, εἶτα παρὰ θάλατταν πορευόμενοι τῆς Μυσίας [MSS. Ἀσίας: Λυδίας] εἰς Θήβης πεδίον. 8. ἐντεῦθεν δι᾽ Ἀτραμυττείου καὶ Κυνωνίου [Κερτώνου̣] ὁδεύσαντες παρ᾽ Ἀταρνέα εἰς Καΐκου πεδίον ἐλθόντες Πέργαμον καταλαμβάνουσι τῆς Μυσίας. Also Thuc. 8. 108. 4 shows that hoplites could march from Abydos to Antandros πεζῇ διὰ τῆς Ι῎δης τοῦ ὄρους. It appears then that there was a route from Ilion to Antandros crossing Ida; this would probably follow the line of the Skamandros (Mendere Chai) to Kebrene, on past the modern Turkish village of Evjilar, and thence “across the spurs of the Kaz Dagh (Mount Ida) to Narli (eight hours) and Edremit (seven hours)” (Murray's Asia Minor, p. 69, 1895). This route, however, from Edremit (Adramyttion) would leave the bulk of Ida on the right, not on the left. A road passing east of Ida, from Zeitunlii, apparently exists (Sitzler in Bursian's Jahresb. 86. 67 f.). It is possible that all three routes were used by the king's forces; the coast road, however, must have been taken by the σκευοφόροι. It seems that Hdt. himself had not been over the ground. Holder apparently solves the difficulty by repunctuation: Ἴδην δὲ λαβών, ἐς ἀριστερὴν χεῖρα ἤιε κτλ. The form of the expression is harsh; and why should the king have had to ‘take’ Ida?

ἐπί τε ποταμὸν Κάικον κ.γ.τ. Μυσίην. The valley of the Kaikos and the plain of Thebe were reckoned to ‘Mysia’ even after the Lydian conquest of the district. Atarneus is expressly described by Hdt. (1. 160, 8. 106) as a Mysian city. The people of Astyia (Ἀστυρηνοί), between Adramyttion and Antandros, are described in the Attic tribute-lists as Μυσοί (cp. Hill's Sources, sub nom.). Karene was a πόλις Μυσίας according to Steph. B., and unfortunately Adramyttion too (cp. infra). Thraemer, Pergamos, p. 279. Cp. also 6. 28.

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Κάνης ὄρος. The construction is unusual. Stein cps. Thuc. 4. 46. 1 “ἐν τῷ ὄρει τῆς Ἰστώνης”. There was a town hard by named Κάναι: cp. Forbiger, ii. 152-3.

διὰ τοῦ Ἀταρνέος: perhaps the district, not the city, both bearing the same name; a rich grain-growing neighbo<*>rhood, yet ‘a field of blood,’ or at least ‘the price of iniquity’; cp. 1. 160, 6. 29, 8. 106 infra. Xen. Hell. 3. 2. 11 describes the city of Atarneus as a χωρίον ἰσχυρόν, which it took Derkylidas eight months to reduce (398-7 B.C.).

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Καρήνην, mentioned by Pliny (5. 32) and Steph. B. (πόλις Μυσίας); but perhaps only from this passage. (Should we have read Καρήνη̣ in 6. 29 for Μαλήνῃ?)

Θήβης πεδίου, “plaine extrêmement fertile qui va d'Antandros jusqu'au delà d'Adramytte,” Radet, La Lydie, p. 175. It seems hypercritical to object to Hdt.'s narrative here that if Xerxes had gone by the coast route the order should have been (1) Adramyttion, (2) Theban plain, (3) Antandros. R. Virchow, Sitzb. Berl. Akad. (1892), 978 ff. The plain extends from Adramyttion to Antandros; the former is now its principal place. Hdt. names first the larger space, and then its terminals.

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Ἀδραμύττειόν τε πόλιν. The form in Thucydides (and others) appears as Ἀτραμύττιον. There was considerable variety in spelling the name (cp. Steph. B. s.v., and App. Crit. above). The position of the ancient Adramytteion is no longer identified with the modern Adramyti, the name having been transferred about 1100 A.D. to the town on the site of Thebe (Hirschfeld in Pauly-Wissowa, i. 404); ‘the ancient Adramyttion lay on a hill by the sea, S. of the Euenos.’ Hdt. is the first extant author to name the city. Thuc. 5. 1 mentions it as a place of refuge offered by the Persian Pharnakes for some of the Delians expelled by the Athenians in 422 B.C., and later (8. 108. 4) records the treacherous butchery of the refugees by the Persian Arsakes. Xenophon touched the place (Anab. 7. 8. 8 quoted above). The city had a harbour (Paul sailed in a ship of Adramyttion, Acts 27. 2); and notwithstanding its sufferings in the Asiatic wars retained its importance in the times of Cicero, Strabo, and Pliny (Cic. pro Flacc. 68, Brut. 316; Strabo 614, 660; Pliny 5. 123). According to the foundation-legend, ap. Steph. B., it was named from Adramytes (Adramys), brother of Kroisos (ὡς Ἀριστοτέλης ἐν πολιτείαις καὶ ἄλλοι); but Xanthos (?) made Sadyattes his father (Nicol. Damas. Fr. 61), and seems to have recognized a king of Lvdia of the name (F.H.G. i. p. 40). Dikaiarchos (Fr. 11, F.H.G. ii. p. 238) made him a ‘Pelasgian’ (perhaps in the interests of the ‘Athenian colony’?) in a distinctly Hellenising version. Radet (La Lydie, p. 199) treats Adramys as an historical person, and dates the foundation 584 B.C. (‘Adramys,’ like Attalos, Atys, Adrastos, has a suspiciously ‘divine’ air about it; but where the etymology, ‘court of death,’ ‘mansion of death,’ comes from, Cruden's Concordance, sub v., is not stated).

Ἄντανδρον τὴν Πελασγίδα, cp. 5. 26. Strabo, 606 (or rather Alkaios, our oldest authority), describes it as ‘Lelegian.’ Thuc. 8. 108. 4 makes the Antandrians Αἰολῆς. Its name appears on the τάξις φόρου of 425 B.C. (Hicks' Manual2 (1901), p. 119). It was seized by the Lesbian exiles in 424 B.C. (Thuc. 4. 52. 3), but recovered by the Athenians in the same summer (c. 75). Lost apparently by the Athenians to the Persians after the Sicilian disaster, it was liberated by a body of Lakedaimonian hoplites in 411 B.C. (Thuc. 8. 108), but was apparently subject to Pharnabazos a little later (Xen. Hell. 1. 1. 25), when the Syracusans not only build ships, but help to rebuild the walls of Antandros, receiving ‘citizenship’ in return for their services. The control of the woods of Ida was a considerable source of profit to the Antandrians; Thuc. 4. 52, Xen. l.c., Strabo 606.

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πρῶτα μέν is not clearly answered by a corresponding clause with δέ. Abicht takes the failure of the Skamandros as the intended complement; but the panic afterwards makes a better parallel to the storm. (So too Stein.)