HERODOTEA

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 Herodotea
Studies on the Text of Herodotus

N. G. WILSON

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 3
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 Preface

With this volume I con­tinue a prac­tice that ori­gin­ated in 1990, when

Sir Hugh Lloyd-­Jones and I decided that our edi­tion of Sophocles for
the Oxford Classical Texts series would be more use­ful if accom­
pan­ied by a mono­graph deal­ing with the many pas­sages which pose
dif ­fi­culties for an editor. Our decision was promp­ted by the con­sid­er­
a­tion that even a much lar­ger appar­atus crit­i­cus than is per­mit­ted in
the series would not provide the space needed for an explan­a­tion of
our decisions. In 2007 my Aristophanea was designed to serve the
same pur­pose, as was S. J. Heyworth’s Cynthia to accom­pany his text
of Propertius. In the case of the present volume I am once again
greatly indebted to Dr Leofranc Holford-­Strevens, whose learn­ing
and acu­men have enabled me to improve the ori­ginal draft at many
points.
In an intro­duct­ory chapter the reader will find inform­a­tion about
the trans­mis­sion of the text which goes bey­ond the bare essen­tials
out­lined in the pre­face to the edi­tion. Once again I have aimed at a
treat­ment which might be appro­pri­ate in a ref­er­ence work sim­ilar to
L. D. Reynolds’s Texts and Transmission: A Survey of the Latin Classics
(Oxford, 1983). In the main part of the book the dis­cus­sion is devoted
prin­cip­ally to pas­sages which in the past have raised ques­tions in the
mind of edit­ors, but I have added a num­ber of oth­ers which seemed to
need atten­tion. Since this is not a book likely to be read through
con­tinu­ously but will more prob­ably be con­sul­ted for inform­a­tion
about indi­vidual pas­sages, I have occa­sion­ally thought it sens­ible to
repeat an explan­a­tion or a state­ment of prin­ciple rather than give
cross-­ref­er­ences. Most of my notes deal with mat­ters of lan­guage and
style, with the aim of get­ting as close as pos­sible to the ori­ginal
word­ing and help­ing to ensure that it can be accur­ately trans­lated;
com­par­ison of trans­la­tions cur­rently in cir­cu­la­tion reveals in cer­tain
pas­sages a greater diversity than should be expec­ted. There are,
how­ever, a num­ber of pas­sages where tex­tual uncer­tainty has a bear­ing
on his­tor­ical ques­tions.
Herodotus is often reckoned to be an easy author, suit­able for
rel­at­ive begin­ners, but the num­ber of notes I have felt impelled to
write is evid­ence that this view is too optim­istic. In addi­tion to my

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 vi Preface

own con­tri­bu­tions I fre­quently refer to the notes made by Paul Maas

in his copy of Hude’s edi­tion, which I was for­tu­nate enough to acquire
from the lib­rary of the late George Forrest, thanks to Mrs Margaret
Forrest; they are now pub­lished in ZPE 179 (2011), 57–70. There are
also a few ref­er­ences to Maas’s cor­res­pond­ence with Enoch Powell,
pre­served in the Powell Archive at Churchill College, Cambridge.

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 Contents

Abbreviations ix
Introduction xi

Book I 1
Book II 25
Book III 47
Book IV 71
Book V 93
Book VI 109
Book VII 123
Book VIII 155
Book IX 175

Herodotea Addenda 197

Appendix 199

Index 201

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 Abbreviations

Most abbre­vi­ations will be eas­ily under­stood. Scholars who

pro­duced com­plete edi­tions are gen­er­ally referred to by name only;
edit­ors of single books sim­il­arly referred to are:

I J. H. Sleeman (Cambridge, 1909)

II W. G. Waddell (London, 1939)
A. B. Lloyd (Leiden, 1975–88)
IV–VI, VII–IX R. W. Macan (London, 1895, 1908)
IV, V, VI, IX E. S. Shuckburgh (Cambridge, 1906, 1890,
1889, 1893)
V, VI G. Nenci (Rome, 1994, 1998)
VI L. Scott (Leiden, 2005)
VIII, IX A. Masaracchia (Rome, 1977, 1978)
VIII, IX D. Asheri et al. (Rome, 2003, 2006).
VIII J. E. Powell (Cambridge, 1939)
A. M. Bowie (Cambridge, 2007)
IX M. A. Flower and J. Marincola (Cambridge,
2002)

Other works referred to in abbre­vi­ated form:

Asheri D. Asheri et al., A Commentary on Herodotus

Books I–IV (Oxford, 2007)
Bechtel F. Bechtel, Die griech­is­chen Dialekte (Berlin,
1921–4)
Blaydes F. H. M. Blaydes, Adversaria in Herodotum
(Halle, 1901)
Chandler H. W. Chandler, A Practical Introduction to
Greek Accentuation, 2nd edn. (Oxford, 1881)
Cooper–Krüger G. L. Cooper III and K. W. Krüger, Early
Greek Poetic and Herodotean Syntax (Ann
Arbor, 2002)
Denniston J. D. Denniston, The Greek Particles, 2nd
edn. (Oxford, 1954)

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 x Abbreviations

Van Herwerden H. van Herwerden, Commentatio crit­ica in

Herodoti lib­ros I et II (Utrecht, 1883)
Kretschmer–Locker P. Kretschmer and E. Locker, Rückläufiges
Wörterbuch der griech­is­chen Sprache, 2nd
edn. (Göttingen, 1963)
LGPN P. M. Fraser and E. Matthews (eds.), Lexicon
of Greek Personal Names (Oxford, 1987–  )
Pingel (1874) J. V. Pingel, ‘Kritiske Anmærkninger til
Herodots 7de, 8de og 9de Bog’,
Metropolitanskolens Program for 1874
(Copenhagen)
Pingel (1877) Unpublished papers in the Royal Library,
Copenhagen, shelf­mark Add. 1215, 4o
Powell Unless oth­er­wise spe­cified, ref­er­ences are
nor­mally to the appendix to his trans­la­tion
(Oxford, 1948)
Powell, History J. E. Powell, The History of Herodotus
(Cambridge, 1939)
Richards H. Richards, Notes on Xenophon and Others
(London, 1907)
Schwyzer E. Schwyzer, Griechiche Grammatik (Munich,
1939–71)
Smyth H. W. Smyth, The Greek Dialects: Ionic
(Oxford, 1894)
Threatte L. Threatte, The Grammar of Attic Inscriptions
(Berlin–New York, 1980–96)

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 Introduction

The early his­tory of the text is obscure. It seems likely that Herodotus
did not live to com­plete the revi­sion of his work, because there are a
num­ber of pas­sages where duplic­a­tion of mater­ial or dis­crep­an­cies
can be plaus­ibly explained by the hypo­thesis that the author’s mas­ter
copy still required some fin­ish­ing touches.1 This hypo­thesis receives
indir­ect sup­port from Galen, who was more inter­ested in, and bet­ter
informed about, bib­li­o­graph­ical mat­ters than any other ancient
author. In his com­ment­ary on Hippocrates, De victu acutorum II,2
the text of which presen­ted ser­i­ous prob­lems, he states: ‘I have often
thought that this book was found in draft form and pub­lished after
Hippocrates’ death. It looks as if the poorly arranged text can only
have come about because Hippocrates him­self added examples that
he found in order to make the argu­ment gen­er­ally con­vin­cing, some
of them in the mar­gin and some on the verso, since he could not fit
the added mater­ial into its proper place.’
If we could be cer­tain that the quo­ta­tion of the first sen­tence of the
proem in Arist., Rhetoric 1409a 27–8, really is due to Aristotle and not
an inter­pol­a­tion,3 it would fol­low that already by the middle of the
fourth cen­tury vari­ant texts were in cir­cu­la­tion. But we know very
little about the for­tunes of the text for the first few cen­tur­ies; this is
due partly to the absence of papyri dat­ing from the Ptolemaic period,
partly to the lack of suf ­fi­cient evid­ence for an assess­ment of Hellenistic
schol­ar­ship devoted to this text. It is clear that the divi­sion of the text
into nine books was estab­lished by the Hellenistic period. But how
the author him­self divided his nar­rat­ive has been debated. A sug­ges­
tion has been made that the ori­ginal text con­sisted of twenty-­eight
papyrus rolls, each con­tain­ing one λόγοϲ.4 These were then reduced
by the Alexandrian lib­rar­ia­ ns to the nine that we know. It is not by

1
  This was the view of Stein, ini­tially expressed in his edi­tio maior (Berlin, 1869–
71), i, pp. xlii f., and accep­ted sub­sequently by J. E. Powell, CQ 29 (1935), 76.
2
  Ed. G. Helmreich, Corpus medicorum grae­co­rum 5. 9. 1 (Berlin, 1914), 216–17.
3
  Cf. R. Kassel’s note ad loc. in his edi­tion (Berlin, 1976); he hes­it­antly accep­ted
that the addi­tional sen­tence in ques­tion is by Aristotle.
4
  S. Cagnazzi, Hermes, 103 (1975), 385–423.

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 xii Introduction

any means implaus­ible to sup­pose that an author who trav­elled to

give lec­tures found it con­veni­ent to have the mater­ial for each lec­ture
on a sep­ar­ate scroll; if we assume that they were of approx­im­ately
equal length each would have con­tained a text equi­val­ent to about
thirty pages of a prin­ted edi­tion, which might have served for a
per­form­ance last­ing two hours. But all this is very hypo­thet­ical; it is
equally likely that as soon as the work began to cir­cu­late in the book
trade someone thought it desir­able to replace the short scrolls with
oth­ers of a more typ­ical length, and in that case the present book-­
divi­sion may have been intro­duced before the Alexandrian schol­ars
and lib­rar­ia­ ns began to be influ­en­tial.
The papyri of Herodotus, much like the papyri of other major
authors, give the editor occa­sional help by con­firm­ing a few mod­ern
con­jec­tures; but the hope that they might trans­form his task has
proved illus­ory. Almost with­out excep­tion those pub­lished so far are
of Roman imper­ial date; if there were any from the Ptolemaic period
con­tain­ing sub­stan­tial por­tions of the text their con­tri­bu­tion might
eli­cit a more enthu­si­astic judge­ment.5 One of the most import­ant was
pub­lished by Tsereteli as P. Ross. Georg. I. 15 (Tiflis [Tbilisi], 1925).
Its good read­ings include (1. 196. 1) con­firm­a­tion of a con­jec­ture
made by Eltz and Blaydes; (1. 196. 3) con­firm­a­tion of a con­jec­ture by
Bergler; (1. 203. 1) pre­ser­va­tion of what appears to have been the
ori­ginal form of the geo­graph­ical term for the Caucasus (Καύκαϲιϲ)
in two pas­sages, in the first of which there is a trace pre­served in the
Roman fam­ily’s vari­ant read­ing Καυκάϲιοϲ. This read­ing sug­gests
deriv­a­tion from a copy in which the altern­at­ive form was recor­ded
above the line. At 1. 202. 4 this papyrus seems not to provide con­­
firmation of Stein’s intel­li­gent sup­ple­ment 〈Ἡρακλέων〉, which,
how­ever, he did not print in his fifth edi­tion with com­ment­ary (1883).
One may also note that in three places the word-­order is not the
same as in the medi­eval MSS; but vari­ation of this kind is a wide­
spread phe­nomenon in the papyri and in medi­eval cop­ies. At 7. 169.
2 P.Oxy. 3381 is prob­ably cor­rect with Δαρδάνου in place of the
col­our­less βαρβάρου. A recent dis­cov­ery of real import­ance is that

5
  Expectations should not be wholly optim­istic; papyri of Plato’s Phaedo and
Laches dat­ing from the 3rd c. bc provided quite a num­ber of tex­tual improve­ments
but were by no means free from error. See G. Jachmann, ‘Der Platontext’, in
Nachrichten von der Akademie der Wissenschaften in Göttingen, philol.-­hist. Kl. 1941
Nr. 11, 225–389 = Textgeschichtliche Studien (Königstein im Taunus, 1982), 581–745.

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 Introduction xiii

an unpub­lished Oxyrhynchus papyrus con­firms at 2. 79. 1 an essen­

tial con­jec­ture which most mod­ern schol­ars have ignored.6
In deal­ing with the papyri I have not sys­tem­at­ic­ally recor­ded vari­
ants that are clearly wrong; this means that I report them less fully
than the medi­eval MSS, from which I cite some minor vari­ants
simply in order to con­firm stem­matic rela­tion­ships. A fact which
deserves men­tion is that Book 1 is much bet­ter rep­res­en­ted than any
of the oth­ers. In a way this is strange, because the papyri mostly date
from the period of the Roman Empire when the edu­cated classes
looked back with admir­a­tion and nos­tal­gia to the great achieve­ments
of the clas­sical past, and the nar­rat­ive of the suc­cess­ful Greek res­ist­
ance to the Persian inva­sions ought to have had a power­ful appeal,
which in turn should have led to the pro­duc­tion of many cop­ies of
Books 5–9.7
The vari­ants in the papyri do not allow us to identify any of them as
a dir­ect ancestor of either of the two branches of the medi­eval tra­di­
tion. It looks as if the medi­eval and Renaissance MSS, of which there
are about sixty, may derive from an arche­type with vari­ant read­ings
dat­ing from the early Byzantine period. Maas in his copy of Hude
indic­ated this pos­sib­il­ity, with the addi­tion of a ques­tion mark, in a
stemma he drew on p. xvi of volume I. It is reas­on­able to sug­gest that
in the fifth or sixth cen­tury an editor pre­pared a text using more than
one source and that vari­ants were indic­ated above the line or in the
mar­gin. But very little can be stated with con­fid­ence about the his­tory
of the text in late antiquity. An inter­est­ing hypo­thesis has been made
about the trans­fer from roll to codex. Since our best manu­script
(Florence, Bibl. Med. Laur., plut. 70. 3 = A) pre­serves sticho­met­ric
indic­a­tions at the end of Books IV, V, VIII, and IX, designed to enable
scribes to cal­cu­late the cor­rect sum to be charged for their ser­vices, it
may well be that the absence of such notes at the end of the other
books indic­ates that their text derived from a dif­fer­ent set of rolls.8 But
even if that is so, it is still highly prob­able that both sets des­cen­ded
from the same Alexandrian edi­tion. The next devel­op­ment seems to

6
  Thanks to the good offices of Dr D. Obbink and Dr M. Salemenou I was able to
inspect P.Oxy. inv. 85/40a in advance of pub­lic­a­tion.
7
  For a sur­vey of the papyri see S. R. West in D. Obbink and R. Rutherford (eds.),
Culture in Pieces (Oxford, 2011), 69–83.
8
  J. Irigoin, Revue d’histoire des textes, 7 (1977), 241, reprin­ted in id., La Tradition
des textes grecs (Paris, 2003), 45.

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 xiv Introduction

have taken place at the end of the eighth or dur­ing the ninth cen­tury,
when there was a revival of intel­lec­tual and lit­er­ary activ­ity in
Byzantium. The arche­type was copied twice, the two scribes mak­ing
dif­fer­ent errors when mis­read­ing uncial script. These cop­ies were the
source of the two fam­il­ies of extant MSS, gen­er­ally known as the
A-­fam­ily and the Roman fam­ily. This recon­struc­tion of events might
appear to be vul­ner­able if it could be proved that there are mis­read­ings
of minus­cule script com­mon to both fam­il­ies, but the objec­tion can be
over­come by insist­ing that one can­not rule out the pos­sib­il­ity that
such mis­read­ings occurred inde­pend­ently. It is argu­able that MS C
offers sig­ni­fic­ant vari­ants deriv­ing from an unknown third source
which can no longer be traced any­where else, a ques­tion which I
dis­cuss below.
Though it is out­side the scope of this intro­duc­tion to describe in
detail and eval­u­ate all the sur­viv­ing manu­scripts, I will provide here
essen­tial inform­a­tion about the import­ant wit­nesses and a few oth­ers
that need to be taken into account from time to time.
A = Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana plut. 70. 3. This MS
was writ­ten by two scribes in the early tenth cen­tury. Bertrand
Hemmerdinger repor­ted that his wife had iden­ti­fied the first scribe,
who wrote fos. 1–238, as Gregorios the sub­deacon, the scribe of a
fam­ous codex of Aristotle’s Organon com­mis­sioned by the prom­
in­ent church­man and bib­li­op ­ hile Arethas (Vaticanus Urbinas gr.
35).9 But Ruth Barbour demon­strated greater palaeo­graph­ical skill
when she declared that the script is com­par­able rather than identical.10
At all events a date at the begin­ning of the cen­tury seems almost
cer­tain. The scribes share two habits: they omit many breath­ings, and
in the left-­hand mar­gin there is much use of a single hori­zontal stroke
which is puzz­ling because it can­not be inter­preted either as an obelus
or as a quo­ta­tion-­mark. Whereas the script of the first hand hangs
from the ruled line, that of the second rests on it, which was the
stand­ard prac­tice until the middle of the tenth cen­tury and is fur­ther
evid­ence to sup­port the date sug­ges­ted.
In con­nec­tion with A it is advis­able to deal here with a recent
heresy which for­tu­nately does not have con­sequences for the con­sti­
tu­tion of the text itself. Maria Jagoda Luzzatto has claimed that fos.

 9
  Les Manuscrits d’Hérodote et la cri­tique verbale (Genoa, 1981), 86.
10
  Greek Literary Hands a.d. 400–1600 (Oxford, 1981), 17.

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 Introduction xv

1–26, on which later mar­ginal notes com­posed by John Tzetzes

(c.1110–80) have been added, are writ­ten in a hand that should be
dated in the late thir­teenth cen­tury and are a fac­sim­ile copy of an
early MS that was annot­ated by Tzetzes.11 This is quite unac­cept­
able.12 No-­one has pre­vi­ously detec­ted a dif­fer­ent hand in the
Herodotean text on these folios, and Byzantine scribes were not
cap­able of fac­sim­ile cop­ies (they some­times tried, but left traces
that could be detec­ted, wit­ness the Prague Plato MS, VI. Fa. 1, and
other later attempts at imit­a­tion dat­ing from the fif­teenth cen­tury).13
The codic­o­lo­gical fact about leaves 25–8 which she adduces, namely
that they fail to form a nor­mal quire, can be explained by the need
to avoid wast­ing pre­cious pieces of parch­ment that were too small
to make a full set of nor­mal bifo­lia. And it is not dif ­fi­cult to think
of explan­a­tions for the fact that the annota­tions do not con­tinue
bey­ond fo. 26.
A is prob­ably the best MS. Certainly in Book 1 it is super­ior to the
oth­ers, des­pite a few lapses from ch. 87 onwards. In the other books
the situ­ation is less clear, but where there is little to choose between
its read­ing and the altern­at­ive I have ten­ded to fol­low A.
Mario Manfredini dis­covered a frag­ment of a MS that was
evid­ently very close to A (Venice, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana,
App. cl. IV 55), which he dated to the twelfth cen­tury.14 He gave it
the siglum m and pub­lished a col­la­tion; the text is I. 13–21. This frag­
ment does not help the editor; if the MS had sur­vived com­plete it
might have been another story.
B = Rome, Biblioteca Angelica, gr. 83. This was writ­ten in the
elev­enth cen­tury. It is close to A, but rarely offers any­thing not­able.
C = Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Conventi Soppressi,
207. This is another elev­enth-­cen­tury MS and is some­thing of a
puzzle. Despite its rel­at­ively early date it is full of errors; on the other
hand there are a few pas­sages where it offers an excel­lent or plaus­ible
vari­ant, and these have been taken as evid­ence that the scribe had

11
  In G. Prato (ed.), I mano­scritti greci tra rif­lessione e dibat­tito (Florence, 2000),
653. Her descrip­tion is ‘una minuscola inclinata imit­ativa di res­tauro, della fine del
secolo XIII, copia fac­sim­ile di un cor­rispond­ente spezzone per­duto di Aa che era
corred­ato da note auto­grafe di G. Tzetzes’.
12
  It imme­di­ately attrac­ted unfa­vour­able com­ment from G. De Gregorio, Bollettino
dei clas­sici, 23 (2002), 37 n. 19.
13
  On which see my paper in SCO 44 (1994), 23–32.
14
  Vichiana, 4 (1975), 247–50.

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 xvi Introduction

access to an extra-­stem­matic source. In a nuanced dis­cus­sion of the

prob­lem G. B. Alberti avoided the tempta­tion of assum­ing that all the
read­ings in ques­tion should be explained in this way.15 Some of them
might be con­jec­tures by a clever reader; if this is the case, it has to be
borne in mind that Byzantine read­ers, how­ever intel­li­gent, were not
as well equipped to arrive at the right solu­tion as their ancient pre­de­
cessors had been. An inter­est­ing puzzle occurs at 3. 126. 2, where C,
accom­pan­ied in this case by P (Paris, BNF grec 1633), provides the
cor­rect form of the Persian name Kranaspes. Was this a lucky guess,
made by someone who saw an ana­logy with the bet­ter-­known name
Hystaspes that had occurred in sev­eral earlier pas­sages? It only
required the addi­tion of a sigma in the second syl­lable.16 Another
dif­fi­cult ques­tion is posed by the plu­per­fect forms in ‑δατο which C
offers at 3. 150. 1, 5. 34. 2 and 5. 103. 1. Though Schwyzer was will­ing
to accept them,17 they were all rejec­ted by Legrand and it has to be
said that in all three con­texts the altern­at­ive tense offered by the main
MSS appears more sat­is­fact­ory. If Legrand is right, one needs to
account for C’s vari­ants. Though Byzantine read­ers and authors were
besot­ted with the plu­per­fect, which they took to be a mark of the idio­
matic Attic Greek which they tried to imit­ate and there­fore might by
exten­sion have wished to impose on Herodotus, would any of them
have been able to provide these non-­Attic forms? If not, did an
ancient reader inter­vene? Two fur­ther pas­sages at which C has
intriguing vari­ants are 4. 86 and 9. 105. I incline to the view that since
C is very close to A and B, an eco­nom­ical explan­at­ ion of its occa­
sional vari­ants of import­ance is that they derive from mar­ginalia in
the exem­plar which were over­looked by the copy­ists of A and B. But
the hypo­thesis of inter­mit­tent use of an oth­er­wise unknown branch
of the tra­di­tion can­not be excluded. Hude cited B and C reg­u­larly,
and used the siglum a to indic­ate agree­ment of A, B and C. I have
taken the view that only a few read­ings of B and C need to be repor­ted.
The other branch of the tra­di­tion con­sists of the Roman fam­ily
(siglum d). It fur­nishes a rare example of bowd­ler­iz­a­tion, the dele­tion
of the chapter about temple pros­ti­tu­tion (1. 199). This chapter was
known to be miss­ing from some late rep­res­ent­at­ives of the fam­ily

15
  Bollettino dei clas­sici, 19 (1998), 6.
16
  This pas­sage was not included in Alberti’s list of poten­tially sig­ni­fic­ant vari­ants.
17
  Griechische Grammatik (Munich, 1939), i. 672.

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 Introduction xvii

(RSV), and it is also miss­ing from the oth­ers (UX). The earli­est MS
of the fam­ily (D) has suffered the loss of a folio at this point, but I was
able to cal­cu­late that this folio would not have provided enough space
to accom­mod­ate the full text.18
D = Vaticanus gr. 2369, a fine tenth-­cen­tury MS which has lost a
num­ber of folios and now lacks 1. 1–1. 5. 3, 1. 38. 2–1. 73. 2 and
1. 197. 1–1. 205. 2. Alberti argued that edit­ors could base their text
on A and D alone, dis­reg­ard­ing the other mem­bers of the Roman
fam­ily because they derive from D.19 But if one exam­ines the read­ings
of D it becomes clear that it exhib­its numer­ous errors from which the
other mem­bers of the Roman fam­ily are exempt; it is not pos­sible to
believe that the scribes of those MSS or of their hypar­che­type (siglum
r) had the abil­ity or inclin­a­tion to cor­rect all these errors.
The other MSS in this fam­ily for which a cer­tain import­ance can
be claimed are RSUVXY. They exhibit a num­ber of omis­sions in
Book I.
R = Vaticanus gr. 123, a four­teenth-­cen­tury MS which lacks Book 5.20
S = Cambridge, Emmanuel College 30. It was writ­ten by the highly
pro­duct­ive and intel­li­gent scribe Andronicus Callistus in the middle
of the fif­teenth cen­tury (not the four­teenth, as has some­times been
stated).21 It offers a num­ber of minor but neces­sary cor­rec­tions of the
trans­mit­ted text; these can be accep­ted as the scribe’s own con­jectures.
S is not cited oth­er­wise; it is close to, and prob­ably a copy of, V.22
U = Vaticanus Urbinas gr. 88, a fif­teenth-­cen­tury MS, was at one
time thought to be product of another well-­known scribe, Ioannes
Rhosos,23 but more recently has been attrib­uted to George
Chrysococces II;24 neither sug­ges­tion has been con­firmed in the latest
work of ref­er­ence.25

18
  Antike und Abendland, 16 (1970), 73.
19
  Op. cit. 3.
20
  It dates from the middle of the cen­tury; water­marks sug­gest c.1345. See C. M.
Mazzucchi in V. Fera–G. Ferraù–S. Rizzo (eds.), Talking to the Text (Messina, 2002),
153–66.
21
  Hemmerdinger, Manuscrits (n. 9), 44, dated it c.1449 but did not state any evid­
ence in sup­prt of this view.
22
  M. D. Reeve, Phoenix, 39 (1985), 289.
23
  C. Stornajolo, Codices Urbinates graeci bib­lio­thecae Vaticanae (Vatican City,
1895).
24
  Hemmerdinger, Manuscrits (n. 9), 14.
25
  E. Gamillscheg, Repertorium der griech­is­chen Kopisten, iii (Vienna, 1997). See
fur­ther G. De Gregorio, op.cit., a detailed study of this MS.

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 xviii Introduction

V = Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, hist. gr. 85,

dat­able by the water­marks to the early fif­teenth cen­tury.
X = Vaticanus gr. 122, partly writ­ten by George Chrysococces II,
who is known to have been act­ive c.1420–40. Alberti made the
import­ant dis­cov­ery that one of the annot­at­ors was none other than
Lorenzo Valla, whose Latin ver­sion occa­sion­ally reflects his crit­ical
acu­men.26 This MS was Valla’s prin­cipal source, but he also used D
and T.27
Y = Vaticanus Palatinus gr. 176, which on the evid­ence of the
water­marks should be dated c.1430–50, offers a text affected by
con­tam­in­a­tion, but appears to be basic­ally a mem­ber of the Roman
fam­ily.28
U and X require fur­ther dis­cus­sion. Despite Alberti’s recog­ni­tion
of their value, they have been neg­lected. An import­ant fact about
them, noted by Alberti,29 is that in Book 1 they do not share all the
omis­sions of RSV; the excep­tions, where their text is com­plete, occur
at vari­ous points between chapters 45. 3 and 79. 1. Where D is lack­ing
UX often agree with A, whereas RSV have an obvi­ous or unim­
port­ant error. Hude had assumed that the Roman fam­ily was
adequately rep­res­en­ted by RSV; but since some of the errors or
inferior vari­ants repor­ted by him from RSV are not shared by U and
X, which are nev­er­the­less mem­bers of the Roman fam­ily, in such
cases it seems legit­im­ate to treat vari­ants in one or more of RSV as
aber­ra­tions within the Roman fam­ily, not all of which are of suf
­fi­cient
interest to be recor­ded in the appar­atus.
There are a few other wit­nesses that merit brief notice on account
of their con­tri­bu­tions to the text.
E is the sym­bol used for the excerpts found in Paris BNF suppl. gr.
134, from the first half of the four­teenth cen­tury; scribe and proven­
ance are unknown.30 This MS has a set of excerpts appar­ently almost
identical with those found in Athos, Dionysiou 90.31 It has a curi­ous

26
  Maia, 12 (1960), 331–45.
27
  IMU 3 (1960), 287–90 with pls. XIV–XV. See also his papers in Maia, 11 (1959),
315–19 and Bollettino dei clas­sici, 7 (1959), 65–84.
28
  R. Cantore, Prometheus, 31 (2005), 97–117.
29
  See also Hemmerdinger, Manuscrits (n. 9), 81–5.
30
  Ch. Astruc et al., Catalogue des manuscrits du sup­plé­ment grec 1–150 (Paris,
2003), 288–91.
31
  S. P. Lambros, Neos Hellenomnemon, 2 (1905), 3.

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 Introduction xix

addi­tion to the text at 3. 34. 3, αὐτίκα δὴ εἴϲῃ, which makes sense,

and at 4. 162. 5 it offers τελευτῶν instead of τελευταῖον.
K = Cambridge, University Library Nn. ii. 34, some­times referred
to as the Askewianus; it should prob­ably be dated c.1330.32
M = Modena, Biblioteca Estense Universitaria, gr. 221 (cur­rent
shelf-­mark α. O. 4. 2), provides a few inter­est­ing read­ings, a num­ber
of which appear also in the Aldine edi­tion.33 The scribe has been iden­
ti­fied as a cer­tain John, per­haps John Moschos; one dated MS in his
hand is Brussels, Royal Library 11281, from the year 1475. This is a
hint that M ante­dates the Aldine, a view strengthened by the fur­ther
attri­bu­tion of Paris BNF grec 2598, dated 1467, to this scribe.34 But
there is evid­ence point­ing in the oppos­ite dir­ec­tion. Hemmerdinger
stated that the water­mark is Briquet’s design 6281, attested in Florence
in 1515–16.35 This design, con­sist­ing of a pair of crossed arrows, is
found in many vari­ant forms over a long period, begin­ning in the
1450s. It seemed advis­able to obtain con­firm­a­tion and/or fur­ther
inform­a­tion, and thanks to the good offices of Dr Bonnie Blackburn
I can report as fol­lows: the paper is fairly thick and iden­ti­fic­a­tion is
not as easy as it might be, but in fo. 182, which is blank, it is pos­sible
to see a dis­tinct­ive vari­ant of the design which is extremely close to
one attested in Ravenna in 1509.36 This lends sup­port to the view that
M is more recent than the Aldine and des­cends from it.
Nor = Nuremberg, Stadtbibliothek Cent. V App. 10, which was
iden­ti­fied by Brigitte Mondrain as the source of the Aldine first
edi­tion of 1502.37 It has the marks char­ac­ter­istic of books that were
used as copy by print­ers. The main scribe has not been iden­ti­fied, but
one of the cor­rect­ors is John Gregoropoulos, a reg­ul­ar col­lab­or­ator in
the Aldine pub­lish­ing house. Investigation of Nor has enabled me to
define more accur­ately the con­tri­bu­tion of the Aldine edi­tion.
P = Paris, BNF grec 1633, a four­teenth-­cen­tury MS which often
agrees with C.

32
  See Appendix (i).
33
  G. B. Alberti, Bollettino dei clas­sici, 20 (1999), 7–9.
34
  E. Gamillscheg, Repertorium der griech­is­chen Kopisten, ii (Vienna, 1989), 112,
no. 279.
35
  Les Manuscrits d’Hérodote (n. 9), 36. For the water­mark see C. M. Briquet, Les
Filigranes (Geneva, 1909, revised edi­tion by A. Stevenson, Amsterdam, 1968).
36
  G. Piccard, Wasserzeichen Werkzeug und Waffen (Stuttgart, 1980), no. IX 943.
37
  Scriptorium, 49 (1995), 263–73.

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 xx Introduction

T (known to some pre­vi­ous edit­ors as N) = Florence, Biblioteca

Medicea Laurenziana plut. 70. 6, writ­ten in 1318 by Nikolaos
Triklines. Alberti sug­ges­ted that it too was used by Valla.38 Alberti has
also pub­lished import­ant cor­rec­tions to the reports of its vari­ants that
were pre­vi­ously avail­able.39 But T now turns out to have passed
through the hands of Gemistos Plethon, who restored a lost bifo­
lium,40 and at 1. 131 erased the words τὸν κύκλον πάντα τοῦ
οὐρανοῦ Δία καλέοντεϲ, which were unwel­come to him.41
The Latin ver­sion by Lorenzo Valla, which he had barely com­pleted
by the time of his death, is occa­sion­ally use­ful because it reflects
emend­at­ ions of the text which should almost cer­tainly be cred­ited to
him rather than a lost exem­plar, since the three MSS he is known to
have used were prob­ably all that he felt the need of or could find. It is
unfor­tu­nate that the ver­sion does not sur­vive in an auto­graph or
mas­ter copy, because the prin­ted ver­sion issued in Venice in 1474 by
Benedetto Brugnoli was based on an inferior copy, and the text of
that edi­tion was sub­sequently mod­i­fied by vari­ous edit­ors, the res­ult
of which is that one can­not be sure that all the emend­at­ ions inferred
from it are cor­rectly attrib­uted to Valla. The best MS is prob­ably
Stockholm, Royal Library Va 18, which seems to have been copied no
later than the begin­ning of 1458, in other words within a few months
of Valla’s death on 1 August 1457. Another import­ant MS is Pesaro,
Biblioteca Oliveriana 624, dated 1470.42
The sec­ond­ary tra­di­tion, though rich because of the numer­ous
quo­ta­tions of a pop­u­lar author by ancient writers, is not as help­ful as
the editor would like. Sometimes doubts are resolved, but we do not
have quo­ta­tions of the most prob­lem­atic pas­sages. And it does not
look as if Byzantine read­ers had access to bet­ter texts; so the editor
derives very little bene­fit from the excerpts made in the middle of the
tenth cen­tury for the emperor Constantine Porphyrogenitus’ encyc­
lo­pae­dia or the quo­ta­tions in the Suda lex­icon of slightly later date.
The excerpts do, how­ever, raise an inter­est­ing ques­tion at 8. 104,
where they omit a pas­sage that has been deleted by mod­ern edit­ors.

38
  Maia, 11 (1959), 315–19.
39
  Ibid. 12 (1960), 344–5.
40
  D. Bianconi, Segno e Testo, 3 (2005), 391–438; see p. 403 and pl. 3. The iden­ti­
fication had been sug­ges­ted to me per lit­teras by F. Lo Monaco in 1984.
41
  F. Pagani, Byzantinische Zeitschrift, 102 (2009), 201 with pl. 13.
42
  S. Pagliaroli, L’Erodoto del Valla (Messina, 2006), 23–4, 45–7, 101.

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 Introduction xxi

Eustathius, whose philo­lo­gical work dates from the middle of the

twelfth cen­tury before his elev­a­tion to the see of Thessalonica, is also
a poten­tial source of inter­est­ing read­ings, but one has to bear in mind
that he was prob­ably cap­able of mak­ing minor cor­rec­tions, as I
sus­pect he did at 3. 60. 4.
Herodotus does not appear to have engaged the atten­tion of
ancient schol­ars as much as might have been expec­ted. We would
gladly know more about Aristarchus’ work, of which a tiny snip­pet is
pre­served in P.Amherst 12, where a vari­ant read­ing in 1. 215 is
dis­cussed.43 A little-­known gram­marian of much the same date,
Hellanicus, was inter­ested in Herodotus, but his views on vari­ous
points of Homeric philo­logy, if accur­ately repor­ted in the scho­lia, do
not inspire con­fid­ence, and if he wrote about Herodotus there is no
reason to think that we would have profited much from his obser­va­
tions.44 P.Oxy. 4455 con­tains a men­tion of Didymus, but there are not
many other signs of crit­ical interest in the text. A rare example is
Porphyry’s cita­tion of Philemon’s dis­cus­sion of the gender of the
name Branchidai.45 This is fas­cin­at­ing because it shows an Atticist
check­ing cop­ies of the text for a vari­ant and refut­ing a sug­ges­tion by
Alexander of Cotiaeum. But there is no proof that Alexander or
Philemon dealt with other prob­lems in the text, and Oration 32 of
Aelius Aristides, which is an obit­u­ary of Alexander, does not indic­ate
that he had a spe­cial interest in Herodotus.46 It looks as if Herodotus
was an author pop­u­lar with the edu­cated pub­lic (Galen noted that he
should be read for pleas­ure47) rather than a school text requir­ing
exegesis, which would explain the paucity of scho­lia; one that is of
interest is found at 3. 61, where a cer­tain Dionysius of Miletus cor­rects
the name of one of the Persian magi. There is also a small col­lec­tion
of just under, 200 unusual words occur­ring in Herodotus (Ἡροδότου
λέξειϲ), trans­mit­ted in two recen­sions, one of them arranged

43
  M. W. Haslam, CP 89 (1974), 45 with n. 169, expressed doubts about the authen­
ti­city of the text but did not spe­cify his reas­ons. F. Montana, ZPE 180 (2012), 72–6,
pro­poses one sig­ni­fic­ant new read­ing.
44
  The frag­ments are edited by F. Montanari, I fram­menti dei gram­matici
Agathokles, Hellanikos, Ptolemaios Epithetes (Berlin, 1988), 45–73.
45
  Accessible in A. R. Sodano’s edi­tion, Porphyrii Quaestionum Homericarum liber
I (Naples, 1970), 35–6.
46
  The frag­ments of Alexander are edited by A. R. Dyck, ICS 16 (1991), 307–25.
47
  De admin­is­tra­tionibus ana­tom­icis 3. 9 (ii. 393K = i. 336–7 Garofalo).

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 xxii Introduction

alpha­bet­ic­ally, the other in the order of their occur­rence in the text.

These lists provide basic help for read­ers not well versed in dia­lect
forms or rare vocab­ul­ary. A few words fig­ure in one list but not the
other, and there are some that are not found in Herodotus at all.48 The
date at which this col­lec­tion was made is unclear, and it is not
valu­able for the editor. To what extent Herodotus had a place in the
school cur­riculum is unclear. Some hints to that effect (Sextus
Empiricus, Adv. math. 1. 57, Julian, ep. 61 B.–C.) need to be weighed
against the fact that many writers seem to be acquain­ted with only
part of the text or to cite it indir­ectly.49
The Byzantines were a little less inter­ested in Herodotus than
Thucydides, if the num­ber of extant cop­ies writ­ten before the middle
of the fif­teenth cen­tury is any­thing to go by, and their cita­tions do not
sug­gest any crit­ical con­cern for the accur­acy of the text. John of
Sardis, who flour­ished in the first half of the ninth cen­tury and wrote
a com­ment­ary on the rhet­or­ical hand­books of Aphthonios, cites a
wide range of authors but does not appear to have dir­ect know­ledge
of Herodotus.50 Photius (c.810–93) might have been expec­ted to give
a fairly full account of the text, espe­cially as he took a lot of interest in
the affairs of east­ern nations, but his sum­mary in Bibliotheca 60 is
very brief. Though he expli­citly acknow­ledged that the text was a
model of Ionic, he prob­ably thought that this made the author less
worthy of atten­tion than rep­res­ent­at­ives of Attic dia­lect. The
numer­ous digres­sions and stor­ies which he regarded as mere fables
seemed to him incom­pat­ible with ser­io ­ us his­tor­ical writ­ing. It may
also be noted that one of the most ver­sat­ile intel­lec­tu­als, Maximus
Planudes (c.1255–1305), is not known to have owned a copy. In the
next gen­er­at­ ion the lead­ing intel­lec­tual fig­ure Theodore Metochites
(1270–1332) is aware of Herodotus as a clas­sic but does not dis­cuss
him in detail. The free­thinker George Gemistos Plethon (1355–1452),
as has been men­tioned above in con­nec­tion with MS T, deleted a

48
  The text was prin­ted by H. Stein in his edi­tio maior (Berlin, 1869–71), ii. 443–82,
and reprin­ted by H. Erbse, Lexica graeca minora (Hildesheim, 1965), 191–230. It is
curi­ous to note that con­versely some Herodotean words have found their way into
Timaeus’ Lexicon Platonicum.
49
  C. Ehrhardt in Reallexikon für Antike und Christentum, part 110 (1988), cols.
854–5.
50
  K. Alpers, Untersuchungen zu Johannes Sardianos und seinem Kommentar zu
den Progymnasmata des Aphthonios (Braunschweig, 2009), 88 n. 288.

