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

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διελέλυτο: pl. p. There is no more actual fighting goingon. Aischylos, Pers. 428, does not say that the actual fighting, but that the weeping and wailing lasted ἕως κελαινῆς νυκτὸς ὄμμ̓ ἀφείλετο. Hdt. plainly implies that the battle was over, in time apparently for the Greeks to apprehend a fresh attack.

κατειρύσαντες, to land. In the Odyssey it is always used of dragging the vessel down into the sea.

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ὅσα ταύτῃ ... ἔτι ἐόντα: i.e. not yet driven by wind or current to the Attic coast; see just below. They would easily possess themselves of the wrecks west of Psyttaleia. Evidently at first they did not realize the magnitude of their success, or the depression of the enemy, but expected (ἐλπίζοντες) that the king would order a fresh attack.

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τῇσι περιεούσῃσι νηυσί: not merely, or so much, those which had returned to Phaleron (c. 92 supra), as the squadron which had moved round the island the night before, and were still perhaps almost intact, c. 76 supra. The text may originally have proceeded Ξέρξης δέ κτλ. c. 97 infra; the intervening passage has the air of a παρενθήκη (cp. 7. 171), or προσθήκη (4. 30), added in his second draft by Hdt. after a visit to Athens; cp. Introduction, § 9.

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ὑπολαβών: as in 7. 170 supra.

τὴν ἠιόνα τὴν καλεομένην Κωλιάδα: Kolias is a cape, or promontory (ἄκρα ἤτοι ἀκτή, Steph. Byz.), some twenty stades from Phaleron, cp. Pausan. 1. 1. 5 “ἀπέχει δὲ σταδίους εἴκοσιν ἄκρα Κωλιάς: . . Κωλιάδος δέ ἐστιν ἐνταῦθα Ἀφροδίτης ἄγαλμα καὶ Γενετυλλίδες ὀνομαζόμεναι θεαί”. Leake's identification of Kolias with Hagios Georgios (τρεῖς Πύργοι), the eastern limit of the bay of Phaleron, is endorsed by Milchhoefer: Strabo 398 places it apparently further south, in the neighbourhood of Anaphlystos. Cp. Hitzig - Bluemner, Pausanias, l.c. ἠιών, as in 7. 44 supra.

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ὥστε ... τὸ εἰρημένον: the structure and argument of the passage are remarkable: what Hdt. is apparently concerned to say is that τὸν χρησμὸν ἀποπλησθῆναι ὃς ἐλελήθεε πάντας τοὺς Ἕλλήνας, sc. τὸ πολλοῖσι ἔτεσι πρότερον τούτων ἐν χρησμῷ Λυσιστράτῳ Ἀθηναίῳ ἀνδρὶ χρησμολόγῳ εἰρημένον—but, having started on the fulfilment of prophecy, he is led to say a good word in passing for the much more extensive and less obscure prophecy of Bakis. When he started, τὸν χρησμόν may have been intended for the prophecy of Lysistratos, but as it is diverted to Bakis, the idea is resumed in the words τὸ εἰρημένον ἐν χρησμῷ.

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τόν τε ἄλλον πάντα ... Βάκιδι. On Bakis cp. c. 77 supra. There was presumably extant in Hdt.'s time a pretty extensive oracular poem ascribed to Bakis, the reference of which to Salamis was obvious. Cp. Introduction, § 10. καὶ Μουσαίῳ is to be removed as a gloss: otherwise the problem of the authorship of the poem is hopelessly confused. On Musaios cp. 9. 43.

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πολλοῖσι ἔτεσι πρότερον τούτων: τούτων referring not to Hdt. and his own date of composition, still less to Bakis and Musaios, or the oracles of Bakis, but to the battle of Salamis, and the circumstances by which the prediction was fulfilled. The date is unfortunately vague: does it refer to the times of Peisistratos, or of Solon, or to still more ancient days?

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Λυσιστράτῳ cannot of course be the Athenian, more or less contemporary with Hdt., who is a frequent subject of satire to Aristophanes (Acharn. 855, Knts. 1267, Wsps. 787 ff., 1301, Lysistr. 1105), but might conceivably be an ancestor of his.

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τὸ ἐλελήθεε πάντας τοὺς Ἕλληνας. Stein5 has cancelled his own emendation λέληθε, and is content to return to the view that Hdt. is not claiming for himself the first correct application of the prophecy of Lysistratos, but dates the true interpretation to the time of Salamis. But the antiquity of the oracle demands an earlier occasion; one might be found in the great adventure of Solon at Kolias, narrated in Plutarch, Solon, 8, which, according to one account, led to the Athenian capture of Salamis, though it is easy to understand that the learned Hellenes, interpreters of prophecy, in discussing such matters, might gladly have transferred, before the date of Hdt.'s composition, the fulfilment of this chresm to the still grander occasion in their own times. Solon's adventure was scarcely remembered outside Athens— and Megara! ‘The Hellenes’ here may well be writers, even if Hdt. himself is not elaiming to have put them right. Cp. Introduction, § 10.

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Κωλιάδες δὲ γυναῖκες ἐρετμοῖσι φρύξουσι. ‘The women of Kolias’ are probably not so much local residents as women visiting the place for the cult or festival of the local Demeter (sic, Plutarch, Solon, 8), who may have used the oars (of the Megarians?) to cook their cakes with. φρύξουσι, though an emendation, seems aeceptable, and more oraeular than φρίξουσι (cp. φρύξαντες 2. 94). πέλανοι would be used in the local cult; or perhaps κριθαὶ πεφρυγμέναι, Thuc. 6. 22. Applied to the b. of Salamis in 480 B. C., the prophecy would have been fulfilled ‘after the king's departure,’ an event far in the future (ἔμελλε ἔσεσθαι), in the time of Lysistratos!