by Herodotus
102. See Book i, ch. 145, and Book v, ch. 68. The supposed date of the Ionic migration was about BC 1050. Danaüs, Xuthus, and Ion seem to be purely mythological personages.
103. That is, they received colonies from Athens.
104. Herodotus includes in this expression the inhabitants of the Greek cities on both sides of the Hellespont, the Propontis, and the Bosphorus.
105. Achaemenes was satrap of Egypt (see ch. 7).
106. Cercuri were light boats of unusual length.
107. Sirom is probably the same name as Hiram.
108. Merbal seems to be the Carthaginian Maharbal.
109. See v, 104.
110. Histiaeus was king of Termera (see v, 37).
111. The special notice taken of Artemisia is undoubtedly due in part to her having been queen of Halicarnassus, the native place of the historian.
112. Troezen was situated on the eastern coast of the Peloponnese.
113. Epidaurus was situated on the same coast as Troezen, but higher up, and close upon the sea-shore.
114. The allusion is apparently to the ‘double portion’ whereto the kings were entitled at banquets.
115. See ch. 186, where the entire Persian host is reckoned to exceed five millions of men!
116. See vi, 70.
117. See v, 2–18 and vi, 44, 45.
118. See ch. 59.
119. The original Pieria was the district between the Haliacmon and the Peneus.
120. See v, 16.
121. See ch. 107.
122. White horses seem to have been regarded as especially sacred (ch. 40)
123. Afterwards Amphipolis.
124. The Bisaltae were a brave and powerful Thracian people.
125. By the Sylean plain, which no other writer mentions, is to be understood the flat tract, about a mile in width, near the mouth of the river which drains the lake of Bolbe (Besikia).
126. Now Stavros.
127. Compare iii, 84.
128. See ch. 21.
129. That is, about 8 feet 2 inches.
130. Nearly £100,000 of our money. [1996 note: see also Book ii, note 333.]
131. See ch. 32.
132. See ch. 82.
133. The Sithonians were probably an ancient Thracian people.
134. It is plain from this that only a portion of the ships made the circuit of the bay in order to collect ships and men. The main body of the fleet sailed across the mouth of the bay.
135. This description sufficiently identities the Canastraean promontory with the modern Cape Paliúri.
136. The situation and origin of Potidaea are well known from Thucydides (i, 56–65).
137. Pallene was the name of the peninsula extending from Potidaea to Cape Canastraeum.
138. Now called Kalamaria.
139. Pella (which became under Philip the capital of Macedonia) was not upon the coast, as we should gather from this passage, but above twenty miles from the sea on the borders of a lake.
140. The bulk of the land force would undoubtedly have kept the direct road through Apollonia which St Paul followed (Acts xvii, 1); while Xerxes with his immediate attendants visited Acanthus, to see the canal, and then rejoined the main army by a mountain-path which fell into the main road beyond Apollonia.
141. The Echeidorus is undoubtedly the Galliko, which flows from the range of Karadagh (Cercine), and running nearly due south, empties itself into the Gulf of Saloniki.
142. The bonasus has been thought to be the modern auroch; but Sir G.C.Lewis regards it as ‘a species of wild ox, cognate, but not identical, with the auroch’.
143. See ii, 10.
144. Aristotle, a native of this district, makes the same statement as Herodotus; and the elder Pliny follows him.
145. In clear weather Olympus and Ossa are in full view from Therma (Saloniki), though the latter is more than seventy miles distant.
146. This description of the pass of Tempe (see ch. 173), though brief, is remarkably accurate.
147. Gonnus was at the western extremity of the pass of Tempe, near the modern Derelí.
148. See ch. 100.
149. Mount Pelium (the modern Plessidhi) lies south-east of Ossa at a distance of about 40 miles. The bases of the two mountains nevertheless join, as Herodotus states. The height of Pelium is estimated at 5,300 feet. It is richly clothed with wood, nearly to the summit.
150. The name Olympus is here applied to the entire range.
151. Mount Pindus, the back-bone of Greece, runs in a direction nearly due north and south.
152. Othrys, now Mount Ierako, is situated due south of Ossa, and south-west of Pelion. Its height is estimated at 5,670 feet.