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 Introduction xxiii

clause in Herodotus’ account of Persian reli­gion. The last great

Byzantine scholar, Cardinal Bessarion (1400–72), when still a rela­
tively young man in 1436, tran­scribed his own copy of Herodotus,
Thucydides, and Xenophon (now MS Venice, Biblioteca Marciana
gr. 365). He clearly read Herodotus with great atten­tion: there are
numer­ous notes on every page indic­at­ing the con­tents, but when I
examined the MS I failed to find any mar­ginal note pre­faced by ἴϲωϲ,
which was a com­mon way of mark­ing a sug­ges­ted emend­a­tion of the
text, and so only a full col­la­tion will reveal whether in fact Bessarion
noticed faults in the text and tried to cor­rect them.
As the know­ledge of Greek gradu­ally became a little more wide­
spread in the fif­teenth and six­teenth cen­tur­ies one would expect an
author offer­ing such a vari­ety of fas­cin­at­ing mater­ial to have been
extremely pop­ul­ar, but there is not much to sug­gest that his work was
reg­ul­arly included in the syl­labus of schools and uni­ver­sit­ies.51 A
trans­la­tion made by Guarino c.1415 got no fur­ther than 2. 71, per­haps
because he did not yet pos­sess a com­plete copy.52 The copy used at
Vittorino da Feltre’s fam­ous school in Mantua is pre­sum­ably to be
iden­ti­fied as MS Milan, Ambrosiana A 253 inf., writ­ten by the scribe
Girard of Patras, who is known to have worked as a res­id­ent copy­ist
at the school. The only critic of the Herodotean text of any import­
ance before the first great edit­ors of the early mod­ern period was
Andronicus Callistus, a pro­lific copy­ist who belonged to Bessarion’s
circle and held teach­ing posts for a time in at the uni­ver­sit­ies of
Bologna and Florence. His con­tri­bu­tions are to be found in MS S, as
noted above. J. E. Powell deserves the credit for recog­niz­ing the hand,
which was already known from other MSS, and assign­ing it to the
fif­teenth cen­tury instead of the four­teenth, a cor­rec­tion which has not
been registered in all recent edi­tions; but he was misled by the incom­
plete inform­at­ ion avail­able at the time and thought that the scribe
was George the Cretan, another asso­ci­ate of Bessarion.53 Aubrey
Diller was able to clear up the muddle.54 There are about fifty pas­sages

51
  Herodotus does not fig­ure in the index of P. Botley, Learning Greek in Western
Europe 1396–1529 (Philadelphia, 2010).
52
  N. G. Wilson, From Byzantium to Italy (London, 1992), 16.
53
  CR 52 (1937), 118–19.
54
  IMU 10 (1967), 403–10 = Studies in Greek Manuscript Tradition (Amsterdam,
1983), 415–26. Though I once expressed slight reser­va­tion (Antike und Abendland, 16
(1970), 73 n. 17), I now feel con­fid­ent that the iden­ti­fic­at­ ion is cor­rect.

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 xxiv Introduction

where the scribe tried with vary­ing suc­cess to cor­rect the text. In
the­ory the mer­its of S could res­ult from access to a lost codex rep­re­
sent­ing an oth­er­wise unknown branch of the tra­di­tion, but there
are cop­ies of other texts tran­scribed by Andronicus which exhibit
good read­ings that are most nat­ur­ally inter­preted as the sug­ges­tions
of an intel­li­gent reader.55 A few good read­ings are also found in the
frag­ment­ary MS Paris BNF grec 1405, writ­ten by Aristoboulos
Apostolides, a Cretan who became bishop of Monemvasia but spent
many years in Italy and died in Venice in 1535.56 A fact worth empha­
sizing is that Politian, the most tal­en­ted Hellenist of his gen­er­a­tion,
did not apply his crit­ical fac­ulties to the solu­tion of puzzles in this
text.
The Aldine edi­tio prin­ceps of 1502 was import­ant as a means of
mak­ing the text more widely avail­able, but it does not con­sti­tute a
land­mark from a crit­ical point of view, since the cor­rec­tions attrib­ut­
able to the pub­lisher and his asso­ci­ates are not numer­ous or sub­stan­
tial. It was, how­ever, appre­ci­ated by Erasmus, who noted in 1531 that
there was still a good deal to be done in the way of provid­ing bet­ter
trans­la­tions of the clas­sics, includ­ing Thucydides and Herodotus,
which seems to imply that he did not have a very high opin­ion of
Valla’s ver­sions.57 Though Erasmus edited many texts, his con­cerns
were more theo­lo­gical than lit­er­ary or his­tor­ical. For two cen­tur­ies or
more, as one prin­ted edi­tion suc­ceeded another, little pro­gress was
made in free­ing the text from the accu­mu­lated errors res­ult­ing from
nearly two mil­len­nia of copy­ing by hand. Occasional con­tri­bu­tions
by emin­ent fig­ures such as Scaliger have been found in mar­ginalia
in their cop­ies of the text. But it was the edi­tion of Wesseling

55
  See my remarks in From Byzantium to Italy (n. 52), 117, 182 n. 13 and
Aristophanea (Oxford, 2007), 12.
56
  Gamillscheg, Repertorium (n. 34), ii. 38, no. 38.
57
  Ep. 2422 to Germanus Brixius. In 1518 he had given his own copy of the Aldine
to Antony Clava, say­ing that he could eas­ily replace it, which he did; both cop­ies have
been iden­ti­fied (Ep. 841; see P. S. Allen’s note). One of the two is now in the British
Library (C 45 k. 6), illus­trated in M. Davies, Aldus Manutius: Printer and Publisher of
Renaissance Venice (London, 1995), 53 with pl. 26. It has brief mar­ginal notes, indi­
cat­ing that Erasmus read it attent­ively; it was a text that he could quarry when prepar­
­ing fresh edi­tions of his Adagia, which had first appeared in 1500, and for his
Apophthegmata of 1532; in the pre­face to this (Ep. 2431) he remarks on how skilled
Plutarch is in con­vey­ing national and indi­vidual char­ac­ter, whereas Xenophon seems
to him dilu­tior and Herodotus suf­fri­gidus; he did not draw as much on the lat­ter
because pler­aque videan­tur a scrip­toris ingenio rep­erta.

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 Introduction xxv

(Amsterdam, 1763), incor­por­at­ing many sug­ges­tions by Valckenaer,

that took a big step for­ward and laid the found­at­ ions for the sys­tem­
atic efforts of nine­teenth-­cen­tury schol­ars, espe­cially the Dutch and
the Germans, to pro­duce a reli­able text. Of sub­sequent edi­tions the
most import­ant have been those of Schweighäuser (Strasburg, 1816),
Krüger (Berlin, 1855–7), Stein (Berlin, 1852–62, fre­quently reprin­ted
with revi­sions; the edi­tio maior, which does not include his
com­ment­ary, appeared in 1869–71), and Van Herwerden (Utrecht,
1885).
A deeply held belief of many nine­teenth-­cen­tury schol­ars was that
texts had been ser­i­ously cor­rup­ted by the addi­tion of explan­at­ory
glosses. There was some basis for this belief, since many extant manu­
scripts, espe­cially those dat­ing from the later Byzantine period,
exhibit numer­ous inter­lin­ear glosses, and even in antiquity some
read­ers will have felt the need for explan­at­ ions of rare and obsol­ete
words. However, attempts to identify glosses were often con­duc­ted
with too much enthu­si­asm. Cobet and oth­ers impressed by his
example found many pas­sages where words or phrases could be
deleted with­out dam­age to the sense and they there­fore pro­posed
dele­tion. Sometimes they had a good case; but it is a mis­take to treat
an author who com­posed with at least some con­cern for oral presen­
t­a­tion as if he were writ­ing in strictly logical fash­ion and never wasted
a word. As a res­ult the undeni­ably import­ant con­tri­bu­tion of Van
Herwerden is some­what dimin­ished by his eager­ness to detect glosses.
Among his con­tem­por­ar­ies Blaydes is a little less help­ful on Herodotus
than on dra­matic texts, but Pingel, who is cited by Hude but not as
often as he should have been, deserves great praise for his acute hand­
ling of dif ­fi­cult prob­lems. Richards also made many highly acute
sug­ges­tions, and though they were pub­lished in access­ible places,
they have ten­ded to be over­looked. The vogue for excision of putat­ive
glosses con­tin­ued in the first half of the twen­ti­eth cen­tury in the work
of Powell, who for­tu­nately did not limit his atten­tion to this prob­lem
but offered solu­tions for almost all dif ­fi­cult pas­sages. Many of his
pro­pos­als appeared in the appendix to his trans­la­tion and with­out the
sup­port­ing argu­ment­at­ ion that might have con­vinced scep­tics.
Though a high per­cent­age of his emend­a­tions seem excess­ively
logical, quite a num­ber are neces­sary and most of the oth­ers deserve
to be repor­ted in the appar­atus crit­ic­ us. Powell’s ideas attrac­ted the
atten­tion of his close friend Paul Maas, who entered some of them in
the mar­gins of his copy of Hude’s text. Unfortunately he did not as a

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 xxvi Introduction

rule add any com­ment.58 It is unclear whether he ever planned to edit

Herodotus; his interest in the text arose from the con­vic­tion that it
was a paradigm case of a tra­di­tion in which a stemma with two
branches could be estab­lished with cer­tainty.59 However that may
be, Maas did make a num­ber of con­jec­tures of his own which
remained unpub­lished, and it is pos­sible that Powell should be given
the credit for stim­u­lat­ing Maas to make his typ­ic­ally acute obser­va­
tions. While the puzzle of determ­in­ing cor­rect dia­lect forms remains
unsolved and a num­ber of pas­sages con­tinue to defy all efforts to
pro­duce a con­vin­cing emend­a­tion, the best hope of sub­stan­tial
fur­ther improve­ments to the text is that one day Ptolemaic papyri or
a sub­stan­tial amount of an early com­ment­ary such as that of
Aristarchus will be dis­covered.
My edi­tion is con­ser­vat­ive in so far as most of the dele­tions and
other rad­ical changes pro­posed by Cobet and Powell are rejec­ted. On
the other hand I have felt it neces­sary to accept or record a fair
num­ber of emend­a­tions of other types and to make some sug­ges­tions
of my own; many of the lat­ter are dia­gnostic, designed to draw atten­
tion to pas­sages where there is reason to sus­pect that the text as it has
come down to us is not neces­sar­ily what the author inten­ded.60
58
  For Maas’s annota­tions see ZPE 179 (2011), 57–70.
59
  He used it in Textkritik, 2nd edn. (Leipzig, 1957), 30.
60
  Cf. Maas, ibid. 33.

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 Book I

Proem (i) The ques­tion whether H. described him­self as a nat­ive of

Halicarnassus or of Thurii has been much debated. Jacoby, RE Suppl.
ii (1913), cols. 206–9 argued for the lat­ter. He was fol­lowed by
Pasquali, Storia della trad­iz­ione e crit­ica del testo, 2nd edn. (Florence,
1952), 312 and Legrand, and more recently by R. Renehan, GGA 243
(1991), 23–44, who did not restate the case in favour. This view
depends on accept­ance of the vari­ant in the cita­tion by Arist. Rhetoric
1409a27–8; though many have declared the sen­tence in ques­tion,
which is clearly an addi­tion inter­rupt­ing the train of thought, to be
spuri­ous, R. Kassel in his edi­tion observed mani­festum emblema
quam­vis dubit­anter pro Aristoteleo habui. In dis­cus­sion of the prob­
lem it has nor­mally been assumed that one read­ing must be right and
the other wrong. But Powell, History, 63–5 adop­ted a more subtle
approach and argued that this is not a typ­ical case in which one read­
ing or the other has to be rejec­ted. He pos­tu­lated two pub­lic­at­ ions by
the author, the second of which is to be dated after 443 and could
nat­ur­ally have named Thurii as the author’s place of res­id­ence. I
regard this as per­fectly plaus­ible but would like to draw atten­tion to
an addi­tional pos­sib­il­ity: there are a num­ber of pas­sages where it
seems to me vir­tu­ally cer­tain that H. had not sub­jec­ted his text to a
final revi­sion and as a res­ult his mas­ter copy exhib­ited vari­ant read­
ings, Though authorial vari­ants have been pos­tu­lated by Stein and
oth­ers, to the best of my know­ledge they have not pre­vi­ously been
adduced as a pos­sible explan­a­tion of the prob­lem here.
Supporters of Θουρίου as the sole genu­ine read­ing need to account for
the pre­val­ence of the other read­ing. This could per­haps be done by
emphas­iz­ing the fash­ion which in Hellenistic times led indi­vidual cit­ies
to express their pride in being the birth-­place of fam­ous men,
Halicarnassus being a not­able example, as is seen in the remark­able

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 2 Book I

epi­gram ori­gin­ally pub­lished in 1998; for a revised edi­tion see The Further
Academic Papers of Sir Hugh Lloyd-­Jones (Oxford, 2005), 211–32.
(ii) The sup­ple­ment 〈δὴ καὶ〉 is due to Maas, who cited 2. 131. 3 in
sup­port. Reference to the Lexicon s.v. δή VI. 1 (p. 83 col. 2) shows
that τε is fre­quently fol­lowed by καὶ δὴ καὶ. In this import­ant
sen­tence the emphasis is appro­pri­ate.
1. 1. 2 Powell’s sup­ple­ment of 〈ἄλλων πολίων τῶν〉 may look
drastic, but in the text as trans­mit­ted τῶν is unsat­is­fact­or­ily obscure.
1. 2. 1 ἴϲα πρὸϲ ἴϲα ϲϕι γενέϲθαι is the read­ing of A, which Pasquali,
op. cit. 315, fol­low­ing Snell, Bursian, 220 (1929), 3, took to be the end
of a hexa­meter. Snell did not com­ment fur­ther. In my opin­ion this
met­rical fact is likely to be coin­cid­ental and unin­ten­ded. [L. A. H.– S.
reminds me that the ini­tial vowel of this adject­ive is long in Ionic.]
In r ϲϕι is trans­posed so as to pre­cede πρὸϲ. If Wackernagel’s law
about the pos­it­ ion of enclit­ics were applied strictly, the enclitic should
be trans­posed still fur­ther, to fol­low δή; but in H. the law is not
uni­ver­sally applied. ἴϲα πρὸϲ ἴϲα is prob­ably an expres­sion in which
the words hang together so closely that noth­ing should be inser­ted; if
that is so, A’s read­ing is to be pre­ferred.
1. 3. 2 ϲϕι is accep­ted by recent edit­ors. But as Stein noted (5th edn.,
1883): ‘strenger wäre, schon wegen αὐτοὶ und ἄλλων, das reflex­ive
und betonte ϲϕίϲι’. Though he left the text unaltered, I have pre­ferred
to accept an easy emend­a­tion.
1. 4. 2 Plut. Mor. 856 f when cit­ing the text gives the expec­ted form
ἐβούλοντο, but in his dis­cus­sion the MSS diverge, B offer­ing the
dubi­ous form ἐβουλέατο and E the evid­ently false ἐβουλεύοντο.
Curiously Ar side here with B. Is this a case of hyper­ion­ism? The form
in ‑έατο is rejec­ted by Smyth 480 (§585), along with all other such
forms in the imper­fect of verbs in ‑ω.
1. 4. 3–4 Van Herwerden (1883) said of the words λέγουϲι Πέρϲαι
‘pro­cul dubio red­denda sunt ludima­gis­tris’. This dele­tion pre­serves
τοὺϲ ἐκ τῆϲ Ἀϲίηϲ as a foil to ἐν τῆν Ἀϲίην a few lines earlier.
Powell’s altern­at­ive dele­tion of τοὺϲ ἐκ τῆϲ Ἀϲίηϲ is also attract­ive,
since the words might be a gloss. But I feel that neither change is
abso­lutely neces­sary if one is will­ing to accept occa­sional col­lo­quial
redund­ancy in H. Stein had no com­ment on these phrases, nor on his
own pro­posal to delete βάρβαρα in §4.

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 Book I 3

1. 5. 3 Commentators whose prin­cipal con­cern is the accur­acy of H.’s

nar­rat­ive note a puzz­ling fault here: the descrip­tion of Croesus as the
first for­eign ruler to con­duct suc­cess­ful attacks on the Greeks is
untrue, because Gyges and his suc­cessors had already done so, as we
learn in chs. 14–18. Powell, History, 10, not included in Asheri’s long
list of con­tri­bu­tions on p. 92 n. 9, argued that the nar­rat­ive about
Croesus ori­gin­ally star­ted after ch. 140. This is the first of a num­ber of
pas­sages which can be taken as evid­ence of H.’s fail­ure to give the text
a final revi­sion, but Stein’s note here does not make the point.
1. 7. 4 Maas saw that in the light of the evid­ence assembled by M.
Lamberz, Glotta, 6 (1915), 7–12, Doule should be under­stood as a
proper name: cf. ZPE 179 (2011), 58.
1. 8. 3 ἅμα . . . γυνή was deleted by Maas, who noted in the mar­gin of
his copy of Hude ‘cf. 10. 3’. But I do not think it can be regarded as
cer­tain that the repe­ti­tion of the concept casts ser­i­ous doubt on the
authen­ti­city of its ini­tial occur­rence here. Dionysius of Halicarnassus,
De comp. verb. 3. 18 and P. Oxy. 3372 both have this sen­tence; so if it
is an inter­pol­a­tion, it is an early one (which is by no means out of the
ques­tion). One might won­der if the sequence of thought needs to be
improved by emend­ing δὲ to γὰρ, but Denniston, GP 169 implies
oth­er­wise.
1. 9. 2 P. Oxy. 2095 reads ἐϲελθόντα 〈αὐτίκα〉. The vari­ant was adop­
ted by Legrand, who com­pared 10. 1. I doubt if it is essen­tial; the
scribe could have been influ­enced by the word­ing of the next ch.,
espe­cially if he was famil­iar with the text through hav­ing read or
copied it pre­vi­ously.
1. 13. 1 τὸν δὲ βαϲιλεύειν is a case of apodotic δὲ lis­ted by Denniston,
GP 180. But in view of the vari­ant in the pre­ced­ing line in d ἢν μὲν
〈δὴ〉, I won­der if this example of the apodotic particle should be
replaced by δὴ so as to give the sense ‘then indeed he should be king’.
1. 16. 2 In his copy of Hude Maas marked the word τούτων with a
cross and noted in the mar­gin ποίων? I ima­gine he might have been
in favour of a sup­ple­ment and exem­pli gra­tia I sug­gest 〈τῶν πολέμων〉.
1. 18. 2 This is the first of a num­ber of pas­sages where Stein detec­ted
authorial revi­sion. He believed that H. had not had time to com­plete
the revi­sion of his text and as a res­ult there are addi­tions and modi­
fic­at­ ions which tend to inter­rupt the sequence of thought. I favour

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 4 Book I

Stein’s hypo­thesis, but it should be noted that in the present pas­sage

Maas, with­out ref­er­ence to Stein’s view, wished to delete the whole of
§2, whereas Powell did not. It should also be noted that Stein changed
his mind in a few places, so that the list of pas­sages he gives is not the
same in all edi­tions.
1. 22. 1 The slightly anom­al­ous pos­it­ ion of τε imme­di­ately after ἰδών
was noted by Denniston, GP 519, with some other examples from H.,
but not includ­ing a sim­ilar case at ch. 171. 3.
1. 26. 3 τῶν μὲν ἐδύνατο μέζοναϲ (sc. αἰτίαϲ) παρευρίϲκειν is prob­
lem­atic from a syn­tactical point of view. One would expect the verb to
gov­ern a dat­ive, and Stein’s ren­der­ing ‘erfinden’ does not address the
dif­fi­culty. Pingel (1877) pro­posed τῷ for τῶν. The error could have
been induced by assim­il­a­tion to the inflec­tion of the pre­ced­ing word
ἐπιϕέρων or by the com­par­at­ive μέζοναϲ. But a single unspe­cified
vic­tim is not what one expects in the con­text. The altern­at­ive of read­ing
τοῖϲι was rejec­ted by Pingel on palaeo­graph­ical grounds, but they are
not the only cause of error, and I would not rule it out. With con­sid­er­
able hes­it­a­tion I have accep­ted the para­dosis on the ground that after
Ἰώνων τε καὶ Αἰολέων the anacoluthon is per­haps accept­able.
1. 28–29. 1 Stein made two dele­tions here, the first εἰϲὶ δὲ . . .
Πάμϕυλοι, noted by Maas but seem­ingly not accep­ted, the second
καὶ . . . Λυδοῖϲι, which Maas did accept. The list of sub­ject peoples is
hardly objec­tion­able, but the ref­er­ence to Croesus’ fur­ther ambi­tions
may be; Λυδοῖϲι falls rather flat, and LSJ sug­gest that τιναϲ should be
sup­plied with προϲεπικτωμένου.
The rest of the sen­tence is prob­lem­atic. ἄλλοι τε οἱ πάντεϲ is a devi­
ation from nor­mal idiom, and Powell’s trans­pos­i­tion of οἵ τε ἄλλοι
πάντεϲ is a reas­on­able solu­tion because errors of word-­order are
fre­quent in MSS. As an altern­at­ive one could delete οἱ πάντεϲ as an
inter­pol­a­tion induced by ἕκαϲτοϲ αὐτῶν in the next line. A fur­ther
and more ser­i­ous dif ­fi­culty is the clause begin­ning ὡϲ ἕκαϲτοϲ. Powell
trans­lated ‘there came one by one to Sardis’, which makes it the main
clause; sim­il­arly Godley has ‘there came . . . in this or that man­ner’.
Such ren­der­ings sat­isfy sense rather than syn­tax; one would prefer
‘whenever each of them could’, which sug­gests that we should read
some­thing on the lines of ὅκωϲ ἕκαϲτοϲ αὐτῶν ἀπικνέεϲθαι δύναιτο.
1. 30. 2 τὴν πολλὴν, the read­ing of A, will have been the read­ing of
the arche­type, as Maas saw. D has the minor cor­rup­tion τὴν πόλιν,

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 Book I 5

while other mem­bers of the Roman fam­ily offer τῆϲ πολλῆϲ, which
looks like a poor con­jec­ture. CP have γῆν πολλὴν, prob­ably also a
con­jec­ture, but gen­er­ally accep­ted; one may com­pare 4. 76. 2
Ἀνάχαρϲιϲ . . . γῆν πολλὴν θεωρήϲαϲ. An altern­at­ive would be to
accept the read­ing of the arche­type and sup­ple­ment 〈γῆϲ〉 τὴν
πολλὴν; cf. 5. 103. 2 Καρίηϲ τὴν πολλὴν.
1. 31. 1 τὰ κατὰ τὸν Τέλλον is syn­tactic­ally awk­ward because the
words are so oddly sep­ar­ated from εἴπαϲ. Stein assumed appos­i­tion
with πολλὰ κτλ. and said ‘Die drei Glieder des Vordersatzes sind,
ihres ver­schiedenen Redetons wegen, selt­sam ver­schoben’. This is
hardly con­vin­cing; one would do bet­ter to accept Reiske’s τοῖϲ for τὰ.
Powell’s dele­tion of εἴπαϲ . . . ὄλβια does not solve the prob­lem, but
it is true that the phrase could be a gloss. One might equally well
sug­gest that τὰ κατὰ τὸν Τέλλον is a gloss designed to explain the
two adject­ives. The second half of the period requires Maas’s sup­ple­
ment in order to avoid an abrupt change of sub­ject.
1. 32. 4 In sup­port of πᾶϲα Blaydes and Richards cited Ar. Ach. 909,
Av. 430, Soph. El. 301, Phil. 622 and Theocr. 15. 20 and 148. In all these
cases πᾶϲ is adja­cent to the word it agrees with, whereas if πᾶϲα is read
here, it is sep­ar­ated by two words, one of them admit­tedly enclitic;
per­haps col­lo­quial usage per­mit­ted dis­tor­tions of nor­mal word-­order.
The mas­cu­line πᾶϲ is found in the indir­ect tra­di­tion and was added in
A by a later hand; but the MSS have πᾶν, adop­ted by most edit­ors.
Stein trans­lated this ‘Der Mensch ist ganz Zufall’ but admit­ted that
πᾶν does not agree with ϲυμϕορή, ‘was immer auffal­lend bleibt’.
1. 32. 6 In the descrip­tion of the man who is blessed with good for­tune
the first adject­ive has caused dif ­fi­culty. ἄπειροϲ ought to be fol­lowed
by a men­tion of what he has no exper­i­ence of; the scribe of T and
Reiske pro­posed ἄπηροϲ, Stein (1869) wondered about εὔποροϲ, and
Pingel (1877) thought ἄλυποϲ, though it involved a more drastic
change, appro­pri­ate in the con­text. I have come round to the view
that Powell was right to loc­ate the fault in the second adject­ive rather
than the first; by sub­sti­tut­ing νούϲων he cre­ated eleg­ant bal­ance with
the next ele­ment of the descrip­tion.
1. 33 As trans­mit­ted this account of the part­ing of Solon and Croesus
involves a very harsh change of sub­ject, usu­ally accep­ted by edit­ors
and glossed over by trans­lat­ors. Andronicus Callistus, the scribe of S,
altered ἀμαθέα to ἀμαθὴϲ, a solu­tion which found favour with H.

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 6 Book I

Cohoon, AJP 64 (1943), 439–40. [L.A.H.-­S. notes that if this had been
the cor­rect read­ing, no-­one would have thought of chan­ging it.]
In addi­tion the lack of bal­ance in οὔτε . . . οὔτε gov­ern­ing respect­
ively an indic­at­ive verb and a par­ti­ciple induced L. I. C. Pearson,
CR 45 (1931), 14, to pro­pose οὔκωϲ οὔτε ἐχαρίζετο λόγου τέ μιν
ποιηϲάμενοϲ οὐδενὸϲ, which is in line with Stein’s para­phrase
(I note in passing that he also con­sidered ὅ τε λόγου κτλ). Stein had
offered 8. 94. 2 as a par­al­lel for οὔτε . . . οὔτε, which Pearson rejec­ted.
But all this still leaves the dif ­fi­culty of ἀμαθέα untouched, and Stein’s
sug­ges­tion that the sub­ject of ἀποπέμπεται is Croesus fails to
con­vince. My pre­ferred way to avoid such an unan­nounced change of
sub­ject is to emend εἶναι to εἶπαι. Though ἀμαθήϲ is nor­mally used
of people, at Plat. Phaed. 105 c it applies to an ἀπόκριϲιϲ. The rel­at­ive
rar­ity of this usage could eas­ily have led to cor­rup­tion. It is to be
noted that the same emend­a­tion of εἶναι to εἶπαι was made by Abicht
at 6. 37. 2 and Gomperz at 7. 143. 3.
1. 46. 3 Ammon is the name of the god, not a place, and so Pingel
(1877) wondered if ἐϲ Λιβύην should be writ­ten. Siesbye, to whom
he sub­mit­ted this sug­ges­tion, was uncon­vinced. Presumably the
oracle was so import­ant in the set­tle­ment that the god’s name was
syn­onym­ous with it.
1. 47. 1 ἕκαϲτα is trans­mit­ted; the Lexicon s.v. II. 2 clas­si­fies it as a
‘false plural’. A plural would be jus­ti­fied if there were a ques­tion of
groups, but that is hardly appro­pri­ate for the vari­ous oracles
con­sul­ted, and so I sus­pect Cobet could have been right to restore a
sin­gu­lar and attrib­ute the error to assim­il­a­tion with ἅϲϲα. On the
other hand the plural in 48. 1 can be taken to sup­port the para­dosis,
and 7. 184. 1 is also worth cit­ing as a pos­sible par­al­lel.
1. 56. 2 A. H. McNeal, AJP 102 (1981), 359–61, pro­posed the sup­ple­
ment τὰ προκεκριμένα 〈ἔθνεα〉 (which Rosén attrib­utes to Dobree).
C. P. Jones, CQ2 46 (1996), 217–18, in an exam­in­a­tion of H.’s and
Thucydides’ usage of ἔθνοϲ and γένοϲ, agreed, and declared Stein’s
altern­at­ive sug­ges­tion of γένεα incor­rect, des­pite the occur­rence of
this word in the pre­ced­ing sen­tence. McNeal also records that
Blakesley (1854, p. 37), made the simple trans­pos­i­tion τὰ ἀρχαῖον,
ἐόντα. This res­ults in a prima facie ambi­gu­ity: what does the adverbial
expres­sion modify? McNeal thought H. ‘left behind him an unpunc­
tu­ated text in scrip­tio con­tinua. Subsequent read­ers had to decide

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 Book I 7

. . .’. He accep­ted the widely held view that the pre­ced­ing words are
mod­i­fied, and my sense is that this would be nat­ural even in an
unpunc­tu­ated text.
1. 57. 2 I am indebted to Robert Fowler for a pre­view of his dis­cus­sion
of chs. 56–8. His pro­posed dele­tion of the clause about ‘all other
groups’ removes a state­ment that does not help the point that H. is
try­ing to make. This dif­fi­culty is not dis­cussed by L. Miletti, Linguaggio
e meta­lin­guag­gio in Erodoto (Pisa and Rome, 2008), 26–7. From the
point of view of syn­tax the clause is very loosely attached to what
pre­cedes, whereas the pas­sage as a whole seems to be care­fully writ­
ten; the clause might be a little less awk­ward if, as I was ini­tially
inclined to sug­gest, trans­posed to the end of the next period. But if it
is to be deleted, how is the inter­pol­a­tion to be explained? Were there
ancient read­ers with an informed interest in the early lin­guistic
his­tory of Greece or the Pelasgians? That seems rather unlikely.
Perhaps we should do bet­ter to assume that a reader tried to make
sense of and improve a text which he found dif ­fi­cult.
1. 57. 3 Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Ant. Rom. 1. 29, cites this pas­sage
with a strik­ing vari­ant: for the people of Krestonia he sub­stitues the
inhab­it­ants of Cortona, and many schol­ars accept this. But it is easy
to see that Dionysius as a res­id­ent of Rome, or per­haps a later copy­ist
of his text, might mis­take a ref­er­ence to the not very well-­known
region of Krestonia, occur­ring as it does in a con­text where the
Etruscans are men­tioned, for a ref­er­ence to Cortona. Asheri, ad loc.
p. 119, seems to me to be right in reject­ing the idea that Dionysius
offers the ori­ginal read­ing; he takes it to be a lec­tio facilior. Herodotus
here focuses on north­ern Greece and adja­cent regions (Plakie is a
little to the east of Cyzicus).
1. 58 Maas here wrote a large obelus in the mar­gin of his copy of
Hude, under­lined the MSS read­ing πολλῶν, and referred to Powell
(1948), who emen­ded the pas­sage drastic­ally, inter alia accept­ing
pro­pos­als by Matthiae and Dobree. The dif ­fi­culties begin with τῶν
ἐθνέων; what is the def­in­ite art­icle doing here? If with Matthiae we
omit the words (they could have been a gloss) and accept Dobree’s
min­imal adjust­ment πολλὸν, excel­lent sense res­ults. Sauppe’s inser­
tion of the Pelasgians seems jus­ti­fied because ἄλλων ἐθνέων indi­­
cates a con­trast with another eth­nic group. He deleted πολλῶν,
whereas Legrand pre­ferred 〈Πελαϲγῶν〉 πολλῶν. A. H. McNeal, ICS

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 8 Book I

10 (1985), 20, sug­ges­ted either obel­iz­ing τῶν . . . μάλιϲτα or sup­ple­

ment­ing ἐϲ πλῆθοϲ τὸ 〈νῦν ἔτι〉 πολλόν, μάλιϲτα as a vari­ant of
Reiske’s pro­posal, remov­ing the dubi­ous τῶν ἐθνέων and adjust­ing
the punc­tu­ation. At the end of the ch. the adverbial πρὸϲ trans­mit­ted
in the MSS seems to me less sat­is­fact­ory as a con­clu­sion of the argu­
ment than Krüger’s slight emend­a­tion.
1. 59. 5 The restate­ment of Pisistratus’ name after the dat­ive pro­noun
refer­ring to him in the pre­ced­ing clause seems oti­ose and if any­thing
weak­ens the force of the con­trast.
1. 61. 2 Since there is no indic­a­tion that Megacles was at log­ger­heads
with his own sup­port­ers, the recon­cili­ation which he now aimed at
must have been with mem­bers of the rival fac­tions. The sup­ple­ment,
attrib­uted by Powell to Stein but not found in his 1869–71 edi­tion or the
edi­tion with com­ment­ary that I have been able to con­sult, is neces­sary.
1. 63. 2 Pisistratus’ sons catch up with the retreat­ing Athenians and
per­suade them to go home. ἕκαϲτοϲ is cited by Hude as the read­ing
of A b c P2 (in fact it is also in U), but an accus­at­ive is required and he
prin­ted ἕκαϲτον, which turns out to be the read­ing of Pac and X.
However, the trans­mit­ted read­ing is odd, and I sus­pect, as did Stein, that
it con­ceals the less obvi­ous ἑκάϲτουϲ, which would refer to each group.
1. 67. 1 I feel con­fid­ent that the vari­ant ἀέθλευον repor­ted from
Bekker’s Anecdota, i (Berlin, 1814), 347, now to be con­sul­ted in I. C.
Cunningham’s edi­tion of the Synagoge (Berlin, 2003), 555 (versio
codi­cis B), is an insig­ni­fic­ant scribal error. The word­ing of the explan­
a­tion given there coin­cides exactly with that in Hesychius α 1245,
where the lemma is ἀέθλεον, as in the MSS of H. It fol­lows that this
vari­ant no longer deserves inclu­sion in the appar­atus.
1. 67. 4 The first line of the oracle is hard to trans­late sat­is­fact­or­ily
because τιϲ seems out of place. I won­der if the right read­ing is θήκη.
The Spartans were look­ing for a tomb. The word-­order would not
then be quite so odd. Powell too thought Τεγέη cor­rupt. With regard
to l. 4 Maas (let­ter of 26 May 1935) was will­ing to accept the gen­it­ive
Τεγέηϲ as equi­val­ent to Τεγέηθεν (Churchill College Cambridge,
Powell Archive 1/6/12).
1. 67. 5 τῶν ἀϲτῶν ἐξιόντεϲ is awk­ward, and Usener, Jahrbücher für
classis­che Philologie, 35/139 (1889), 376–7 poin­ted out that after
Ϲπαρτιητέων there is no reason to add τῶν ἀϲτῶν. The words could

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 Book I 9

well be an intrus­ive gloss. If it were removed the simple sup­ple­ment

〈οἳ〉 ἐξιόντεϲ, pro­posed by Blaydes and Richards, would be a pos­sible
solu­tion. Another attract­ive approach is attrib­uted by Powell to Stein
(though I have not been able to trace it): for ἀϲτῶν ἐξιόντεϲ read
ἐξιόντων. With Van Herwerden’s adjust­ment of the word-­order to
restore the obvi­ous and neces­sary οἱ αἰεὶ this is emin­ently plaus­ible.
A com­plic­a­tion is that Usener believed ἀϲτῶν to be a cor­rup­tion of
ϲτατῶν, a rare term found in Bekker’s fifth lex­icon, Anecdota Graeca,
i. 305. 20. The entry reads ϲτατῶν: ἄρχοντέϲ εἰϲι παραπληϲίαν
ἔχοντεϲ τοῖϲ ἀγαθοεργοῖϲ ἀρχήν. If this is accur­ate inform­a­tion, it
proves that ϲτατῶν can­not have stood in the text of H., since the
office in ques­tion is being defined here, not com­pared or con­tras­ted
with another. In any case this would be an example of explain­ing
obscurum per obscurius, since the term was excep­tion­ally rare and
prob­ably not in use out­side Sparta.
1. 68. 5 The nar­rat­ive of the Spartan recep­tion of Lichas’ report about
Tegea is ellipt­ical, and I am not entirely sure that the text is sound. A
widely accep­ted inter­pret­at­ ion is that the Spartan author­it­ies believed
him but moun­ted an accus­at­ ion against him on the basis of a false
state­ment (some trans­late λόγοϲ as ‘pre­text’, but one might rather
expect πρόϕαϲιϲ (×20 in H.) to be used if that were the mean­ing);
Lichas’ ensu­ing exile was designed to lull the Tegeans into think­ing
that there was no danger. But the nar­rat­ive is very bald; there is noth­
ing to make it expli­cit that a decep­tion of this kind was inten­ded, and
when Lichas returns to Tegea and tells the smith of his mis­for­tune,
the Greek does not indic­ate the fals­ity of his claim, as it could so eas­ily
have done, e.g. by δῆθεν (×14 in H.). So is it bet­ter to assume that the
charge arose from a false state­ment by Lichas’ enemies? The reader
would have appre­ci­ated a more spe­cific indic­at­ ion, but at least if that
is what happened his com­plaint to the smith was genu­ine. I would
not exclude the pos­sib­il­ity that the text is cor­rupt. If ἐκ were deleted
the nature of the charge would become clear, and it would fol­low that
Lichas’ report was not accep­ted as cred­ible. In this vein Blaydes tried
ὡϲ for ἐκ, pre­sum­ably with lighter punc­tu­ation after ἐδίωξαν. But I
won­der if this rem­edy requires the fur­ther addi­tion of a par­ti­ciple in
the gen­it­ive.
1. 70. 2 ἀπελοίατο A: ἀπεληίϲαντο r. The vari­ant appears to be
lex­icis addendum (not in DGE or Lex. z. byz.Gr.), but it seems to be
cor­rectly formed and could be regarded as a dif­fi­cilior lec­tio. Rosén

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 10 Book I

accepts it, and it is a vivid word. On the other hand, if Kretschmer–

Locker are to be trus­ted, com­pounds of ληίζομαι are not attested.
Editors who have rejec­ted it have pre­sum­ably taken it to be a gloss;
could it be an authorial vari­ant? If A’s read­ing were a gloss one might
expect it to be ἀϕέλοιντο—and per­haps it ori­gin­ally was and has
been con­ver­ted into Ionic by a know­ledge­able reader.
1. 71. 2 οὔνομα . . . Ϲάνδανιϲ was deleted by Jacoby, Hermes, 51
(1916), 477–8 = Abh. z. gr. Geschichtsschreibung (Leiden, 1956),
169–70. He rejec­ted the altern­at­ive pos­sib­il­ity of trans­pos­ing the
clause to fol­low ἔχων and thought the words must ori­gin­ate from a
scholium like the valu­able note pre­served at 3. 61. Legrand con­tem­
plated trans­pos­i­tion to fol­low Λυδῶν but did not adopt this in his
text. Transposition is easy and seems to me the bet­ter solu­tion, since
it pre­sup­poses a com­mon error. If the clause is retained in either
pos­it­ ion it might be improved by sup­ple­ment­ing οὔνομα 〈δὲ〉. The
omis­sion of the sus­pect clause in the late MS M is prob­ably no more
than a scribal error.
1. 76. 3 A, which on the whole is the best MS, has the sin­gu­lar
κήρυκα, which may well be the right read­ing. Asheri, p. 136, sug­ges­ted
that it indic­ates con­tact with the league of the Panionion, whereas the
plural would refer to con­tact with indi­vidual cit­ies. On palaeo­graph­
ical grounds one could explain the change from sin­gu­lar to plural,
which is the read­ing of P. Oxy. 19 and d, by the pres­ence of final
syl­lables in ‑αϲ imme­di­ately before and soon after. Such errors of
assim­il­at­ ion are very fre­quent and can occur inde­pend­ently.
1. 78. 2 ἐϲ 〈τὴν〉 τῶν {ἐξηγητέων} Τελμηϲϲέων was one of vari­ous
sug­ges­tions by Richards and ini­tially appealed to me. Scheer had had a
sim­ilar idea, simply to delete τῶν ἐξηγητέων, which res­ults in an unac­
cept­able con­struc­tion. But I now feel less sure that the word defin­ing the
pro­fes­sion of the Telmessians is super­flu­ous and prefer a dif­fer­ent
emend­a­tion by Richards. One might also con­sider adapt­ing the read­ing
of the Aldine as fol­lows: ἐϲ τῶν Τελμηϲϲέων τοὺϲ ἐξηγητάϲ.
1. 79. 1–2 Two sig­ni­fic­ant vari­ations of word­ing are found here in d;
in each case the sense and syn­tax appear to be accept­able. One is
temp­ted to add this pas­sage to the list of authorial vari­ants; but
another explan­at­ ion is that an ancient reader tried to improve the
text. Legrand took the longer ver­sion to be an inter­pol­at­ ion; but
Weber, SIFC 17 (1940), 261–9, thought it prefer­able.

