Histories

by Herodotus

  140. No more passed at that time. But very many years afterwards, when the Hellespontian Chersonese had been brought under the power of Athens, Miltiades, the son of Cimon, sailed, during the prevalence of the Etesian winds, from Elaeus in the Chersonese to Lemnos, and called on the Pelasgians to quit their island, reminding them of the prophecy which they had supposed it impossible to fulfil. The people of Hephaestia obeyed the call; but they of Myrina, not acknowledging the Chersonese to be any part of Attica, refused and were besieged and brought over by force. Thus was Lemnos gained by the Athenians and Miltiades.

  Notes to Book Six

  1. See v, 106. ‘An expedition against Sardinia,’ as Grote observes, ‘seems to have been among the favourite fancies of the Ionic Greeks of that day.’

  2. The readiness with which this was believed proves, even better than historical instances, how frequent such transfers of population were in the great oriental empires.

  3. See v, 115, 116.

  4. See i, 141 and 148.

  5. Lade is now a hillock in the plain of the Maeander.

  6. This was the most important naval manoeuvre with which the Greeks were acquainted. It is supposed to have had two objects; one, the breaking of the oars of the two vessels between which the ship using the manoeuvre passed, and the other, the cutting off of a portion of the enemy’s fleet from the rest.

  7. Instead of being drawn up on shore, as was the usual practice.

  8. For a description of Mycale, see i, 148. It was the name given to the mountainous headland which runs out from the coast in the direction of Samos.

  9. In this fact we seem to have another indication that Ephesus kept aloof from the revolt.

  10. For the frequency of such outrages, see ch. 138.

  11. See ch. 77.

  12. Didyma was the name of the place called also Branchidae, in the territory of Miletus, where the famous temple of Apollo stood.

  13. See i, 175.

  14. See v, 44.

  15. Phrynichus, the disciple of Thespis, began to exhibit tragedies about the year BC 511.

  16. [The Sicels were part of the pre-Hellenic population of Sicily. – E.H.B.]

  17. That is, on the north coast.

  18. The Epizephyrian or Western Locrians are the Locrians of Italy, who possessed a city, Locri, and a tract of country, near the extreme south of the modern Calabria.

  19. Rhegium retains its name almost unchanged. It is the modern Reggio.

  20. See vii, 153, 154.

  21. Himera was an important place, and the only Greek colony on the north coast of Sicily.

  22. Zancle, the modern Messina.

  23. See ch. 5.

  24. According to the Persian custom with rebels.

  25. Compare Caesar’s conduct on receiving the head of Pompey.

  26. Tenedos retains its name absolutely unchanged to the present day. It is a small but fertile island, producing an excellent wine.

  27. See iii, 149.

  28. See ch. 9.

  29. See v, 1.

  30. A small town upon the Sea of Marmora, about 40 miles from Constantinople.

  31. See iv, 144.

  32. See iv, 13.

  33. It was situated on the western side of the Thracian Chersonese.

  34. A Thracian people who occupied the tract immediately north of the Chersonese.

  35. By ‘the sacred road’ is meant apparently the road which led from Delphi eastward.

  36. The maintenance of such a stud as could entitle a man to contend with any chance of success in the great games, marks the owner as a person of ample fortune.

  37. The wearing of arms had gone out of fashion in Greece some little time before.

  38. Literally, ‘his brother on the mother’s side’.

  39. See ch. 103.

  40. This appears to have been a marauding expedition, to which the Scythians were encouraged by the success of the Ionian revolt up to that time.

  41. See ch. 31.

  42. See iv, 137.

  43. These provisos were common in the Greek treaties.

  44. See ii, 6, and v, 53.

  45. See iii, 90. What necessitated the new rating and measurement was the alteration of territory which had taken place in consequence of the revolt.

  46. This is another instance of the alternation of names among the Persians. (Compare iii, 160, etc.) Gobryas was the son of a Mardonius.