153. Lake Boebeis, so called from a small town Boebe, at its eastern extremity, is the modern lake of Karla, a piece of water which has no outlet to the sea.
154. Modern science will scarcely quarrel with this description of Thessaly, which shows Herodotus to have had the eye of a physical geographer and the imagination of a geologist.
155. This was not the case.
156. The Dolopes inhabited the mountain tract at the base of Pindus.
157. The Enianes occupied the upper valley of the Spercheius.
158. The Magnetians, Achaeans, and Malians, were the inhabitants of the coast tract between Thessaly and Locris.
159. See vi, 48.
160. The barathrum, or ‘pit of punishment’ at Athens, was a deep hole like a well into which criminals were precipitated.
161. This Hydarnes seems to be the person alluded to in Book vi, ch. 133.
162. Concerning Adeimantus, see vii, 59, 61 and 94.
163. The event took place in the year BC 430, nearly sixty years after the murder of the Persian envoys.
164. That is, Assyrian.
165. By the ‘limit of Cecrops’ the boundaries of Attica are intended.
166. The practice of addressing persons by their fathers’ names was common in Greece.
167. This plan appears to have been seriously entertained.
168. Laureium or Laurion was the name of the mountainous country immediately above Cape Colonna (Sunium). The silver-mines, with which the whole tract abounded, had been worked from time immemorial.
169. If the number of citizens at this time was, according to the estimate already made, 30,000 (v, 97), the entire sum which they were about to have shared among them must have been fifty talents.
170. See v, 81, 89; vi, 87–93. The council appears to have assembled at the Isthmus (ch. 172).
171. The corn-growing countries upon the Black Sea, in ancient as in modern times, supplied the commercial nations with their chief article of food.
172. We have here an estimate of the Argive loss in the battle and massacre of which an account was given above (see vi, 78–80). If, as is probable, the number of citizens was not greater than at Sparta (about 10,000), the blow was certainly tremendous.
173. Argos never forgot her claim or relinquished her hopes of the hegemony. It induced her to stand aloof from great struggles – from the Peloponnesian as well as from this – in order to nurse her strength.
174. See ii 106, and v, 53, 54.
175. Telos, still known by its old name, but more commonly called Piscopi, lies due south of the Triopian promontory (near Cape Crio, i, 174), at the distance of about twenty miles.
176. Gela, like most of the Sicilian towns, derived its name from the stream on whose banks it was built.
177. Cleander was the first tyrant.
178. Aenesidemus was the father of Theron, tyrant of Agrigentum not long afterwards.
179. Callipolis was a Naxian settlement, and lay at no great distance from Naxos.
180. Naxos, according to Thu
cydides (vi, 3), the first of the Greek settlements in Sicily, was founded about the year BC 735.
181. See vi, 23.
182. Leontini was founded from Naxos, six years after the arrival of the Chalcideans in Sicily.
183. Camarina was founded from Syracuse about the year BC 599.
184. Euboea seems never to have recovered from this blow.
185. No particulars are known of this war.
186. See vi, 23.
187. Agrigentum was founded from Gela, about BC 582.
188. This is the first instance of the mixed mercenary armies of Carthage, by which her conquests were ordinarily effected.
189. That is, Suffes. The Greek writers always speak of the Suffetes as ‘kings’.
190. See vi, 23.
191. Pylos, celebrated in poetry as the abode of Nestor (Iliad ii, 591–602), and in history as the scene of the first important defeat suffered by the Spartans (Thucydides iv, 32–40), was situated on the west coast of the Peloponnese, near the site of the modern Navarino.
192. Taenarum was the ancient name of the promontory now called Cape Matapan.
193. Iapygia coincides generally with the Terra di Otranto of our maps, extending, however, somewhat further round the Gulf of Taranto.