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 Book I 11

1. 81 and 82. 1 ϲυμμαχίαϲ in these two pas­sages is con­struc­ted with

ἐϲ, which is odd. The plural of this noun has already occurred in the
sim­ilar pas­sage 77. 4; there κατὰ may be trans­lated ‘in accord­ance
with’ and the noun has its nor­mal mean­ing ‘alli­ances’. But here the
con­text requires a ref­er­ence to allied cit­ies, and I there­fore pro­pose
ϲυμμαχίδαϲ, i.e. πόλιαϲ. Though ϲυμμαχίϲ is not oth­er­wise attested
in H., it is used with or with­out πόλιαϲ in Thucydides (e.g. 2. 2. 1) and
Xenophon (e.g. Hell.7. 3. 11).
1. 82. 1–2 The oscil­la­tion between sin­gu­lar and plural forms of
Thyrea(i) is unex­pec­ted, as Stein noted. Stephanus Byzantius s.v.
accep­ted the plural as a legit­im­ate altern­at­ive but with­out cit­ing any
author­ity (per­haps he did in the ori­ginal unab­bre­vi­ated ver­sion); did
he simply accept the text of H. as trans­mit­ted? Was this a name for
more than one part of the Argive ter­rit­ory, mean­ing per­haps
‘gate­way’? W. K. Pritchett, Studies in Ancient Greek Topography IV
(Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London, 1982), 64–74 does not con­sider
this lin­guistic puzzle.
1. 84. 3 In the descrip­tion of the point where the acro­polis of Sardis
was vul­ner­able the word­ing seems a trifle redund­ant. Krüger deleted
τὸ χωρίον, and Stein fol­lowed him; the res­ult is to make the con­struc­
tion of the gen­it­ive awk­ward. It would be bet­ter to delete τῆϲ
ἀκροπόλιοϲ or even both phrases.
1. 84. 4 Though Blaydes’s sug­ges­tion is plaus­ible, the MSS read­ing is
accept­able; see the Lexicon, s.v. κατά B. II. 8.
1. 85. 3 μέν νυν] μέν νιν Pingel (1877). The trans­mit­ted text gives a
particle fol­lowed by an enclitic in a com­bin­a­tion very fre­quent in H.
(×314 accord­ing to the Lexicon s.v. νυν). This usage is con­nect­ive;
that being so, one would expect the words to be placed nearer the
begin­ning of the period. Stein defen­ded the para­dosis by refer­ring to
2. 42. 1 and 7. 129. 2. But in the first of these pas­sages, where νυν is
omit­ted by d, there is no inter­ven­ing sub­or­din­ate clause, and the
second is highly prob­lem­atic, as Pingel had shown in 1874.
1. 86. 3 ἡϲυχίηϲ the read­ing of A was accep­ted by Hude and other
edit­ors, and Renehan, GGA 243 (1991), 27 n. 9, was also in favour. d’s
read­ing λειποψυχίη (λιπο-­ is the spelling gen­er­ally pre­ferred) is
attested in clas­sical authors; Maas in his copy of Hude under­lined it
(and in the text marked a query after ἡϲυχίηϲ) but gave no fur­ther

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 12 Book I

indic­a­tion of his views. Since it is so dif­fer­ent in mean­ing it can hardly

be a gloss; if not genu­ine it seems to be an attempt to improve the text.
1. 88. 2 πρὸϲ ϲὲ is prin­ted by edit­ors with the accen­ted form of the
pro­noun. But as the point of the sen­tence is the con­trast between
λέγειν and ϲιγᾶν, emphasis on the pro­noun denot­ing the addressee
is not wanted, and the pro­noun should be prin­ted as an enclitic.
1. 90. 1 Cyrus’ open­ing words as trans­mit­ted are prob­lem­atic. Though
even Powell appar­ently accep­ted Hude’s text, it seems to me that
Richards’s ana­lysis is essen­tially valid. From the con­text it is clear that
the king men­tioned is Cyrus and that he wishes to reward Croesus for
good advice and other ser­vices. But on one point I dis­agree with
Richards: he chose to inter­pret the trans­mit­ted read­ing ϲεῦ as a slight
cor­rup­tion of ϲε εὖ, which is plaus­ible at first sight. But it res­ults in
the neces­sary adverb εὖ being sep­ar­ated by sev­eral words from the
verb it mod­ifi­ es; though Richards saw no objec­tion to this, I am
extremely doubt­ful whether this word-­order can be accep­ted and
prefer to regard the cor­rup­tion of ϲε to ϲεῡ as the res­ult of assim­il­a­
tion to the case of the pre­ced­ing and fol­low­ing words.
1. 90. 2 In Cyrus’ ques­tion to Croesus as to why he made his request
with cri­ti­cism of the god the repe­ti­tion of the enclitic pro­noun οἱ is at
first sight ambigu­ous and may be faulty. τῷ θεῷ might be expec­ted.
1. 91. 5 The open­ing sen­tence in this sec­tion is dif ­fi­cult. Is τὸ to be
taken as cor­rel­at­ive with τοῦτο in the main clause? As it is fol­lowed
by τελευταῖον it would have been hard for any ancient reader to
dis­tin­guish it from what looked like the def­in­ite art­icle, and though
LSJ seem to accept the adverbial use of τελευταῖον with­out the
art­icle, no par­al­lel is offered and the Lexicon does not sup­port this
view. In place of the trans­mit­ted read­ing εἶπε τὰ εἶπε Legrand tried
τὰ εἶπε, but real­ized that τὸ εἶπε would be more logical. εἶπε in SV
is prob­ably a scribe’s attempt to emend. ἐπείτε εἶπε is the simple and
eleg­ant solu­tion of A. Poutsma, Mnemosyne2, 48 (1920). 107. It turns
out that he was anti­cip­ated by Pingel (1877).
1. 92. 2 The gender of Branchidae was dis­cussed by ancient schol­ars,
as repor­ted by Porphyry, Quaestiones Homericae 8, where 2. 159. 3 is
adduced to settle the ques­tion. It is worth not­ing that in this dis­cus­
sion they showed aware­ness of the pro­gress­ive deteri­or­a­tion of texts
(ed. A. R. Sodano (Naples, 1970), 38. 10–39. 10).

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 Book I 13

1. 92. 4 Hesychius ε 4873 clearly refers to this pas­sage and the lemma
is ἐπὶ κνάϕου ἕλκων. Plut. Mor. 858 e has the form γνάϕου.
Elsewhere in Plutarch the MSS fluc­tu­ate in their spelling; see the
evid­ence assembled by P. A. Hansen in his appar­atus for 858 e. But
the MSS here have κναϕηίου, which at 4. 14. 1 means a fuller’s shop.
I have wondered whether the word could also refer to the tool used by
the fuller, the form­a­tion being ana­log­ous to γλυϕεῖον and γραϕεῖον.
It would be a dif ­fi­cilior lec­tio and I am not at all sure that it is right,
but the cor­rup­tion is odd. Maas under­lined the MSS read­ing but did
not enter it in the text.
1. 93. 1 οἷά τε is the para­dosis, retained by Legrand and Asheri, but
it is not idio­matic here, and Krüger’s γε is a simple and obvi­ous solu­
tion. Powell declared the whole phrase des­per­ate, pre­sum­ably on
account of καὶ; but this is an example of the rather strange usage
noted by Denniston, GP 296, who cited this pas­sage among oth­ers,
and the mean­ing is ‘such as another coun­try cer­tainly has’.
1. 95. 2 Powell deleted the chro­no­lo­gical state­ment, and it must be
admit­ted that an inter­pol­a­tion of this kind could have been made by
an ancient scholar with an interest in such mat­ters. But there are
other pos­sib­il­it­ies. One is to change ἀρχόντων to ἀρξάντων. This
would mean that the revolt of the Medes took place at the end of the
520-­year period; but Stein rejec­ted this on his­tor­ical grounds. It is
there­fore bet­ter to take the par­ti­ciple as hav­ing the force of an imper­
fect as at 134. 3 (see K.–G. i. 200).
1. 98. 6 In the descrip­tion of the con­cent­ric for­ti­fic­a­tions of Deioces’
cap­ital, after a state­ment of the col­our of the first five circles, the text
sum­mar­izes with a sen­tence begin­ning οὕτω πάντων τῶν κύκλων.
Though it is clearly wrong in the light of what fol­lows Stein accep­ted
this read­ing in his 1869 edi­tion; later he tried τῶν πέντε for πάντων
τῶν. A sim­pler rem­edy is to read τούτων for πάντων. For the con­fu­
sion of these words see Aristophanea, 48–9, 72, 93, 172.
1. 99. 1 πρὸϲ . . . αἰϲχρόν was deleted by Powell, and Maas sug­ges­ted
the sup­ple­ment ἀντίον 〈ἄλλου〉. With regard to the pro­posed dele­
tion it may be said that πρόϲ τε τούτοιϲι is not obvi­ously the kind of
intro­duct­ory for­mula that an inter­pol­ator might have used, and I am
not sure that Maas’s sup­ple­ment is right, because Deioces may have
been lay­ing down the law about beha­viour in his own pres­ence, in
which case 〈αὐτοῦ〉 might be bet­ter. But I regard καὶ ἅπαϲι . . .

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 14 Book I

αἰϲχρόν as an insol­uble crux; τοῦτό γε αἰϲχρόν could be the remark

of a reader that found its way into the text.
1. 105. 4 ὁ θεὸϲ is trans­mit­ted here in the MSS, whereas the indir­ect
tra­di­tion (two papyri and two pre-­Byzantine quo­ta­tions) offers ἡ
θεὸϲ. Hude, fol­lowed by sub­sequent edit­ors, accep­ted the fem­in­ine
form, but Maas in his copy under­lined the entry ὁ L (= libri), which
sig­ni­fies that he recog­nized the import­ance of the vari­ant and may
mean that he would have adop­ted it; he did not, how­ever, enter it in
the prin­ted text. The mas­cu­line was accep­ted by T. Harrison, Divinity
and History: The Religion of Herodotus (Oxford, 2000), 174–5 with
n. 65. He noted H. ‘can be shown to altern­ate sud­denly from the usage
of “divin­ity in gen­eral” to speak­ing of a par­tic­u­lar divin­ity’, and on the
present pas­sage he remarked that the mas­cu­line ‘must surely be the
dif ­fi­cilior lec­tio’. This asser­tion may be over-­con­fid­ent, since cor­rup­
tion could go either way: if the fem­in­ine was the ori­ginal read­ing it
could eas­ily have been changed to the com­moner mas­cu­line, while an
ori­ginal mas­cu­line might have temp­ted a pedantic reader to make the
change. S. R. West in D. Obbink and R. Rutherford (eds.), Culture in
Pieces (Oxford, 2011), 72, noted that ὁ θεὸϲ must be taken as a gen­er­
al­iz­ing mas­cu­line and pre­ferred the fem­in­ine. At 4. 35. 2 a sim­ilar
dif ­fi­culty arises and there Legrand wished to restore a fem­in­ine form.
ἅμα λέγουϲί τε] With the trans­mit­ted text τε is dubi­ously placed
or super­flu­ous. Pingel’s pro­posal seems right in order to achieve the
proper bal­ance between what the Scythians say and what the vis­itor
may observe. Richards had sim­ilar ideas, based on the con­sid­er­at­ ion
that the final ele­ment in the period can hardly be an asser­tion by the
Scythians them­selves.
1. 107. 1 ἕκαϲτα sounds unusual in con­junc­tion with αὐτὰ fol­low­ing.
Maas noted ‘unklar’ fol­lowed by ‘will nicht 108. 2 vor­wegneh­men’. In
ch. 108 the magi state a single fact, which makes the plural seem out
of place. Could this be the first occur­rence of αὐθέκαϲτοϲ in the
sense of ‘blunt’? At 5. 13. 3 αὐτὰ ἕκαϲτα is A’s vari­ant and gives
prima facie sup­port to this inter­pret­a­tion.
1. 108. 4 In Cyrus’ warn­ing to Harpagus not to be dis­loyal the words
ἄλλουϲ ἑλόμενοϲ are not the most obvi­ous way to describe a change
of alle­gi­ance. Legrand renders ‘t’attachant de préférence à d’autres’. I
have wondered whether a noun such as δεϲπόταϲ has fallen out, or
per­haps more plaus­ibly ἄλλοιϲ ἑπόμενοϲ should be con­jec­tured.

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 Book I 15

1. 114. 5 If Schäfer was right to cor­rect ὀργῇ to ὀργῆϲ at 61. 2, the

same adjust­ment needs to be made here. The idiom is attested else­
where; see Soph. OT 345 and com­ment­at­ors ad loc.
1. 116. 3 To describe the dis­missal of Artembares Van Herwerden’s
〈ἐκ〉πέμπει is plaus­ible, as this com­pound has been used a few lines
before. Pingel (1877) tried 〈ἀπο〉πέμπει. Does the para­dosis con­sti­
tute an example of sim­plex fol­low­ing com­pound? The inter­ven­ing
clauses seem to me to make this a rather dubi­ous case.
In the account of the inter­view it seems to me that CP have the
right text; the other MSS omit τὰ by hap­lo­graphy and divide
the res­ult­ing words dif­fer­ently. Hude accep­ted μουνόθεν, a word
not oth­er­wise attested in the clas­sical period. Maas in his copy under­
lined the vari­ant in d, which may mean that he would have adop­ted
it; it would cre­ate an example of the apodotic use described by
Denniston, GP 177. Wesseling’s simple adjust­ment to δὴ should
not be ruled out.
1. 120. 3 The sen­tence begin­ning παρὰ ϲμικρὰ is dif ­fi­cult. If the
words παρὰ ϲμικρὰ . . . κεχώρηκε are sound the mean­ing is ‘some
oracles have had trivial out­come/been of little account’, but it is hard
to find any par­al­lel for this expres­sion, and Krüger noted that in H.
παρὰ with accus­at­ive is nor­mally used in con­nec­tion with people
(Cooper–Krüger seem not to men­tion this point). In addi­tion one
should note that in the Lexicon, 289, Powell added a query to his
ren­der­ing ‘of little account’.
The second clause is also prob­lem­atic. Powell, CQ 32 (1938), 211,
argued that ἐχόμενα is a gloss on ὀνειράτων and pro­posed {ἐχόμενα}
ἀτελέωϲ, whereas in 1948 he simply obel­ized. But ἐχόμενα con­forms
to H.’s usage; see the Lexicon s.v. C 2. His objec­tion to τελέωϲ in
the sense ‘in the end’ invites one to prefer the altern­at­ive ren­der­ing
‘abso­lutely/com­pletely’. Maas had doubts about ἀτελέωϲ (let­ter of
22 November 1938, in the Powell archive, as cited above). Powell’s
interest in the pas­sage con­tin­ued after 1948. Maas recor­ded a pro­posal
dated 1950: in the second part of the sen­tence he wished to read
ἦ πού γε τῶν ὀνειράτων and delete the fol­low­ing words.
Unfortunately Maas gives no hint of the argu­ments in sup­port of this
bold sug­ges­tion; one may spec­ul­ate that the expres­sion ἐϲ ἀϲθενὲϲ
ἔρχεται seemed unidio­matic in a clas­sical author. Maas’s own view
was that the whole sen­tence should be deleted, but his reas­ons are not
indic­ated.

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 16 Book I

1. 120. 5 κείνωϲ is the para­dosis, but apart from the fact that H. does
not use this word else­where it ruins the logic of the pas­sage. If an
adverb is in order here, ‘oth­er­wise’ rather than ‘in that event’ is the
sense required. Powell’s res­tor­a­tion of a con­di­tional clause intro­duced
by ἢν seems neces­sary, even if it pre­sup­poses a very odd cor­rup­tion.
Could κείνωϲ have stood ori­gin­ally at the begin­ning of the apodosis?
1. 122. 3 ἦν τέ οἱ ἐν τῷ λόγῳ τὰ πάντα ἡ Κυνώ is clear in mean­
ing, and there are sev­eral par­al­lels in H. and else­where. But in those
other pas­sages πάντα is used with­out the def­in­ite art­icle, and Blaydes
on 7. 156. 1 wondered if it should be deleted here. I think he was
right, and that the addi­tion of the art­icle is not pro­tec­ted by its occur­
rence in adjectival expres­sions such as τὰ ϕίλτατα and τὰ πρῶτα.
1. 125. 2 Cyrus sum­mons the Persians to appear before him, each of
them bring­ing a scythe. In the text as trans­mit­ted he does not tell
them when they are to come. Naber saw the need to put that right; his
sug­ges­tion ἐϲ τὴν ὑϲτεραίην would be cor­rect in repor­ted speech,
but Maas real­ized that dir­ect speech requires ‘tomor­row’.
1. 125. 4 Since ἀροτῆρεϲ is a Homeric form (Il. 18. 542, 23. 835), the
vari­ant ἔαϲι in C may deserve con­sid­er­a­tion, as it is a form known
from Il. 16. 759, Od. 8. 162 and 557, 10. 349, 19. 345. F. Sommer,
Zeitschrift für slav­is­che Philologie, 25 (1956), 225–9 argued that it is
not likely to be the inser­tion of an inter­pol­ator but a genu­ine epic
touch. But one could equally well main­tain that many copy­ists were
steeped in Homer and might uncon­sciously be influ­enced by epic
forms. So this vari­ant can­not count as strong evid­ence in sup­port of
the view that C rep­res­ents a dif­fer­ent branch of the tra­di­tion.
1. 132. 1 In this sec­tion there is what seems at first sight a rather
abrupt change from verbs in the plural to the sin­gu­lar. But this
appears to be a fea­ture of H.’s style, so that sup­ple­ments such as 〈τιϲ〉
are prob­ably out of place; par­al­lels occur at 1. 195. 1 and 4. 22. 2.
1. 132. 2–3 There are vari­ous dif ­fi­culties here. (i) ἔθηκε ὦν was
sus­pec­ted by Powell, who wished to restore an example of tmesis and
add the notion of the dis­tri­bu­tion of por­tions. So he pro­posed δι’ ὦν
ἔθηκε. Denniston, GP 428 accep­ted the para­dosis as an example
of the apodotic use of the particle. (ii) Tournier’s inter­pret­at­ ion of
the para­dosis as κρεάδια θέντοϲ is ingeni­ous and was pre­ferred
by Jackson, Marginalia scaen­ica (Oxford, 1955), 135 n. 1. But a

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 Book I 17

dimin­ut­ive is not essen­tial in the con­text, and whether or not one

accepts Powell’s emend­a­tion, the com­pound in δια-­is slightly bet­ter.
(iii) The puzzle of the magus’ incant­a­tion has spurred more than one
critic to emend. I think Jackson, loc. cit., did well to remark that
θεογονίην is not a word that would read­ily occur to an inter­pol­ator
in this con­text, and his rearrange­ment, which also assumes a minor
error of assim­il­a­tion, restores sense at a cost which is not too great.
He cites οἷοϲ and ὅϲοϲ with δὴ in other pas­sages of H., to which
1. 157. 2 may be added, since there ὅϲην δή κοτε ἔχων of an unspe­
cified quant­ity seems ana­log­ous.
1. 133. 2 Powell (1948) deleted the sen­tence which seems to mean ‘If
any dessert were laid before them, they would not stop eat­ing’. Did he
think this snide remark to the det­ri­ment of the Greeks could not be
accep­ted in H.? The quo­ta­tion in Athenaeus 144 a includes it; so
Powell must have thought this a cor­rup­tion that affected the text at an
early stage of trans­mis­sion.
1. 134. 2 Hude accep­ted Krüger’s dele­tion of τῷ λεγομένῳ as a gloss
that referred back to the pre­vi­ous sen­tence where κατὰ λόγον had
occurred. But the pres­ence of the gloss could equally well be taken to
imply that the text ori­gin­ally included Stein’s sup­ple­ment, and that is
the solu­tion I have pre­ferred. As an altern­at­ive I would not abso­lutely
rule out Abresch’s κατὰ λόγον τὸν λεγόμενον.
1. 134. 3 προέβαινε κτλ. is dif ­fi­cult. It seems to mean ‘for the nation
exten­ded its gov­ern­ment and sov­er­eignty’. Legrand tried 〈πᾶν〉 τι for
τὸ and trans­lated ‘il y avait de peuple à peuple grad­a­tion dans le
com­mandement et l’authorité déléguée’. Asheri takes τὸ ἔθνοϲ to mean
‘every people’, which is too free a ren­der­ing of what is trans­mit­ted.
1. 145. 2 The river Peiros near Olenos in Achaea was a big river if one
believes the para­dosis. Powell did not, and pro­posed 〈οὐ〉 μέγαϲ.
Consultation of the Barrington Atlas of the Greek and Roman World
(Princeton, n.d.), map 58 B 1, lends sup­port to his view. Connoisseurs
of tex­tual cor­rup­tion will recall that scribes occa­sion­ally wrote some­
thing which was the oppos­ite of what stood in their exem­plar; see H.
Lloyd-­Jones and N. G. Wilson, Sophocles: Second Thoughts (Göttingen,
1997), 33–4, 87, 105 and Radt on Strabo 744. 25. For the loss of a
neg­at­ive see also on 4. 49. 1. Here ϲμικρόϲ would be another pos­sib­
il­ity. Other pas­sages where the ques­tion arises are 1. 207. 6, 3. 107. 1,
5. 57. 2, 7. 36. 2, 8. 61. 2, 8. 111. 3, 8. 112. 2.

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 18 Book I

1. 148. 2 This sen­tence was rightly sus­pec­ted by Legrand, who noted

the oddity of πεπόνθαϲι and the obscur­ity of τοῦτο. He nev­er­the­less
did not rule out the pos­sib­il­ity that there is an authorial addi­tion
here. But Stein’s more com­plex and ingeni­ous hypo­thesis con­vinces
me: this is a note which con­tra­dicts another note, now lost, about the
names of fest­ivals.
1. 149 Since Asheri does not make the point, it is per­haps worth
sug­gest­ing that the list of Aeolic cit­ies is par­tic­ul­arly appro­pri­ate if H.
here had a West Greek audi­ence in mind. At 4. 99. 5 Corcella in deal­
ing with the pas­sage that men­tions both Attica and Iapygia is right to
speak of ‘two sorts of audi­ence’, and Powell, The History of Herodotus
(Cambridge, 1939), 65–6, took §5 to be a later addi­tion by H. designed
to cater for an Italian pub­lic. Nenci on 5. 74. 2 and Bowie on 8. 120 do
not say that sim­ilar infer­ences might be made from those two
pas­sages. See also below on 4. 85. 4.
1. 152. 2 The Spartans rebuff a del­eg­at­ ion. οὔκωϲ ἤκουον MSS: οὐκ
ἐϲήκουον Naber. οὔκωϲ does occur else­where in the sense ‘not at all’
and should prob­ably not be removed. Naber’s point could be met by
read­ing οὔκωϲ 〈ἐϲ〉ήκουον. ἀκούω in the sense ‘obey’ is cited in the
Lexicon. Maas under­lined the MSS read­ing.
1. 152. 3 The par­ti­ciple describ­ing the Phocaean envoy reach­ing
Sardis, ἀπερέοντα, is a rel­at­ively uncom­mon word, and Stein’s
replace­ment of it with the rather obvi­ous ἀγγελέοντα is at first
sight dubi­ous; one can, how­ever, ima­gine that a scribe who looked
ahead to the word ῥῆϲιν and anti­cip­ated the mean­ing of the rest
of the sen­tence intro­duced a word that seemed appro­pri­ate. One
may add that in uncial script two gam­mas could eas­ily be mis­taken
for pi. Richards con­tem­plated 〈ἀπόρ〉ρηϲιν, retain­ing the trans­mit­ted
verb. He was also pre­pared to accept ῥῆϲιν as sim­plex fol­low­ing
com­pound; but I doubt if that prin­ciple can be invoked when the
second concept is not expressed by the same part of speech as the
first.
1. 153. 2 ἀγορῇϲι] ἀγοράϲι Powell (1948), not recor­ded by Maas.
The change is plaus­ible because it avoids clumsy repe­ti­tion in the next
clause. But one would expect ἀγορήϲι on the ana­logy with πρήϲι etc.
I would sug­gest that this is how the MSS read­ing should be inter­
preted, i.e. as a dat­ive sin­gu­lar. The word is rare but attested in Plat.
Soph. 219 d and in non-­lit­er­ary texts.

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 Book I 19

1. 153. 3 τὴν πρώτην εἶναι was obel­ized by Powell (1948); Maas did not
record his view here, but at 3. 134. 5, where the para­dosis points to ἐπὶ
. . . ἰέναι in a sim­ilar con­text, he favoured the solu­tion offered by Powell,
the dele­tion of ἐπὶ and accept­ance of Bekker’s εἶναι, and he sug­ges­ted
that τὴν πρώτην εἶναι should be treated as ana­log­ous to ἑκὼν εἶναι.
He referred back to the present pas­sage but did not cite par­al­lels from
else­where. K.–G. ii. 19 offer τὸ νῦν εἶναι and τὸ τήμερον εἶναι, which
might be thought close enough to jus­tify the MSS read­ing; ‘at first he
treated the Ionians as of no account’. But I still share Powell’s doubts.
1. 156. 2 The pre­cise for­mu­la­tion of the orders that Cyrus gives to
Mazares raises a minor prob­lem. As trans­mit­ted the text refers to
‘those orders which Croesus had given’, but I can­not help think­ing
that the text would be more sat­is­fact­ory if it read ‘the same orders’ or
‘all the orders’; hence my sug­ges­tions in the appar­atus.
1. 160. 4 The gen­it­ive of the name Atarneus is syn­tactic­ally impossible,
even though it was accep­ted by Hude. Maas under­lined Krüger’s
emend­a­tion to the nom­in­at­ive but nev­er­the­less obel­ized the pas­sage,
whereas Powell accep­ted the emend­a­tion. Richards objec­ted that
there is noth­ing to jus­tify the gen­it­ive and pre­ferred to posit a lacuna
after τούτου. With some hes­it­a­tion I have fol­lowed him. But Legrand
sus­pec­ted that a scribe was dis­trac­ted by the occur­rence of ἐκ . . .
τούτου a few lines below, and one should not rule out that pos­sib­il­ity.
1. 160. 5 ἦν δὲ χρόνοϲ οὗτοϲ οὐκ ὀλίγοϲ γενόμενοϲ, ὅτε κτλ.
Legrand noted ‘οὗτοϲ abesse malim’. Though Maas and Powell seem
not have been bothered, I can­not see that οὗτοϲ belongs here. It has
no logical con­nec­tion with the pre­ced­ing sen­tence. Sleeman said that
it is explained by ὅτε, which does not help. H. might have said ‘There
had pre­vi­ously been a long period when . . .’, which could have been
expressed by πρὸ τούτων. Blaydes saw that there is a prob­lem here,
but his οὐκ οὕτω ὀλίγοϲ does not con­vince.
1. 162. 1 The repe­ti­tion of key facts about Harpagus, nar­rated ori­gin­
ally in chs. 119 and 129, is odd. Could it be an indic­a­tion that ch. 162
did not form part of the text for the same pub­lic read­ing? Or is it just
a reminder to the reader? Maas was aware of the puzzle but offered no
remark, and the com­ment­ar­ies seem to over­look it.
1. 167. 3 ἐκτήϲαντο is accep­ted by many in the sense ‘acquired (by
pur­chase)’, and in fact the Phocaeans had attemp­ted such a pur­chase

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 20 Book I

of ter­rit­ory in ch. 165. But the cor­rup­tion pos­tu­lated by Schweighäuser

is entirely nat­ural in view of the occur­rence of διεχρήϲαντο two lines
above.
1. 170. 3 L.A.H.-­S. draws atten­tion to the anom­al­ous pos­it­ ion of
οἰκεομέναϲ, which could be remedied by Schweighäuser’s ἄλλοθι
for ἄλλαϲ, ‘cit­ies estab­lished else­where’. A sup­ple­ment such as
〈ἐκεῖθι〉 would be another pos­sib­il­ity. If the last clause means ‘they
should not be held in any less esteem, as if they were demes’, might
one con­sider 〈ϲυν〉οικεομέναϲ?
1. 171. 4 In the descrip­tion of Carian dress Cobet pro­posed to read
περικειμένοιϲι in place of the trans­mit­ted nom­in­at­ive, and he
was fol­lowed by Powell (1948); Maas has no note at this point. LSJ
accept the nom­in­at­ive but sup­ply τελαμῶναϲ by extra­pol­a­tion.
Blaydes wondered about περιειμένοι, which is tempt­ing at first
sight, even if the word is not used by H. But it seems that this verb
is nor­mally con­struc­ted with an accus­at­ive of the art­icle of cloth­ing
or weaponry.
1. 174. 3 The sen­tence ἐντὸϲ . . . ἐγίνετο seems lac­onic or ellipt­ical.
More than one trans­lator has had dif ­fi­culty and assumed that some­
thing like 〈τοῦ ὀρύγματοϲ〉 needs to be sup­plied. Since the Cnidians
did not bring their pro­ject to com­ple­tion I think Dobree and Blaydes
were right to sup­ple­ment 〈ἄν〉. Which word-­order should be pre­ferred
is unclear; I have assumed that the particle was slightly more likely to
have been lost after πᾶϲα. The strict applic­at­ ion of Wackernagel’s law
would favour the altern­at­ive, but H. is not the strict­est of authors in
this respect.
1. 181. 3 It is widely believed that μέχριϲ is a Hellenistic form, not
admiss­ible in H. (Schwyzer i. 405). This may well be cor­rect, but as it
is repor­ted to be fre­quent in Xenophon (ibid.), two views are pos­sible:
either the tra­di­tion of Xenophon has been cor­rup­ted, which indeed is
quite con­ceiv­able, or the form is pre-­Hellenistic. With some hes­it­a­
tion I have accep­ted the MSS read­ing here and else­where (the MSS
appear to be fairly con­sist­ent), and I find that Legrand and Medaglia
have also accep­ted it.
1. 184 ἐπεκόϲμηϲαν may be a trifle sur­pris­ing in con­nec­tion with τὰ
τείχεα, but it suits the fol­low­ing object τὰ ἱρά. It is not clear whether
the uncom­poun­ded ἐκόϲμηϲαν in SV is an emend­at­ ion or a scribal

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 Book I 21

error. Whereas Powell pre­ferred it, Maas deleted the men­tion of it

from the appar­atus.
In the last sen­tence Powell deleted ἀνὰ, and Maas noted that it
could be a faulty repe­ti­tion from the pre­ced­ing sen­tence. Then
πελαγίζειν is trans­it­ive as it is at 2. 92. 2. Another simple way to
make the trans­it­ive mean­ing abso­lutely clear would be to write
πάντα. Maas also tent­at­ively con­sidered πάν〈τα ἔτεα〉, not­ing that
in 2. 132. 2 we find ἀνὰ πάντα ἔτεα and in 2. 99. 3 ἀνὰ πᾶν ἔτοϲ.
1. 186. 1 ἐκ βαθέοϲ was obel­ized by Maas and Powell; LSJ cite
Plotinus 3. 8. 10 for the mean­ing ‘through and through’, which is
rather far-­fetched to serve as a par­al­lel. Stein’s attempt at explan­a­tion
‘im Gegensatz zu den Ufermauern und der Brücke’ makes the
sen­tence very ellipt­ical. Translators tend to use the term ‘excav­at­ ion’
here; should one there­fore sup­ple­ment 〈ὀρύγματοϲ〉?
1. 190. 2 The siege of Babylon makes no pro­gress; in the trans­mit­ted
text οὐδὲν has to be taken as an adverb. Richards, with­out mak­ing
expli­cit his grounds for objec­tion, but cit­ing as a par­al­lel 3. 56. 1
οὐδὲν προεκόπτετο τῶν πρηγμάτων, pro­posed to read here
προκοπτόμενον. From his addi­tional cita­tion of Plat. Rep. 604 b εἰϲ
τὸ πρόϲθεν οὐδὲν προβαῖνον I infer that he accep­ted the accus­at­ive
abso­lute imme­di­ately fol­low­ing the nor­mal gen­it­ive abso­lute. A
reg­u­lar con­struc­tion could be obtained by read­ing οὐδενὸϲ . . .
προκοπτομένου. But per­haps it is bet­ter to accept that οὐδὲν was
some­times the key concept of an accus­at­ive abso­lute; K.–G. ii. 89 cite
Thuc. 4. 125. 1 κυρωθὲν δὲ οὐδὲν ἐχώρουν ἐπ’ οἴκου, which appears
not to have been emen­ded and describes a sim­ilar con­text. Adam on
the Plato pas­sage cited Euthyphro 4d. The pos­i­tion is com­plic­ated by
the fact that at 3. 56. 1 Griffiths is pro­pos­ing to read τὰ πράγματα.
1. 191. 2 The MSS have τάξαϲ τὴν ϲτρατιὴν ἅπαϲαν, which does not
sit well with τάξαϲ ἑτέρουϲ. Powell there­fore sup­plied τὴν 〈καθαρὴν〉,
for which par­al­lels can be found at 1. 211. 2 and 4. 135. 2. Powell also
fol­lowed Legrand in delet­ing τάξαϲ ἑτέρουϲ, a dele­tion which seems
to me unne­ces­sary and weak­ens the con­trast between the two sec­tions
of the army; in prose texts one should be ready to delete words that
appear to be due to a glossator or inter­pol­ator, but these words do not
fall into that cat­egory. As an altern­at­ive Legrand con­sidered ἅπαϲαν
〈ἑτέρουϲ μὲν〉, which I find more plaus­ible than Powell’s pro­posal
and have accep­ted, admit­tedly with some hes­it­a­tion.

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 22 Book I

1. 193. 2 ἐϲ was deleted by Krüger. The trans­la­tion in LSJ ‘cut up into

ditches or canals’ is not accept­able. κατατέμνω can be con­struc­ted
with an accus­at­ive of the pieces into which the object has been
divided, but that is not the point here. Krüger was prob­ably right,
how­ever; above at 180. 3 it is said of Babylon that κατατέτμηται τὰϲ
ὁδοὺϲ ἰθέαϲ.
1. 193. 2–3 Between the ref­er­ence to corn and vari­ous trees Stein
pos­ited a lacuna, because with­out it Babylon would be described as
hav­ing no palm trees, which are in fact dis­cussed below.
1. 194. 2 ϕοινικηίουϲ is a prob­lem. How was an ancient reader to know
whether it meant ‘Phoenician’ or ‘from the date palm’? Commentators
are not agreed whether there could be casks or con­tain­ers made of palm
wood. For what it is worth one may note that Strabo 739 (16. 1. 5) says
that the Assyrians used ϕοινικικὰ ξύλα in house con­struc­tion, both
for beams and pil­lars. If Phoenician con­tain­ers are meant, how did they
reach Armenia? Not by the river trans­port described here. I won­der if
the adject­ive refers to a par­tic­u­lar size of con­tainer; or was H. mis­in­
formed? Legrand refers to ‘vin de Phénicie’ and seems to over­look that
this wine was being trans­por­ted down from Armenia to Babylon.
Valla’s ϕοινικικὰ ξύλα is open to objec­tion. As Stein noted, palms do
not grow in Armenia, and in 193. 4 it is stated that the Babylonians
pro­duce their own wine from the fruit of this palm; in addi­tion the
word-­order that res­ults looks unsat­is­fact­ory.
1. 195. 1 The oscil­la­tion between sin­gu­lar and plural verbs is odd;
Stein jus­ti­fied it as fol­lows: ‘Der kollekt­iv­is­che Singular tritt beson­
ders gern ein bei Beschreibung von Sitten, Ämtern, Opfern, Künsten’.
But he did not take into account the abrupt change from ἔχων to
κομῶντεϲ. The occur­rence of ἕκαϲτοϲ in the fol­low­ing sen­tence
points the way to a solu­tion: one should sup­ple­ment 〈ἕκαϲτοϲ〉 or
〈πᾶϲ τιϲ〉.
1. 196. 1 Cooper–Krüger, 54. 17. 2B (p. 2490) do not provide any
sat­is­fact­ory par­al­lel for the con­struc­tion ὡϲ ἂν. One would expect it
to mean ‘in whatever way’. Krüger and Blaydes simply deleted ἂν; the
lat­ter added ‘causa erroris obvia est’ (did he mean that an opt­at­ive
induced the inser­tion of ἂν?). Stein sug­ges­ted ὅϲαι αἰεὶ, which seems
prefer­able.
Rosén reports an inter­lin­ear note in A above ὡραῖαι. He reads it
as ἢ γνώριαι. It is very hard to decipher; per­haps it should be

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 Book I 23

tran­scribed ἤδη ὥριμαι. W. Lapini, ZPE 121 (1998), 52 thinks it was

in ori­gin a graphetai vari­ant, ὥριαι intro­duced by ἢ. But such vari­
ants are not nor­mally intro­duced by ἢ. The note is in any case not by
the scribe or any remotely con­tem­por­ary reader, so it can hardly be of
any import­ance.
1. 196. 3 The form ἀμορϕεϲτάτην is not cited by DGE from any
other pas­sage. Schwyzer i. 535 accep­ted it as a form influ­enced by
syn­onyms or oppos­ites, in this case εὐειδήϲ. But it is far more likely
to be a cor­rup­tion induced by the pre­ced­ing εὐειδεϲτάτην.
In l. 3037, where the MSS read ἂν, αὖ was sug­ges­ted by Hermann
and δὴ by Richards. The lat­ter’s sug­ges­tion is prefer­able, because con­fu­
sion of ἄν and δὴ was com­mon; other pas­sages in H. where it is sus­pec­ted
are 2. 135, 4. 66 and 6. 121. Richards dis­cussed the mat­ter in Xenophon
and Others (London, 1907; see the index on p. 347) and Aristophanes
and Others (London, 1909; see the index on p. 386). See also Radt on
Strabo 439. 2, where some instances in the text of Plato are cited.
1. 196. 5 Stein’s dele­tion of the clause ἵνα . . . ἄγωνται is prob­ably
right. Rosén wished to delete εἰϲ ἑτέραν πόλιν because of the Attic
forms, but they are so eas­ily removed that his pro­posal is not con­­
vincing. Richards favoured trans­pos­i­tion to fol­low ἀπάγεϲθαι in §4;
though this is attract­ive at first sight, it cre­ates an incon­sist­ency with
the sen­tence begin­ning ἐξῆν.
A fur­ther com­plic­a­tion is that in place of ἄγωνται PSI 1170 reads
ἀνάγωϲι, which won the approval of Weber, SIFC 17 (1940), 261–9,
and Asheri. I can­not see why a com­pound in ἀνα-­ is to be pre­ferred
here, and sug­gest that it is a mis­take induced by the erro­neous ἀνάγεϲθαι
or ἂν ἄγεϲθαι just above, which was cor­rec­ted by Gronovius.
1. 199. 2 After θώμιγγοϲ Powell pos­ited a lacuna because the
fol­low­ing word πολλαὶ does not cohere well with αἱ δὲ πλέονεϲ at
the begin­ning of the period. His trans­la­tion includes the word
‘always’, which is not in the text as trans­mit­ted; he was appar­ently
unaware that Van Herwerden had sup­plied αἰεὶ, but after πολλαὶ,
which is per­haps more plaus­ible palaeo­graph­ic­ally.
πάντα τρόπον ὁδῶν is dif­fi­cult. Schweighäuser deleted ὁδῶν and
Bekker tried δι’ ὦν, which is ingeni­ous, but the Lexicon s.v. ὦν indi­
cates that tmesis is found only with an aor­ist or for the descrip­tion of
recur­rent events. Deletion leaves ἔχουϲι in the sense attested
at 2. 108. 3, which is a very close par­al­lel.

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 24 Book I

1. 207. 2 The appro­pri­ate dis­tinc­tion between emphatic and enclitic

pro­nouns (ἐμέ and ϲοι) recom­men­ded by Schweighäuser is pre­served
in the hitherto some­what neg­lected MSS UX.
1. 210. 2 At the risk of pay­ing undue respect to Wackernagel’s law I
have accep­ted A’s read­ing, which places the enclitic pro­noun imme­
di­ately after the verb instead of the particles that fol­low, and Maas
took the same view (as does Rosén).
1. 215. 1 ἄνιπποι MSS: ἅμιπποι Aristarchus in P. Amherst 12; cf.
Bekker, Anecdota, i. 205, where I would recom­mend the sup­ple­ment
ὅπερ καὶ μᾶλλον 〈ἀρέϲκει〉. The MSS read­ing is accep­ted by many
with­out ques­tion (Asheri has no note); Legrand defends it by
com­par­ing 2. 108. 3, but there the con­text is a descrip­tion of the land
of Egypt as πεδιὰϲ πᾶϲα ἄνιπποϲ καὶ ἀναμάξευτοϲ, not of a
mil­it­ary force, and the mean­ing is ‘unsuit­able for horses/cav­alry’.
ἄνιπποι in the same sense as πεζοί would be unex­pec­ted, con­sid­
er­ing H.’s reg­u­lar use of the lat­ter. The Gomme–Andrewes note on
Thuc. 5. 57. 2 states that the cor­rec­tion has to be made there and
at Xen. Hell. 7. 5. 23 and Arist. Ath. Pol. 49. 1; they think it should
prob­ably be made here and refer to Jacoby on Philochorus, FGH 328
F 71. Harpocration s.v. ἅμιπποι cites Isaeus fr. 125, Thucydides and
Xenophon but not H.