  47. The aggressors in the late war (v, 99).

  48. See v, 18.

  49. The navigation of this coast is still full of danger.

  50. On its site, see vii, 109.

  51. See ch. 28.

  52. That is, on the south-east side of the island.

  53. The great importance of this appeal is that it raised Sparta to the general protectorate of Greece. Hitherto she had been a leading power frequently called in to aid the weaker against the stronger, but with no definite hegemony, excepting over the states of the Peloponnese (v, 91). Now she was acknowledged to have a paramount authority over the whole of Greece, as the proper guardian of the Grecian liberties. It gave additional weight to the appeal that it was made by Athens, the second city of Greece.

  54. This was the second time that Demaratus had thwarted Cleomenes (v, 75).

  55. Cleomenes puns upon the name Crius, which signifies ‘ram’ in Greek.

  56. These poets are not those of the Epic cycle, which concluded with the adventures of Telegonus, the son of Ulysses.

  57. Sister therefore, according to the myth, of Theras, the coloniser of Thera (iv, 147).

  58. See ii, 91. Herodotus believes in the tale which brings Danaüs from Egypt.

  59. This is an entirely distinct story from that related below (vii, 150) – that Perseus, son of Danaë, had a son Perses, the progenitor of the Achaemenian kings – which latter the Greeks generally adopted. Both stories seem to me pure inventions.

  60. That is to say, the kingdoms of the Peloponnese, afterwards conquered by the Dorians.

  61. i.e. of king Zeus in the heavenly realm, and of the divine king from whom the royal line in Sparta was derived. – [E.H.B.] The necessary union of the priestly with the kingly office was an idea almost universal in early times.

  62. The number of the knights who formed the king’s body-guard is always elsewhere declared to be 300.

  63. The division of the Greek month was into decades. The seventh day of each month was sacred to Apollo, who was believed to have been born on the seventh of Thargelion (May).

  64. [The medimnus was about 12 gallons, the choenix rather less than a quart, and a cotyle half a pint. – E.H.B.]

  65. The three classes of which the Lacedaemonian population consisted are here very clearly distinguished from one another: 1. The Perioeci, or free inhabitants of the country districts; 2. The helots, or serfs who tilled the soil; and 3. The Spartans, or Dorian conquerors, who were the only citizens, and who lived almost exclusively in the capital.

  66. Therapna was a place of some importance on the left bank of the Eurotas, nearly opposite Sparta, from which it was distant probably about two miles.

  67. A precinct sacred to Apollo, at a little distance from the town itself.

  68. Dem-aratus is the ‘People-prayed-for’ king. Compare the Louis le Désiré of French history.

  69. See v, 75.

  70. See chs. 50 and 51.

  71. The seizure of the bride was a necessary part of a Spartan marriage.

  72. The venality of the Delphic oracle appears both by this instance, and by the former one of the Alcmaeonidae (v, 63). Such cases, however, appear to have been rare.

  73. The feast of the Gymnopaedia, or naked youths, was one of the most important at Sparta. [Warlike songs were sung by choruses. – E.H.B
.]

  74. Compare i, 129.

  75. See ch. 63.

  76. Zacynthos, one of the Ionian islands, still retains its ancient name.

  77. In BC 486 (vii, 3)

  78. Wealth was the chief requisite for success in this contest.

  79. Or ‘the Whelp’.

  80. See ch. 50.

  81. Superstitious feelings of dread still attach to the water, which is considered to be of a peculiarly noxious character.

  82. See v, 42.

  83. The great goddesses, Demeter and Persephone.

  84. The lake Stymphalia, or Stymphalis, was in Northern Arcadia.

  85. Nauplia is still known by its ancient appellation.

  86. Tiryns was situated at a short distance from Argos.

  87. See ch. 19.

  88. It is hopeless to attempt a rational explanation of this oracle, the obscurity of which gives it a special claim to be regarded as a genuine Pythian response.

  89. This temple, one of the most famous in antiquity, was near Argos.

  90. Phigalea was an Arcadian town.

  91. The Greek law allowed an accused person, with the consent of the accuser, to clear himself of a crime imputed to him, by taking an oath that the charge was false.