194. See ch. 6. Compare ch. 140.
195. See ch. 128. The pass intended is probably that which crossed the Oympic range by the town of Petra.
196. By ‘Upper Macedonia’ Herodotus appears to mean the upper portion of Pieria.
197. The northern tract of Euboea was called Histiaeotis.
198. The northern portion of the Aegean, extending from Magnesia to the Thracian Chersonese.
199. Trachis was one of the chief cities of the Malians (chs. 198 and 199). It afterwards became Heraclea, on being colonised by the Lacedaemonians.
200. See ch. 216.
201. The whole district was regarded as ennobled by the sufferings of Heracles, and as sacred to him.
202. See chs. 208, 223 and 225.
203. Thermopylae and Artemisium.
204. See ch. 99.
205. The employment of fire-signals among the Greeks was very common. Aeschylus represents it as known to them at the time of the Trojan war. [Compare the opening of the Agamemnon of Aeschylus. – E.H.B.]
206. Scyros, still called Skyro, lay off the east coast of Euboea, at the distance of about 23 miles.
207. The distance is calculated to be about 900 stades or 103 miles.
208. The crew of a Greek trireme seems always to have been 200 (viii, 17).
209. See ch. 96.
210. See ch. 97. It appears from that passage that in these 3000 vessels are included, besides penteconters, various other craft of a much smaller size.
211. See ch. 60.
212. See ch. 87.
213. [These numbers are probably wholly fabulous. Modern historians e.g. Bury) estimate the land forces at 300,000, and the number of the fleet at about 800 triremes. – E.H.B.]
214. The medimnus contained about 12 gallons English.
215. The name Bora is still retained in the Adriatic for the north-east wind.
216. See ch. 182.
217. The modern Gulf of Volo.
218. See i, 149
219. See iii, 31.
220. Paphos seems to have been one of the earliest Phoenician settlements in Cyprus.
221. The excellence of the Thessalian horses was proverbial.
222. See ch. 129.
223. See ch. 173.
224. The most famous temple of Zeus Laphystius was in Boeotia.
225. The tale went, that Ino, wishing to destroy the children of Athamas by his first wife Nephele, produced a dearth by having the seed-corn secretly parched before it was sown, and when Athamas consulted the oracle on the subject, persuaded the messengers to bring back word, that Phrixus must be sacrificed to Zeus. Athamas was imposed upon, and prepared to offer his son; but Nephele snatched Phrixus from the altar, and placed him upon a ram with a golden fleece which she had obtained from Hermes; and the ram carried him through the air to Colchis, where it was offered by Phrixus to Zeus. The fleece he gave to Aeetes the Colchian king.
226. The tides in the Mediterranean seldom rise more than a few feet, in some places not above 12 or 13 inches. The flatness of the coast round the Maliac Gulf would render the rise and fall more perceptible there than elsewhere.
227. Colonel Leake has satisfactorily identified this stream as well as the Melas.
228. This is certainly an incorrect reading. Twenty-two thousand plethra are above 420 miles, whereas the plain is even now, at the utmost, seven miles across.
229. The Asopus is clearly the Karvunaria.
230. Amphictyonies were religious leagues of states possessing a common sanctuary.
231. Amphictyon would seem to be most clearly an invented name, formed, according to the Greek custom of referring all appellatives to a heros eponymus, from the word Amphictyony.
232. The Arcadian is here distinguished from the Boeotian city of the same name (see viii, 34).
233. See v, 46.
234. Leonidas seems to have been fully aware of the desperate nature of the service which he now undertook. He therefore, instead of taking with him his ordinary bodyguard of youths, selected a bodyguard from among the men of advanced age, taking none but such as had male offspring living, in order that no family might altogether perish.
235. The Carneian festival fell in the Spartan month Carneius, the Athenian Metageitnion, corresponding nearly to our August. It was held in honour of Apollo Carneius.
236. See viii, 26. The Olympic festival was celebrated at the time of the first full moon after the summer solstice. It therefore ordinarily preceded the Spartan Carneia, falling in the latter end of June or in July.