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 Book II

2. 2. 1 As trans­mit­ted the text means ‘When Psammetichus came to

the throne and wished . . ., from that point onwards the Egyptians
. . .’. It would be more logical to speak not of his wish but of his suc­cess
in find­ing an answer to his ques­tion. Hence for ἠθέληϲε Rödiger
pro­posed ἐξήνυϲε. Elsewhere in H. this verb means ‘arrive’, but A.
Pers. 721 and Eur. Hipp. 400 are par­al­lels for the mean­ing ‘suc­ceed’
fol­lowed by an infin­it­ive. Stein glossed the MSS read­ing with
ἐπύθετο, ἱϲτόρηϲε, which is hardly a solu­tion. If the emend­a­tion is
not accep­ted H. must be cred­ited with care­less writ­ing here and the
aor­ist has to be trans­lated as equi­val­ent to a plu­per­fect in English,
which is not impossible.
2. 4. 1 τῶν ὡρέων ἐϲ was deleted by Powell. The res­ult is idio­matic
Greek but the dele­tion pre­sup­poses an unusual cor­rup­tion, unless
there was anti­cip­a­tion of τῶν ὡρέων from the next sen­tence but
one. ἐϲ αὐτὸν looks odd, but per­haps the pre­pos­it­ ion indic­ates
pur­pose, in which case one might render ‘divid­ing twelve sec­tions
of the sea­sons to make it’, with some sup­port from the Lexicon s.v. ἐϲ
D II. 1.
2. 5. 1 This period is dif­fi­cult, as crit­ics have recog­nized. Two parts of
Egypt that both res­ult from the allu­vial action of the Nile are
com­pared. As nor­mally prin­ted the syn­tax leaves some­thing to be
desired. Richards improved mat­ters by sup­ple­ment­ing 〈καὶ〉
Αἴγυπτοϲ to make the par­al­lel­ism clearer, but even so the second
ele­ment of the com­par­ison hangs rather loosely. Stein saw that ἔϲτι
δὲ is awk­ward (‘als ob dies nicht das Prädikat zu τὰ κατύπερθε wäre,
son­dern der Ggs.’), and accep­ted anacoluthon. But that is eas­ily
removed by the dele­tion of δὲ. Richards was also right to read τῶν for
τῆϲ, impli­citly reject­ing Krüger’s defence of the para­dosis (‘τῆϲ

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 26 Book II

bez­ieht sich auf das in τὰ lie­gende ἡ χώρα’). τῆϲ mis­leads the reader
and is an error caused by assim­il­a­tion.
2. 8. 3 The dif ­fi­culty here is the fig­ure given by the MSS for the
num­ber of days needed for the voy­age upstream from Heliopolis.
Dietsch sup­ple­men­ted 〈καὶ δέκα〉 so that the jour­ney would require
four­teen days instead of four, and his sup­ple­ment has been accep­ted
by most edit­ors. Lloyd (2008), 249 believes it to be quite unne­ces­sary
and notes that it is con­tra­dicted by Aristides 36. 46 (343 Jebb, 453
Dindorf). Though that is a rel­ev­ant fact, it is not decis­ive; Aristides
could have had a defect­ive text. The solu­tion to the prob­lem was
found by Powell, Hermes, 68 (1933), 123–6, 71 (1936), 475–6, who
rightly insisted that ἐϲτὶ . . . ἐοῦϲα is not accept­able syn­tax. He
adjus­ted the punc­tu­ation and accep­ted the read­ing of d, which by
omit­ting the particle δὲ removes an unwanted inde­pend­ent clause.
Neither Lloyd nor Rosén seems to be aware of Powell’s con­tri­bu­tion,
but it was spot­ted by Waddell.
2. 11. 3 κου has been quer­ied. Stein (1869) said ‘for­tasse rec­tius κοτε’
and Powell agreed in the Lexicon s.v. κου. But Denniston, GP 493
noted its occur­rence in repor­ted speech with the infin­it­ive and that it
may occur even at the end of a clause. I recog­nize, how­ever, that κοτε
is attract­ive in view of the chro­no­lo­gical dis­cus­sion that fol­lows. One
may add that if κοῦ can mean ‘how?’, which it appears to below and
at 3. 6. 2, then κου might be rendered ‘some­how’.
2. 14. 1 ταῦτα μὲν . . . ϕέρε δὲ νῦν is what the MSS offer, but μὲν
does not have to be answered by δὲ, and ϕέρε sug­gests the simple
change to δὴ, restor­ing a very com­mon expres­sion, as shown by
Denniston, GP 218.
2. 17. 4 Here C provides the cor­rect form of the adject­ive ἰθέα. This is
a rel­at­ively minor detail and might even be a lucky acci­dent, the
omis­sion of an iota; but I record the fact here because Maas thought
the read­ing might be a scribal con­jec­ture.
2. 18. 1 περὶ Αἴγυπτον was deleted by Powell (who attrib­uted this to
Stein). If the words are genu­ine they look like a col­lo­quial after­
thought; the word-­order is not per­haps the most nat­ural. One might
also con­sider sup­ple­ment­ing 〈τῆϲ〉 περὶ Αἴγυπτον.
2. 19. 3 Was Krüger right to delete τὰ λελεγμένα? It is the read­ing of
A, whereas the Roman fam­ily seems to me clearly inferior with τὰ

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 Book II 27

λεγομένα, even though it was accep­ted by Stein. If sus­pi­cion attaches

to the form of the per­fect par­ti­ciple, it will be neces­sary to delete it
below at 21. 1, where τῆϲ λελεγμένηϲ is not in fact essen­tial, and it
may be noted that at 6. 122. 1 the com­pound προλελεγμένα has been
taken to be one ground for sus­pi­cion about the authen­ti­city of the
pas­sage. In the present pas­sage ταῦτα hardly called for a gloss.
2. 22. 2 τόπων A: om. d. The word could be a gloss. The switch to the
neu­ter ψυχρότερα, pre­sum­ably imply­ing χωρία, is slightly awk­ward
and would be avoided if one deleted τόπων.
The fol­low­ing words have pro­voked many sug­ges­tions. I think the
best approach is to com­bine the evid­ence of A and d and accept ἐϲ τὰ
ψυχρότερα ῥέων τῶν. One has to give πολλὰ sat­is­fact­ory mean­ing,
which it does not have if refer­ring to ψυχρότερα, since there is no
point here in men­tion­ing the extent of the cooler regions. So I reject
the text as prin­ted by Stein and Hude (ῥέων ἐϲ τὰ ψυχρότερα).
Reiske was on the right track with the inser­tion of τεκμήρια, and
Dietsch improved on this with μαρτύρια, which is used just below.
2. 22. 3 ἐόντεϲ was deleted by Gomperz. It does not look like a gloss so
much as a clumsy repe­ti­tion from the end of the pre­ced­ing clause.
Wadddell retained it, say­ing it is ‘to be joined as part of the pre­dic­ate
with ἀπολείπουϲι, cf. διατελέουϲι ἐόντεϲ l. 11’. I doubt this. Gomperz
was prob­ably right. Alternatively I sup­pose the trans­mit­ted text could
pos­sibly con­ceal the residue of a more appro­pri­ate par­ti­ciple mean­ing
‘to reside’, e.g. διάγοντεϲ, con­trast­ing with ϕεύγουϲι in the fol­low­ing
clause.
For the con­junc­tion in ὡϲ ἡ ἀνάγκη ἐλέγχει Powell wished to
sub­sti­tute 〈τοῦτον μὲν〉 ὦν. Did he intend us to under­stand λόγον
with τοῦτον? But λόγοϲ does not fig­ure in the con­text, since the
the­or­ies under dis­cus­sion are intro­duced as ὁδοί. Or does it refer to
the upholder of the the­ory in ques­tion, par­al­lel to λέξαϲ in the next
sen­tence?
2. 26. 1 αὐτῷ is the read­ing of the MSS. The obvi­ous solu­tion is to
adjust to the dat­ive of the reflex­ive pro­noun, as Lloyd saw. This seems
to me prefer­able to Legrand’s dele­tion and Stein’s ἑωυτοῦ.
2. 30. 4 Psammetichus pur­sues desert­ers from his king­dom and on
catch­ing up with them ἐδέετο μένειν ἄλλα πολλὰ λέγων καὶ κτλ.
accord­ing to Powell’s res­tor­a­tion of a sen­tence that is per­haps incom­
plete. If δέομαι can be abso­lute, as the Lexicon sug­gests, the

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 28 Book II

sup­ple­ment is not essen­tial; but if one is made, a more appro­pri­ate

verb might be κατελθεῖν, since the king was ask­ing them to return,
not to stay where they now were.
2. 35. 1 ἣ . . . χώρη was deleted by Stein. Waddell fol­lowed suit, tak­ing
the words to be a mar­ginal explan­a­tion of πρὸϲ πᾶϲαν χώρην, and it
is indeed pos­sible that the pre­pos­i­tion in the sense ‘in com­par­ison
with’ was felt to need a note. But as the col­loc­a­tion of art­icle + ἄλλοϲ
+ πᾶϲ is Herodotean (cf. 3. 14. 3 etc.) I think the words may be
basic­ally sound. A modi­fic­a­tion is required, since χώρη can hardly
mean ‘the earth’. It is easy to read γῆ instead, assum­ing that the
mis­take arose by anti­cip­a­tion of the other word at the end of the
sen­tence. – A’s super­lat­ive πλεῖϲτα is prob­ably to be accep­ted; cf.
3. 119. 5, K.-­G. i. 22–3; πλέω in d may be an attempt to reg­u­lar­ize
the con­struc­tion.
2. 36. 3 The clause omit­ted by d might have attrac­ted the atten­tion of
a Dr Bowdler. To delete it as Hude did implies that an inter­pol­ator
added it and I sup­pose one could ima­gine this as racist abuse. Legrand
pos­ited a lacuna, rightly in my opin­ion; a verb would cre­ate a sequence
of three match­ing clauses.
2. 37. 5 Most edit­ors accept the Attic declen­sion for ἀρχιέρεωϲ from
A(BC); Rosén, fol­lowed by Lloyd, prin­ted it with an oxy­tone accent
(which is con­tra­dicted by Hdn. i. 245. 13, for what that is worth).
There is inscrip­tional evid­ence from Miletus and its colon­ies for
sim­ilar Attic-­declen­sion forms in Ionic. But Stein accep­ted d’s reg­u­
lar form with­out com­ment, per­haps because else­where H. does not
appear to use the Attic-­declen­sion form of this noun, whether
com­pound or sim­plex. One might also observe that there is no obvi­
ous reason why H. should have adop­ted a Milesian form, and Smyth
§478, p. 384, drew atten­tion to the fact that in H. some words are not
inflec­ted accord­ing to the Attic declen­sion which one might have
expec­ted. Legrand fol­lowed Stein, cit­ing Bechtel iii. 114–15 and
Hoffmann iii. 523, des­pite their advocacy of the other view; he
con­cluded his note by say­ing ‘ἀρχιερεώϲ scrip­sisse ipsum Herodotum
mihi valde dubium’. I won­der if he took the form found in A(BC) to
be an Atticizing improve­ment; I sup­pose one could ima­gine a learned
reader tak­ing its occur­rence in Plat. Legg. 947 a (or a gram­marian’s
ref­er­ence to that pas­sage) as a hint, but this does seem rather
far-­fetched. I admit to feel­ing puzzled. See also below on 3. 142. 4.

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 Book II 29

2. 39. 1 πῦρ ἀνακαίουϲι is Bekker’s gen­er­ally accep­ted emend­a­tion

of πυρὴν καίουϲι. Maas under­lined the read­ing of the MSS in his
copy of Hude, but he did not offer any com­ment, nor did he annot­ate
the appar­atus at 4. 145. 2, where A has πυρὴν ἔκαιον and d πῦρ
ἀνέκαιον. In the lat­ter pas­sage d is obvi­ously cor­rect. The error is
odd; per­haps it is a kind of hap­lo­graphy. At 8. 19. 2 there is no vari­
ant, and that pas­sage gives fur­ther sup­port for Bekker’s emend­a­tion.
At 2. 107. 2 πυρή is used of a fire that was in effect a pyre and there­
fore does not sup­port the trans­mit­ted text here.
2. 39. 2, 2. 40. 2 Two occur­rences of κεῖνοϲ have caused dif ­fi­culty
because the point of the pro­noun is not imme­di­ately obvi­ous. In 39.
2 Tucker ingeni­ously pro­posed κοινῇ, which is cer­tainly appos­ite in
sense. In 40. 2 Scaliger’s κεινὴν for κείνην is at first sight tempt­ing,
but may not be neces­sary. The usage of the pro­noun could be
ana­log­ous to a rare usage of ille in Latin to refer to ‘the x in ques­tion’,
as noted by E. Courtney in D. Butterfield and C. Stray (eds.), A. E.
Housman, Classical Scholar (London, 2009), 38. Though I accept this
view, I should feel hap­pier if fur­ther examples could be found.
2. 40. 3 καθαρῶν was obel­ized by Powell; Maas sug­ges­ted ‘white
bread’, cf. LSJ, where, how­ever, the examples cited are much later.
The word occurs below at 38. 1–3 and 41. 1 applied to oxen; but if it
is wrong, an altern­at­ive might be κριβανιτῶν (or should it be writ­ten
κλι–? At 2. 92. 5 the MSS have the form κλιβάνῳ).
2. 42. 1 A reads μέν νυν, a com­bin­a­tion of particles which as a rule is
found only at the begin­ning of a period. The Lexicon gives 7. 129. 2 as
an example of resumptive usage, but the text there is highly uncer­
tain. Stein cited 1. 85. 3, where again there are grounds for rejec­tion.
2. 43. 1 ‘Ἡρακλέοϲ δὲ τοῦ περὶ τόνδε τὸν λόγον 〈λέγουϲι〉 ἤκουϲα
ὅτι was Powell’s sug­ges­tion. His sup­ple­ments make expli­cit the
con­trast implied by τοῦ ἑτέρου at the start of the next sen­tence. I find
it hard to decide whether they are neces­sary or merely ‘improv­ing the
author’. One might also con­sider περὶ τούτου, which would also
make clear the con­trast.
2. 44. 2 μέγαθοϲ, accep­ted by Stein and oth­ers though it makes little
sense, was obel­ized by Powell; Maas was silent. Reiske pro­posed μέγα
ϕῶϲ, an internal accus­at­ive. Kannicht on Eur. Hel. 1131 illus­trates
this usage: ‘das in der Regel intrans­it­ive λάμπειν ist hier ersicht­lich

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 30 Book II

trans­it­ive kon­stru­iert, wie auch Io 82–3 . . . Der Übergang in

die trans­it­ive Konstruktion scheint durch syn­takt­isch ambi­val­ente
Konstruktionen mit inneren Akkusativen ver­mit­telt worden zu sein’.
Wesseling’s μεγάλωϲ received the approval of Legrand; but Lloyd
notes that it does not sit well with λάμπω. Waddell wondered about
a lacuna, wich would pre­sum­ably have given a fig­ure for the height of
the statue. Van Herwerden noted that Theophr. de lap. 25 has
εὐμεγέθηϲ refer­ring to this statue; if that is the right read­ing the
cor­rup­tion is not quite so easy to account for.
2. 46. 4–47.1 ἐπίδεξιν, if cor­rect, has to mean ‘notori­ety’, a usage
which seems not to be attested. Van Herwerden (1883, 35) with good
reason objec­ted and pro­posed instead ἐπίλεξιν, an unat­tested word
which he thought could be derived from ἐπιλέγεϲθαι. He was right
to sug­gest that one would like a word indic­at­ing hor­ror or dis­may. I
have con­sidered ἐπίληψιν, ‘strong cri­ti­cism’, which is rare and late,
and would prefer ἔκπληξιν, since H. uses the cor­res­pond­ing verb.
ἀπίκετο is sup­por­ted by ἀπῖκται in a com­par­able expres­sion at 1.
193. 4. But after that the trans­ition from goat to pig is abrupt and I
sus­pect that some­thing may have been lost, since the story of the
woman and the goat seems incom­plete.
2. 47. 2 τῇ αὐτῇ πανϲελήνῳ was deleted by Cobet, and one can see
why he was temp­ted. But this is an example of a pas­sage where one
should not exclude the pos­sib­il­ity of an authorial vari­ant or col­lo­quial
redund­ancy. Similar con­sid­er­a­tions apply to Gomperz’s dele­tion of
τοὺϲ.
2. 51. 3–4 Powell deleted the last five lines of this ch., pre­sum­ably
because the con­tent is essen­tially repe­ti­tion of what has just been
stated. But scho­li­asts and inter­pol­at­ors nor­mally made it their busi­
ness to add some­thing. I am pre­pared to believe that this is another
case of the author’s altern­at­ive ver­sions. If Powell was right, how­ever,
this could be a school exer­cise designed to para­phrase and if pos­sible
improve a pas­sage in a clas­sical text; cf. my remarks on this edu­ca­
tional prac­tice in Revue d’histoire des textes, 17 (1987), 8–9.
2. 53. 1 ἔνθεν in A is a rarer usage than ὅθεν in d, but appears to be
accept­able; cf. 1. 111. 4 and examples from other authors in LSJ.
2. 54. 1 This ch. deals only with oracles of Zeus, who has not been
men­tioned in the imme­di­ate con­text. In order to make it clear that

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 Book II 31

the oracles of other gods are not being dis­cussed, it seems right to
accept Powell’s sup­ple­ment 〈Διὸϲ〉.
2. 55. 1–2 The nar­rat­ive here is untidy. Since the inform­ants at
Dodona are female (αἱ προμάντιεϲ) the switch to the mas­cu­line in
their report (αὐτοὺϲ . . . αὐτοῖϲι) is unex­pec­ted. It has to be explained
by sup­pos­ing that H. is already think­ing of the other inhab­it­ants
of Dodona, who are men­tioned at the end of the ch. But there is a
fur­ther dif ­fi­culty: αὐτοὺϲ fol­lowed by ϲϕεαϲ (ϲϕεα Krüger and
Legrand, which hardly helps; deleted by Legrand) seems clumsy. I
incline to the view that αὐτοὺϲ are the inhab­it­ants at large and ϲϕεαϲ
the priest­esses.
2. 56. 2 πεϕυκυίῃ imme­di­ately after ϕηγῷ does not yield good sense.
Powell pro­posed to delete it, but there is no obvi­ous reason why it
should have been added as a gloss. Van Herwerden (1883, 36)
sug­ges­ted trans­pos­i­tion so that it is next to αὐτόθι. That would be
intel­li­gible, but αὐτόθι has a dif­fer­ent func­tion, to mark the woman’s
move to Dodona. I would prefer to sup­pose that H. referred to a very
tall tree, e.g. 〈μακρὰ〉 πεϕυκυίῃ.
Since the priest­esses had served in the temple in Thebes but did so
no longer, an aor­ist par­ti­ciple of ἀμϕιπολεύω is more suit­able, as
Bekker saw.
2. 61. 1 Denniston, GP 243 deals with γὰρ δὴ, but does not men­tion
μὲν γὰρ δὴ. L.A.H.-­S. com­pared 4. 191. 3, where there is no vari­ant,
and so A’s read­ing can be accep­ted.
2. 65. 2 Powell obel­ized the sen­tence deal­ing with sac­red anim­als, but
his tent­at­ive sub­sti­tu­tion of οὐ for καὶ is an easy way to restore a
stand­ard idiom. αὐτοῖϲι seems intrus­ive and Cobet deleted it; more
drastic sur­gery is unne­ces­sary.
2. 65. 4 The lacuna pos­ited by Stein removes one dif­fi­culty, but it is
odd that whereas both male and female attend­ants were men­tioned
in §3, here the attend­ant is female, assum­ing that one accepts the
read­ing of A rather than d’s τῇ.
2. 70. 2 μὴ δὲ ποιήϲαϲ in d is the less usual word-­order; A has
nor­mal­ized. Denniston, GP 187 included the present pas­sage in a
short list of excep­tions to the gen­eral rule, ‘when the writer desires to
con­vey the oppos­i­tion between a pos­it­ive idea and its neg­at­ive coun­
ter­part, with a con­sequent heavy stress on the neg­at­ive particle. So

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 32 Book II

nor­mally with a con­di­tional par­ti­ciple expressed or under­stood, a

word or words being repeated’.
2. 71. 1 ἰδέηϲ is awk­ward and Powell deleted; pre­sum­ably he thought
it would not be right to trans­late ‘such is the nature of their appear­
ance’. A slight emend­a­tion is worth con­sid­er­ing: at 2. 92. 4 and 4. 109.
1 (τὴν) ἰδέην is used as an accus­at­ive of respect, and I won­der if ἰδέην
should be adop­ted here: ‘their physis, as far as appear­ance is con­cerned,
is as fol­lows’.
In the descrip­tion of the hip­po­pot­amus the MSS read δίχηλον
ὁπλαὶ βοόϲ, which is per­haps accept­able as col­lo­quial syn­tax; but in
Arist. Hist. an. 502a9, which fol­lows H. very closely with­out being a
ver­batim tran­script, we find δίχηλον δ’ἐϲτὶν ὥϲπερ βούϲ, which led
Diels, Hermes, 22 (1887), 430, to pro­pose ὡϲ καὶ. Along the same
lines Powell sug­ges­ted ὥϲπερ βούϲ. For Stein the words ὁπλαὶ βοόϲ
were an inter­pol­at­ ion, but he also cited Aristotle.
2. 75. 1 On geo­graph­ical grounds this town called Bouto must be
dif­fer­ent from the one already men­tioned three times. It is slightly
odd that H. does not advise the reader of this fact, and so I have
retained Gutschmid’s con­jec­ture in the appar­atus.
2. 78. 1 (i) πάντῃ ‘in all dir­ec­tions’ can hardly be right. Stein’s dele­
tion of the word is sup­por­ted by Lloyd with good argu­ments. But why
should the word have been inser­ted? Not all scribal errors are explic­
able by appeal to obvi­ous factors; but if one wishes to avoid that
con­clu­sion here, is it pos­sible that the word has been mis­placed? It
would fit well after περιϕέρει. In other con­texts, where the meas­ure
of an area is given, the word seems to mean ‘in each dir­ec­tion’, i.e.
length and breadth.
(ii) δίπηχυν is accep­ted by Hude and oth­ers and it is the read­ing of
A; d has διπλοῦν, which lends sup­port to Tucker’s δίπουν, a pro­posal
ignored by Legrand and Lloyd. ‘Two feet long’ is at least as good in
the con­text as ‘two cubits long’, and I sus­pect that d pre­serves a trace
of the right read­ing.
2. 79. 1 (+ 7. 96. 2) It is quite remark­able that Hude, being aware of
Hoffmann’s ἁπαξά, which is merely the cor­rect inter­pret­a­tion of A’s
read­ing and not an emend­a­tion, did not print it. To his credit Waddell
saw that it might be cor­rect here and at 7. 96. 2, but even he did not
adopt it, and Lloyd’s long note con­tin­ues point­less dis­cus­sion. The
Lexicon fails to record the word; when Maas wrote on 6 February

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 Book II 33

1938 to con­grat­u­late Powell on hav­ing pub­lished ‘ein unver­gleich­

liches Hilfsmittel’ he added: ‘Sollten Sie ἁπαξόϲ . . . absicht­lich
ver­schwie­gen haben, so wüsste ich gern die Gründen; mir scheinen
diese Lesungen von Otto Hoffmann völ­lig zwin­gend.’ It now turns
out that P. Oxy. inv. 85/40 has the right read­ing post cor­rec­tionem.
For a valu­able up-­to-­date dis­cus­sion of these pas­sages see P.
Vannicelli, QUCC 96/125 (2010), 87–97.
2. 79. 3 The last clause in this period is strange: what does it mean to
say ‘this was their first and only song’? In English one would say ‘their
one and only song’, but if H. inten­ded that highly implaus­ible asser­
tion he would surely have expressed it dif­fer­ently. Lloyd sug­gests we
should under­stand ‘at that time’. The inser­tion of τότε would be a
simple rem­edy for this puzzle; the best way of achiev­ing the desired
res­ult is to sub­sti­tute it for τε. Powell had noted that there is some­
thing wrong with the con­nect­ing particles in this clause and had
pro­posed to delete the intro­duct­ory καὶ. My sug­ges­tion deals with
both dif ­fi­culties.
2. 86. 3 ἐν οἰκήμαϲι was obel­ized by Powell (1948). But the
Lexicon cites 4. 14. 3 as another instance of this word mean­ing
‘work­shop’.
2. 92. 5 καὶ πωλέουϲι was deleted by Stein and trans­posed to fol­low
τρέπουϲι by Van Herwerden. Legrand fol­lowed him but trans­lated
‘où qu’on vend’. It is sim­pler to accept that καὶ is used here in the
sense noted by Denniston, GP 292, cat­egory (8), or even to emend to
ἢ; the con­fu­sion between these two words is not uncom­mon owing to
the sim­il­ar­ity of the minus­cule forms of eta and kappa and the use of
a com­pen­dium for the alpha-­iota syl­lable.
2. 96. 4 κατερραμμένη was obel­ized by Powell, who nev­er­the­less
trans­lated ‘sewn’. Waddell rendered ‘tied together with a wattle-­mat’
or ‘wick­er­work’. LSJ speak of a frame lashed to a crate. ῥάπτω and its
com­pounds must refer to stitch­ing; but how could one use stitch­ing
to join the planks of a raft? καταδεδεμένη would be the nor­mal
word to denote some­thing tied; but since ῥίψ means ‘mat’ I think H.
meant to say that the raft was covered with a mat, and he used the
rare and there­fore eas­ily cor­rup­ted verb καταϲτρώννυμι.
2. 97. 2 The sen­tence begin­ning ἔϲτι is dif ­fi­cult because οὗτοϲ is
obscure. Lloyd, fol­low­ing a sug­ges­tion by Waddell, writes ‘the verb

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 34 Book II

here has an unusu­ally strong exist­en­tial nuance, hence the emphatic

pos­it­ ion: “But this is not (the real) water-­route but rather via the apex
of the delta . . .” ’. The notion that a nuance can be unusu­ally strong
does not com­mend itself. Leaving that aside, how­ever, I do not think
one can extract from the Greek the mean­ing which Lloyd rightly
expects to find. Stein’s sup­ple­ment seems neces­sary.
2. 98. 1 ἐξ ὅϲου was clearly the read­ing of the arche­type and is prob­
ably sound. The read­ing of S, ἐξ ὅτου, is prob­ably a con­jec­ture by
Andronicus Callistus; but he can­not be assumed to have been an
expert in mat­ters of dia­lect and the author­it­ies sug­gest that this is not
the cor­rect Ionic form. At 4. 40 edit­ors emend to ὅτευ. Maas under­
lined the entry in the appar­atus here and referred to 3. 63. 2, where
Hude accep­ted Stein’s ἐξ ὅτευ; A there has ἐξ ὅτου, while d offers ἐξ
ὅϲου, which is prob­ably right, though it depends on the assump­tion
that the influ­ence of Atticism has not affected the text here.
2. 99. 4 ἀπεργμένοϲ in the pre­ced­ing sec­tion is used of the river in its
new course; here the ref­er­ence is to the dry land that res­ul­ted, but as
it stands the word is inap­pro­pri­ate, and Powell obel­ized, trans­lat­ing
‘the part cut off’, which makes sense but is too free a trans­la­tion.
Legrand notes ‘Plus loin, l’espace d’où le fleuve était écarté est appelé
τὸ ἀπεργμένον’. But this too seems to me to be open to objec­tion.
What we need is ‘the area where the stream had been redir­ec­ted’. I
sug­gest exem­pli gra­tia τὸ 〈κατὰ τὸ〉 ἀπεργμένον.
2. 100. 3 In the pub­lic­a­tion of P. Oxy. 3376 M. Chambers offers good
sug­ges­tions to account for the strik­ing diver­gences of the papyrus from
the tra­di­tional text. It is tempt­ing to fol­low the papyrus and sup­ple­
ment ὑπόγαιον ξεί〈νια〉, remov­ing a slightly awk­ward bra­chylogy
and assum­ing an early cor­rup­tion of the text; but the MSS read­ing can
per­haps be accep­ted as mean­ing ‘she claimed to be innov­at­ing 〈in
domestic archi­tec­ture〉’, and if that is so, the addi­tional word in the
papyrus is an attempt to cla­rify the mean­ing. νόῳ in the sense of ‘inten­
tion’ is hardly objec­tion­able; ἐργῷ might be a gloss or a mis­guided
cor­rec­tion. With some hes­it­a­tion I have left the text unaltered.
2. 101. 1 The crux here seems insol­uble. Powell resor­ted to his usual
weapon and deleted κατ’ . . . λαμπρότητοϲ. P. Oxy. 3376 has a lacuna
but prob­ably offered the same text as the MSS. Accepting οὐ γὰρ
ἔλεγον as sound Denniston, GP 72–3 included this pas­sage in his
dis­cus­sion of ‘fusion’ of clauses, a cat­egory well rep­res­en­ted in H. It is

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 Book II 35

best trans­lated with a sub­or­din­ate clause begin­ning ‘Since’. In the

present pas­sage one looks in vain for a sat­is­fact­ory main clause to
fol­low ἀπόδεξιν. It could be cre­ated by drastic emend­at­ ion such as
{κατ’} οὐδένα ἐπιθυμῆϲαι λαμπρότητοϲ. Another approach would
be to read οὐ κατέλεγον with Blaydes and adopt Stein’s καὶ for κατ’,
but I think fur­ther adjust­ment would be needed. M. Broschmann, De
γάρ par­tic­u­lae usu Herodoteo (Diss. Leipzig, 1882), 63, assumed
anacoluthon; the sen­tence should be inter­preted as if it began τοὺϲ
δὲ ἄλλουϲ βαϲιλέαϲ. κατ’ οὐδὲν ‘in no way’ is found in Dem. 36. 33
and 37. 24. It can be retained here, as can λαμπρότητοϲ, if εἶναι is
replaced by a verb mean­ing ‘aim at’.
2. 102. 4 Valckenaer’s dele­tion of περὶ was anti­cip­ated by Scaliger
and may well be the right solu­tion. But in prose texts one or more
words are fre­quently lost, which is what led Richards to sug­gest
〈ἀμύνεϲθαι〉 exem­pli gra­tia. In the light of H.’s usage I think
〈ἀγωνίζεϲθαι〉 might be slightly bet­ter. Though H. offers no par­al­lel
for γλίχομαι con­struc­ted with an infin­it­ive, other authors do.
2. 104. 2 τοιϲίδε sug­gests that more than one piece of evid­ence is
about to be sup­plied, but only one fol­lows, and I sug­gest an easy
cor­rec­tion to rec­tify this.
2. 104. 3–4 These sec­tions are muddled and it is hard to believe that
H. would have wished to leave them unre­vised. Legrand noted that
the last sen­tence, which applies to the Phoenicians only, is out of
place. One should there­fore either trans­pose it to fol­low the pre­vi­ous
men­tion of the Phoenicians or treat it as an addi­tion that the author
had not fit­ted into the con­text. Even if one of these solu­tions is accept­
able, there is repe­ti­tion at the end of §3 which should per­haps be
treated as an inter­pol­at­ ion.
2. 109. 1 The plural τὰϲ προϲόδουϲ is hardly objec­tion­able (cf. LSJ),
and Powell’s change to τῆϲ προϲόδου accom­pan­ied by dele­tion of
ποιήϲαϲθαι seems to verge on caco­ethes emendandi, and this is one
of a num­ber of his pro­pos­als that I think worthy of brief men­tion
here but have not recor­ded in the appar­atus. The two infin­it­ives in the
trans­mit­ted text are par­al­lel; the king derived his rev­en­ues from this
meas­ure.
2. 114. 3 Proteus sends a mes­sage in reply to the one from Thonis.
The MSS vary between λέγοντα (A) and λέγονταϲ (d), fol­lowed by

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 36 Book II

τάδε. Van Herwerden assumed that a dit­to­graphy had occurred and

emen­ded to λέγων, which most edit­ors have accep­ted. It is not very
dif­fi­cult to under­stand ἄγγελον or τινα, or one could sup­ple­ment
accord­ingly. It may be worth adding that at the begin­ning of the ch.
the ori­ginal mes­sage is intro­duced with the words ἀγγελίην
λέγουϲαν τάδε, and per­haps a repe­ti­tion of that phrase should be
con­sidered as an altern­at­ive pos­sib­il­ity. On this view the cor­rup­tion
would have taken place in two stages, first the loss of the noun, then
the cor­rec­tion of the par­ti­ciple so as to agree with Proteus. L.A.H.-­S.
offers another good sug­ges­tion.
2. 115. 4 ἐκκλέψαϲ is found at the end of the sen­tence in A, even
though the sense is com­plete with­out it after the pre­ced­ing par­ti­ciple.
Some edit­ors (and Maas) have chosen to delete it as a gloss or attemp­ted
improve­ment of the text. This is plaus­ible but not neces­sar­ily right;
Legrand prin­ted the addi­tional par­ti­ciple with­out com­ment, and
Waddell accep­ted it as ‘effect­ive as an abrupt explan­a­tion of ἔχων’. I
am inclined to mit­ig­ate the abrupt­ness by the inser­tion of 〈καὶ〉.
2. 116. 1 ἐϲ ὃ was deleted by Bekker. The nor­mal mean­ing is ‘until’,
which does not suit the con­text. Maas appears to have dis­agreed with
the dele­tion and referred to 1. 115. 3. I can only sup­pose that he took
the mean­ing to be con­sec­ut­ive. Stein’s ἑκὼν seems more con­vin­cing.
2. 118. 3 Powell’s dele­tion of καὶ οὐκ . . . ἔχει is another drastic
meas­ure, since the first of the clauses objec­ted to seems to fit well in
the con­text; the second, intro­duced in the MSS by ἃ, could be a gloss
on χρήματα. With some hes­it­a­tion I have pre­ferred to adopt Struve’s
emend­a­tion τῶν.
2. 118. 4 τῷ λόγῳ τῷ πρώτῳ was deleted by Van Herwerden, and
Powell, CR 51 (1937), 104, took the same view as Waddell, that the
text is sound and is an example of word-­play involving the name
Proteus. It does not mat­ter that the joke may seem feeble to mod­ern
taste; but I note that Powell in 1948 changed his mind.
2. 121 γ 1 What the text might be expec­ted to say is that there was no
obvi­ous way for any­one to enter or leave. Should we sup­ple­ment e.g.
ϕανερήν rather than delete the whole phrase, as Powell wished to do?
2. 121. δ 2 The guards come to get some of the wine that is flow­ing
out of the skin con­tain­ers. The Greek says that they col­lec­ted τὸν

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 Book II 37

ἐκκεχυμένον οἶνον. The last word is in A but omit­ted by d, and the

text would be intel­li­gible with­out it. But is the par­ti­ciple cor­rect as it
stands? If the wine had poured out of the skins it was spread­ing over
the ground, but surely not in such a way that it could be recovered in
any ves­sel. The guards could only col­lect it as it poured out, and
strictly speak­ing the par­ti­ciple should be in the present tense,
match­ing ῥέοντα in the pre­ced­ing clause. The Byzantines had a great
lik­ing for the per­fect tense, the idio­matic use of which was a char­ac­
ter­istic of Attic, and they may have intro­duced it here, unless H. was
care­less in draft­ing.
2. 124. 1 The king closed the temples and pre­ven­ted people from
sac­ri­fi­cing. A reads ϲϕεαϲ θυϲιέων τουτέων ἀπέρξαι. But τουτέων
is omit­ted by d and many edit­ors accept that read­ing. It is con­ceiv­able
that the word was wrongly inser­ted here by a scribe who focussed on
its occur­rence in the next sen­tence. If A is right, ‘those sac­ri­fices’
means ‘the sac­ri­fices they would have made at those temples’ or is a
loose ref­er­ence back to ch. 122. Maas under­lined A’s vari­ant, which
may hint that he pre­ferred it. Stein trans­lated ‘der noch jetzt im Land
üblichen’, and com­pared 1. 75. 4, where, how­ever, the pro­noun
ταύταϲ has an obvi­ous point of ref­er­ence, which is lack­ing here. One
won­ders if παϲέων should be con­sidered.
2. 124. 3 δέκα ἔτεα writ­ten as two words was quer­ied by Powell, who
pre­ferred δεκαέτεα. Maas objec­ted that in the next sec­tion the text
reads τὰ δέκα ἔτεα (‘aber Z. 13’), which did not pre­vent him from
tent­at­ively pro­pos­ing εἰκοϲιέτεα just below. In my opin­ion the
def­in­ite art­icle is not decis­ive. δεκαέτηϲ is found at 1. 114. 1,
εἰκοϲαέτηϲ (sic) at 1. 136. 2 (the form­a­tion accords with πενταέτηϲ
ibid.; but LSJ prefer εἰκοϲι–, as Maas pro­posed). These adject­ives
describe people, but I sup­pose H. could have used them with χρόνοϲ.
Since this is a ques­tion involving dia­crit­ics the MSS have no author­ity,
and it is hard to know how an ancient reader would have inter­preted
the script.
2. 124. 5 πανταχῇ μέτωπον ἕκαϲτον, though accep­ted by all
edit­ors, is open to ques­tion. What is the pur­pose of the adverb? Is it
some kind of gloss or a clumsy col­lo­qui­al­ism?
2. 125. 3 In the descrip­tion of how the blocks of stone were raised up
the series of steps some cor­rec­tion of the para­dosis is needed. Richards

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 38 Book II

saw that ἐπ’ ἄλληϲ μηχανῆϲ is repe­ti­tious and thought it was an

inter­pol­a­tion. But it seems too banal to be a gloss, and I have assumed
with Schenkl that some­thing has been lost.
2. 125. 4 For the use of εἴτε with­out a cor­rel­at­ive, as the equi­val­ent
of ἤ, see Denniston, GP 507–8 n. 1, who accepts this unpar­alleled
anom­aly as a typ­ic­ally Herodotean col­lo­qui­al­ism.
Van Herwerden objec­ted to ἐξέλοιεν since ‘remove’ can hardly be
right. The super­flu­ous ἐξ– could eas­ily have come from ἐξεποιήθη in
the next line. Another way to account for the cor­rup­tion is to sup­pose
that the ori­ginal text read ἐπεξῆϲ ἕλκοιεν, ‘moved suc­cess­ively from
one level to another’.
2. 126. 1 The king’s daugh­ter reques­ted from each cli­ent one block of
stone. ἐν τοῖϲι ἔργοιϲι was deleted by Valckenaer, and the pre­pos­i­tion
ἐν pro­vokes doubt, but on the other hand I agree with Lloyd that it was
no more suit­able as part of a gloss. Werfer tried ἐπὶ, which I sup­pose
means ‘for the works (she inten­ded)’, and Lloyd takes it this way. I
prefer to sup­ply 〈ἐκ τῶν〉, eas­ily omit­ted in view of the phras­ing of the
next sen­tence, and to trans­late ‘from the blocks on the build­ing site’.
2. 127. 2 Powell’s dele­tion of δὲ was anti­cip­ated by Legrand. In my
opin­ion the sen­tence runs more smoothly if the def­in­ite art­icle is
added in order to make imme­di­ately expli­cit the ref­er­ence to the
other canal.
2. 127. 3 A very dif ­fi­cult pas­sage. Powell, CQ 32 (1938), 213, was
mildly favour­able to Weidemann’s pro­posal to read τὸ instead of
τὠυτὸ, but pre­ferred to sup­ple­ment 〈τὸ μὴ〉 ταὐτὸ (sic) μέγαθοϲ
〈ἔχειν〉. In passing one should ask whether 〈τοῦ μὴ〉 would be bet­ter.
But in 1948 Powell pro­posed to delete τεϲϲαράκοντα . . . μέγαθοϲ,
fol­low­ing Van Herwerden, who had made the smal­ler dele­tion of τῆϲ
. . . μέγαθοϲ (1883, p. 44), sug­gest­ing that the unusual ὑποβὰϲ had
stim­u­lated inter­pol­a­tion. Lloyd, p. 384, is temp­ted to fol­low
Weidemann and ignores Powell’s sug­ges­tion of 1948. One may doubt
whether an inter­pol­ator would have known exactly what the dif­fer­
ences in the dimen­sions of the two pyr­am­ids were.
2. 134. 3 Powell’s ἐγένετο in place of ἦν seems neces­sary. Hude had
accep­ted Schaefer’s trans­pos­i­tion of ἦν, which the MSS oddly placed
before λιπομένων, cre­at­ing a most unlikely hyper­baton. But ἦν is not
the right word here. The cause of the cor­rup­tion may be that a scribe’s

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 Book II 39

eye wandered and he either repeated ἦν from the pre­vi­ous sen­tence

or anti­cip­ated it from the next one.
2. 135. 2 ἄν is not sat­is­fact­ory here; as in other pas­sages δὴ is the
simplest emend­a­tion, as Richards saw. Legrand tried ἅλιϲ, which is
not out of the ques­tion, con­struc­ted with a dat­ive. The accus­at­ive of
the MSS must be con­ver­ted to nom­in­at­ive or gen­it­ive; the lat­ter
cre­ates easier syn­tax, with χρήματα the sub­ject of both clauses.
2. 136. 1 H. describes the dec­or­a­tion of the pro­pyl­aea to a temple of
Hephaestus. According to the MSS it had carved fig­ures and ἄλλην
ὄψιν οἰκοδομημάτων μυρίην. Godley trans­lated ‘innu­mer­able
graces of archi­tec­ture’, which suits the con­text but can­not be extrac­ted
from the Greek. Powell obel­ized, but I would like to sug­gest that H.
refers here to inscrip­tions along­side the fig­ures. The word for carving/
engrav­ing an inscrip­tion is ἐγκολάπτω, from which derives the
word ἐγκόλαψιϲ. I would tent­at­ively pro­pose to read it here, even
though it appears to be attested so far only in inscrip­tions from
Lebadeia in Boeotia. [L.A.H.-­S. draws atten­tion to the late-­fifth-­
cen­tury fash­ion for nouns end­ing in -­ϲιϲ.] In addi­tion the def­in­ite
art­icle should prob­ably be inser­ted before οἰκοδομημάτων.
2. 140. 1 ἐϲ τὴν δωρεὴν, though accep­ted by Stein and oth­ers, is
dubi­ous, and Wesseling deleted the art­icle. A more pre­cise cor­res­
pond­ence with the pre­ced­ing sen­tence can be achieved by read­ing ἐϲ
δωρεὴν γῆν. Gamma and tau were eas­ily con­fused in uncial script,
and minor errors of word-­order are com­mon.
2. 140. 2 In 1948 Powell obel­ized the words οὐκ οἷοί τε . . .
Ἀμυρταίου. But accord­ing to a note by Maas he had fur­ther thoughts
and decided to delete the whole sen­tence begin­ning ταύτην τὴν
νῆϲον. Maas dates this October 1949. I have chosen to obel­ize, in the
belief that there may be inform­a­tion here which goes back to H., but
I can­not see any con­vin­cing way of remov­ing the clumsy repe­ti­tion
offered by the text of the MSS.
Since the fig­ure of 700 years is at vari­ance with the other evid­ence
it has been ques­tioned. Lloyd, Introduction, p. 188 with n. 38, defends
the trans­mit­ted text: ‘The date ap. 2. 140. 2 is not given in indir­ect
speech. It is not part of the inform­a­tion derived from the same priestly
source as the rest. The date is clearly part of a folk tale and was ignored
by H. for chro­no­lo­gical pur­poses.’ But since numer­als are so often
cor­rup­ted one should at least con­sider whether palaeo­graph­ical

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 40 Book II

factors are rel­ev­ant. Hemmerdinger, p. 168, sug­ges­ted con­fu­sion of

tau (300) and psi (700), and in fact some forms of psi make this plaus­
ible; for example, the scribe of Codex C of Archimedes, dat­able
c.950–75, writes psi in this way.
2. 141. 1 τῶν μαχίμων MSS, which is dif ­fi­cult, des­pite the attemp­ted
jus­ti­fic­at­ ion by Waddell: ‘gen. instead of acc. after ἐν ἀλογίῃϲι ἔχειν,
as though it were ἀλογίην ἔχειν or ἀλογέειν: “he des­pised and
dis­reg­arded the war­rior Egyptians.” ’ Rather than attrib­ute such
clumsy syn­tax to H. one should look for a simple emend­a­tion. There
is a fur­ther ques­tion: has any editor explained the present tense in
ἔχειν and the aor­ist of παραχρηϲάμενον? Should one read ϲχεῖν for
ἔχειν? Epsilon and sigma were often con­fused. Blaydes took the
infin­it­ive to be imper­fect and pre­ferred ἐν ἀλογίῃ.
2. 141. 5 In the para­dosis the open­ing sen­tence is inco­her­ent.
ἀπικομένουϲ is not part of any con­struc­tion, nor is there any point
in αὐτοῖϲι. The par­ti­ciple can be changed into a gen­it­ive to agree with
the king or a dat­ive plural to refer to the Arab forces; αὐτοῖϲι can be
deleted, as it was by Waddell, but it would also be easy to change it to
αὐτόθι. Initially I was con­tent with a solu­tion of this kind. Stein,
how­ever, observed that if one takes ser­i­ously the report of this
cam­paign in Josephus, AJ 10. 4. 18–19, which refers to H., a lacuna
must be pos­ited. The sense required is that the Egyptian king prayed
to his god, and the god listened to his prayer, send­ing a plague on the
Arab forces. So the ori­ginal may have read ‘On arrival he asked the
god for assist­ance against the enemy, and the god ensured that they
were over­run one night by rodents.’ On this basis I favour the minor
adjust­ment of the par­ti­ciple to ἀπικομένου, refer­ring to the king, as
pro­posed by Bekker; then Stein’s lacuna after the par­ti­ciple is needed
and another has to be pos­ited before αὐτοῖϲι. But all remains very
uncer­tain.
At the end of the sec­tion many of the Arab invaders flee with­out
their weapons. The epi­thet γυμνῶν is fol­lowed in A by ἀνόπλων,
which Stein deleted as a gloss. In d the fol­low­ing word is ὅπλων, and
Maas under­lined this vari­ant as worthy of note. Since γυμνόϲ can be
con­struc­ted with a gen­it­ive, should one accept that here? With some
hes­it­at­ ion I have decided against, partly because the Roman fam­ily is
not gen­er­ally super­ior to A, partly because the sequence of four words
with identical inflec­tion does not appeal to a mod­ern ear and pos­sibly
did not appeal to the Greeks either (but note Dem. de Cor. 238).