  92. See v, 81, 89.

  93. The Athenain theoris was the ship which conveyed the sacred messengers to Delos.

  94. The situation of Sunium was on the extreme southern promontory of Attica.

  95. In this way the letter of the law was satisfied, at an expense to the Athenians of 100 drachmas.

  96. Thus it appears that Athens at this time maintained a fleet of 50 ships.

  97. In Aegina, as in most Dorian states, the constitution was oligarchical. The Athenians, it appears, took advantage of this circumstance, and sought to bring about a revolution which would have thrown the island, practically, into their hands. This is the first instance of revolutionary war in which Athens is known to have engaged.

  98. In whose honour the feast of the Thesmophoria was celebrated in almost all parts of Greece.

  99. See v, 86.

  100. A sum exceeding £24,000 of our money. [1996 note: for the comparative values of money, see also Book ii, note 333.]

  101. The pentathlon, or contest of five games, consisted of the five sports of leaping, running, throwing the quoit or discus, hurling the spear, and wrestling.

  102. Decelea was situated on the mountain-range north of Athens (Parnes) within sight of the city.

  103. See v, 105.

  104. See ch. 48.

  105. The Icarian sea received its name from the island of Icaria, which lay between Samos and Myconos.

  106. See v, 34.

  107. Tenos was distant about 13 miles from Delos, in a direction almost due north.

  108. The Delians, whose holy island was believed to be specially exempt from earthquakes, thought it to the credit of their god, that he should mark by such a prodigy the beginning of a great war.

  109. See ch. 133.

  110. Carystus was one of the four principal cities of the ancient Euboea.

  111. See v, 77.

  112. The ten generals (strategoi) are a part of the constitution of Cleisthenes, who modelled the Athenian army upon the political division of the tribes. Each tribe annually elected its phylarch to command its contingent of cavalry, its taxiarch to command its infantry, and its strategos to direct both. Hence the ten strategoi, who seem immediately to have claimed equality with the polemarch or war-archon. [Note: The strategoi were elected, unlike the members of the senate (boulé), who were appointed by lot. – E.H.B.]

  113. Miltiades, the son of Cypselus, the first king of the Chersonese.

  114. See ch. 41.

  115. [See Browning’s poem ‘Pheidippides’ in his Dramatic Idylls. – E.H.B.]

  116. The temple or rather chapel of Pan was contained in a hollow in the rock just below the Propylaea, or entrance to the citadel. The cavern still exists.

  117. Moderns estimate the direct distance at 135 or 140 miles.

  118. It was the favourite boast of Athens that her inhabitants were autokhthones – sprung from the soil. Hence the adoption of the symbol of the grasshopper.

  119. The Greeks divided their month of 29 or 30 days into three periods: 1, from the 1st day to the 10th inclusively; 2, from the 11th to the 20th, and 3, from the 21st to the end. The ninth day of the first decade is thus the ninth day of the month itself.

  120. Between Euboea and Attica.

  121. Styra was a town of southern Euboea.

  122. Heracles was among the gods specially worshipped at Marathon.

  123. The altar of the Twelve Gods at Athens has been mentioned before (ii, 7). It was in the Agora.

  124. The Asopus is the modern Vurieni, the great river of southern Boeotia.

  125. The polemarch, or war-archon, was the third archon in dignity.

  126. When Herodotus wrote, the polemarch had no military functions at all.

  127. The right wing was the special post of honour (see ix, 27). The polemarch took the post as representative of the king, whose position it had been in the ancient times.

  128. The Panathenaic festival is probably intended. It was held every fifth year (i.e. once in every four years, half-way between the Olympic festivals), and was the great religious assembly of the Athenians.

  129. The ornament at the stern consisted of wooden planks curved gracefully in continuance of the sweep by which the stern of the ancient ship rose from the sea. Vessels were ordinarily ranged along a beach with their sterns towards the shore, and thus were liable to be seized by the stern-ornament.