237. See chs. 101–4.
238. The Spartan custom of wearing the hair long has been already noticed (i, 82).
239. See ch. 83.
240. The 10,000 Immortals.
241. See ch. 176.
242. See ch. 199.
243. See ch. 212.
244. See chs. 221 and 228.
245. The celebrity of the Acarnanian seers has been already mentioned (i, 62).
246. Melampus was placed in the generation before the Trojan war.
247. The monument seems to have been standing at least as late as the time of Tiberius.
248. Herodotus seems to have misconceived this inscription. He regarded it as an epitaph upon the Greeks slain at Thermopylae. Hence he sets the number of the slain at 4,000 (viii, 25). But it plainly appears from the wording to have been an inscription set up in honour of the Peloponnesians only, and to have referred to all who fought, not merely to those who fell.
249. This famous inscription Cicero has translated in the Tusculans (i, 42):
‘Dic, hospes, Spartae nos te hic vidisse jacentes, Dum sanctis patriae legibus obsequimur.’
250. Simonides was, as it were, the poet laureate of the time.
251. By the expression ‘his Helot’, we are to understand the special servant (therapon), whose business it was to attend constantly upon the Spartan warrior.
252. See ix, 71.
253. Chilon was included among the seven wise men. The maxims gnothi seauton (know thyself) and meden agan (nothing in excess) were ascribed to him.
254. See ch. 190.
255. See ch. 220.
256. Here we have one out of many instances of the common practice of writing among the Spartans, so strangely called in question by Grote.
Book Eight
1. The Greeks engaged in the sea-service were the following. The Athenians furnished a hundred and twenty-seven vessels to the fleet, which were manned in part
by the Plataeans, who, though unskilled in such matters, were led by their active and daring spirit to undertake this duty; the Corinthians furnished a contingent of forty vessels; the Megarians sent twenty; the Chalcideans also manned twenty, which had been furnished to them by the Athenians; [1] the Aeginetans came with eighteen; the Sicyonians with twelve; the Lacedaemonians with ten; the Epidaurians with eight; the Eretrians with seven; the Troezenians with five; the Styreans with two; and the Ceans [2] with two triremes and two penteconters. Last of all, the Locrians of Opus came in aid with a squadron of seven penteconters.
2. Such were the nations which furnished vessels to the fleet now at Artemisium; and in mentioning them I have given the number of ships furnished by each. The total number of the ships thus brought together, without counting the penteconters, was two hundred and seventy-one; and the captain, who had the chief command over the whole fleet, was Eurybiades the son of Eurycleides. He was furnished by Sparta, since the allies had said that, ‘if a Lacedaemonian did not take the command, they would break up the fleet, for never would they serve under the Athenians.’
3. From the first, even earlier than the time when the embassy went to Sicily [3] to solicit alliance, there had been a talk of entrusting the Athenians with the command at sea; but the allies were averse to the plan, wherefore the Athenians did not press it; for there was nothing they had so much at heart as the salvation of Greece, and they knew that, if they quarrelled among themselves about the command, Greece would be brought to ruin. [4] Herein they judged rightly; for internal strife is a thing as much worse than war carried on by a united people, as war itself is worse than peace. The Athenians therefore, being so persuaded, did not push their claims, but waived them, so long as they were in such great need of aid from the other Greeks. And they afterwards showed their motive; for at the time when the Persians had been driven from Greece, and were now threatened by the Greeks in their own country, they took occasion of the insolence of Pausanias to deprive the Lacedaemonians of their leadership. This, however, happened afterwards.
4. At the present time the Greeks, on their arrival at Artemisium, when they saw the number of the ships which lay at anchor near Aphetae, and the abundance of troops everywhere, feeling disappointed that matters had gone with the barbarians so far otherwise than they had expected, and full of alarm at what they saw, began to speak of drawing back from Artemisium towards the inner parts of their country. So when the Euboeans heard what was in debate, they went to Eurybiades, and besought him to wait a few days, while they removed their children and their slaves to a place of safety. But, as they found that they prevailed nothing, they left him and went to Themistocles, the Athenian commander, to whom they gave a bribe of thirty talents, [5] on his promise that the fleet should remain and risk a battle in defence of Euboea.