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 Book II 41

Legrand took ὅπλων to be an ancient emend­a­tion, pre­sum­ably by

someone who pre­ferred this rem­edy to removal of a gloss, and I find
this very plaus­ible as an account of what happened.
2. 142. 3 οὐ μὴν οὐδὲ is a com­bin­a­tion of particles that puzzled even
Denniston, GP 363. He cited a num­ber of examples from H. only, not
includ­ing the present pas­sage. Here A reads οὐ μέντοι οὐδὲ, a rare
but attested com­bin­a­tion (GP 197).
2. 142. 4 ἀνατεῖλαι fol­lowed by ἐπανατεῖλαι is sus­pi­cious, espe­cially
when com­bined with the dif ­fi­cult use of ἐξ in place of ἔξω, which was
plaus­ibly pro­posed by Scaliger. The eccent­ric rising is not to be
spe­cified here but in the next sen­tence. Boeckh’s ἀναϲτῆναι ‘migrated
from’ is per­fect and was adop­ted by Legrand).
2. 143. 3 Powell deleted καὶ δεικνύντεϲ and παῖδα ἐόντα. This
leaves the sen­tence with­out an expressed object, which seems to me
too ellipt­ical. The required object is prob­ably to be obtained by
sup­ple­ment; given that in 166. 2 in a sim­ilar con­text we read παῖϲ
παρὰ πατρὸϲ ἐκδεχόμενοϲ I tent­at­ively sug­gest παῖδα 〈παρὰ〉
πατρὸϲ ἑωυτῶν ἕκαϲτον 〈διάδοχον〉 ἐόντα.
2. 143. 4 ἀπὸ θεοῦ γενέϲθαι ἄνθρωπον could be a gloss as Powell
main­tained, but I sus­pect it is merely an ele­ment of col­lo­quial repet­i­
t­ive style. The expres­sion might be improved slightly by the addi­tion
of 〈τὸ〉 ἀπὸ.
2. 145. 2 P. Fackelmann 7, pub­lished by H. Bannert and H. Harrauer
in WS 14 (1980), 25–8, pre­serves a tiny scrap of text which is of
con­sid­er­able import­ance for the his­tory of texts, as the edit­ors recog­
nize. Their sup­ple­ments to the pre­served words prove that the
numeral 15,000 must have been abbre­vi­ated, not writ­ten out in full.
This runs counter to the implic­a­tion of the author­it­at­ive state­ment by
Sir Eric Turner, Greek Manuscripts of the Ancient World, 2nd edn.,
rev. P. J. Parsons (London, 1987), 15, who knew of only one lit­er­ary
papyrus with an abbre­vi­ated numeral. P. Fackelmann 7 sug­gests that
prac­tice may have var­ied more than has been sup­posed, and in fact
there was already some other evid­ence point­ing in the same dir­ec­
tion. The Codex Sinaiticus of the Bible can be dated to the middle of
the fourth cen­tury because the scribes oscil­late between two types of
abbre­vi­ation for numer­als, as was shown by H. J. M. Milne and T. C.
Skeat, Scribes and Correctors of the Codex Sinaiticus (London, 1938),

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 42 Book II

62. It is also gen­er­ally accep­ted that Wilamowitz was right to explain

errors at Theophrastus, Char. 23. 6 and below at ch. 145. 4 by pos­tu­
lat­ing the early use of acro­phonic numer­als which were later mis­un­
der­stood (Hermes, 33 (1898), 522 = Kleine Schriften, iv (Berlin, 1962),
33; ibid. 40 (1905), 142 = iv. 196). I think tex­tual crit­ics are entitled to
assume that con­jec­tures pre­sup­pos­ing abbre­vi­ated numer­als in
ancient manu­scripts are legit­im­ate.
The edit­ors of the papyrus, which they assign to the 3rd c. ad,
pro­pose the sup­ple­ment ΙΕ. They do not sup­ply the dia­critic needed
to indic­ate that the numeral is 15,000 and not 15, but this would have
occu­pied very little space and does not affect their res­tor­a­tion.
I add some fur­ther rel­ev­ant mater­ial. (i) R. Kassel, ZPE 174 (2010),
49–59, has drawn atten­tion to the use of abbre­vi­ated numer­als in P.
Ant. III 139 and 186 of Galen, De com­posi­tione medic­am ­ ent­orum per
gen­era. This papyrus dates from the sixth cen­tury. (ii) P. Oxy. 4459 of
Strabo 2. 5. 20–4, c.ad 200, has AC ͞  for 1,100 and traces of ͞ϛ for 6,000.
(iii) Another sys­tem of abbre­vi­ation has recently been detec­ted in the
Codex Sinaiticus. The let­ter des­ig­nat­ing the numeral has a hori­zontal
stroke writ­ten above and a dot on either side. See B. C. Jones,
Scandinavian Evangelical E-­Journal for New Testament Studies, 1
(2010), 15–19. (I owe this ref­er­ence to Dr B. H. Weaver.)
2. 146. 1 Richards like oth­ers before him saw the dif ­fi­culty in ἄλλουϲ
and pro­posed αὐτοὺϲ. Though this is at first sight attract­ive, I am not
sure that an emphatic pro­noun is in place here, and ἄνδραϲ may be
ques­tioned, since ἀνθρώπουϲ is the word one might expect. Powell
sup­ple­men­ted this in place of ἄλλουϲ, delet­ing ἄνδραϲ. I ima­gine he
pos­ited a cor­rup­tion of the nomen sac­rum ͞α͞ν͞ο͞υ͞ϲ, which was easy in
both uncial and minus­cule script.
2. 148. 1 H. expresses his admir­at­ ion for the labyrinth. Though the
gen­eral sense of his remark can be inferred, some edit­ors have rightly
seen dif ­fi­culty in the text offered by the MSS. The adjectival phrase
λόγου μέζω in appos­i­tion to the object seems incom­plete with­out
the par­ti­ciple 〈ἐόντα〉. A com­par­able expres­sion is found at 7. 147. 1:
προεπύθοντο . . . ἐόντα λόγου μέζω. Initially I found this a fully
sat­is­fact­ory solu­tion. But Powell, CQ 29 (1935), 80, had offered a
com­plex dis­cus­sion of whether ἤδη should be taken with the verb or
with the adjectival expres­sion, pre­fer­ring the former and either
accept­ing a bra­chylogy or inter­pret­ing the expres­sion as hav­ing been
sub­sti­tuted for a super­lat­ive (he failed to make the point that the

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 Book II 43

word-­order, which he did not pro­pose to alter, does not favour his
second pro­posal, since the sep­ar­a­tion of the adject­ive from the modi­
fy­ing adverb would be an obstacle to the reader). In 1948, how­ever,
he returned to the prob­lem with a drastic rewrit­ing of the sen­tence,
intro­du­cing the super­lat­ive: τῶν ἐγὼ ἤδη εἶδον 〈ἔργων〉 πολλῷ
μέγιϲτον. This seems to me to go too far, but the change from the
accus­at­ive sin­gu­lar to the gen­it­ive plural of the def­in­ite art­icle is
easy and I think it is a neces­sary ele­ment of the best solu­tion.
Being con­vinced that ἤδη is to be retained in the text and does not
need to be trans­posed, also that Powell’s ref­er­ence to Ar. Ach. 315 is
not rel­ev­ant for the present pas­sage, I have taken the required sense
to be ‘bey­ond descrip­tion among the monu­ments which I have
ever seen’.
2. 149. 1 The size of Lake Moeris is indic­ated. The MSS have τῆϲ τὸ
περίμετρον τῆϲ περιόδου, but the mean­ing ought to be ‘the meas­
ure­ment of its cir­cum­fer­ence’. The word­ing is odd and Van
Herwerden deleted τῆϲ περιόδου, fol­lowed by Legrand and
Powell. But if the words are a gloss, they should be in the nom­in­at­ive.
It is easier to assume duplic­at­ ion of the pre­fix περι- and read
τὸ μέτρον κτλ.
2. 149. 4 Lloyd noted that Reiske’s inser­tion of 〈ἡ〉 makes for an
ellipt­ical sen­tence and wondered if 〈ἡ γῆ〉 would be bet­ter. I am
pretty sure he was right.
2. 151. 3 ἐν ϕρενὶ λαβόντεϲ] ἐν om. d, del. Hude. This pas­sage has to
be dis­cussed in con­junc­tion with 9. 10. 1, where the pre­pos­it­ ion is
omit­ted by A. One can delete the pre­pos­it­ ion on the assump­tion that
it was added by a scribe famil­iar with the Homeric ἐν ϕρεϲὶ. The
altern­at­ive, which I would not rule out, is that H. accep­ted Homeric
usage with a change from the plural to the sin­gu­lar.
2. 152. 5 The simplest rem­edy here, adop­ted by Hude fol­low­ing
Krüger, is to delete μετ᾽ ἑωυτοῦ on the ground that it is a care­less
repe­ti­tion. Stein pro­posed the min­imal change of μετ᾽ to τε τὰ,
which pro­duces good Greek; but the idio­matic expres­sion mean­ing
‘sup­port the interests of’ seems not to occur in H. If one applies the
prin­ciple that words are often lost in prose texts, a simple word that
might have been lost here is μάχεϲθαι or γενέϲθαι. Then the repe­ti­
tion of the pre­pos­it­ ional phrase becomes accept­able, but the sen­tence
as a whole is not eleg­ant.

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 44 Book II

2. 155. 3 Another ser­i­ous crux; trans­lat­ors apply the usual tech­niques

of mas­sage to pro­duce a seem­ingly smooth text. . The first prob­lem is
τούτοιϲι. Waddell took it to refer to the pro­pyl­aea, the only plural
noun in the con­text. But it is sep­ar­ated by two inter­ven­ing clauses,
which Lloyd (1988, p. 141) rightly found objec­tion­able. If the word
were deleted good sense would res­ult: each wall was equal in length,
and the error would be easy enough to account for. Powell, CQ 29
(1935), 81, had a more drastic rem­edy, to delete καὶ τοῖχοϲ ἕκαϲτοϲ
as a faulty gloss on τούτων ἕκαϲτον, which he took to refer to ‘all
three dimen­sions’, the height of the pro­pyl­aea and of the shrine, and
the length of the shrine. This seems to me impossibly ellipt­ical, and
in 1948 he tried τὸ μέτωπον for τούτων, delet­ing ἐϲτι and claim­ing
to be fol­low­ing Stein (no such pro­posal is found in the edi­tions of
1869 and 1881). I am quite unable to agree with Lloyd’s asser­tion
(1988, p. 141) that ‘the received text yields a sat­is­fact­ory sense’.
Legrand thought one might try ἑκάτερον for ἕκαϲτον, the ref­er­ence
being to the height and length of the monu­ment; but in such a
dif­fi­cult pas­sage I have chosen not to encum­ber the appar­atus still
fur­ther.
2. 157 ἐπολιόρκεε in the imper­fect is the read­ing of AD and U, and
is cor­rect. RSVX offer ἐπολιόρκηϲε, as does the Suda s.v. ψ 19. This
gives a ter­minus ante quem in the middle of the tenth cen­tury for the
ancestor of this branch of the Roman fam­ily. The fact that U here
sides with AD may be due either to con­tam­in­at­ ion or the capa­city of
the scribe to make a small but neces­sary adjust­ment to what he found
in his exem­plar.
2. 158. 4 The sup­ple­men­ted adverb was dis­covered by Bekker,
Anecdota, i. 418 in MS B of the Synagoge (Paris, BN Coislin 345),
now avail­able in the edi­tion of I. C. Cunningham (Berlin, 2003); see
lemma 1637 on p. 634. The present pas­sage and sev­eral frag­ments of
com­edy are cited spe­cific­ally in illus­tra­tion of this rare word. The
vari­ant is not sup­por­ted by any MS or the papyrus, and Lloyd objects
that it makes H. guilty of inac­cur­acy. But H. was not infal­lible. The
word is found also at 5. 53, where it is placed before the numeral in
ques­tion, which seems equally accept­able; Hude’s trans­pos­i­tion was
rejec­ted by Maas, who made no note on 5. 53. In the scholium on Ar.
Plut. 388 the present pas­sage is cited with the adverb after the
numeral, which, how­ever, has been cor­rup­ted to the impossible fig­ure
of 70 (abbre­vi­ated by the sym­bol omic­ron in R and V, the two best

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 Book II 45

MSS; Legrand recom­men­ded the very easy emend­a­tion to omega,

which sig­ni­fied 800, but this again is based on the assump­tion that H.
can­not make a mis­take). The Suda α 2928 has the same cor­rup­tion,
which is one of the innu­mer­able indic­a­tions that it used the scho­lia
on Aristophanes as one of its prin­cipal sources.
2. 160. 4 Hude prints a dif ­fi­cult text, in which the two verbs of the
protasis do not match, the first being in the indic­at­ive and the second
in the opt­at­ive. But he notes the pro­posal of Cavallin to restore a
second indic­at­ive by read­ing ἀπίκοντο in place of the trans­mit­ted
ἀπικοίατο. The sane effect can be achieved just as well by read­ing
ἀπίκατο, the less usual form which is found a few lines above.
2. 162. 3 ἐπάραϲ with­out an expressed object is rather ellipt­ical. Stein
com­pared Ar. Lys. 799 and Soph. OT 1270; the former is more sat­is­
fact­ory than the lat­ter as a par­al­lel. But doubts remain. Wesseling
noticed that Favorinus (fr. 15 B., 7 Amato) has ἐπάραϲ τὸ ϲκέλοϲ
ἀπεματάϊϲε and it is tempt­ing to accept this as the ori­ginal read­ing
in H. Lloyd (1988, p. 177) was scep­tical of efforts to emend, but did
not cite Favorinus; more recently he para­phrased ‘hav­ing lif­ted his
leg/risen in the saddle’.
2. 168. 1 Since ϲϕι clearly refers to the mil­it­ary caste, whereas ch. 167
was all about crafts­men, Waddell, fol­low­ing Stein, rightly describes
that ch. as a digres­sion, and I have marked it accord­ingly.
2. 169. 5 τὰ δένδρεα dis­rupts the flow of the descrip­tion; the words
are a gloss that has been adjus­ted to give the appro­pri­ate ter­min­a­tion.
As L.A.H.-­S. notes, if H. had thought it neces­sary to spe­cify the mean­
ing of ϕοίνικαϲ he would have found another way to do it.
2. 170. 2 The rim of the lake is a stone sur­round­ing. Powell thought
the phrase λιθίνῃ κρηπῖδι κεκοϲμημένη καὶ ἐργαϲμένη εὖ κύκλῳ
ple­onastic. He may have been right to fol­low P. Oxy. 1092 and
Athenagoras in omit­ting καὶ ἐργαϲμένη. On the other hand not all
ple­onasm is unac­cept­able in this text; but I also note that the Roman
fam­ily pre­serves what looks like a trace of a vari­ant read­ing that
invites con­sid­er­a­tion: ἁρμοϲμένη would refer to the neat­ness of the
masonry, and was con­jec­tured by Andronicus Calllistus in S. Legrand
deleted καὶ, which makes for an abrupt text.
Powell (1948) states that P. Oxy. 1092 reads εὐκύκλῳ, the
com­pound adject­ive, rather than εὖ κύκλῳ. This is grossly mis­lead­ing;

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 46 Book II

papyri rarely have the dia­crit­ics to indic­ate such dis­tinc­tions, and in

this case the only pre­served let­ters are ]κλωι.
2. 175. 5 ἐνθυμιϲτὸν is the read­ing of A, accep­ted by many edit­ors. It
is not above sus­pi­cion, because else­where H. uses the expres­sion
ἐνθύμιον ἐγένετο (8. 54) and the form­a­tion -­ιϲτ-­is odd. Cobet went
so far as to declare it impossible, but it has now been found in two
inscrip­tions from Thasos, one of which is more or less con­tem­por­ary;
see J. Pouilloux, Recherches sur l’histoire et les cultes de Thasos (Paris,
1954), 371–3. However, it is dif ­fi­cult to believe that H. would have
used a very rare word attested only in Thasos, a place with which he
had no obvi­ous con­nec­tion. The Roman fam­ily divides, with r offer­ing
ἐνθυμιϲτὸν and D after cor­rec­tion ἐϲ θυμὸν. Confusion of nu and
sigma has no explan­a­tion other than scribal dis­trac­tion. Perhaps the
scribe of D tried to cor­rect the text by cre­at­ing a con­struc­tion
ana­log­ous to ἐϲ θυμὸν βαλέϲθαι found at 1. 84, 7. 51, 8. 68.
Valckenaer’s ἐνθύμιον restores nor­mal usage. Can one account for
the intrus­ive let­ters sigma and tau? Two lines above they occur twice
in the words ϲτέγηϲ ἀναϲτενάξαι, and I think that explains how
scribes could have erred.
2. 176. 1 Αἰθιοπικοῦ d: τοῦ αὐτοῦ A. Editors dis­agree. Stein accep­ted
A’s word­ing and com­men­ted ‘aus dem­sel­ben Steinblocke gehauen’.
Though this is pos­sible I now incline to the view that this read­ing is an
error induced by the pre­ced­ing τῷ αὐτῷ and that d’s vari­ant is prob­
ably not to be rejec­ted as an erro­neous gloss.
2. 178. 1 αὐτοῦ can hardly be taken with ναυτιλλομένοιϲι as an
adverb of motion towards, and so Van Herwerden pro­posed αὐτόϲε.
Richards found that ‘unem­phatic and by no means strong enough’.
This objec­tion is not fully con­vin­cing, but one could argue that two
adverbs are required, one with each par­ti­ciple, and his sug­ges­tion of
αὐτοῦ 〈πολλάκιϲ〉 δὲ has merit. I have pre­ferred an adverb which is
a bet­ter foil to αὐτοῦ. Powell tried the gentler medi­cine of trans­
pos­ing the particle δὲ to fol­low the par­ti­ciple.

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 Book III

3. 5. 1 Powell trans­posed the first sen­tence of this sec­tion to fol­low

Αἴγυπτοϲ in §3, and Maas appears to have approved of this. But I do
not think that the order of the clauses which res­ults is a neces­sary
improve­ment, and it inter­rupts the sequence Ienysus—Mount
Kasios—Lake Serbonis. Powell also, again appar­ently with Maas’s
approval, made the minor trans­pos­i­tion οὔρων μέχρι, thus mak­ing
H. refer to the bound­ary of Phoenicia instead of the city of Kadytis
(Gaza). That is plaus­ible, but again it seems to me not abso­lutely
neces­sary.
3. 6. 2 Translators tend to para­phrase the end of this story (which
attrac­ted much scorn from Sayce). The prob­lem lies in the adject­ive
παλαιόϲ, which seems to refer to the stock of pot­tery. The nor­mal
mean­ing ‘ancient’ will hardly do here, des­pite Powell’s attempt in the
Lexicon to water down its mean­ing, and in this story about the pot­tery
it is quite inap­pro­pri­ate. If the text is sound one has to assume that
the term is bor­rowed from the lan­guage of bank­ing and refers to
ori­ginal stock; the usage is known from Lysias fr. 13 (Carey), cited by
Photius s.v., refer­ring to the ori­ginal amount of a loan. If that is not
accept­able one might read ἐπὶ τὸν πάλαι χῶρον, mean­ing that the
pot­tery was taken back to the place where it had been some time ago;
this sug­ges­tion is based on the fact that the adverb can refer to the
rel­at­ively recent past.
3. 7. 1 A’s read­ing ἕλξαντεϲ is a rare case of this MS in error through
mis­in­ter­pret­a­tion of uncial script. Maas under­lined the entry in
Hude’s appar­atus and wrote in the mar­gin ‘uncial’. By con­trast I have
noted, with­out mak­ing a sys­tem­atic search, that this type of error
seems to be more fre­quent in d or D (see the appar­atus at 2. 17. 4 ,
2. 94. 1 , 2. 181. 2 , 3. 92. 2 , 3. 115. 2 , 4. 49. 1 , 8. 44. 1 ).

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 48 Book III

3. 9. 3 ϲώζωϲι A: ποτίζωϲι d. The vari­ant in d is odd; it is so dif­fer­ent

in mean­ing that it can hardly be taken as a gloss. It could be a reader’s
adjust­ment, influ­enced by koine usage; J. A. L. Lee, A Critical Study of
the LXX Version of the Pentateuch (Chico, Calif. 1983), 118–22, states
that whereas in clas­sical usage ποτίζω means to give a per­son or
animal some­thing to drink, in the koine it often has the sense ‘irrig­ate’.
It occurs 28 times in the Pentateuch.
E. Mehler, Mnemosyne, 5 (1856), 63–79, deleted δεκόμεναι as a
gloss; I am will­ing to accept a mild ple­onasm here. He also inver­ted
the order of the two sen­tences in §4; but with the trans­mit­ted order
there is more emphasis on the fact that there were no less than three
con­duits, which seems sat­is­fact­ory.
3. 10. 3 The aor­ist par­ti­ciple βαϲιλεύϲαντοϲ in A was pre­ferred by
Powell and Maas, accept­ing the former’s dele­tion of ἐπὶ, which is
super­flu­ous in con­junc­tion with the par­ti­ciple; less plaus­ibly one
could delete the par­ti­ciple and Αἰγύπτου. The verb here means ‘come
to the throne’ rather than simply ‘reign’.
Denniston, GP 319 took ἀλλὰ καὶ τότε as ‘but then’, not­ing as an
altern­at­ive that per­haps καὶ should be placed before αἱ. He was
appar­ently unaware of Richards’s τότε καὶ, which is equally effect­ive
as a rem­edy.
3. 13. 3 The inhab­it­ants of Cyrene and Barce had the same fears as the
Libyans. Hude prints Schaefer’s emend­at­ ion δείϲαντεϲ ὁμοίωϲ καὶ
οἱ Λίβυεϲ (anti­cip­ated, per­haps acci­dent­ally, by Y). A has ἃ καὶ and
d ὡϲ καὶ. The read­ing of d seems clumsy, but ὁμοίωϲ ἃ would make
sense; does A pre­serve a trace of an ori­ginal τὰ?
3. 14. 3 Hude prin­ted ἀντεβόων from E, but this com­pound is not
cited by DGE from any text earlier than Bion 1. 38 and Josephus,
BJ 3. 92 [L.A.H.-­S. adds Euphorion 116. 2 Lightfoot], and Maas
marked it as an erro­neous con­jec­ture, refer­ring to §9 below. The fol­­
lowing verb ἀντικλαίω is cited only from the present pas­sage and
Eustathius 37. 15, where a pre­ced­ing com­pound in ἀντι-­ invited
the coin­age of a new word. Hude also adop­ted the read­ing of E in
§9, with­out neces­sity, it seems to me.
3. 14. 7 Maas deleted the end of the first period, from Ψαμμηνίτου
to Αἰγυπτίων. The words could eas­ily be a cla­ri­fic­a­tion of the
sense added by a reader. Maas sug­ges­ted repla­cing them with
the pro­noun ϲϕέαϲ. A decision depends on decid­ing whether

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 Book III 49

the trans­mit­ted text is impossible in a work designed ori­gin­ally for

oral deliv­ery.
3. 14. 8 ἐξόδῳ, accep­ted by Powell in the Lexicon, does not have the
required mean­ing, and Powell later accep­ted Van Herwerden’s
παρεξόδῳ. In the con­text com­pounds in παρεξ-­are found above at
§4, if one accepts the vari­ant in d, and in §6. The draw­back is that the
noun pro­posed is attested oth­er­wise only in the Etymologicum
Gudianum and non-­clas­sical authors. I won­der if πάροδοϲ would be
bet­ter, even if it is not used else­where by H.; on this view the syl­lable
εξ could be explained as an error deriv­ing from ἐξ ἐκείνου.
3. 14. 9 In d ἐτιμήϲαϲ is fol­lowed by τούτοιϲιν, which is not adop­ted
by edit­ors. But Maas inser­ted it in the mar­gin of his copy. Can the
word refer to the king’s expres­sions of sym­pathy for his former
com­pan­ion?
3. 14. 10 The dif ­fi­culties here do not admit of any easy solu­tion. Maas
obel­ized καὶ ταῦτα . . . Αἰγυπτίων. (i) If ὡϲ is retained, a verb is
required to com­plete the syn­tax. Tkatsch’s ἐπύθοντο, repla­cing ὑπὸ
τούτου and giv­ing point to ϲϕι, has no great plaus­ib­il­ity from a
palaeo­graph­ical point of view. Schenkl’s inser­tion of οἱ ἤκουϲαν οἱ
περὶ Καμβύϲεα was pre­ferred by Powell, but with dele­tion of ὑπὸ
τούτου. Those two words, how­ever, do not look like a gloss, and I
sus­pect they con­ceal τοῦ ἀγγέλου. Though ϲϕι does not have to be
taken as sin­gu­lar, Griffiths’s ἤκουϲε ὁ Καμβύϲηϲ is a good modi­fic­a­
tion of Schenkl’s rem­edy. (ii) ὡϲ was deleted by Matthiae, and Steger
tried ὦν. In either case ὑπὸ τούτου is still a prob­lem. Steger’s pro­posal
appears to con­flict with rules for pos­i­tion indic­ated in the Lexicon.
3. 16. 3 ὦν . . . γε was restored by Schweighäuser; A has τε, and d
omits the particle. This usage seems to be very rare. Denniston, GP
425 cited only Ar. Thesm. 755, where met­rical con­sid­er­a­tions may
have played a part. It is prob­able that A’s read­ing is an error.
3. 16. 4 κείμενοϲ with­out fur­ther qual­i­fic­at­ ion is odd, and it was not
per­verse of Blaydes to sug­gest hes­it­antly τηκόμενοϲ or ϲηπόμενοϲ;
the lat­ter was sub­sequently pro­posed by Powell, which Maas recor­ded,
adding a query. An altern­at­ive worth con­sid­er­ing is that some­thing
has dropped out of the text, e.g. ἐν ταϕῇ.
3. 18 Hude accep­ted the text of the MSS, record­ing Gomperz’s
adjust­ment of ἑκάϲτουϲ to ἑκάϲτοτε. Powell, with Maas’s approval,

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 50 Book III

took the fur­ther step of delet­ing ἑκάϲτοτε at the end of the next
sen­tence. This is neat, but the nor­mal idiom for ‘the per­sons cur­rently
in office’ is τοὺϲ ἐν τέλει αἰεὶ ἐόνταϲ, and the adject­ive found in the
MSS looks like a faulty anti­cip­a­tion of ἑκάϲτοτε, which can be
retained if αἰεί is accep­ted.
3. 22. 4 Powell accep­ted the sup­ple­ment τῷ πόματι 〈τῷδε〉 found in
E. But Maas thought it likely to be con­jec­ture and unne­ces­sary. On
bal­ance I agree. However, omis­sions are fre­quent, and if a papyrus
were found to agree with E, though that might be pure coin­cid­ence,
one would need to think again.
3. 23. 2 ἀπ’ ἧϲ λουόμενοϲ κτλ.: the trans­mit­ted text appears to say
that it was the hosts and the del­eg­a­tion who bathed in the spring,
whereas the con­text requires a more gen­eral state­ment. Hence Powell’s
〈οἱ〉 λουόμενοι, and his second sup­ple­ment 〈ἢ〉 κατά περ seems to be
a fur­ther improve­ment. Maas accep­ted both emend­a­tions.
3. 23. 4 Van Herwerden deleted ἀνδρῶν and he was fol­lowed by
Powell. The word is too banal to be accept­able, but on the other hand
δεϲμωτήριον hardly needed a glossator’s elu­cid­a­tion. It is more
plaus­ible that a word such as κακόυργων has dropped out. Griffiths
takes a lead from Grene’s trans­la­tion and sug­gests μεϲτὸν or πλέον.
3. 24. 3 Powell, with Maas’s approval, deleted αὐτῷ τῷ νέκυϊ (I do
not see why he failed to remove ὁμοίωϲ as well). But I sup­pose that
the trans­mit­ted text means that the glass cas­ing did not pre­vent the
viewer from see­ing clearly what was inside. That was the view of
Sayce: ‘all is as vis­ible as the bare corpse itself’. Similarly Stein noted:
‘αὐτὸϲ ὁ νέκυϲ der blosse nackte Leichnam ist.’ The draw­back to
both explan­a­tions is that the Greek does not include a word cor­res­
pond­ing to ‘bare’ or ‘nackte’. This may not be a decis­ive objec­tion, but
I am led to won­der if αὐτῷ con­ceals an adject­ive formed with alpha
privat­ive, e.g. ἀκαλύπτῳ (rare, and not attested in H., but found at
Soph. OT 1427).
3. 25. 2 Cambyses tells the Greeks in his army to stay behind and
takes with him ‘all the infantry’. Stein made the obvi­ous infer­ence
that the Greeks were all sail­ors, but one might won­der if some of
them were infantry, in which case it would have been more accur­ate
to say that Cambyses took with him all the Persian infantry; that in
turn sug­gests the pos­sib­il­ity of a sup­ple­ment such as 〈Πέρϲην〉.

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 Book III 51

3. 25. 4 Since the army was on its way, one does not expect to read
that their pro­vi­sions ran out αὐτίκα. Powell and Maas under­stood
the word as mean­ing ‘at once’ and deleted it. But I think Stein may
have been right to com­pare ch. 39. 3 below, 4. 146. 1 and 8. 27. 1,
where ‘soon’ or ‘first of all’ might be accep­ted as a ren­der­ing of this
adverb. The DGE refers to Iliad 1. 386 for the mean­ing ‘first of all’. If
any change is required, αὐτόθι might be con­sidered.
3. 26. 1 Μακάρων νῆϲοϲ is the read­ing of A and was under­lined by
Maas; Hude seems not to have noticed that it is sup­por­ted by an
expli­cit ref­er­ence in Stephanus Byzantius (α 533). It is the dif ­fi­cilior
lec­tio, and the other branches of the tra­di­tion exhibit a simple error.
3. 27. 2 αὐτὸϲ gives the wrong emphasis, and there can be little doubt
that Van Herwerden was right to pro­pose αὖτιϲ, which was accep­ted
by Powell and Maas. The pro­noun lends itself to cor­rup­tion; see
Aristophanea, 216 for fur­ther examples.
3. 29. 3 〈ἡ〉 ὁρτὴ μὲν δὴ was Schaefer’s pro­posal, but Maas objec­ted
to the word-­order and referred to Stein, who com­pared 9. 88. 1 for
the lack of an art­icle at the begin­ning of a sen­tence or clause, and on
that pas­sage cited sev­eral par­al­lels from H., includ­ing 1. 194. 4, 2. 40.
2, 4. 9. 3, 5. 67. 4. It is worth not­ing that P. Oxy. 1619 sides with the
MSS at this point.
3. 32. 1 τοὺϲ ϲκύλακαϲ is omit­ted by P. Oxy. 1619 and some edit­ors
fol­low suit. As omis­sions are com­mon it is not cer­tain that the
papyrus offers the ori­ginal text, and the words in ques­tion are not so
oti­ose or clumsy as to con­vince me of the need for dele­tion.
3. 32. 4 κοτὲ was deleted by Maas; he adds ‘cf. v.l.’ Though I think he
was right I am not clear what his addi­tional note meant, because the
inver­sion of the words κοτὲ ϲύ, which is the vari­ant in d he seems to
be refer­ring to, is hardly a ground for sus­pi­cion. κοτὲ has little point
unless one fol­lows Powell in chan­ging ἐμίμηϲαϲ to μιμήϲεαι. But the
future tense is less vig­or­ous and Maas quer­ied it. κοτὲ may have been
induced by κότερον in the pre­ced­ing sen­tence.
3. 34. 3 Richards took the sen­tence begin­ning νῦν ἄρα as a ques­tion.
He did not say whether he inter­preted ἄρα as the inter­rog­at­ive
particle, but as it almost always occu­pies first pos­i­tion that would be
unlikely. With ἄρα I see no need for a ques­tion; Cambyses begins
scorn­fully ‘So now . . .’. But there is one aspect of this pas­sage which

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 52 Book III

raises doubts: ἄρα occurs in three con­sec­ut­ive sen­tences, which may

be thought a trifle inel­eg­ant, and I am not at all sure that the second
occur­rence is appro­pri­ate. Cambyses is not now real­iz­ing that
pre­vi­ous com­ments about him­self were after all incor­rect; he is surely
say­ing that they also, like the cur­rent remarks, were undeserved. I
would expect to read here οὐδὲ γὰρ or οὐδ’ αὖ.
3. 34. 4 τελέϲαι may be regarded as the para­dosis, since it is likely
that the vari­ant καλέϲαι in CP is a Byzantine attempt at emend­a­tion.
Stein deleted the word as part of an intrus­ive note that had cited
Odyssey 2. 271–2; this does not seem a very plaus­ible account of the
cor­rup­tion. L. Weber, RFIC 15 (1937), 380–1, tried ταλάϲαι, which I
do not under­stand, des­pite his cita­tion of Hesychius τ 75 ταλάϲ〈ϲ〉-
αι: ὑπομεῖναι καὶ τὰ ὅμοια (as emen­ded by I. Vossius). Stein
(1869) had also con­sidered εἰκάϲαι. That is a bet­ter attempt.
Griffiths’s 〈ἔργα〉 τελέϲαι is very neat; part of the pro­cess of the
cor­rup­tion will have been a kind of hap­lo­graphy. Whereas
the uncom­poun­ded verb is found in the Homer pas­sage cited above,
one should per­haps note that ἐπιτελέω is more fre­quent in H.
With this solu­tion one might con­sider whether Κῦρον should be
deleted as a gloss; but sim­ilar word-­order at ch. 3. 2 above provides
a par­al­lel—unless the name there too is a gloss, which seems to me
less likely.
3. 34. 5 τῇ γινομένῃ κρίϲι is the read­ing of d; the par­ti­ciple is omit­
ted by P. Oxy. 1619 and A, and edit­ors fol­low suit. It is not obvi­ous
why the word should have been added; even if the tense is hardly
appro­pri­ate, the expres­sion is not objec­tion­able in prin­ciple, as is
shown by the word­ing in 5. 5 κρίϲιϲ γίνεται. The change of a single
let­ter to pro­duce an aor­ist gives sat­is­fact­ory sense.
3. 35. 1 αὐτὸϲ is omit­ted by A, and most mod­ern edit­ors accept this
read­ing, while retain­ing αὐτοὶ in the next clause. But this gives the
wrong emphasis to the period; Prexaspes him­self is to learn some­
thing, and there is no need for emphasis on the other Persians. Van
Herwerden saw that αὐτοὶ is not wanted here.
3. 39. 2 A’s read­ing ἔνειμε, if it means ‘gov­erned’, is much easier with
Stein’s sup­ple­ment 〈ϲὺν〉 τοῖϲ ἀδελϕέοιϲι. If it means ‘appor­tioned’,
per­haps the text can stand, with the dat­ive of the per­sons con­cerned,
i.e. ‘for the bene­fit of his broth­ers’, and πόλιν is then sup­plied as the
object, not need­ing to be repeated. d’s read­ing διένειμε is clearer and