  130. Marathon is twenty-six miles from Athens by the common route.

  131. See v, 63. Cynosarges was situated very near the famous Lycaeum, the school of Aristotle.

  132. See v, 63.

  133. According to Plutarch, Theseus was seen by a great number of the Athenians fighting on their side against the Persians.

  134. It lies between Tenos and Icaria.

  135. This temple acquired a special celebrity from the defeat which the Athenians suffered in its neighbourhood in the eighth year of the Peloponnesian war, BC 424. The name of Delium is said to have been given to it because it was built after the model of Apollo’s temple at Delos.

  136. See vii, 151.

  137. In general Athenian women – indeed, Greek women without exception – were not even asked to give their consent to the match prepared for them.

  138. This chapter is generally regarded as an interpolation. It is wanting in several of the best manuscripts.

  139. See v, 63.

  140. It is plain that Herodotus was of the same opinion as Thucydides (vi, 54–59), that far too much honour was paid to the memory of these persons.

  141. See v, 55, 62.

  142. See i, 55.

  143. There are strong reasons for suspecting the whole of this story.

  144. [Castor and Pollux, ‘the great twin brethren, to whom the Dorians pray’. – E.H.B.]

  145. See v, 69.

  146. Seventy ships appear to have been the full complement of the Athenian navy, until the time when the number was raised by Themistocles to 200 (see ch. 89, and vii, 144). Miltiades therefore took the whole Athenian navy on this expedition.

  147. See ch. 16

  148. He would feel that he was doing an act of great impiety, since the sanctuaries of Demeter were not to be entered by men.

  149. Fifty talents is certainly an enormous sum for the time.

  150. Brauron, as is sufficiently evident from this passage, was one of the maritime demes of Attica. The Brauronia was a festival held once in four years, wherein the Attic girls between the ages of five and ten went in proces
sion, dressed in crocus-coloured garments, to the sanctuary, and there performed a rite wherein they imitated bears. No Attic woman was allowed to marry till she had gone through this ceremony.

  151. The tale went that the Sintian Lemnians, the original inhabitants of the island, having become disgusted with their wives, on whom Aphrodite had sent a curse, married Thracian women from the continent. Hereupon their wives formed a conspiracy, and murdered their fathers and their husbands. Hypsipyle alone had compassion on her father Thoas, and concealed him. Her fraud was afterwards detected; Thoas was killed, and Hypsipyle sold into slavery.

  152. Lemnos is nearly 140 miles north of Attica.

  Book Seven

  1. Now when tidings of the battle that had been fought at Marathon reached the ears of King Darius, the son of Hystaspes, his anger against the Athenians, which had been already roused by their attack upon Sardis, [1] waxed still fiercer, and he became more than ever eager to lead an army against Greece. Instantly he sent off messengers to make proclamation through the several states, that fresh levies were to be raised, and these at an increased rate; while ships, horses, provisions, and transports were likewise to be furnished. So the men published his commands; and now all Asia was in commotion by the space of three years, while everywhere, as Greece was to be attacked, the best and bravest were enrolled for the service, and had to make their preparations accordingly.

  After this, in the fourth year, [2] the Egyptians whom Cambyses had enslaved revolted from the Persians; whereupon Darius was more hot for war than ever, [3] and earnestly desired to march an army against both adversaries.

  2. Now, as he was about to lead forth his levies against Egypt and Athens, a fierce contention for the sovereign power arose among his sons; since the law of the Persians was, that a king must not go out with his army, until he has appointed one to succeed him upon the throne. [4] Darius, before he obtained the kingdom, had had three sons born to him from his former wife, who was a daughter of Gobryas; while, since he began to reign, Atossa, the daughter of Cyrus, had borne him four. Artabazanes was the eldest of the first family, and Xerxes of the second. These two, therefore, being the sons of different mothers, were now at variance. Artabazanes claimed the crown as the eldest of all the children, because it was an established custom all over the world for the eldest to have the pre-eminence; while Xerxes, on the other hand, urged that he was sprung from Atossa, the daughter of Cyrus, and that it was Cyrus who had won the Persians their freedom. [5]