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

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Ἀράβιοι. One of the standing provinces of the empire on the Achaimenid inscriptions, and habitually grouped with Babylon, Assyria, and Egypt, but assuredly not including the whole peninsula (cp. 3. 91, 97). Ethnologically, we have here the purest Semitic stock of the empire, unless, indeed, these ‘Arabians’ are to be sought (with Rawlinson) in Africa, between the Nile valley and the Red Sea (2. 8). The Arabs of Asia were not vassals of Persia (3. 88).

ζειράς: “probably a Semitic word” (Stein), yet Hdt. also uses it of a Thracian garment, etc. (c. 75 infra). Schweighaeuser, Baehr translate ζείρα by sagum (=σάγος, Poly b. 2. 28. 7, 30. 1, apparently a Keltic garment and perhaps word), generally interpreted ‘a long flowing cloak.’ G. W. ap. Rawlinson makes it “a flowing dress, or petticoat (sic), very similar to their present costume.”

ὑπεζωμένοι seems to mean ‘uudergirt,’ ‘girt in,’ perhaps between the legs, to facilitate movement; hence the curious synonyms in Gloss. Herod. μίτρα ... . ζώνη. Cp. c. 62 supra.

τόξα παλίντονα. The epithet is Homeric, but of doubtful interpretation there (cp. Monro's Odyss. 21. 11). Here it plainly has a technical significance, and applies to a small strong bow, with a curve, or double curve, when unstrung, which has to be overcome and reversed when the bow is strung. Ammianus Marcellinus, in comparing the shores of the Euxine to a bow (22. 8), seems to have a bow of this kind in view: cum arcus omnium gentium f<*>exis curventur hastilibus, Scythici soli vel Parthici circumductis utrimque introrsus pandis et patulis cornibus effigiem lunae decrescentis ostendunt, medietatem recta et rotunda regula dividente. What Marcellinus predicates of the Scythian or Parthian, Hdt. predicates of the Arabian: that such a bow should have been ‘long’ (μακρά) seems very unlikely. Agathon the poet seems to have compared the letter Σ to a Skythian bow (Athenaeus 454).

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πρὸς δεξιά, ‘carried on the right side,’ as for example by the figure of the ‘Hittite’ in the Pass of Karabel, which Hdt. (2. 106) erroneously describes as carrying the bow in the left hand (as is usual).

Αἰθίοπες: as appears in the next chapter, the Ethiopians ὑπὲρ Αἰγύπτου are here intended. With them Hdt. passes from Asia to Libya, though by something of an inconsequence the same name in the next chapter leads him back to the confines of India. The frontiers of Asia and of Libya were, however, perhaps ill defined in his authority (cp. 4. 36 ff.). The ‘Ethiopians’ represent for Hdt. an indigenous African stock (4. 197). undoubtedly the negro, or negroid, among whom he came to distinguish two or three groups or sections, (a） the Ethiopians of Meroe, or next Egypt (2. 29, 30, 3. 97 etc.); (b) οἱ μακρόβιοι, 3. 17 f., who dwelt ‘on the southern sea’; (c) οἱ τρωγλοδύται (4. 183). Plainly the first alone are here in question, and they furnish a distinct type of armature (ἡ Αἰθιοπικὴ σκευή, cp. 2. 106), which is next described.

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ἐναμμένοι: Ionic for ἐνημμένοι; cp. ἐπαμμένους, 8. 105 infra (with genit.). Here δοράς must he supplied; cp. 5. 25 (ἀνθρωπέη). ὲνημμένος frequent in Aristophanes (διφθἐραν, Clouds 72; Ekkl. 80 παρδαλᾶς, Birds 1250 λεοντῆν, Frogs 430 κάλλιστα, Peace 1225, etc.).

ἐκ φοίνικος σπάθης, ‘of the stem of the palm (-leaf).’ σπ. ‘the spathe of the flower of many plants, especially of the palm-kind,’ L. & S. G. W. ap. Rawlinson observes that such bows can only have been used by inferior tribes.

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μακρά: μικρούς. How the arrows were small if the bows were large is not elear. Stein's remark that the larger the bow the smaller the pull does not seem helpful. Perhaps the arrows were short, not as compared with other arrows, but as compared with the bow. The reading is supported by Photius 723 (Agatharchides). The stone-tips were rather primitive, but still more paltry the horn-tipped lances.

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τῷ καὶ τὰς σφρηγῖδας γλύφουσι: sc. οἱ δακτυλιογλύφοι (Stein); τῷ relative, instrumental. G. W. ap. Rawlinson thinks the stone in question ‘an agate or some other of the silicious stones so common in Ethiopia.’ Is an agate hard enough to cut gems?—perhaps the soap-stone order. Theophrastus lap. 41 ἔνιοι δὲ λίθοι καὶ τὰς τοιαύτας ἔχουσι δυνάμεις εἰς τὸ μὴ πάοχειν, οἶον τὸ μὴ γλύφεσθαι σιδηρίοις ἀλλὰ λίθοις ἑτέροις ib. 43; ἔνιοι δὲ λίθοις ἄλλοις γλύφονται, σιδήροις δ᾽ οὐ δύνανται (quot. ap. H. Blumner, Technologie iii. (1884) 295 n.). It is not clear whether Hdt. is thinking of powdered stone, or of direct use of the point, in engraving. Perhaps he hardly means that the Ethiopian arrow-head is actually used in gem-cutting, but merely that the arrow-head was ‘as hard as diamonds.’ Cp. 2. 86 (with Wiedemann's note).

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ῥόπαλα τυλωτά: cp. c. 63 supra; but these are not armed with iron. Snch clubs are still in use, “made of acacia or of ebony, and called lissan, from the supposed resemblance to a tongue,” G. W. ap. Rawlinson.

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τὸ μὲν ἥμισυ, ‘upper and lower,’ or ‘back and front,’ or ‘left and right’? γύψος (ἡ), evidently white; cp. 8. 27 (white chalk). μίλτος (ἡ), vermilion; cp. 4. 191, 194.

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Ἀρσάμης ὁ Δαρείου <τε> καὶ Ἀρτυστώνης τῆς Κύρου θυγατρός: this Achaimenid rejoices in the name of his great-grandfather (cp. c. 11 supra); his brother is mentioned below (c. 72). Aischylus makes ‘great Arsames’ governor of Egypt (Pers. 37), one of the few nominal agreements of Aeschylus with Hdt.'s list, and afterwards kills him at Salamis (Pers. 308). Artystone, the sister of Atossa, evidently younger and much more attractive (cp. 3. 88). Was her image a Greek work? τὴν (rel.) στέρξας, εἰκὼ ἐποιήσατο: i.q. τὴν στέρξας, εἰκὼ αὐτῆς ἐποιήσατο or τῆς εἰκὼ ἐποιήσατο στέρξας αὐτήν. Cp c. 146 infra; ἐκέλευε σφέας τοὺς δορυφόρους περιάγοντας ἐπιδείκνυσθαι πάντα. εἰκώ: an Ionic form. Hdt. has εἰκόνα 2. 143, εἰκόνες 2. 130. Cp. Weir Smyth, § 523.