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 Book III 53

becomes still bet­ter if the object of the verb is stated; Cobet’s 〈τὰ δύο
μέρεα〉 meets the need.
I take A’s ἴϲχων to be a hint of the true read­ing and fol­low Stein in
restor­ing the aor­ist.
3. 40. 4 In the text as it is usu­ally prin­ted Amasis says ‘If after that
your suc­cesses are not bal­anced in turn by mis­for­tunes, put that right
in the way I have sug­ges­ted’. That is not strictly logical; it is not
sur­pris­ing that the trans­la­tion by A. L. Purvis in The Landmark
Herodotus (London, 2008), 225, adds ‘once again’, and Stein, hav­ing
noted on ἀκέο ‘sc. τὰϲ εὐτυχίαϲ’ added ‘Polycrates soll . . . neue
Verluste sich aufer­le­gen’ (my ital­ics). It is pos­sible that we should
read some­thing like 〈τὸ δεύτερον〉 ἀκέο.
3. 41. 2 ἀπέπλεε is intel­li­gible, but I would expect the text to say that
Polycrates sailed back to port, for which the vox pro­pria is κατέπλεε.
The pre­pos­i­tional com­pound could have been altered by assim­il­a­tion
to the fol­low­ing verb.
3. 42. 2 Denniston, GP 152 noted ‘It seems that καίπερ γε (though
sup­por­ted by εἴπερ γε) is only found, in some MSS, in Hdt. 3. 42. 2.’
Blaydes’s trans­pos­i­tion is easy; but A may be right to omit the particle.
3. 42. 4 πάντα τὰ ποιήϲαντά μιν οἷα καταλελάβηκε is syn­tactic­
ally most pecu­liar. Cooper–Krüger 2. 51. 11. 6 (p. 2306) say that οἷα
equals ὡϲ, which they do not explain and I do not under­stand. K.-­G.
ii. 101 list this pas­sage along­side examples of the οἷοϲ ὢν οἷα πάϲχειϲ
type. This is spe­cial plead­ing; in that well-­estab­lished idiom the eleg­
ant par­al­lel­ism of the two adject­ives makes such sen­tences easy to
under­stand, and they cite no example which even remotely matches
the sen­tence in H., and none earlier than Sophocles (Schwyzer ii. 405
is no bet­ter). It may also be noted that typ­ical trans­la­tions of the
usu­ally accep­ted text might be bet­ter if πρήξαντα were trans­mit­ted
rather than ποιήϲαντα; cf. the word used by Amasis at the begin­ning
of his let­ter to Polycrates at ch. 40. 2 above. The rem­edy is to read
ὅϲια, espe­cially as the Lexicon makes it clear that ποιεῖν is the verb
used to describe such activ­ity. i.e. con­duct designed to avoid giv­ing
offence to the gods. That was Polycrates’ aim; at 3. 40. 2 Amasis had
warned him that τὸ θεῖον is ϕθονερόν and he was doing his best to
take evas­ive action. As a par­tial par­al­lel one should note the word­ing
used at 8. 106. 3 to describe divine retri­bu­tion; the gods οἵ ϲε
ποιήϲαντα ἀνόϲια . . . ὑπήγαγον ἐϲ χεῖραϲ τὰϲ ἐμάϲ. Cf. also

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 54 Book III

Pausanias’ words at 9. 79. 2. An attempt to jus­tify the MSS read­ing by

point­ing to the usage of οἷοϲ as equal to ὅτι τοιοῦτοϲ fails because of
the inter­ven­ing words, which make a sig­ni­fic­ant dif­fer­ence.
3. 44. 1 This pas­sage is dif
­fi­cult. With some hes­it­a­tion I have adop­ted
the fairly simple rem­edy of emend­ing a particle. But more drastic
meas­ures may be needed. In a let­ter of 16 October 1935 Maas agreed
with Powell that there was a trace of ‘man­gel­hafti­ger Schlußredaktion’
here (and at 5. 126. 2).
3. 45. 1 ὑπὸ Πολυκράτεοϲ is omit­ted by A and deleted by some edit­
ors. Since I incline to the view that omis­sions are at least as likely as
addi­tions in the trans­mis­sion of prose texts I have not deleted. But
one can hardly feel con­fid­ent in such cases. The word-­order is not an
objec­tion; for a very sim­ilar example in a par­ti­cipial clause see the
first sen­tence of ch. 46. Comparable hyper­bata were dis­cussed by J.
Vahlen, SB Wien, 72 (1872), 43–6 = Gesammelte philo­lo­gis­che
Schriften, i (Leipzig, 1911), 214–18.
3. 45. 4 ἑτοῖμοϲ usu­ally describes a per­son ready to act rather than
pre­pared in a pass­ive sense, and the para­dosis cre­ates a very loose
con­struc­tion with the epex­egetic infin­it­ive. Cobet’s slight change
res­ults in a sen­tence of per­fect clar­ity.
3. 47. 1 The explan­a­tion of the muddle here is prob­ably that δεόμενοι
was con­ver­ted into a dat­ive by assim­il­a­tion to Ϲαμίοιϲι, after which
it was neces­sary to insert a par­ti­ciple refer­ring to the wish of the
Spartans. If the text is not adjus­ted as Cobet pro­posed, ἐϲτρατεύοντο
is fol­lowed by an infin­it­ive of pur­pose, which is implaus­ible.
3. 48. 1 Griffiths’s sup­ple­ment μέζον (would μέγα be equally suit­
able?) removes the dif ­fi­culty of ὥϲτε γενέϲθαι, which had been
deleted by Van Herwerden; those words are hardly likely to have
been a gloss and do not mean ‘so that it actu­ally took place’, with the
implic­a­tion that Corinthian par­ti­cip­a­tion was vital.
εἰϲ (so Ad ) was deleted by Powell; the rel­ev­ant par­al­lel for this
usage of ἔχειν is 1. 69. 3, καὶ γάρ τινεϲ αὐτοὺϲ εὐεργεϲίαι εἶχον
ἐκ Κροίϲου, as earlier noted by Blaydes.
The chro­no­lo­gical puzzle is neatly removed by W. Lapini, Il P.Oxy.
664 di Eraclide Pontico e la cro­no­lo­gia dei Cipselidi (Florence, 1996),
114. C. Neri, Eikasmos, 8 (1997), 91–5, favours instead Vollgraff’s
sup­ple­ment of a neg­at­ive at the begin­ning of the clause (Mnemosyne2,

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 Book III 55

50 (1922), 65–73 at 68–9); but judging by the evid­ence of the Lexicon

it seems to me clear that he is wrong in claim­ing that the con­nect­ing
particle in third pos­i­tion is no obstacle to the pro­posal; when the
particle is so placed the two words that pre­cede cohere very closely
and count as a single concept. If I under­stand him rightly, Neri thinks
that H. is mak­ing a point about chro­no­lo­gical asym­metry and wishes
to make clear the dif­fer­ence between imme­di­ate action in the one
case and long delay in the other. But the expres­sion is, to say the least,
very ellipt­ical.
3. 49. 1 Though the gen­eral sense of this pas­sage is clear, the text
offered by the MSS is cor­rupt. It is tempt­ing to prefer the shorter
ver­sion that can be recon­struc­ted from the some­what dam­aged P.
Oxy. 1619, which has been inad­equately repor­ted by Hude and oth­ers.
According to a plaus­ible sug­ges­tion by A. H. R. E. Paap, De Herodoti
reliquiis in papyris et mem­branis Aegyptiis ser­vatis (Leiden, 1948), 68,
it read εἰϲὶ ἀλλήλοιϲ διαϕόρωϲ ἔχοντεϲ. But this might be the res­ult
of an ancient scholar’s attempt to sim­plify an already cor­rupt pas­sage
by sub­sti­tut­ing one par­ti­ciple for another and omit­ting the unwanted
ἑωυτοῖϲι. This putat­ive ancient scholar could have anti­cip­ated his
mod­ern coun­ter­parts by observing that ἀλλήλοιϲι and ἑωυτοῖϲι
cre­ate an unac­cept­able duplic­a­tion and εἰϲὶ can­not be com­bined with
ἐόντεϲ. Rosén thought the two verbs could be jus­ti­fied by par­al­lels at
2. 7. 1 and 4. 46. 3, but the pres­ence in those pas­sages of another
adject­ive deprives them of value. Perhaps the root of the prob­lem lies
in εἰϲὶ, which Maas obel­ized. He might there­fore have been sym­pa­
thetic to Blaydes’s διατελέουϲι. Blaydes fol­lowed Schaefer in omit­
ting ἀλλήλοιϲι, which the lat­ter alleged to be a gloss on ἑωυτοῖϲι; this
last assump­tion seems less than con­vin­cing, and Stein noted from
6. 52. 8 the expres­sion διαϕόρουϲ ἀλλήλοιϲι. If both dat­ives are to be
retained, an adject­ive should be added. Stein, who incid­ent­ally
sug­ges­ted that a longer lacuna should be pos­ited in order to jus­tify
τούτων ἕνεκεν, tried ὁμαίμονεϲ (cf. 5. 49. 3). Legrand pre­ferred
ὅμαιμοι (cf. 1. 151. 2), omit­ting ἑωυτοῖϲι, and Sitzler, PhW 41 (1921),
cols. 1076–8, pro­posed 〈ϕθονεροὶ〉 ἐόντεϲ.
3. 50. 3 Most edit­ors accept Abicht’s ἔχων for ἐχόμενοϲ. But it is
worth con­sid­er­ing whether the cir­cum­flex accent in A’s read­ing is a
sig­ni­fic­ant trace of an ori­ginal περι〈ϲϲῶϲ〉 θυμῷ (the adverb is used
by H.) or Περί 〈ανδροϲ〉 θυμῷ (Griffiths), the lat­ter sug­ges­tion being
a little less eco­nom­ical because it entails dele­tion of the tyr­ant’s name

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 56 Book III

after the par­ti­ciple. Maas under­lined ἐχόμενοϲ, which may mean that
he wished to retain it.
3. 52. 4 (i) ἐν αὐτοῖϲι is retained by most edit­ors and Stein cited
1. 9. 1 ἐξ αὐτῶν as a par­al­lel. But there τοιαῦτα in the pre­ced­ing
clause provides a point of ref­er­ence, which is lack­ing in the present
pas­sage. Corruption was easy, given the semantic change in αὐτόϲ
seen in the mod­ern lan­guage. (ii) The per­fect of the com­pound
ἐγγίγνεϲθαι is per­haps to be inferred from the vari­ants in the MSS
and is attrib­uted by Legrand to Stein (but it is not in his 1869 or 1893
edi­tions).
3. 53. 1 ἐνώρα has no expressed object; LSJ tell one to sup­ply τὸ
τυραννικὸν. Though the pre­vi­ous sen­tence ended with the words τὴν
τυραννίδα I find this recom­mend­a­tion dif­fi­cult and agree with Stein
that some­thing has been lost (his other sug­ges­tion, made in 1869, to
read οὔκων ἐνώρα, I do not under­stand).
3. 57. 4 The sen­tence trans­mit­ted imme­di­ately after the oracle sits
awk­wardly there, and Powell, CQ 29 (1935), 151, trans­posed it to the
end of 58. 2, where again it would fol­low the word ἐρυθρόν. This won
the approval of Maas (‘sehr fein’). But I am not con­vinced that it is
much bet­ter when trans­posed, and I would prefer to treat it as another
authorial addi­tion not yet fit­ted smoothly into its con­text. If a trans­
pos­i­tion is to be made one might also sug­gest that the sen­tence could
be read after χρῆϲαι (58. 3), the point being that the loan was
reques­ted because the Siphnians enjoyed the lux­ury of a mar­ket place
and town hall con­struc­ted of Parian marble.
3. 59. 2 ἐν ταύτῃ is not very clear: does it refer to νήϲου or Κρήτῃ or
Κυδωνίην? Legrand hes­it­antly pro­posed ἐν Κρήτῃ, but it is not obvi­
ous why the cor­rup­tion should have occurred. Might it not be bet­ter
to delete ἐν? It makes good sense to say ‘They stayed there and
prospered for five years.’
Strabo 10. 4. 12 records the temple of Dictynna at Cydonia. As
H. men­tions it after the other temples in the city, Powell appears
to have been right to restore typ­ical phras­ing by sup­ple­ment­ing
τά 〈τε〉 ἄλλα.
3. 59. 3 The con­jec­ture Ἀϕαίηϲ, attrib­uted by some to A. Furtwängler,
was acknow­ledged by him as the pro­posal of Hermann Kurz,
Neues Schweizerisches Museum, 3 (1863), 96–101; see his Aegina:

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 Book III 57

Das Heiligtum der Aphaia (Munich, 1906), 7. He endorsed it enthu­

si­ast­ic­ally, but the cur­rent view of his­tor­i­ans and archae­olo­gists is
that it is not essen­tial.
3. 60. 1 Later in this ch. the second and third remark­able monu­ments
of Samos are intro­duced by δεύτερον and τρίτον. Why is there no
intro­duct­ory word or phrase for the first? One expects some­thing
between ἐξεργαϲμένα and ὄρεοϲ. It should also be noted that the
particle τε is out of place, which escaped Denniston’s acute eye.
Editors offer no help, and even Maas, who wrote sev­eral notes on this
ch., made no com­ment here.
3. 60. 3 βάθοϲ κατ’ εἴκοϲι ὀργυιέων is part of the descrip­tion of the
har­bour mole, as trans­mit­ted with exactly the same word­ing by the
papyrus also. κατ’ was emen­ded to καὶ by Eltz to give the mean­ing
‘even’, which has gen­er­ally been accep­ted. But κατὰ with numer­als
sig­ni­fies ‘approx­im­ately’; Maas under­lined the word and noted ‘=
fere’.
3. 60. 4 In this § two sup­ple­ments are required. Maas inser­ted Hera’s
name with­out com­ment, pre­sum­ably on the prin­ciple that the name
of the deity is reg­ul­arly stated. The addi­tion of 〈ἀνὴρ〉 is due to Stein,
who found it in Eustathius’ com­ment­ary on Dionysius Periegetes
533. Though I do not share Maas’s optim­istic view of Eustathius’ abil­
ity as a tex­tual critic (cf. Scholars of Byzantium, 201–2), I am quite
pre­pared to believe that this is a sup­ple­ment which he might have
thought of him­self and was not in his exem­plar.
3. 61. 1 εἰδείηϲαν has to be trans­lated ‘sup­posed’ rather than ‘know’.
The dif ­fi­culty was remarked by Stein, who noted ‘hier “glaub­ten” ’.
But more often ἐπίϲταϲθαι is so used. The pres­ence of εἴηϲαν earlier
in the sen­tence makes one won­der if there is a cor­rup­tion; Blaydes
noted that at 9. 42. 1 the form given by the MSS is εἰδεῖεν. There are
three pos­sib­il­it­ies here: that a particle indic­at­ing scep­ti­cism such as
δὴ or δῆθεν has been lost; that a dif­fer­ent verb needs to be sub­sti­
tuted, such as ἐπίϲταιντο; that οἶδα can have the same range of
mean­ing, lead­ing to ambi­gu­ity, as ἐπίϲταμαι.
3. 66. 2 A scholium on Hippocrates, Epidemiai 5. 15, found in MS
Vaticanus gr. 277 is the source of fr. 18 of Erotian (ed. Nachmanson,
pp. 104–5). It dis­cusses the semantic range of ϲϕακελίζω and cites
the present pas­sage (erro­neously stat­ing that it comes from Book II).

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 58 Book III

The author clearly believes that ὀϲτέον, which Powell wished to

delete, can be the sub­ject of this verb. The quo­ta­tion includes two
vari­ants in the fol­low­ing clause, neither of which appears to be an
improve­ment.
3. 67. 2 ἐπιβατεύων τοῦ ὁμωνύμου Ϲμέρδιοϲ has caused dif ­fi­culty.
Blaydes wrote ‘Sub. ὀνόματοϲ. Cf. 63 ἐπιβατεύων τοῦ Ϲμέρδιοϲ
ὀνόματοϲ’. Along the same lines Powell pro­posed οὐνόματοϲ τοῦ
for ὁμωνύμου. If the verb can mean some­thing like ‘exploit/ take
advant­age of ’ the trans­mit­ted text can stand. But doubt remains.
3. 68. 3 The cor­rect form of the woman’s name is hard to determ­ine.
Hude accep­ted d’s Φαιδυμίη, per­haps think­ing that it derived
sup­port from the twelfth-­cen­tury Byzantine his­tor­ian Zonaras, Ann.
4. 2. But there is no proof, nor indeed much like­li­hood, that Zonaras
was well informed or had a bet­ter source. Asheri says it is ‘an excel­
lent Greek name’, a claim which is not sup­por­ted by LGPN. If H.
inten­ded the name to be identical to a Greek name he may have writ­
ten Φαιδίμη, which is attested, along with its mas­cu­line coun­ter­part.
3. 70. 2 εἰϲάγεται is the read­ing of the MSS, cor­rec­ted by mod­ern
editor to ἐϲ-­. But Krüger rightly pre­ferred ἐπάγεται, not­ing that it
was pro­posed by Valckenaer on the strength of Zonaras 4. 2. Although
sup­port from that source is in prin­ciple dubi­ous, this com­pound is
more pre­cisely idio­matic.
3. 71. 5 There are vari­ous dif ­fi­culties here. (i) The repe­ti­tion of ὑμῖν
gives emphasis at the wrong point, as Richards saw; of his solu­tions I
have pre­ferred trans­pos­it­ ion to dele­tion. (ii) ὑπερπέϲῃ ‘goes by’ is
not easy, but Scaliger’s ὑπεκπέϲῃ is less well attested. The MSS read­
ing appears to be sup­por­ted by a pas­sage in Hippocrates, Mul. 2. 133
(Littré viii. 282). (iii) ἐμεῦ ‘no-­one else will denounce me’ is another
case of mis­placed emphasis. Darius is surely say­ing ‘I will be the first
to denounce . . .’. At some point a scribe mis­takenly thought the
pro­noun must be taken with the noun that fol­lows rather than the
par­ti­ciple which pre­cedes. (iv) ὅτι and ὡϲ seem ple­onastic; the former
as deleted by Blaydes, the lat­ter by Van Herwerden. (v) Is ϲϕεα to be
pre­ferred to ϲϕεαϲ, which would have to be taken as a second per­son
pro­noun? That seems to be the case at 5. 92 α 2.
3. 73. 3 ἄλλ’ ἢ, though adop­ted by Hude and Legrand, is ruled out by
Denniston’s state­ment, GP 24, that it is used only after neg­at­ives and

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 Book III 59

in ques­tions. A’s ἄλλοθι of motion towards is extremely dubi­ous, but

ἄλλῃ can be used in that sense; this is Griffiths’s solu­tion and seems
best.
3. 74. 2 τὰ πάντα οἱ μυρία δώϲειν is prob­lem­atic. Blaydes cited
instances of πάντα with a numeral mean­ing ‘in all’: 4. 88 and 9. 81 in
H., Theopompus ap. Ath. 144 f, Plut. Coriol. 10, Parthenius 9, Pindar
fr. 170. But none of these instances includes the def­in­ite art­icle.
Minimal emend­a­tions such as Hermann’s ταλάντα and Rosén’s τε
πάντα deserve men­tion. The numeral has also been the sub­ject of
dis­cus­sion; Powell, CQ 32 (1938), 214, stated ‘The hyper­bol­ical
expres­sion formed on the ana­logy of πάντα δέκα διδόναι etc.
(4. 88. 1, 9. 81. 2) requires μύρια, an exact num­ber; the μυρία of the
edit­ors (except Abicht, ed. 2) would be point­less.’ In strict logic
that is true, and Maas agreed, but I am not sure that strict logic is
always a safe guide in Herodotean puzzles.
3. 80. 1 ἐντὸϲ A: ἐκτὸϲ d: πένθοϲ Griffiths, which is very ingeni­ous.
A ques­tion arises: who was mourn­ing whom? Griffiths makes the
plaus­ible sug­ges­tion that the mourn­ing was for Cambyses and his
brother the genu­ine Smerdis, who had not received their due because
of the usurp­a­tion. He cites Eur. Or. 39 and 422, where there is men­tion
of the sixth day after Clytemnestra’s murder. If it was reg­u­lar prac­tice
to com­plete the funeral rites after five days (for which I have not
detec­ted any inde­pend­ent evid­ence), the ques­tion remains whether it
was, or was thought to be, Persian prac­tice as well. If πένθοϲ is cor­rect,
one might expect the verb to be ἐποιήϲαντο as at 2. 1. 1 and 9. 24.
Stein men­tioned that other schol­ars took ἐγένετο as imper­sonal;
Powell on 8. 6. 1 noted an imper­sonal use, with a par­al­lel at 1. 5. 1, but
was inclined to remove a fur­ther pos­sible case at 8. 107. 1 by emend­
a­tion. It is per­haps sur­pris­ing that no-­one seems to have thought of
delet­ing the verb, but how it got there would be hard to explain.
The only real­istic altern­at­ive approach is to sup­pose that a word
mean­ing ‘peace’ or ‘calm’ has been lost, giv­ing the sense that nor­mal
con­di­tions were restored within five days; the sup­ple­ment 〈εὐνομίη〉
would be suit­able. On re-­read­ing Stein I was struck by his ref­er­ence
to Sextus Empiricus, Adv. Rhet. 2. 33, who says that it was the cus­tom
in Persia after the death of the king to allow a period of five days of
ἀνομία. I won­der what rela­tion that report bears to the present
pas­sage; is it too fanci­ful to con­jec­ture that Sextus depended on a text
of H. that included the sug­ges­ted sup­ple­ment?

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3. 81. 2 εἶδε strikes an odd note and the adjust­ment to οἶδε, incor­
por­ated from Nor by the Aldine, is easy. οἱκήιον is also dif ­fi­cult and
Powell obel­ized (Maas did not com­ment). Two pos­sib­il­it­ies occur to
me: (i) since this adject­ive can be con­struc­ted with a gen­it­ive or a
dat­ive, one could sup­ple­ment e.g. οἱκήιον 〈τοῦ καλοῦ〉; (ii) another
simple solu­tion would be to read οἰκόϲ, for which 7. 239. 2 provides
a reas­on­ably close par­al­lel.
3. 82. 1 The major­ity of edit­ors print τῷ λόγῳ from Stobaeus 4. 47. 24,
but the MSS have τῶν λέγω. Maas marked a query in the prin­ted text
and under­lined the entry in the appar­atus; it is accep­ted by some (one
trans­la­tion runs ‘e tutte quelle che dico ottime’), but I do not think this
makes good sense after προκειμένων or with what fol­lows.
Maas quer­ied ἀρίϲτου; in this he had been pre­ceded by Blaydes.
Given the repu­ta­tion of demo­cracy in later antiquity it is hard to
sup­pose that the word was inter­pol­ated by an admirer of the sys­tem;
it looks more like an erro­neous repe­ti­tion of the concept in the
pre­ced­ing clause.
3. 85. 2 Van Herwerden’s sup­ple­ment is jus­ti­fied by the exact par­al­lel
at 1. 120. 3. Maas appears not to have known that the con­jec­ture had
already been made but he entered it in his text with a ques­tion mark
and noted the par­al­lel.
3. 86. 2 Griffiths casts jus­ti­fi­able doubt on ἐκ ϲυνθέτου and pro­poses
ϲὺν θεῷ. I sug­gest as an altern­at­ive ἐκ θεοῦ, as at 1. 34. 1; cf. also ἐκ
τοῦ θεοῦ at 9. 16. 4. On this view ϲὺν arose from a copy­ist’s recall of
ϲὺν θεῷ as another legit­im­ate idiom.
3. 87 Powell objec­ted to the pro­noun τοῦτον. Though it is not strictly
neces­sary it may reflect col­lo­quial usage. His pro­posal ταύτην is at
first sight attract­ive, but on reflec­tion it seems to me that the demon­
strat­ive is no bet­ter when applied to the hand rather than the indi­
vidual. Maas noted the pro­posal in the mar­gin and wrote below it
‘ped­antisch’.
3. 88. 3 τε πάντα οἱ is the read­ing of A, but d trans­poses the enclitic
pro­noun in accord­ance with Wackernagel’s law, and this may be
cor­rect. Maas did not indic­ate his view.
3. 94. 2 H. notes the large size of the Indian pop­u­la­tion and com­ments
on the trib­ute it paid in rela­tion to that paid by all the other sib­jects of
the empire. What exactly did he mean? (i) Did their pay­ment equal

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 Book III 61

that of all the oth­ers com­bined? Rodríguez Adrados has ‘equi­val­ente

al de todos los demás’. If that is right, should one sup­ple­ment 〈ἴϲον〉?
The adjectve is more often con­struc­ted with a dat­ive than the pre­pos­
i­tion πρόϲ. (ii) Was the pay­ment greater in com­par­ison with that of
other nations, either as the largest single paymnent or a higher
amount per per­son? Again, a sup­ple­ment might be wel­come.
3. 95. 1–2 R. Develin, Phoenix, 44 (1990), 35 is inclined not to emend
the text here (or at 89. 2), partly because of Pollux 9. 86, who states
that the Attic tal­ent equalled 60 Attic minae and the Babylonian
tal­ent 70. Though H. is not named there, it looks as if Pollux had the
same text in front of him as has been trans­mit­ted to us. The dif­fer­ent
fig­ure in MS S is regarded by Legrand as scribal con­jec­ture, and that
is a sens­ible view to take, given what we know about the scribe in
ques­tion, Andronicus Callistus.
The final sen­tence of this ch. makes no sense. H. has been deal­ing
with large fig­ures; for him then to con­tinue ‘I dis­reg­ard still smal­ler
fig­ures’ is ridicu­lous. Godley real­ized this and wrote ‘fig­ures less than
ten’. Even with the trans­pos­i­tions pro­posed by Powell in ch. 89, not
registered or com­men­ted on by Maas, a puzzle remains. With some
hes­it­at­ ion I sug­gest read­ing τὸ δέ τι, not tak­ing it to be an adverbial
expres­sion of the type described by K.-­G. i. 584c, but as pro­nom­inal,
‘someone/some­thing’, as at 1. 114. 2 τὸν δέ τινα . . ., τῷ δέ τινι. I do
not favour emend­ing to δέ τοι, since Denniston, GP 552 does not cite
this com­bin­a­tion of particles from H. But L.A.H.-­S. points to what
appears to be a unique instance at 2. 120. 3. Though this alters the
bal­ance of prob­ab­il­ity slightly, I am still reluct­ant to adopt it.
3. 97. 2 Naber, fol­lowed by Stein, deleted the sen­tence about the
sim­il­ar­it­ies between Ethiopians and Indians. If that is accep­ted,
ϲυναμϕότεροι at the begin­ning of the next sen­tence has no
sat­is­fact­ory ref­er­ence, and so Naber inser­ted καὶ οἱ πληϲιόχωροι
τούτοιϲι after κατεϲτρέψατο. I think he was on the right track
but prefer to treat the sen­tence which he wished to delete as
an author’s addi­tion not integ­rated into the text. But I accept the
sup­ple­ment.
3. 98. 3 I have not burdened the appar­atus with a men­tion of the
spuri­ous vari­ant ἀπαρτίζει for ποιέεται. Maas appos­itely noted here
‘ἀπαρτίζει Eust. Dion. 1187 [he meant 1107] para­phrasi­er­end, also
nicht mit L. Weber, Glotta, 26 (1938), 268 aufzun­eh­men.’

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Though the gen­eral sense is clear, the lit­eral trans­la­tion of the

remark about the boats is ‘One length of reed makes each boat’, which
seems an odd for­mu­la­tion; one might expect ‘each length of reed
makes one boat’ or ‘one length of reed makes a boat for each (of these
people)’. So I would tent­at­ively sug­gest invert­ing the order of ἓν and
ἕκαϲτον or intro­du­cing the dat­ive ἑκάϲτῳ.
3. 99. 1–2 If one accepts Powell’s trans­pos­i­tion of the two sen­tences
τὸν γὰρ δὴ … ἀπικνέονται (ll. 1589–91) to follow διαϕθείρεϲν, the
sen­tence that then fol­lows, begin­ning ὁ δὲ ἄπαρνοϲ is very abrupt.
Krüger deleted the last sen­tence of the ch. The whole pas­sage can be
made logical by adopt­ing Dobree’s δὲ for γὰρ; then we have a trans­
ition from inval­ids to the eld­erly.
3. 102. 2 Is the state­ment about the rel­at­ive size of the ants cor­rectly
trans­mit­ted? Foxes are quite small, typ­ic­ally weigh­ing about 5 kg, and
H. doubt­less thought of them as being nor­mally of a stand­ard size.
But can he have had the same view about dogs? Hardly; Molossians
were big, and Xen. Cyn. 9. 1 speaks of ‘large Indian dogs’. This uncer­
tainty is prob­ably what led Van Herwerden to emend the text to read
‘wolves’ instead of dogs. But the wolf is very much big­ger, often
weigh­ing 40 kg. I won­der if an adject­ive refer­ring to a par­tic­u­lar type
or breed has fallen out of the text.
3. 105. 1 For their speed of move­ment the ants can­not be com­pared
to any other animal or insect. But is the sin­gu­lar ὁμοῖον cor­rect?
Rosén emends to οὐδὲν ἕτερον ὁμοῖον τούτοιϲ, which gives suit­
able sense but is not eco­nom­ical. It would be sim­pler to adjust the
adject­ive to the accus­at­ive mas­cu­line plural; but per­haps the text can
be accep­ted, under­stand­ing τὸ ζῷον as the sub­ject.
3. 108. 1 The dif ­fi­culty in the open­ing sen­tence can be tackled in
two ways. The first, adop­ted by Hude, is to fol­low A in omit­ting the
verb ἀπηγέοντο. Maas under­lined this word in the appar­atus but
made no fur­ther com­ment. If it is an inter­pol­a­tion, it could be attrib­
uted to a reader who failed to recog­nize the idiom whereby con­di­
tional clauses in ora­tio obli­qua may have an infin­it­ive in place of
a finite verb (K.-­G. ii. 252). The altern­at­ive view is that the verb
should be fit­ted into the struc­ture of the sen­tence; this is eas­ily effected
by trans­pos­i­tion to fol­low οἷόν τι, as sug­ges­ted by Legrand. If this
solu­tion appeals, one could dis­pense with ἠπιϲτάμην, as Krüger
sug­ges­ted.

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 Book III 63

­fi­culty arises from the words ἐοῦϲα ϲοϕὴ.

In the next sen­tence a dif
Griffiths’ ssup­ple­ment ϕαίνεται is con­vin­cing. Previous edit­ors have
avoided this type of solu­tion by fol­low­ing Stephanus and delet­ing
γὰρ in the next clause, so that a single long period res­ults. That is
pos­sible, and was prob­ably the inten­tion of the scribe of MS C, where
it looks as if there has been an attempt to erase the particle.
3. 109. 3 The artic­ul­a­tion of the clause deal­ing with the winged snakes
is awk­ward. Cobet saw this and sug­ges­ted sub­sti­tut­ing ὄϕιεϲ for
ἐόντεϲ. Powell fol­lowed suit. With the com­bin­a­tion of par­ti­ciple and
indic­at­ive verb the lat­ter could be trans­lated ‘exist’. But the text would
run more smoothly if the verb were deleted, with lighter punc­tu­ation
after ἄλλῃ.
3. 110 Richards objec­ted to Stein’s acqui­es­cence in the tau­to­logy of ἐϲ
ἀλκὴν ἄλκιμα and sub­sti­tuted the adject­ive δόκιμα, which is used
sev­eral times else­where by H. Careless read­ing of uncial script com­bined
with assim­il­a­tion would explain the error. If assim­il­a­tion was a factor
one should not rule out the altern­at­ive of read­ing ἐϲ μάχην. The lack of
bal­ance in the syn­tax led Krüger to replace τέτριγε with a par­ti­ciple;
one could equally well add 〈ἐϲτι〉 at the end of the sen­tence.
3. 111. 3 αὐτῶν A: om. d. The word is deleted by Hude. It could be a
mis­taken repe­ti­tion from the pre­vi­ous sen­tence; but the sense is
improved by assum­ing a simple con­fu­sion and sub­sti­tut­ing the
appro­pri­ate adverb.
3. 113. 2 ‘The other breed of sheep have broad tails, a cubit in breadth’
is what the MSS offer at the end of the §. But the point which H. was
prob­ably try­ing to make is that the broad tails are only a third as long.
So I won­der if πλάτοϲ has dis­placed μῆκοϲ. If there is an error in the
text it goes back to antiquity because Aelian, NA 10. 4 clearly had
the same text as our MSS. On the other hand his agree­ment with d in
the vari­ant τριῶν πηχέων in the pre­vi­ous § may be mis­lead­ing, since
he is para­phras­ing in this ch. and one can­not be quite sure which
read­ing he had at this point in his text.
3. 114 (i) Powell’s dele­tion of πρὸϲ δύνοντα ἥλιον has not been
accep­ted by edit­ors. ‘As the noon/mid­day heat passes’ could per­haps
have been a way of indic­at­ing the com­pass point SW, as Powell trans­
lates. Why should the fol­low­ing words not be the modi­fic­a­tion required
in order to sig­nify a dir­ec­tion slightly closer to west, i.e. WSW? (ii) The

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case for adopt­ing Mehler’s παντοῖα gains sup­port from ch. 135. 2,
where παντοίων in d is rightly pre­ferred to A’s πάντων.
3. 116. 3 αὗται A: αὐτὰ d: αὐταὶ Stein. A demon­strat­ive pro­noun is
not needed, nor is Stein’s inter­pret­a­tion of the trans­mit­ted let­ters an
improve­ment, since it gives the wrong emphasis. Powell was clearly
right with πάντα.
3. 126. 1 κατὰ Valckenaer: καὶ MSS. The emend­a­tion makes bet­ter
sense in con­junc­tion with the next sen­tence: ‘dur­ing the reign of the
magi’ is picked up by ‘in that unsettled time’. For con­fu­sion of these
two words see also 4. 155. 4, 159. 6, 5. 3. 2, 92 ζ 3.
3. 126. 2 ἀγγελιηϕόρον is the read­ing of A, and the word recurs else­
where in H. d offers vari­ous forms of the Persian tech­nical term for
their mes­sen­ger ser­vice, which is found at 8. 98. 2, where it refers
to the insti­tu­tion rather than the indi­vidual mes­sen­ger (cf. L. Miletti,
Rendiconti dell’ Accademia di Archeologia Lettere e Belle Arti (Naples),
74 (2006–7), 231–2). But it would be rash to deny the pos­sib­il­ity
that there was a noun des­ig­nat­ing the mes­sen­ger, and this is the
view taken in DGE. Is one of the vari­ants a gloss, and if so which? A’s
read­ing could be, but one would expect the glossator to use
the sim­pler word ἄγγελον. If A’s read­ing is cor­rect, it needed no
explan­at­ ion; the vari­ant of d would then have to be explained as
the inter­ven­tion of a learned reader anxious to dis­play his
know­ledge, which is not out of the ques­tion. Or are both read­ings
authorial?
The form ὑπείϲαϲ appears to gain sup­port from ὑπείϲαντεϲ
at 6. 103. 3. LSJ s.v. ὑϕεῖϲα observe that the aor­ist par­ti­ciple of
ἑδ-­ should not have an aug­ment and emend to ὑπεϲ-­, fol­low­ing
Wackernagel, Sprachliche Untersuchungen zu Homer (Göttingen,
1916), 63–4, 254. The error in the MSS is more eas­ily explained
as an iota­cism of the com­mon­est type. Cobet’s ὑπίϲαϲ, even
though ὑϕίζω is not oth­er­wise attested in prose, com­mends itself.
Chantraine, Dictionnaire éty­mo­lo­gique, 313, seems pre­pared to accept
the exist­ence of this form, but does not dis­cuss these pas­sages.
3. 129. 1 The two par­ti­ciples with which the ch. begins are to say the
least ple­onastic; lit­er­ally one ought to trans­late ‘when Oroetes’ pos­ses­
sions had arrived and been trans­por­ted up to Susa’. It would be more
nat­ural for the first par­ti­ciple to refer to indi­vidu­als. Stein sug­ges­ted
‘von den Sklaven’ and Godley trans­lated ‘Oroetes’ slaves’. But they

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 Book III 65

have not been men­tioned in the con­text; it would be more plaus­ible

to refer to Bagaios and his men.
3. 129. 3 οἷα δὴ is omit­ted by A and many edit­ors fol­low suit. I accept
d’s read­ing and sup­pose the mean­ing to be ‘hav­ing over­heard some­
thing or other’. 1. 86. 5 offers a par­al­lel. But what fol­lows in the MSS
needs adjust­ment.
The com­bin­a­tion πρότερον ἔτι is hardly appro­pri­ate in the con­text
since the second adverb has no point, and trans­lat­ors tend to ignore
it. Blaydes, for­get­ting about dia­lect forms, wondered about ποτε or
ὢν. Either κοτε or ἐὼν would do.
3. 134. 6 d’s read­ing ἅμα ἔποϲ τε res­ults in a zeugma which many
edit­ors find accept­able. The vari­ants in A and C avoid this by the
addi­tion of a verb of speak­ing (ἔϕα A, εἶπε C); they also insert
a super­flu­ous τε. Maas under­lined this entry in the appar­atus with­
out  fur­ther com­ment. One has to decide whether A’s read­ing is a
vestige of the truth or an error induced by a scribe’s recol­lec­tion of a
Homeric for­mula (cf. h. Merc. 46). Homeric touches are an ele­ment
of Herodotean style, as noted by E. Norden, Die antike Kunstprosa,
3rd edn. (Leipzig, 1915), 40, cit­ing P. Cassian Hofer, Ueber die
Verwandtschaft des hero­doteis­chen Stils mit dem homerischen (Progr.
Meran, 1878), who on p. 20 men­tions this pas­sage with­out see­ing the
pos­sib­il­ity of mak­ing it more Homeric. That was achieved by
Valckenaer’s pro­posal ἅμα τε ἔποϲ ἔϕατο κτλ. (ἅμα τε is found at
1. 112,1, 4. 150. 3), and Blaydes repor­ted that ἔϕατο is the read­ing of
K. This is very tempt­ing.
3. 135. 2 Darius invites Democedes to take back to Greece, as a
present for his father and broth­ers, all his pos­ses­sions. The pro­noun
ἐκείνου puzzles me. If any pro­noun is wanted, one expects ἑωυτοῦ as
in §3 below. After μιν the text would make good sense with­out a
second pro­noun. One might won­der if the mean­ing inten­ded is
‘everything he pos­sessed there (in Persia)’, in which case ἐκεῖθι
would be suit­able.
3. 136. 2 Κρηϲτώνηϲ A: Κρότωνοϲ d. The scribes were influ­enced by
the men­tion of Taras and thought they were deal­ing with another
place-­name, des­pite the faulty syn­tax that res­ults; d’s read­ing anti­
cipates the occur­rence of the name Croton in the next sen­tence.
As the scribe of K and some edit­ors have seen, ῥηιϲτώνη is the word
required, and Richards under­stood it as indic­at­ing the wish of

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Aristophilides to make things easy for Democedes. The emend­a­tion

ἐϲ ῥηιϲτώνην is easy, ἐϲ/εἰϲ and ἐκ being fre­quently con­fused. Less
sat­is­fact­ory was the pro­posal of Erbse, Glotta 39 (1960–1), 222–4, to
read ἐκ μηχανῆϲ, for which he tried to offer a palaeo­graph­ical jus­ti­
fic­at­ ion, claim­ing that a minus­cule mu can eas­ily be con­fused with
kappa-­rho. ‘In der mit­tleren Minuskel kon­nte ein μ sehr wohl als κρ
angese­hen wer­den, und die Silbe χα liess sich mit der Buchstabenfolge
ϲτω ver­wech­seln, wenn man voraus­setzt, dass der α in der Vorlage
nahe an die rechten Ende des χ her­anger­ückt war, die dann, mit dem
Schriftbild des α ver­ein­igt, den Schein eines ω her­vor­riefen.’ I have
the greatest respect for Erbse’s achieve­ments as a scholar, but on this
occa­sion he was wide of the mark.
3. 139. 2–3 There are two oddit­ies of word-­order here. (i) Van
Herwerden saw the need to trans­pose πυρρὴν so that it stands next to
χλανίδα. Errors of word-­order are fre­quent, but one might also
sug­gest that πυρρὴν has replaced an adverb such as πρωΐ or a noun
refer­ring to an art­icle that Syloson was buy­ing. Yet another possi­
bil­ity is that the cloak was a lux­ury art­icle which attrac­ted Darius; if
so, πορϕυρέην would be a suit­able descrip­tion. (ii) Syloson’s offer to
Darius ends with τοι, more prob­ably the enclitic pro­noun than the
particle. But neither should stand at the end of this sen­tence, and
Stein deleted the word, pre­sum­ably as a gloss. One could con­sider
trans­pos­ing it to fol­low δίδωμι δὲ.
3. 142. 4 In view of the fact that the MSS con­sist­ently offer ἱρόϲ,
ἱρεύϲ, it is odd that the abstract noun is given as ἱερωϲύνη in AD,
and odder still that r here has ἱερεωϲύνη. The lat­ter form received the
bless­ing of W. Schulze, Kleine Schriften (Göttingen, 1966), 413 and
Quaestiones epi­cae (Gütersloh, 1892), 144. Threatte i. 154 cites
ἱερεώϲυνα, See also above on 2. 37. 5.
3. 143. 1 Denniston, GP 222 cited this pas­sage as one of the rel­at­ively
rare cases of δή with a neg­at­ive. It is still neces­sary to account for τι,
and for­tu­nately he cited οὐδὲν δή τι from Hippocrates, Prorrhetikon
2. 12, which seems to be a sat­is­fact­ory par­al­lel. But since it does
not come from H., Blaydes’s con­jec­ture οὐκέτι is just worth a
men­tion.
3. 143. 2 The last sen­tence is very odd as trans­mit­ted, and for good
reason Sitzler pos­ited a lacuna before it. Another pos­sib­il­ity was seen
by Van Herwerden, who trans­posed it back to fol­low καταϲτήϲεται

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 Book III 67

in §1. This makes it an awk­ward par­en­thesis, but the idea should not
be ruled out.
3. 146. 3 Denniston, GP 260 noted that the com­bin­a­tion τε δὴ is
strik­ingly fre­quent in H. by com­par­ison with other authors. But
Blaydes’s τε ἤδη, mean­ing that the Persians thought agree­ment had
been reached already, is not with­out point.
3. 148. 2 Cleomenes expresses anxi­ety that Maiandrios’ dis­play of
pre­cious ves­sels may lead him or another Spartiate into tempta­tion,
and so he per­suades the author­it­ies to expel the Samian ‘from the
Peloponnese’. Powell detec­ted illo­gic­al­ity here and deleted the phrase;
why should the ban extend bey­ond Sparta? The words could be an
inter­pol­a­tion designed to add clar­ity; other explan­at­ ions are that
H. was impre­cise here or that he failed to spe­cify Cleomenes’
anxi­ety that the Samian’s pres­ence any­where in the Peloponnese
might cause trouble. Asheri inter­prets the text as ‘the entire ter­rit­ory
of the Peloponnesian League’ and sees no dif ­fi­culty. Stein had no
com­ment.
3. 149 ϲαγηνεύϲαντεϲ was deleted by Stein. The implied pro­ced­ure
con­flicts with the account of the Persian mas­sacre of Samians at
ch. 147. Stein also noted that when the term is used at 6. 31. 2 it has to
be explained; this objec­tion is less com­pel­ling, since the revi­sion of
the text was not com­pleted by H. and one might even spec­u­late that
the other pas­sage was draf­ted earlier. If the word is an inter­pol­a­tion
in a sen­tence which makes per­fect sense with­out it, how should one
account for it? Presumably a learned reader wanted to show off and
improve the trans­mit­ted text. But an altern­at­ive is to sup­pose that the
Persians con­duc­ted a second oper­a­tion and that H. con­ten­ted him­self
with a some­what ellipt­ical and con­densed nar­rat­ive. Asheri does not
dis­cuss the prob­lem.
3. 150. 1 Schwyzer i. 672 records forms in -­δατο here and at 5. 34. 2, 5.
103. 1. Here the form is found in C and P only; it is rejec­ted by Legrand,
and the con­text does sug­gest that the imper­fect, as in Ad, is cor­rect.
Similarly at 5. 34. 2 the imper­fect of Ad looks right, against CP, and at
5. 103. 1 Ar with an imper­fect seem bet­ter than C (D there has a slip).
The prob­lem then is to explain the vari­ant; though the Byzantines
were besot­ted with the plu­per­fect, would any of them have been
cap­able of provid­ing this form? If not, did an ancient reader inter­vene?
[L.A.H.-­S. draws atten­tion to the form in -­δαται at 4. 58.]

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3. 154. 1 μεγάθεοϲ can mean ‘import­ance’ and ἐϲ τὸ πρόϲω with a

gen­it­ive to fol­low is found at 1. 5. 3; the verb there is προβήϲομαι. If
in the present pas­sage ἐϲ is taken as indic­at­ing a res­ult (cf. Lexicon s.v.
IV), the text can be accep­ted with­out emend­a­tion. But Powell obel­
ized, I sup­pose because he thought it too ellipt­ical, and I have
wondered if a word has fallen out of the text, e.g. a par­ti­ciple in the
sense of ‘con­trib­ut­ing to’. A clue to an altern­at­ive solu­tion, if any
change is needed, may be provided by πρόϲω ἀρετῆϲ ἀνήκειν at 7.
237. 2, but that expres­sion is not an exact par­al­lel. An elab­or­ate and
spec­u­lat­ive recon­struc­tion would be 〈καὶ〉 τιμῶν 〈ϲυμβάλλον〉ται,
since τιμαί can mean ‘offices of state’.
3. 155. 4 ἔπαθον A; πέπονθα d. The decision between the vari­ants is
finely bal­anced and edit­ors dif­fer. I have opted for the aor­ist on the
prin­ciple that the per­fect was more likely to be intro­duced by read­ers
or copy­ists brought up in the Atticist tra­di­tion, for whom the per­fect
was a fea­ture of Attic to be used as often as pos­sible in their own
com­pos­i­tions.
ϲτρατιῆϲ is rendered ‘com­mand of an army’ by Godley, fol­low­ing
Stein’s ‘Führung eines Heeres; vgl. 9. 109’. But it is tempt­ing to make
a slight alter­a­tion and read ϲτρατηγίηϲ. On the other hand Zopyrus’
request to the Babylonians in 157. 1 accord­ing to the MSS is for
ϲτρατιῆϲ, where ‘an army’ is accept­able as a trans­la­tion in the con­text,
though emend­a­tion would be pos­sible there too.
3. 156. 1 Denniston, GP 231 accep­ted δὴ with­out com­ment, appar­
ently not noti­cing that Hude pre­ferred the rarer particle δῆθεν, which
is attested in thir­teen other pas­sages in H. If one reads δὴ one must
assume that the scribe of D embel­lished the text or that there was a
vari­ant in the arche­type.
3. 157. 1 The descrip­tion of Zopyros as the most dis­tin­guished of the
Persians is open to doubt; he would more nat­ur­ally be des­ig­nated as
one of them, and I have sug­ges­ted two simple emend­at­ ions which
would pro­duce the ori­ginal mean­ing.
3. 157. 4 ἐν was deleted by Cobet. The par­al­lels cited by Gow on
Theocr. 14. 46 sup­port him, because they have a dat­ive with­out the
pre­pos­i­tion.
3. 159. 2 What Powell pro­posed for this pas­sage is not entirely clear.
According to his pub­lic­a­tion of 1949 he wished to delete the clause

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 Book III 69

ἵνα . . . ὑπογένηται. It seems to me that this is a typ­ical case of un­­­

n­­ecessary ath­etesis of words that are not indis­pens­able for the sense.
But in 1948 he also pro­posed to delete τάδε and ἐποίηϲε. This too
I find unne­ces­sary; Maas did not record it but indic­ated instead that
Powell read τοῦτο Δαρεῖοϲ προϊδὼν ἐποίηϲε τάδε, which is most
attract­ive. Maas recor­ded the date as 1948, and I infer that it arose
in private con­ver­sa­tion too late to be included in his pub­lic­a­tion.

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 Book IV

4. 1. 2 If one accepts the aor­ist par­ti­ciple καταπαύϲαντεϲ as the read­

ing of the arche­type, which D ini­tially adjus­ted to a present and then
cor­rec­ted to a future, the objec­tions to the pre­ced­ing clause, as stated
by Richards and inde­pend­ently by Powell, are valid; one must assume
that a mar­ginal note has intruded into the text. It could have been
writ­ten by someone aware of what was to be nar­rated in chs. 11. 4 and
12. 2. This is per­haps more plaus­ible than the assump­tion of yet
another authorial revi­sion. Most edit­ors accept the present par­ti­ciple.
Stein pro­posed a trans­pos­i­tion: ‘Die Worte καταπαύϲαντεϲ . . .
Ἀϲίηϲ ständen richti­ger Z. 8 hinter τριήκοντα’. But that does not
yield a sat­is­fact­ory sequence, since the Medes would then become the
sub­ject of ἐπιδιώκοντεϲ ἐϲέβαλον.
4. 1. 3 The sen­tence begin­ning αἱ γὰρ τῶν is at first sight a very
abrupt change of topic. The con­nec­tion of thought even­tu­ally
becomes clear at 3. 1. The nar­rat­ive would have been much easier to
fol­low if the text read οὐκ ὀλίγην 〈δι’ αἰτίην τοιήνδε〉 with per­haps
〈ἥνπερ ἔρχομαι ἐρέων〉.
4. 2. 2 περιϲτίξαντεϲ, the read­ing of A, was prin­ted by Hude and
obel­ized by Maas with­out fur­ther com­ment. I do not think we need
be so pess­im­istic. Dobree’s πέριξ ϲτήϲαντεϲ clev­erly com­bines
ele­ments from both branches of the tra­di­tion; Macan thought it
‘almost cer­tain’.
4. 6. 2 Rather than obel­ize with Hude I accept the sug­ges­tion of Stein
and Abicht to restore the name of a king; this pre­sup­poses a simple
error of hap­lo­graphy in the arche­type of the tra­di­tion. τοῦ
was adjus­ted to τοὺϲ by Andronicus Callistus in S, which I do not
under­stand and have omit­ted from the appar­atus, while Medaglia’s

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 72 Book IV

τευ pro­duces dubi­ous word-­order unless trans­posed to fol­low

the noun.
4. 8. 2 ἔξω τοῦ Πόντου κατοικημένον was deleted by Powell, but
sub­sequent treat­ments of the pas­sage, includ­ing that of H.-­G.
Nesselrath, Eikasmos, 22 (2011), 133, show no sign of dis­con­tent with
the trans­mit­ted text. It can be trans­lated ‘lived out­side the region of
Pontus, a res­id­ent of the island the Greeks call Erytheia’. Powell may
have objec­ted to the redund­ancy of the state­ment, but one can doubt
whether an ancient reader would have felt the need to add the words
com­plained of. A fur­ther point is that the per­fect middle par­ti­ciple of
the verb fol­lowed by an accus­at­ive is not a usage found else­where in
H. and may there­fore be open to ques­tion. Regular usage could be
restored by trans­pos­ing οἰκέειν to fol­low the par­ti­ciple. Whatever
view one takes of this prob­lem I would remark that the nar­rat­ive
could be improved if the remote­ness of Erytheia and the dis­tance
covered by Heracles were con­veyed with more emphatic word­ing.
That could be effected by emend­ing ἔξω to ἑκάϲ (×3 with the gen­it­ive
in H.).
4. 9. 3 καὶ τὸν κομιϲάμενον ἐθέλειν ἀπαλλάϲϲεϲθαι would nat­ur­
ally be trans­lated ‘and he, hav­ing recovered them, wished to depart’.
Stein glossed the par­ti­ciple ‘ubi recu­per­asset’. But Heracles has not
yet recovered his horses; the required sense is ‘he wanted to recover
them and leave’, which can be achieved more pre­cisely by the trans­
pos­it­ ion ἐθέλειν κομιϲάμενον.
4. 9. 5 ἴδηαι is the tread­ing of the MSS, and most edit­ors restore the
nor­mal form ἴδῃ, assum­ing an error induced by recol­lec­tion of the
Homeric form (×7 in the Iliad, ×3 in the Odyssey). It is pos­sible that
the scribe of d had some met­rical know­ledge and delib­er­ately adjus­ted
the word-­order to cre­ate hexa­meter rhythm. Homeric touches are of
course com­mon enough in H., but as the present con­text is not a
moment of high drama, per­haps the major­ity of edit­ors are right.
Though μὲν δὴ occurs in H., it is a ‘for­mula of trans­ition’, as
Denniston, GP 258, puts it, and so the vari­ant in r is not appro­pri­ate
in this con­text.
4. 10. 3 The text offered by the MSS appears to mean ‘This is the only
thing his mother man­aged for Skythes’, which is incon­sequen­tial.
Stein thought the sen­tence might be trans­posed to fol­low ἐν τῇ χώρῃ
at the end of §2; but does that make the logic any bet­ter? The sense

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 Book IV 73

inten­ded may pos­sibly have been ‘His mother arranged for Skythes
alone to remain’, in which case one is temp­ted to fol­low Legrand but
adjust his pro­posal τὸ δὲ μεῖναι to τὸ δὲ μοῦνον δὴ μεῖναι (or
καταμεῖναι) or some­thing sim­ilar. But there would not be a great
deal of point in the remark.
4. 11. 4 Legrand’s tent­at­ive emend­a­tion in the pen­ul­tim­ate clause
cre­ates the required sequence of aor­ist infin­it­ives; most of the MSS
have the present, which does not look right, and it is curi­ous that
SV are repor­ted as hav­ing the future which dif­fers from the aor­ist
by only a single let­ter. I had wondered if the reports were inac­cur­ate,
but Pat Easterling and Stefano Panteghini very kindly veri­fied for
me in situ that SV do not offer the emend­at­ ion that appears to be
neces­sary.
4. 13. 1 Experts dis­agree about the form of the adject­ive which
describes Aristeas. W. Schulze, Orthographica (Marburg, 1894), p. x
= Orthographica et Graeca Latina (Rome, 1958),13 declared: ‘nam
Herodotum ϕοιβόλαπτοϲ ded­isse tit­u­lorum fide con­stat’. He failed
to note that in the present pas­sage the vari­ant in d gives some sup­port
to his view (this inform­a­tion was avail­able in Stein’s edi­tion of 1869);
on the other hand he might have men­tioned that the MSS appear to
be unan­im­ous at 3. 69. 4 in offer­ing ἐπίλαμπτοϲ. Bechtel iii. 205
argued in favour of forms with­out the nasal infix, whereas Smyth 136
(§130) had declined to accept as decis­ive the inscrip­tional evid­ence,
observing that it all came from the single area of Miletus. I do not
know if this objec­tion needs to be mod­i­fied in the light of sub­sequent
finds of inscrip­tions; but I do not feel it is safe to exclude the pos­si­
bil­ity of vari­ation within Ionic or incon­sist­ency in H.
4. 14. 1 ταῦτα ποιήϲαϲ A: ταῦτα εἴπαϲ d, Origenes, c. Celsum 3. 26.
Though Hude fol­lowed A, Stein and Maas were con­vinced by the
com­bined evid­ence of d and Origen; on this view A’s read­ing will
have been influ­enced by the first sen­tence in ch. 13. 1. I have fol­lowed
them, but would not rule out the pos­sib­il­ity that the ori­ginal text was
ταῦτα τὰ ἔπεα ποιήϲαϲ.
4. 15. 1 τάδε δὲ is gen­er­ally accep­ted; it is the read­ing of r and the
first hand in MS Vat.gr. 386 of Origen, c. Celsum 3. 26; but Ad omit
δὲ, and a later cor­rector in the MS of Origen appears to con­cur. Maas
asked ‘habet Origenes?’ and under­lined Hude’s entry, adding ‘also
Konjektur von δ’ (his sym­bol for r). He may well have been right; but

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 74 Book IV

errors of hap­lo­graphy and dit­to­graphy are equally com­mon, and it is

a finely bal­anced ques­tion to decide what to read here.
4. 16. 2 H.-­G. Nesselrath, Gymnasium, 116 (2009), 322 n. 50, noted
that Rosén fol­lowed r in omit­ting ἀκοῇ and very sens­ibly asked
whether instead ἀτρεκέωϲ is the word which should be deleted.
Though he was tent­at­ive, I feel sure that his altern­at­ive rem­edy was
the right one, remov­ing a faulty repe­ti­tion of the word used in §1.
4. 17. 1 Ἕλληνεϲ Ϲκύθαι is an accept­able dif ­fi­cilior lec­tio in A. A
sim­ilar expres­sion is found in Hecataeus FGH 1 F 146, where Jacoby
cited oth­ers from 3. 56. 2 and 6. 45. 1. d had Ἑλληνοϲκύθαι, accep­ted
by Legrand but rejec­ted by Corcella as a later lin­guistic usage. That
may not be decis­ive, since there has to be a first occur­rence of any
innov­at­ive usage. But A’s read­ing is not obvi­ously wrong, and on the
whole it is a more reli­able wit­ness.
It is hard to determ­ine the cor­rect spelling of the name Alizones/
Alazones, the lat­ter often writ­ten with a rough breath­ing. Strabo 12.
3. 21 clearly sup­ports the former, but it is pos­sible that he worked
from a defect­ive copy of H. Radt ad loc. in a long note does not
com­ment on this ortho­graph­ical ques­tion. As edited by Lentz,
Herodian i. 27–8 gives the spelling Ali-­. Asheri thinks the Herodian
text should obvi­ously be emen­ded, with­out stat­ing a reason or
reck­on­ing with the uncer­tain­ties sur­round­ing Lentz’s edi­tion. He
thinks the form Ali-­ was influ­enced by Iliad 2. 856. Stephanus
Byzantius does not help to solve the ques­tion because he has
entries for both spellings (α 188 and 205), neither spe­cific­ally related
to H.
4. 18. 1 The most plaus­ible explan­at­ ion of the vari­ant read­ings was
given by Richards: ἄλλοι was mis­read as ἄνοι (a mis­take quite easy in
minus­cule); this was then inter­preted as the nomen sac­rum for
ἄνθρωποι. This explan­a­tion might be thought to require the assump­
tion of a minus­cule arche­type or of the same error occur­ring inde­
pend­ently in both branches of the tra­di­tion. But it can also be said
that ἄλλοι in uncial script, if care­lessly writ­ten or dam­aged, was eas­ily
exposed to error.
4. 18. 2 ἐπὶ τρεῖϲ ἡμέραϲ ὁδοῦ is the read­ing of the MSS, quer­ied by
Blaydes, who pro­posed ἐπὶ τριῶν ἡμέρῶν ὁδὸν, not­ing the par­al­lel
expres­sion in 22. 1; the pre­sumed error is akin to the exchange of
ter­min­at­ ions, which is fre­quent, as Richards exem­pli­fied (pp. 303–6).

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 Book IV 75

He made the same sug­ges­tion as Blaydes, and also thought that ἐπὶ
could be dis­pensed with, as in ch. 19, which he did not men­tion, and
in 21.
4. 20. 1 Powell saw a dif ­fi­culty in the last sen­tence of this sec­tion and
obel­ized. Legrand trans­lated ‘une partie de leur ter­ritoire’, but the
plural τὰ instead of τὸ and the pro­noun αὐτῶν are not accur­ately
rendered. Since one trad­ing sta­tion has just been named it would
be nat­ural for the text to con­tinue with some kind of ref­er­ence to
oth­ers, and I sug­gest as a sup­ple­ment τὰ δὲ 〈ἄλλα ἐμπόρια〉 αὐτῶν
(cf. ch. 24), tak­ing my cue from Stein’s ‘andere Teile des Gebietes’.
4. 21 L. Weber, SIFC 17 (1940), 261–9, wondered if the words ὕλῃ
παντοίῃ should be adjus­ted in the light of Hesychius ε 763 εἴδη
παντοία ἀντὶ τοῦ ὕλη. Αἰολεῖϲ καὶ Ἴωνεϲ εἴδαϲ τὰϲ ὕλαϲ λέγουϲι.
Latte’s edi­tion does not refer to this passsage. But if a papyrus or
MS were found to read ἴδῃ here, one might well agree that a gloss
had crept into the text, repla­cing the rarer word that is part of H.’s
vocab­u­lary. Cf. 4. 109. 2.
4. 28. 1 τάϕρου A: τάϕρηϲ d. Editors have dis­reg­arded the vari­ant,
which can­not be dis­missed as a mis­take induced by the con­text, and
they have failed to take note of Stephanus Byzantius’ Τάϕραι καὶ
Τάϕρη ἑνικῶϲ, which indic­ates that the fem­in­ine form was a place
name; it appears to be an accept­able dif ­fi­cilior lec­tio, eas­ily altered to
con­form in its inflec­tion to the pre­ced­ing κρυϲτάλλου.
4. 33. 3 Hesychius π 2010 Πέρϕερεϲ is glossed θεωροί and is taken
to refer to the present pas­sage. The d-­fam­ily gives the same form but
with dif­fer­ent accen­tu­ation, while A has Περϕερέεϲ. The pro­par­oxy­
tone form is Aeolic and may be cor­rect, as was argued by L. Weber,
RhMus2 82 (1933), 225–7, who noted that Wilamowitz had restored
in Callimachus, Iambi 7, the cult title of Hermes as Περϕεραῖοϲ,
found in the Aeolic con­text of Ainos (Hermes, 40 (1905), 138 = Kl.
Schr. iv (Berlin, 1962), 191–2).
4. 35. 4 Legrand drew atten­tion to P. L. Couchoud and J. Svoronos,
BCH 45 (1931), 287–8, who noted that a ban­quet­ing room, if not
revealed by excav­a­tions, might be less appro­pri­ate than a place where
sail­ors ded­ic­ated the mast of a ship. They pro­posed ἱϲτιοϕορίου, an
easy change, not noted by recent edit­ors, and per­haps it will be
thought far-­fetched; but it is just worth a men­tion so long as the

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 76 Book IV

ban­quet­ing room in ques­tion has not been iden­ti­fied. It should be

remarked that the word is lex­icis addendum.
4. 36. 2 Herold’s sup­ple­ment 〈καὶ τῇ Λιβύῃ〉 seems jus­ti­fied because
the next sen­tence con­tains the word ἑκάϲτηϲ, and if only two con­tin­
ents were in ques­tion H. would have writ­ten ἑκατέραϲ.
4. 38. 1 αὐτῆϲ is sus­pect: what does the pro­noun refer to? Legrand,
hav­ing made a sens­ible sup­ple­ment to the open­ing of ch. 37, felt able
to trans­late ‘se détachent de la partie cent­rale’, but the com­plex­ity of
the inter­ven­ing text makes this ren­der­ing implaus­ible. Some ver­sions
simply ignore the words; Godley has ‘of this region’, which is impre­
cise. Macan noted ‘sc. Ἀϲίηϲ’. Should one adopt that?
4. 43. 1 λέγοντεϲ is the read­ing of the MSS, which at first
sight appears to fol­low on nicely after ἔλεγον in the pre­ced­ing
sen­tence, but the sense is incom­plete and vari­ous sup­ple­ments need
to be con­sidered, e.g. καταδέξαι or περιπλῶϲαι (Stein), or περὶ
αὐτῆϲ/περὶ τοῦ πλόου. Van Herwerden’s γνόντεϲ also looks
attract­ive after ἐγνώϲθη and con­vinced Powell, but one would
expect cor­rup­tion to work in the oppos­ite dir­ec­tion, with the second
verb wrongly assim­il­ated to the first. 〈κατα〉λέγοντεϲ would
be sim­pler, since this com­pound fre­quently means ‘describe’, and
the object, though not stated, can eas­ily be under­stood from the
con­text.
4. 43. 5 ϲίνοντεϲ is the read­ing of A, an act­ive par­ti­ciple of dubi­ous
attest­at­ ion; H. else­where uses the middle. The com­plic­at­ ion here is
that LSJ report act­ive forms from two pas­sages: (i) Plut. Mor. 913 e,
where Hubert in the Teubner edi­tion of 1960 notes ‘ϲίνοντοϲ (hoc
uno loco) pro ϲινομένου hiatus vitandi causa dictum?’ (ii) Galen 15.
662 = CMG 5. 9. 1, In Hipp. περὶ διαίτηϲ p. 236. 11 ed. G. Helmreich
(Leipzig and Berlin, 1914), which attests the act­ive as Ionic but with­
out offer­ing examples. Helmreich refers to Erotian, p. 80. 6 N., but
that par­al­lel does not in fact favour the act­ive form, and one won­ders
in any case if Galen was misled by a faulty copy of a Hippocratic text.
4. 44. 1 The Indus is the second river with cro­codiles after the Nile.
The phras­ing seems a trifle awk­ward and I won­der if the demon­
trat­ive pro­noun is in place; in a sim­ilar pas­sage at 1. 25. 2 οὗτοϲ is the
sub­ject of the clause, which makes a difer­ence. One might sup­ple­
ment 〈ἐὼν〉 or read αὐτὸϲ.

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 Book IV 77

4. 45. 2 ἐπωνυμίαϲ ἔχοντα . . . λέγουϲι was deleted by Powell, and it

has to be admit­ted that one might expect ἐπωνυμίαι ἐοῦϲαι, since
the idea that an ὄνομα pos­sesses an ἐπωνυμίη is odd. If Powell is
right, the cor­rup­tion had already entered the text at some time in
antiquity, since Procopius, Bella 8. 6. 14–15, cites this sen­tence
ver­batim, but with the vari­ant καὶ Μαιῶτιν, which coin­cides with
Valla’s ren­der­ing et Maiotidem (but Valla did not bother to adjust the
text in X accord­ingly). The con­nect­ing particle in place of the def­in­ite
art­icle is attract­ive. The Tanais is not else­where described as Maeotic
and does not need any such adject­ive.
4. 45. 3 ἤδη here serves little pur­pose, and I feel that Blaydes was
right to restore a com­bin­a­tion of particles that is found else­where in
H.; see Denniston, GP 243.
4. 46. 1 λόγιμον is the read­ing of d, but if the word means ‘import­ant’,
which is the only sense offered in the Lexicon, it is the wrong word
for the con­text, assum­ing that a con­trast with ἔθνεα ἀμαθέϲτατα
is inten­ded. J. F. Kindstrand, Anacharsis, the legend and the
Apophthegmata (Uppsala, 1981), 26–7, rejects the altern­at­ive read­ing
λόγιον because he takes it to mean ‘versed in his­tory’, which is
Powell’s ren­der­ing in the Lexicon. However, in Democritus 68 B 30
‘wise’ or ‘thought­ful’ is clearly the right trans­la­tion, and I would
accept that mean­ing here. Support for λόγιον is provided by the
quo­ta­tion in the Epimerismi homer­ici π 187, ed. A. R. Dyck (Berlin,
1996), 649. The appar­ent vari­ant ἐλλόγιμον in Eustathius’
com­ment­ary on Dionysius Periegetes 669 is prob­ably no such thing,
as the com­ment­ary is to a large extent para­phrase, which by no means
guar­an­tees that this was the word in Eustathius’ copy of H.
4. 48. 1 τοιόνδε invites the reader to expect in the fol­low­ing clause an
explan­a­tion of why the Istros is the biggest of all rivers. As the text is
usu­ally prin­ted ποταμῶν καὶ ἄλλων hardly makes sense: a gen­it­ive
abso­lute instead of a finite verb is not expec­ted, nor is the particle.
One simple rem­edy was applied by Steger, who sub­sti­tuted δὴ for
καὶ; another would be to delete καὶ. Hermann opted for a lacuna
before ποταμῶν. I think Schweighäuser was prob­ably on the
right lines in sug­gest­ing punc­tu­ation after γέγονε. The explan­a­tion
fol­lows with asyn­deton, provided one is will­ing to adjust δὲ to δὴ.
‘Though other rivers flow into it, the ones that make it big are the
fol­low­ing . . .’

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4. 48. 2 Denniston, GP 386 notes ‘the μὲν after πέντε is cer­tainly

remark­able’ and cites two other ‘remark­able and doubt­ful pas­sages,
which lend each other some meas­ure of sup­port’. In this case the
repe­ti­tion seems par­tic­u­larly clumsy and there is no cor­res­pond­ing
δὲ. Koen’s μεγάλοι has palaeo­graph­ical merit, but one should not
rule out Van Herwerden’s οἵδε, which is far from being drastic.
Another gentle medi­cine is that of Valckenaer, who tried μόνοι (sic)
for μὲν οἱ, but I am not con­vinced that H. would have wished to
say that.
4. 49. 1 As trans­mit­ted the text speaks of ‘three other large rivers’, but
of the three only the last earns a men­tion in W. Smith, A Dictionary of
Greek and Roman Geography (London, 1872, repr. 2006), where it is
described as ‘a large river of Scythia’, and none of them fig­ures in the
Barrington Atlas. Mannert’s sup­ple­ment of 〈οὐ〉 is a good idea; one
may note examples of the loss of neg­at­ives col­lec­ted by H. Richards,
Aristophanes and Others (London, 1909), 320–1. The altern­at­ive is to
sup­pose a cor­rup­tion to polar oppos­ite; see above on 1. 145. 2.
4. 52. 4 τέρματα has caused dif ­fi­culty, and Powell pro­posed ῥέυματα.
But per­haps ‘con­verge at the end of their course’ is accept­able. I doubt
if it is neces­sary to detect here a meta­phor from the race-­course, pace
Corcella ap. Asheri.
4. 53. 2 εὐκομιδεϲτάταϲ was declared cor­rupt by Powell in the
Lexicon. LSJ refer to Hesychius ε 6934, which offers the glosses εὖ
ἠγμένοϲ, εὐκόμιϲτοϲ, i.e. ‘eas­ily trans­por­ted’. That is not the mean­
ing required here: after the first adject­ive, which indic­ates the qual­ity
of the fod­der derived from this pas­tur­age, one might expect the second
adject­ive to refer to the quant­ity, but an emend­a­tion such as
εὐθαλεϲτάταϲ is not palaeo­graph­ic­ally attract­ive. Mela 2. 6, obvi­ously
refer­ring to this pas­sage, has lae­tis­sima pab­ula, which does not help.
Another concept which might be appro­pri­ate here is the access­ib­il­ity
of the pas­tur­age, if one could think of the right word. I have also
con­sidered εὐμαρεϲτάταϲ because LSJ s.v. cite an inscrip­tion from
Andros (IG xii/5. 714. 15) in which this adject­ive is applied to ϲῖτοϲ
and they trans­late ‘easy to obtain, abund­ant’. If ‘abund­ant’ is a legit­
im­ate ren­der­ing, this adject­ive might provide a solu­tion; but in the
con­text it appears that offi­cials are being thanked simply for mak­ing it
easier to obtain corn, and it does not fol­low that the sup­ply was pos­i­
tively abund­ant. Dare one sug­gest εὐκομεϲτάταϲ, on the assump­tion

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that H. allowed him­self the altern­at­ive third-­declen­sion form of

εὔκομοϲ, attested by Pollux and found once in Maximus of Tyre
32. 8, admit­tedly in the sense of ‘long-­haired’ rather than ‘lux­uri­ant’?
4. 57 Μαιῆτιν ἣ οὐρίζει] Μαιῆτιν, ῥέων δὲ οὐρίζει Powell, so that
the sub­ject of the verb is the river Tanais, not the λίμνη Μαιῆτιϲ. A
sim­pler way of achiev­ing this is to read καὶ for ἣ. In minus­cule script
eta is eas­ily con­fused with kappa, and καὶ was often abbre­vi­ated to
kappa with a small addi­tional stroke down­wards.
4. 62. 1 κατὰ νομοὺϲ ἑκάϲτοιϲι τῶν ἀρχέων is Hude’s text; in read­
ing ἀρχέων he fol­lows Stein’s later edi­tion. The MSS read­ings are
ἀρχείων A: ἀρχαίων d: ἀρχηΐων C, which Stein had accep­ted in
1869. The dif ­fi­culty is that ἑκάϲτοιϲι sep­ar­ates νομοὺϲ and ἀρχέων
and can­not gov­ern the lat­ter. Powell rather typ­ic­ally deleted the last
three words, but one ought to regard that rem­edy as a last resort.
Stein, fol­lowed by Legrand, tried ἑκάϲτουϲ, which restores sense; but
it is not clear why the dat­ive should have been sub­sti­tuted for
the accus­at­ive, revers­ing the usual pro­cess that occurs in errors of
assim­il­a­tion. Corcella inferred that the read­ing of the arche­type was
pre­served in C and less accur­ately in A, and he inter­preted this to
mean ‘the premises of the magis­trates’. To me this implies too
soph­ist­ic­ated a sys­tem of gov­ern­ment; as Shuckburgh had already
remarked, ‘the dif ­fi­culty of a fixed place of gov­ern­ment for people of
the nomadic habits attrib­uted to the Skyths will doubt­less occur to
every­one’. Legrand accep­ted Stein’s ἀρχέων, which he took to be the
three king­doms men­tioned in chs. 7 and 120, sub­divided into
dis­tricts, and that seems more plaus­ible. But I do not see how to
con­strue the gen­it­ive with­out emend­a­tion of the pre­ced­ing adject­ive,
and my pref­er­ence would be for ἑκάϲταιϲι; for this usage of the word
in the plural fol­lowed by a gen­it­ive see the Lexicon s.v. B II. 2; it is a
rel­at­ively rare idiom and exposed to cor­rup­tion.
As to the verb, I fol­low Stein again in accept­ing his minor emend­
a­tion, on the basis that A with its com­pound form pre­serves a trace of
the ori­ginal read­ing, whereas the scribe of d did not know what to
make of the obvi­ously faulty com­pound in his exem­plar and changed
it to the sim­plex.
ὕψοϲ δὲ ἔλαϲϲον is non­sense as it stands, and Powell as usual
deleted. If the words are inter­pol­ated, are they a feeble joke? It is
bet­ter to sup­pose that some­thing has been lost, e.g. ‘less than 〈x
cubits〉’, spe­cify­ing the height.

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4. 62. 2 τοιϲίδε Wesseling (and Stein, who trans­lated ‘noch um

Folgendes mehr’): τοῖϲδε MSS. Stein’s ren­der­ing res­ults in a very
odd con­struc­tion with θύουϲι. Powell obel­ized. Legrand tried τοιάδ’,
which is insuf ­fi­cient, since one expects a dat­ive to stand in con­trast to
τοῖϲι ἄλλοιϲι θεοῖϲι. I am temp­ted to delete the word as a scribal
error induced by the fol­low­ing dat­ives.
δ’ om. P, del. Bekker, who has been fol­lowed by most edit­ors,
pre­sum­ably accept­ing asyn­deton explic­at­ivum. If this is the right
view, which I have rather hes­it­antly accep­ted, P’s read­ing could be
just a lucky slip.
4. 64. 2 δέρματα χειρόμακτρα is the clumsy and tau­to­log­ous read­
ing of A, whereas d omits δέρματα, and edit­ors on the whole accept
that. In the con­text it can hardly have been added as a gloss, but
per­haps it was an absent-­minded par­tial anti­cip­a­tion of ἀποδαρμάτων
in the next sec­tion. δερμάτινα would be an easy emend­a­tion.
4. 65. 2 In the first sen­tence the change of sub­ject in the second clause
is abrupt; sud­denly within the same sen­tence we have a sin­gu­lar verb
with­out the pro­noun τιϲ to make mat­ters clear. αὐτοῦ is rather vague,
L.A.H.-­S.’s pro­posal to sub­sti­tute the pro­noun for the second ἦν is an
easy way to restore good sense. Hude noted a sim­ilar change from
plural to sin­gu­lar at 8. 98. 1, but Powell ad loc. registered Van
Herwerden’s objec­tion to the pro­noun αὐτῷ in that pas­sage. Here we
can cer­tainly do with­out αὐτοῦ. Reiske tried αὐτῶν.
The next ques­tion arises at the end of the sec­tion. The host explains
that rel­at­ives attacked him but he over­came them. The words ταύτην
ἀνδραγαθίην λέγοντεϲ (λέγεται d) are a viol­ent anacoluthon. The
only plural ante­cedent in the nom­in­at­ive is οἰκήιοι; is H. really telling
us that the aggres­sion of the οἰκήιοι was claimed by them to be
ἀνδραγαθίη? I would prefer to assume that the host lays claim to that
vir­tue because he has fended off the hos­tile activ­ity of his rel­at­ives.
Read λέγουϲι, with punc­tu­ation before ταύτην.
4. 69. 1 d inserts καμάρηϲ after ἅμαξαν. L. Weber, PhW 54 (1934),
1068–71, favoured inter­pret­ing this as ‘a bundle (of logs)’, accept­ing
the gloss in Hesychius κ 566 as ori­gin­at­ing in this pas­sage of H.
I remain scep­tical, des­pite the agree­ment of some mod­ern edit­ors.
The vari­ant does need to be accoun­ted for, and I note that Pollux
10. 52 cites 1. 199. 1 for καμάρη as a covered chariot. My view is
that καμάρην was the ori­ginal read­ing here, which attrac­ted the

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 Book IV 81

gloss ἅμαξαν, and after that a minor error of assim­il­a­tion occurred.

Legrand thought this solu­tion arbit­rary, but it does not pre­sup­pose
any­thing even remotely unusual in the his­tory of texts.
4. 70 I am not con­vinced that the MSS read­ing ὑπέατι is pro­tec­ted
by Hesychius υ 267, which appears to be cor­rupt any­way. R. Beckes,
Etymological dic­tion­ary of Greek (Leiden, 2010), 1090, remarks ‘the
form with ὑπ-­remains dif ­fi­cult; folk ety­mo­logy was assumed, e.g. by
Frisk, and dia­lectal ori­gin (cf. Aeol. ὐπίϲϲω = ὀπίϲϲω) may also be
con­sidered’. The lat­ter sug­ges­tion is open to doubt, as we are deal­ing
with Ionic.
4. 74 In Homer dis­junct­ive ques­tions some­times lack an intro­duct­ory
con­junc­tion (Odyssey 4. 109, 11. 463, both after forms of οἶδα). I do
not see any obvi­ous reason why H. should here be copy­ing Homeric
usage. No other example is cited, and Blaydes’s sup­ple­ment is very
tempt­ing.
4. 75. 2 ἀγάμενοι ought to mean ‘tak­ing delight’; the lex­ica cite this
pas­sage, Plat. Symp. 179 C and Xen. Cyr. 2. 4. 9. But as Dr S. R. West
points out, in the Plato pas­sage admir­a­tion with per­haps a note of
sur­prise is the key point, and sim­il­arly in Xenophon. Blaydes
wondered about ἀγαλλόμενοι (×3 in H.). Below at 8. 144. 3, where
the Athenians express their grat­it­ude to the Spartans, some meas­ure
of admir­a­tion is cer­tainly implied; but I am inclined to think that
sur­prise would be out of place and tact­less in the con­text. At 9. 79. 1
Pausanias’ use of the verb indic­ates pleas­ure.
K. Meuli, Hermes, 70 (1935), 122–7 = Gesammelte Schriften (Basel
and Stuttgart, 1975), 817–24, remarked: ‘ὠρύεϲθαι, vorzug­s­weise
vom Geheul wilder Tiere, nament­lich der Wölfe, oder von mensch­li­
chem Klagegeschrei geb­raucht, will zu Herodots Deutung nicht recht
passen’. Does this imply that he would emend or that H. mis­un­der­
stood his inform­ant? It looks to me as if Plat. com. 138 indic­ates
that the verb could be used in other con­texts, so that doubt may be
unne­ces­sary.
4. 76. 1 μητιγεωναλληλων was appar­ently the read­ing of the arche­
type; as far as the particles are con­cerned it was, as noted by Denniston,
GP 449 prob­ably cor­rupt. With three adjust­ments a plaus­ible text can
be restored. (i) D offers μήτε; (ii) Stein’s τεῶν assumes the con­fu­sion
of tau and gamma, as was fre­quent in uncial script; (iii) Hermann’s
ἄλλων is neat and simple. But the critic would feel hap­pier if there

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 82 Book IV

were a papyrus to con­firm this res­tor­a­tion of the text. I also won­der if

Ἑλληνικοῖϲι should be fol­lowed by τε rather than δὲ, since μήτε . . .
τε is idio­matic. Medaglia’s ἄλλων ληῶν (vel λαῶν) is not likely to be
right, as one would expect ἐθνέων.
4. 78. 5 ἐϲ αὐτὰ refers back to the house Skyles had con­struc­ted, but
the epx­pres­sion is syn­t­actic­ally loose. One also expects ἠγάγετο (cf.
6. 69. 1 for the con­struc­tion with ἐϲ), and I won­der if that was
the ori­ginal read­ing, replaced in our MSS by a gloss. Shuckburgh saw
the lin­guistic point but did not go so far as to pro­pose this rem­edy.
4. 79. 3 θεὸν ἐξευρίϲκειν τοῦτον ὅϲτιϲ is trans­lated ‘invent/seek out
the god who . . .’. But τοῦτον seems oti­ose. I feel pretty sure that
Richards was right to doubt the pro­noun and to pro­pose τοιοῦτον
(see below on ch. 95. 3). Alternatively one might won­der if ‘wor­ship’
or ‘pro­pi­ti­ate’ rather than ‘invent’ is a more suit­able concept here.
ἐξιλάϲκεϲθαι would, how­ever, be rather drastic as an emend­a­tion.
4. 79. 4 διεπρήϲτευϲε is recor­ded in DGE with an expres­sion of
doubt and the tent­at­ive trans­la­tion ‘montar en col­era’. But what root
is it sup­posed to derive from? Kretschmer–Locker list the word and
the con­jec­ture διαδρηϲτεύω, but there is no other attest­a­tion for
either. Of vari­ous con­jec­tures the best is prob­ably Dindorf’s
διεδρηπέτευϲε, even if this word too is lex­icis addendum.
4. 80. 3 In the pro­pos­i­tion addressed by Sitalkes to Oktamasadas it is
dif ­fi­cult to decide whether the per­sonal pro­nouns are enclitic or not.
Hude fol­lowed Schaefer in mak­ing both emphatic; he may have been
right, and in ortho­graphic details of this kind the MSS are not author­
it­at­ive. Stein (1896) replaced τε with δὴ in order to cre­ate suit­able
con­nec­tion with the pre­ced­ing sen­tence. That was a good idea, but it
seems to me that there is no need to remove the trans­mit­ted particle;
τε δὴ is a favour­ite usage in H., as was noted by Denniston, GP 260.
4. 84. 1 τῶν 〈τιϲ〉 Περϲέων is an attract­ive sup­ple­ment by Legrand.
One might also con­sider whether the proper name should be intro­
duced by 〈οὔνομα δέ οἱ〉 or by an indic­a­tion of Oiobazos’ rank, e.g.
〈ἀνὴρ δόκιμοϲ〉.
4. 85. 4 The con­clud­ing sen­tence about the Hellespont broad­en­ing to
form the Aegean could well be another remark made for the bene­fit
of Westen Greeks who had little or no idea of the geo­graphy of the
mother coun­try.

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 Book IV 83

4. 94. 1 νομίζουϲι is the MSS read­ing at the end of the lst sen­tence.
Maas under­lined this part of the entry in the appar­atus with­out
fur­ther com­ment. In a dis­cus­sion of the use of this verb J. Tate, CR 51
(1937), 3–6, con­cluded that there are no instances of it mean­ing ‘wor­
ship’, ‘fear’, or ‘hon­our’, and he rejec­ted the com­mon inter­pret­a­tion
of the three pas­sages cited by LSJ to sup­port it. Mehler’s emend­a­tion
seems accept­able, and pre­sup­poses that a scribe erro­neously repeated
the verb from the pre­vi­ous sen­tence. As to the name of the god, if the
let­ters gamma–epsi­lon are taken to be the particle, as in some edi­tions,
it is hard to see what pur­pose it serves.
4. 95. 3 Here we have the same prob­lem as at ch. 79. 3 above: the
demon­strat­ive pro­noun is too spe­cific. Renehan, HSCP 89 (1985), 25,
provided the same answer. Corruption was easy, espe­cially after
τούτων in the pre­ced­ing clause.
4. 97. 1 The Ionians are given instruc­tions to dis­mantle the bridge
and fol­low the king over­land, and then comes a loosely attached
ref­er­ence to the troops trans­por­ted by the fleet. One pos­sib­il­ity is that
the text ori­gin­ally stated that the Ionians were to fol­low the king and
the main body of troops. If so, we should read τῷ . . . ϲτρατῷ.
Powell’s trans­la­tion points to a dif­fer­ent solu­tion: ‘then, after all were
gone over, Darius com­manded the Ionians and the rest of the navy to
break up the bridge and go with him on land’ (my ital­ics). This indic­
ates that he accep­ted Stein’s sup­ple­ment τὸν 〈ἄλλον〉, which deserves
ser­i­ous con­sid­er­a­tion. Whether one accepts this or not, the phrase is
left hanging. The period would read much bet­ter if it were trans­posed
to fol­low λύϲανταϲ. My own view is that a verb may have been lost;
in that case the ori­ginal sense will have been that the troops con­veyed
by the fleet were instruc­ted to con­tinue their voy­age.
4. 97. 4 κω must be quer­ied. Is Koes say­ing ‘I have no fear yet that we
may be defeated’? That can hardly be right in the con­text, but Blaydes’s
attemp­ted rem­edy κου intro­duces a note of dif ­fi d­ence, which is no
improve­ment. Powell trans­lates ‘I have never . . .’, which gives the
right emphasis; but if that was the inten­ded mean­ing one might
expect to find οὐδαμὰ in the text. I have wondered if κωϲ should be
writ­ten, since οὔκωϲ means ‘not at all’, and the two ele­ments of the
concept are found sep­ar­ated as οὐ . . . πωϲ in Homer.
4. 99. 3 See above on 1. 149.

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 84 Book IV

4. 99. 5 The trans­fer­ence of ἄλλοιϲι, which in real­ity is part of the

ante­cedent, into the rel­at­ive clause is odd, as Richards noted. He cited
Dem. 18. 16, admit­ting that it is ‘not pre­cisely par­al­lel’, which is
an under­state­ment. Stein was nearer the mark with his ref­er­ence to
1. 57. 2; but there the slightly ple­onastic ἄλλα is much easier to under­
stand. Though pre­vi­ous edit­ors have not been bothered, I do won­der
if there is some­thing wrong with the trans­mit­ted text.
4. 103. 3 ἕκαϲτοϲ was deleted by Nitzsch, fol­lowed by some edit­ors. I
do not find the word objec­tion­able; it seems plaus­ible that each
mem­ber of the vic­tori­ous force comes away with a trophy, and I
would not rule out the idea that every vic­tim was decap­it­ated.
4. 105. 2 ἀποκατίϲταται, the read­ing of D (except that it aspir­ates
the first tau), though accep­ted by Hude and Corcella, has not found
favour with other edit­ors (and Maas agreed with them). The verb is
widely attested, but rejec­tion of it could be jus­ti­fied by sup­pos­ing it to
be a Byzantine ‘improve­ment’ of the text, and that the arche­type had
κατίϲταται. The point is made with suf­fi­cient emphasis by αὖτιϲ
ὀπίϲω. In the light of that con­sid­er­a­tion I have rejec­ted as less likely
the pos­sib­il­ity that the arche­type could have had ἀπο-­writ­ten above
the line, to cor­rect a scribal omis­sion, and that only the scribe of D (or
its ancestor) took note of this. This case exem­pli­fies a dif ­fi­culty in the
applic­at­ ion of stem­matic ana­lysis.
4. 106 τούτων makes sense, but Mehler con­sidered Ϲκυθῶν or τῶν
ταύτῃ. I would prefer πάντων. Cf. Aristophanea 48–9.
4. 107 τὰϲ ἐπωνυμίαϲ in the plural makes no sense in rela­tion to the
name of a single tribe. If it were the cor­rect read­ing it would mean
that indi­vidual mem­bers of the tribe had their names on their jack­ets
like foot­ball play­ers. Legrand and oth­ers assume that H. was refer­ring
also to the Androphagoi.
4. 109. 2 If πλείϲτῃ can mean ‘most extens­ive’ the text may be sound,
even if a more nat­ural epi­thet would have been μεγίϲτῃ. Blaydes
con­sidered adjust­ing to the nom­in­at­ive πλείϲτη, ‘ubi den­sissima est’,
with ἐϲτι as the pre­dic­ate. This is attract­ive, except that one would
then have to sup­ply a verb in what becomes the main clause.
4. 119. 4 The read­ing of the MSS καὶ ἡμεῖϲ οὐ πειϲόμεθα requires
emend­a­tion and there have been many sug­ges­tions. Powell pro­posed
καὶ ἡμέαϲ, mak­ing the pro­noun the object of ἀδικέων. This is

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 Book IV 85

ingeni­ous but hardly neces­sary; it is per­fectly in order for the text to

con­tinue ‘we too will defend ourselves’ or words to that effect. Most
crit­ics, Powell included, have seen that the verb must be emen­ded, and
either Hoeger’s ἀπωϲόμεθα or Bekker’s περιοψόμεθα should prob­
ably be accep­ted. τ(ε)ιϲόμεθα found favour with Valckenaer. It could
be com­bined with dele­tion of οὐ, as pro­posed by Renehan, HSCP 89
(1985), 26–8, or with αὐτὸν for οὐ, pro­posed by Richards, who asser­ted
that the pro­noun ‘in an abbre­vi­ated form has else­where been known
to exchange with οὐ’. The indexes to his two books of crit­ical adversaria
fail to provide a ref­er­ence to other alleged examples, and I think he
may have been under a mis­ap­pre­hen­sion about abbre­vi­ations used in
the MSS. Renehan argues that his view is sup­por­ted by the pres­ence of
tech­nical legal terms in the con­text, and that the right solu­tion must
indic­ate a threat in view of ch. 125. 5. By this he seems to exclude
Bekker’s solu­tion; but the verb sug­ges­ted by Bekker surely does imply
a threat and it is so used both in H. and in the orators.
4. 120. 1 In the clause τὰ παρεξίοιεν αὐτοὶ the pos­it­ ion of the
pro­noun gives rise to doubt. Van Herwerden trans­posed it to fol­low
κρήναϲ, so that the con­trast between the strategy of the two parties is
clearer, which is an improve­ment. An altern­at­ive and very simple
solu­tion is to add a single let­ter and read αὐτόθι (×34 in H.).
The Scythians divide their forces in two. The read­ing of A is διχοῦ,
a form oth­er­wise attested only in Choeroboscus, In Theodosii can­ones
1. 388. 8. Since the ana­log­ous form πενταχοῦ occurs at 3. 117 A’s
read­ing may be right. d has διχοὺϲ, which may be no more than a
trivial error, but I have wondered if it con­ceals the rare adject­ive
διξοὺϲ, which was eas­ily exposed to cor­rup­tion. Cf. below on 6. 109. 4.
4. 121 The merit of Andronicus Callistus’ emend­at­ ion in S was recog­
nized by Legrand, Powell and Maas. The other MSS exhibit an error
of assim­il­a­tion. A bet­ter point is made if the Scythians load all their
wag­ons, whereas there was no need to say that all the women lived in
them.
4. 127. 2 The Scythian king’s chal­lenge to Darius would read bet­ter if
he said ‘Our ances­tral tombs are near at hand’, which leads me to
sug­gest that an adject­ive or adverb, e.g. πληϲίον, has been lost.
4. 127. 4 τοῦτο . . . ῥῆϲιϲ was deleted by Valckenaer, and many have
agreed with him that this is an inter­pol­at­ ion. They seem to have
thought that the pro­verb ἡ ἀπὸ Ϲκυθῶν ῥῆϲιϲ (Diogenian 5. 11)

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sup­ports this view. But it seems to me more likely that a highly quot­
able remark became pro­ver­bial, with a slight adjust­ment of the word­
ing because it was taken out of its ori­ginal con­text. Maas did not
favour dele­tion.
4. 129. 3 ἐπὶ ϲμικρόν τι could be an expres­sion of time or quant­ity.
If the sen­tence means ‘they gained some­thing from the fight­ing’ the
sub­ject has to be the Persians, and Stein accord­ingly sup­ple­men­ted
〈οἱ Πέρϲαι〉. The attrac­tion of this rem­edy is that with it the fol­low­ing
sen­tence pro­duces a good con­trast. But if the phrase in ques­tion
means ‘for a short time’, the verb should indic­ate that the Scythians
ini­tially came off worse. ἐϕέροντο is in any case prob­lem­atic; what
might be bet­ter here is ἐπαύροντο, ‘they suffered the effects’ (I assume
that an unaug­men­ted form is prefer­able).
4. 131. 1 Eustathius in his com­ment­ar­ies on Homer twice tells us
(468. 32 and 1570. 17) that H. wrote βάθρακοϲ, the Ionic altern­at­ive
for βάτραχοϲ res­ult­ing from aspir­ate meta­thesis, and other gram­
mari­ans cite the form. O. Hoffmann, Die griech­is­chen Dialekte, iii
(Göttingen, 1898), 607 (cf. also 273), made it clear how dubi­ous this
asser­tion is, and F. Bechtel, Die griech­is­chen Dialekte, iii (Berlin,
1924) does not include the form in his index of Ionic words or
men­tion it on p. 94 in his dis­cus­sion of Lautvertauschung. I am
inclined to think that Eustathius’ memory played a trick on him
and that he had seen the form in a gram­mat­ical text rather than
found it in a copy of H. Previous edit­ors’ ref­er­ences to the attest­at­ ion
of the vari­ant form in the scho­lia on the Iliad may be mis­lead­ing:
Erbse’s edi­tion shows that it is not found in the scho­lia vet­era, and
the reli­ab­il­ity of Gregory of Corinth, De dia­lec­tis, p. 414 is open to
ques­tion.
4. 139. 1 There are sev­eral ways of approach­ing the prob­lem here.
(i) If πειρῴατο is abso­lute, mean­ing ‘attack’, the two par­ti­ciples
that fol­low can be accep­ted. (ii) Stein (1869) sup­plied γέϕυραν 〈μὴ
ἔχοιεν〉 rather than delete any­thing. (iii) Hude accep­ted C’s omis­sion
of καὶ βουλόμενοι. How is one to account for the intru­sion of these
words? Are they a gloss that per­haps ini­tially read ἢ βουλόμενοι,
added by a reader who was not sure that βιώμενοι was sat­is­fact­ory?
Rather than delete Emperius ingeni­ously sug­ges­ted ἢ καιροῦ
λαβόμενοι. (iv) Stein (1896) made the more sub­stan­tial dele­tion of
καὶ . . . γέϕυραν, tak­ing it to be a gloss on πειρῴατο βιώμενοι. The

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explan­a­tions that assume the intru­sion of a gloss do not seem to me

very con­vin­cing in this con­text.
4. 139. 2 ἐπείγεϲθε was deleted by Powell, and the Lexicon cites no
other example of the sense ‘be zeal­ous’. But an exten­sion of the
nor­mal mean­ing so as to indic­ate urgency does not seem implaus­ible,
and if a reader had felt the need to add a word here it is hard to believe
that this word would have been his choice. I have wondered if
ἀπίκεϲθε would be more accept­able; it gives suit­able sense but is
open to the objec­tion that it is not obvi­ous why it should have been
cor­rup­ted.
4. 145. 2 (and 6. 138. 1) The accen­tu­ation of Brauron is gen­er­ally
assumed to be oxy­tone, in accord­ance with the doc­trine laid down by
Chandler, pp. 171–4, §610–1. He admits that there are many excep­
tions but does not include Brauron among them. The rule is stated
by Herodian (cf. Steph. Byz. α 144 and the epi­tomes). In the present
pas­sage MSS other than CP agree on par­oxy­tone, and the same
read­ing is found at Plut. Mor. 296 b, Strabo 9. 1. 22 (399C), Steph.
Byz. s.v., sch. on Lucian 19. 25 (p. 52 Rabe) and Etymologicum
Symeonis p. 130 Berger (emen­ded in Strabo by Tzschucke, in Steph.
Byz. by Meineke). At 6. 138. 1 Ar have pro­par­oxy­tone, but CDPS
properi­spo­menon.
4. 157. 2 As trans­mit­ted by the MSS the Pythian oracle has Doric
forms in the first two words only, but the sec­ond­ary tra­di­tion in Plut.
Mor. 408 a has two more. As a gen­eral rule the dia­lect forms were
lit­er­ary and epic (H. W. Parke and D. E. W. Wormell, The Delphic
Oracle (Oxford, 1956). ii, p.xxx). In this instance Corcella ap. Asheri,
p. 683, sug­gests that the Doric incipit (sic—he over­looks Plutarch’s
ver­sion) is ‘in accord with the eth­nos of those con­sult­ing it’. This
inter­est­ing sug­ges­tion could apply to the second line, but not the first,
of the next oracle in ch. 159. If it is cor­rect, Plutarch’s ver­sion in ch.
157 is to be pre­ferred, though the second line does not offer the Doric
form of ϲοϕίη. With some hes­it­a­tion I take the view that in both these
oracles one line has the dia­lect forms appro­pri­ate to the cli­ent. The
text of these oracles in Anth. Pal. 14. 84–5 does not help to determ­ine
the ques­tion.
ἄμεινον looks like a gloss that has dis­placed ἄρειον.
4. 162. 5 τοῦτο . . . ἔλεγε as found in the MSS and prin­ted by Hude
is prob­lem­atic. Are these words an inde­pend­ent sen­tence or an

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explan­at­ory sub­or­din­ate clause? If the former, the sen­tence is

fol­lowed by asyn­deton, which could be remedied with­out dif ­fi­culty,
but the word-­order is unac­cept­able. Denniston, GP 97 does not
sug­gest that post­pone­ment of γὰρ is to be expec­ted in H. and does
not men­tion this pas­sage. TM and the Aldine rec­tify the word-­order
by offer­ing τοῦτο γὰρ ἐπὶ παντὶ, with asyn­deton to fol­low. Dietsch
pro­posed 〈καὶ〉 τοῦτο, so that γὰρ intro­duces a sub­or­din­ate clause.
This is attract­ive, but there is a draw­back: τοῦτο is then to be taken
with τελευταῖον, and the pro­noun which looks for­ward to an object
about to be spe­cified is more usu­ally τόδε. In addi­tion ἔλεγε has no
expressed object. But if one is will­ing to com­bine Dietsch’s pro­posal
with the trans­pos­i­tion found in TM and the Aldine, good sense
res­ults.
4. 163. 3 τὴν κάμινον was deleted by Van Herwerden, which is
plaus­ible and ought to have been registered by Hude. Perhaps the
words are simply a care­less repe­ti­tion from the begin­ning of the
period. One might also con­sider ἐν τῇ καμίνῳ.
4. 164. 4 The accen­tu­ation of for­eign names is prob­lem­atic and the
MSS are divided here. But it so hap­pens that par­oxy­tone is recom­
men­ded for Alazeir by ps.-­Herodian p. 21. 3–3 Schmidt, and that is
what D offers, whereas Ar make it oxy­tone. Unfortunately no gen­eral
prin­ciple is stated in the epi­to­mated form of the ancient treat­ise that
has come down to us. MSS of the Septuagint, e.g. the Codex
Marchalianus, Vat. gr. 2125 of the sixth cen­tury, and Oxford Canon.
gr. 35 of the twelfth, have accen­tu­ation for at least some of the Semitic
names, and this is the prac­tice fol­lowed in the Rahlfs edi­tion. Chandler
offers no guid­ance about for­eign names. Dr S. R. West sug­ges­ted to
me that they should all be prin­ted with­out accents, which may well be
right; we can­not be sure that ps.-­Herodian’s view was soundly based.
4. 166. 1 ὁ δὲ Ἀρυάνδηϲ ἦν οὗτοϲ is what the MSS offer. Blaydes
pre­ferred to reverse the order of the verb and pro­noun, but no-­one
else has seen any dif ­fi­culty here. If the MSS are cor­rect, do we have
here some kind of exten­sion of Wackernagel’s law whereby the
unstressed cop­ula in the imper­fect is shif­ted for­ward as if it were an
enclitic? I find that rather implaus­ible. Should the pro­noun be deleted?
4. 166. 2 Rosén’s sup­ple­ment, which had occurred to me inde­pend­
ently, improves the sense and has par­al­lels at 1. 173. 3, 2. 135. 4 and
3. 48. 3.

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4. 167. 3 πρόϲχημα τοῦ λόγου is the gen­er­ally accep­ted text. Stein,

who had prin­ted it in 1869, later prin­ted πρόϲχημα τοῦ ϲτόλου, as
did Macan, with­out any note or explan­at­ ion. Confusion with 6. 44
may be the cause of the error. Krüger deleted the art­icle, which
receives some sup­port from 6. 133. 1.
4. 172. 3 ἐν τῇ ὄψει ἐνύπνιον is the para­dosis, which has caused dif ­fi­
culty. Stein (1896) deleted the first three words with­out com­ment. But
the Lexicon shows that ὄψιϲ τοῦ ἐνυπνίου is a com­mon expres­sion in
H. (×8, of which ×5 with the art­icle), and it is easy to restore here.
4. 173 προϲόμουροι would be hapax leg­omenon; Powell opted for
ὅμουροι, Blaydes for πρόϲουροι, which I have pre­ferred as the rarer
word. The MSS read­ing looks like the con­fla­tion of the true read­ing
with a gloss.
4. 174 According to the MSS H. refers here to the Garamantes. But
this con­flicts with his account of them in chs. 183–4. I incline to the
view that Baehr was right to emend to Γαμϕάϲαντεϲ. The emend­a­
tion relies prin­cip­ally on a pas­sage of Pomponius Mela (1. 47), which
clearly depends on H.: nudi sunt Gamphasantes armor­um­que
omnium ignari; nec vitare sciunt tela nec iacere, ideoque obvios fugi­
unt, neque aliorum quam quibus idem ingenii est aut con­gres­sus aut
col­loquia pati­un­tur. Legrand accep­ted the emend­a­tion and was cri­ti­
cized by L. Parroni in his com­ment­ary (Rome, 1984) for poor crit­ical
method on the ground that Stephanus Byzantius and Eustathius on
Dionysius Periegetes 217 agree with the MSS. What Eustathius read
is of no account, since there is no evid­ence that he had an inde­
pend­ent source, and Stephanus may well have worked from a copy
that had already had a very rare name cor­rup­ted into a rather com­mon
one. The emend­a­tion is sup­por­ted by J. Desanges in the Budé edi­tion
of Pliny, NH v/1. 385, on §§ 35 and 45. Sir William Smith, Dictionary
of Greek and Roman Geography (London, 1872, repr. 2006), 1975 had
demurred: ‘If any change be neces­sary, we sus­pect it to be, of the two,
rather in the Roman com­pilers; for their story seems copied from H.’
But care­less copy­ists are not likely to turn a rather well-­known name
into a much rarer one; a clearer applic­a­tion of the prin­ciple utrum in
alterum would be hard to find.
4. 178 Prof. George Xenis kindly drew my atten­tion to John
Philoponus, Praecepta ton­ica, p. 8, ll. 2–5 Dindorf, who indic­ates that
the name Phla has a peri­spo­menon accent. The text of that pas­sage

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 90 Book IV

was cor­rec­ted by C. Göttling, Allgemeine Lehre vom Accent der griech­

is­chen Sprache (Jena, 1835), 407. Chandler, p. 20, con­curs. The fact
that MS X is cor­rect in this detail is not neces­sar­ily sig­ni­fic­ant, since
copy­ists were not usu­ally experts in such mat­ters,
4. 180. 6 Legrand deleted ἁδρὸν and con­sidered sub­sti­tut­ing τι for
τὸ, while Powell obel­ized τρίτου μηνὸϲ. But drastic meas­ures are not
needed. One only has to look to the Hippocratic cor­pus to find the
neces­sary inform­a­tion; at De natura pueri 30. 5 and 6 ἁδρόϲ is used in
a com­par­able con­text to refer to the foetus or new­born child and
means ‘robust’. That being so ‘in the third month 〈after the birth〉’ is
per­fectly clear.
4. 183. 4 τῶν ἡμεῖϲ πέρι is a good example of the oper­at­ ion of
Wackernagel’s law. Rosén’s trans­pos­i­tion περὶ ἡμεῖϲ is, to put it
mildly, sur­pris­ing, given that he was by train­ing a lin­guist and should
not have been unaware of Wackernagel’s find­ings. If the pro­noun
here were in an oblique case it would be accen­ted par­oxy­tone; ancient
gram­mari­ans are clear that this was cor­rect prac­tice (cf. Chandler,
p. 276); no-­one seems to have asked why the nom­in­at­ive should be
exempt from this rule. The only pas­sage in which I have been able to
find a prima facie example is in the sixth-­cen­tury hym­no­grapher
Romanos 57. 15. 2, but it is known that in this author met­rical con­sid­
er­a­tions affected the rules about enclit­ics; see K. Krumbacher, Abh.
München, 24/3 (1909), 125 n. 5.
4. 184. 3 τοῦτο Ad can be taken to refer to the ὄροϲ: the vari­ant
τοῦτον in C cre­ates agree­ment with the fol­low­ing τὸν κίονα but is
prob­ably just a scribal error. The Aldine dele­tion of the art­icle is not
neces­sar­ily cor­rect, since accept­able sense res­ults with­out it.
4. 191. 4 Is H. say­ing that the numer­ous fauna are fab­ulous or real?
Reiz wished to make them fab­ulous, a con­jec­ture which Stein (1869)
did not deign to notice. Van Herwerden sought to avoid the dilemma
by sup­ple­ment­ing an adject­ive, to cre­ate a pair of altern­at­ives so that
both cat­egor­ies would be men­tioned. The word pro­posed by Reiz is
not attested in LSJ or the Lexikon zur byz­antin­is­chen Gräzität.
Medaglia records that Montfaucon in the Histoire de l’Académie
roy­ale des Inscriptions et Belles-­Lettres avec les Mémoires de Littérature,
12 (1740), 170–5, reit­er­ated his pro­posal ἀκατάψαυϲτα, ‘untouch­
able’, ori­gin­ally made in his Palaeographia graeca (Paris, 1708), 343
but rejec­ted by Gronovius in his edi­tion of 1715. This word also is

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 Book IV 91

lex­icis addendum but Montfaucon cited ἄψαυϲτοϲ and noted that the
pre­pos­it­ ional com­pound makes the adject­ive more emphatic. He
found that two MSS he con­sul­ted in Paris con­firmed his con­jec­ture,
as did sev­eral oth­ers in Italian col­lec­tions, col­lated for him by a
Genevan scholar called Vernai; of the lat­ter only T is taken into
account by mod­ern edit­ors. Montfaucon, who on first read­ing the
text thought it ridicu­lous, per­haps had a point, because after the
obvi­ously fab­ulous creatures there is ref­er­ence to sav­age men and
women; then the numer­ous spe­cies of wild anim­als con­clude the list,
and it would make sense to say that they are not to be touched. But it
is neces­sary to determ­ine exactly what the adject­ive in ques­tion refers
to: if it is only to the imme­di­ately pre­ced­ing item in the list, ‘numer­ous
other wild beasts’, in con­trast to the oth­ers, then the adject­ive offered
by the MSS can stand.
4. 192. 3 Krüger and Powell wished to delete the par­en­thesis about
the Libyan word and its Greek equi­val­ent, and Maas appar­ently
agreed with them. But H. was inter­ested in lan­guage, and I do not
think we should jump to the con­clu­sion that the sen­tence is an
inter­pol­a­tion. See L. Miletti, Linguaggio e meta­lin­guag­gio in Erodoto
(Pisa and Rome, 2008), 91–2.
4. 196. 3 ἀπιϲωθῇ is the MSS read­ing, but DGE s.v. sug­gests that this
com­pound is not found else­where in the clas­sical period, and Blaydes
did well to note that at 7. 103. 4 H. used ἀνιϲόω, which is oth­er­wise
attested.
4. 198. 1 τιϲ . . . ϲπουδαίη is unusual in two ways: the pro­noun
com­bined with an adject­ive usu­ally fol­lows it, and is not nor­mally
sep­ar­ated by inter­ven­ing words. Cooper–Krüger 51. 14. 1A (p. 2309)
offer a par­al­lel from 7. 42. 2, which is close with­out being exact.
Nevertheless I would not exclude the pos­sib­il­ity that ἡ Λιβύη is a
gloss or that χώρη has been lost.
4. 198. 3 ἑκατοϲτὰ is accep­ted from AD by edit­ors. But since words
formed with the suf ­fi x -­οϲτόϲ indic­ate frac­tions, not mul­ti­plic­a­tion,
e.g. πεντηκοϲτή for a 2% tax, this can­not be right. Only Blaydes
appears to have quer­ied the text, but his pro­posal ἑκατοντακόϲια
may not be cor­rectly formed. ἑκατὸν is the read­ing of S, surely a
con­jec­ture; Maas, who might have been expec­ted to take note of it,
simply deleted the whole of Hude’s appar­atus entry here. The ques­
tion arises, sup­pos­ing the fig­ure of 100 to have been in the arche­type,

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 92 Book IV

whether it could have been cor­rect. The com­par­ison with Babylon

takes us back to 1. 193. 3, where the yields are stated to be 200-­fold
nor­mally and 300-­fold in the best years. If H. here means to say that
the ter­rit­ory of the Euesperides is as fer­tile as Babylon, then the fig­ure
of 100 is wrong; but it can per­haps be retained on the assump­tion that
this ter­rit­ory, though not as fer­tile as Babylon, is also remark­able. The
form of the word needed would be ἑκατονταπλήϲια. I draw atten­
tion to the fact that r reads ἑκατὸν τὰ, which could pos­sibly be a
trace of the true read­ing. But the read­ing of AD is unex­plained.

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 Book V

5. 3. 1 ἀμήχανον 〈οὐδὲ〉 μὴ Richards. The read­ing of the MSS is

accep­ted by Cooper–Krüger 54. 8. 9A (p. 2436), a dis­cus­sion of sen­tences
with verbs of fear and the like. But fear or a sim­ilar emo­tion is not part
of the con­text here, and Richards’s sup­ple­ment com­mends itself.
5. 3. 2 οὐνόματα ἔχουϲι πολλὰ κατὰ χώραϲ ἕκαϲτοι is oddly
phrased. It seems to be a blend of ‘they have many names’ and ‘each
tribe is named after its loc­at­ ion’, and per­haps this is a col­lo­qui­al­ism to
be accep­ted. Stein explained πολλὰ as ‘pro­leptisch’, i.e. pre­dic­at­ive.
Nenci tried ἑκάϲτου and trans­lated ‘secondo la regione di cias­cuno’,
which is not a bad idea, and I have wondered if it should be mod­i­fied
to ἑκάϲτων. Legrand’s ‘vari­ables d’une con­trée à l’autre’ would be
more accur­ate if πολλὰ were replaced by an adject­ive indic­at­ing
diversity, e.g. παντοῖα. One might also try to remove the bra­chylogy
by pos­it­ing the loss of a word that makes clearer the res­id­ence of the
tribes in sep­ar­ate areas, e.g. διαιρεθέντεϲ.
5. 4. 2 The MSS have ἀνηγέομαι in the sense ‘nar­rate’, for which
there are par­al­lels in Pindar but seem­ingly not else­where in clas­sical
Greek. Are we to sup­pose that this usage was cur­rent in Ionic dia­lect
as well as Pindar’s? I have pre­ferred to sup­pose that ἀναπλῆϲαι in the
pre­ced­ing clause induced an error of assim­il­a­tion.
5. 7 τῶν ἄλλων πολιητέων was emen­ded to ὧλλοι πολιῆται by
Powell. His lin­guistic objec­tion to the text as trans­mit­ted is over-­
subtle, and my read­ing of LSJ s.v. παρέκ sug­gests that the MSS read­
ing is accept­able.
5. 8 Semenov’s ἁπλῶϲ for ἄλλωϲ looks attract­ive at first sight, but
the word is not found else­where in H. and ἄλλωϲ is prob­ably to be
accep­ted as an example of the usage lis­ted as no. 4 in the Lexicon s.v.

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κατὰ λόγον μουνομαχίηϲ is dif­fi­cult, as Powell appears to have

been the first to see. He obel­ized κατὰ λόγον. The expres­sion is
Herodotean, and if it is cor­rect here in the sense ‘in accord­ance with’,
the noun to fol­low should be εὐδαιμονίηϲ, since the con­text deals
with burial rites for the wealthy. However, it is not easy to account for
the cor­rup­tion unless one is ready to assume a more ser­i­ous error in
the trans­mis­sion and sug­gest e.g 〈εὐδαιμονίηϲ διὰ〉 μουνομαχίηϲ
(I am not sure if διὰ is the right pre­pos­it­ ion, but 2. 91. 4 may be an
adequate par­al­lel). Nenci’s ren­der­ing ‘secondo le norme del com­batti­
mento sin­golo’ points towards a dif­fer­ent solu­tion; on this view we
should read νόμον for λόγον; ‘the biggest prizes are awar­ded by
cus­tom for single com­bat’. Krüger and Stein took μουνομαχίηϲ to be
depend­ent on ἄεθλα, which is dif ­fi­cult enough in itself and leaves
κατὰ λόγον unex­plained. One can only express sur­prise at Krüger’s
pro­posal to inter­pret it as ‘nach Verhältniss der bezüg­lichen
Schwierigkeiten der Kämpfe’. Legrand’s ‘avec raison’ and ‘suivant
une juste pro­por­tion’ seem wrong and are dif ­fi­cult to recon­cile with
the word-­order.
5. 9. 3 The last sen­tence of this ch. was deleted by Reiske, fol­lowed by
Powell. Since the dia­lect forms are cor­rect it is not neces­sar­ily a gloss.
Transposition to fol­low Μηδικῇ at the end of §1 could be con­sidered,
but τοὺϲ δὲ ἵππουϲ does not then fol­low so nat­ur­ally after the ref­er­
ences to Ligyes and Cypriots. Van Herwerden rejec­ted dele­tion but
began a new para­graph with ch. 10, which is to take advant­age of
mod­ern con­ven­tions of typo­graphy that were not avail­able to the
ancients. My pre­ferred solu­tion is to treat this as an after­thought by
the author which was not integ­rated into the con­text.
5. 12. 1 ἦν as the third per­son plural of the imper­fect raises ser­i­ous
doubts. Is it a case of the schema Pindaricum or a legit­im­ate Ionic
form? C. D. Buck, The Greek Dialects, 2nd. edn. (Chicago, 1955), 128,
§163. 4, notes the exist­ence of this form in vari­ous Doric dia­lects but
not Ionic (Bechtel ii. 354 is less help­ful). Cooper–Krüger 62. 4. 1A
(pp. 2685–6) accept it here as a sin­gu­lar in accord with the nearest
ele­ment in the con­text, but cite no close par­al­lel. Rosén deletes, cit­ing
K.–G. i. 68–9, where ini­tial ἔϲτι with a plural is allowed, but then the
asyn­deton becomes still more abrupt. Perhaps we should read 〈ἐϲ τ〉
ὴν, delet­ing οἳ.
5. 13. 3 For αὐτὰ ἕκαϲτα cf. 1. 107. 1.

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The last sen­tence of the ch. is dif ­fi­cult. The two Paeonians have
made their jour­ney to Persia with the aim of get­ting help in their
bid for power. But when even­tu­ally they obtain an audi­ence with
Darius, the answer they give to his final ques­tion was cor­rectly
described by Macan as ‘vague and incon­sequen­tial’, and this is
reflec­ted in trans­la­tions; if it was their aim to con­vince the king that
all Paeonian women were as indus­tri­ous as their sis­ter, was this just
a neces­sary ini­tial step towards their ulti­mate ambi­tion? It is hard
to accept an anec­dote that ends with­out mak­ing its point clearly.
There is in any case a lin­guistic objec­tion to the text as given by the
MSS. Richards was surely right to find the absence of a sub­ject for
the verb ἐποιέετο unsat­is­fact­ory, and his pro­posal to emend αὐτοῦ
to πάντα, backed by a ref­er­ence to 8. 99, where a sim­ilar emend­at­ ion
has a good chance of being the best solu­tion. makes the text a little
less obscure. He offered as altern­at­ives the sup­ple­ments πάντα or
τάδε. If neither of these sug­ges­tions is accep­ted, one has to con­sider
whether the verb should be emen­ded, e.g. to ἀπίκατο, ‘that was why
they had come’.
5. 16. 1 If Stein’s dele­tion of the three tri­bal names is cor­rect, one
needs an explan­at­ ion of how they came to be inser­ted. Are the words
a gloss ori­gin­ally phrased in the nom­in­at­ive which has been incor­
por­ated into the text with adjust­ment of the case to suit the con­text?
That would be a pos­sible sequence of events; it pre­sup­poses a very
well-­informed ancient reader, and there can­not have been many
such per­sons. Nenci fol­lows L. Weber, PhW 58 (1937), col. 220, in
pro­pos­ing trans­pos­i­tion to fol­low ἐπειρήθη δὲ, which he finds
accept­able on con­di­tion that the three tribes are not among the lake-­
dwell­ers of Prasias; and he offers some evid­ence that they were not.
This is adop­ted by Hornblower with­out dis­cus­sion of the tex­tual
dif ­fi­culty. But then the ref­er­ence to Megabazus’ planned man­oeuvre
is fol­lowed too abruptly by a descrip­tion of the lake-­dwell­ers.
Abicht tried to restore coher­ence to the pas­sage by a change of
word-­order: ἐπειρήθη . . . ἐξαιρέειν κατοικημένουϲ ὧδε. But
would ὧδε be used to describe a way of life as opposed to a strategy
for con­quest? Just below we read οἰκέουϲι τοιοῦτον τρόπον.
5. 16. 3 Since Kretschmer–Locker do not provide evid­ence for words
end­ing in -­πακτοϲ from πήγνυμι and -­πηκτοϲ would be expec­ted
any­way, Reiske’s cor­rec­tion seems to be required.

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5. 17. 2 ὑπερβάντι in the dat­ive was sug­ges­ted by Abicht and/or

Bernhardy in place of the accus­at­ive, and it seems easier, espe­cially in
the light of the par­al­lel in 1. 104; but what is the syn­tax of the fol­low­ing
infin­it­ive? Neither K.–G. nor Cooper–Krüger refer spe­cific­ally to this
pas­sage. It seems halfway between con­sec­ut­ive and epex­egetic;
Shuckburgh thought it depend­ent on the notion con­tained in
ϲύντομοϲ, but that seems much too far away. Abicht appar­ently
thought the dat­ive depend­ent on the verb ἐϲτὶ or ἔξεϲτι, to be under­
stood. Similarly Stein: ‘abh. von einem aus ἐϲτὶ ϲύντομοϲ κάρτα
vorschwebenden παρέχει, ἔξεϲτι. Ähnlich 1. 104, aber mit dem
Dativ des Particips’. But I find this far from con­vin­cing. It would be
bet­ter to make the sup­ple­ment in the text.
5. 19. 2 A’s read­ing ἀνακαιομένου was obel­ized by Powell; Maas
under­lined in the appar­atus d’s read­ing ἀναγομένου with­out fur­ther
com­ment; it is not clear to me what it could mean. I do not myself
find ‘incensed’ inap­pro­pri­ate; Shuckburgh com­pared Eur. Or. 609
μᾶλλόν μ’ ἀνάψειϲ. Nenci tried ἀναγκαζομένου, ren­der­ing ‘ti trat­
tieni i tuoi dis­corsi’, which is not how I would have trans­lated, pre­fer­
ring ‘prac­tic­ally forced (to act)’.
5. 22. 2 A and d vary both in word-­order and the par­ti­ciple refer­ring
to Alexander. Shuckburgh thought that βουλομένου was ‘more likely
to have been the explan­at­ory gloss’. He cited Dietsch’s ϲτελλομένου,
but the present tense of that verb seems wrong. If the altern­at­ives do
not go back to the author we must sup­pose that an ancient reader
decided to improve the text. Maas under­lined A’s read­ing and Powell
adop­ted it, tak­ing the view, which I share, that ‘chose’ is less suit­able
in the con­text than ‘wished’.
5. 23. 1 The name of the town that Histiaios was for­ti­fy­ing needs to be
stated, and Steger dealt with that prob­lem. But μιϲθὸν and δωρεὴν
can­not both stand adja­cent in the text; the former was deleted as a
gloss by Schaefer, the lat­ter by Dobree. It seems to me more likely that
μιϲθὸν could have been the gloss added as an explan­at­ ion, and I am a
trifle puzzled that both Powell and Dobree took the other view.
Abicht retained both words by trans­pos­it­ ion; with the addi­tion of
〈ἅτε〉 I find that a good solu­tion.
τῷ . . . Μύρκινοϲ was deleted by Powell. If the ante­cedent is χώρου
τούτου, the clause cre­ates clumsy word-­order; if it is ποταμὸν,
the state­ment is false. Powell’s sug­ges­tion is based on the jus­ti­fia­ ble

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assump­tion that after the loss of Μύρκινον just above a reader felt
obliged to restore the name but did so in the wrong place.
5. 24. 3 ἐν βραχέϊ is trans­lated in DGE ‘en poco tiempo’; other trans­
la­tions and the Lexicon imply the same. But as Powell later saw, it
hardly makes sense. I have wondered whether the words belong to
the pre­ced­ing clause, ‘you dis­ap­peared from sight a short time after’,
or to what fol­lows, ‘to meet you soon’. An altern­at­ive is to posit
the mean­ing ‘to put it briefly’, which would require some expres­sion
such as ἵνα ἐν βραχέϊ λέγω. Maas was inclined to obel­ize; Powell’s
dele­tion does not seem right, since the phrase does not look like
a gloss.
5. 28. 1 Gebhardt’s ἀνανέωϲιϲ, accep­ted by Nenci, is a very simple
and eleg­ant improve­ment of the MSS read­ing ἄνεωϲ. Scaliger and de
la Barre tried ἄνεϲιϲ, accep­ted by Hude, Legrand, and Maas, ‘〈after a
short time〉 there was res­pite’, which is not sat­is­fact­ory unless the
fol­low­ing clause is intro­duced by an advers­at­ive particle. Maas evi­­
dently tried to avoid this objec­tion by tak­ing μετὰ as adverbial so as
to trans­late ‘after­wards, for a short time’; but I find it incon­ceiv­able
that an ancient reader would have inter­preted the words μετὰ . . .
χρόνον in any but the obvi­ous way (at 7. 154. 2 μετὰ δὲ οὐ πολλὸν
χρόνον is a case in point). If the words οὐ πολλὸν χρόνον were trans­
posed to fol­low ἄνεϲιϲ κακῶν this dif ­fi­culty would be avoided. Maas
appears ori­gin­ally to have accep­ted Gebhardt’s emend­a­tion, which he
ascribed to T. W. Allen, RevPhil3 13 (1939), 45, and then to have
changed his mind in the light of the imper­fect ἦν. He referred to
Legrand, who inter­preted the Greek as Maas pro­posed. Legrand
asked if one could speak of a renewal of hos­til­it­ies with­out hav­ing
said that there had been a ‘relâche’; I regard that as spe­cious logic.
5. 30. 6 τῶν Κυκλάδων was deleted by Hude, and though oth­ers
have not fol­lowed him it is reas­on­able to argue that the words are too
banal to stand in the main nar­rat­ive; to Macan they looked like a
gloss. But in 31. 2 just below they can per­fectly well fig­ure in
Aristagoras’ speech to the Persian Artaphernes.
5. 31. 1 ἔνι is not unusual in H. (×11), and the change of con­struc­tion
after the opt­at­ive εἴη is per­haps accept­able; but it would be easy to
restore ἐνείη. d’s vari­ant ἔχει may be an attempt to cor­rect the text,
but it could also con­ceal ἔχοι. Stein accep­ted ἔνι ‘nach epis­cher
Weise’; would there have been any point in epic phras­ing here?

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5. 33. 4 In the alter­ca­tion between Aristagoras and Megabates the

MSS make the Greek say ‘Didn’t Artaphernes des­patch you to do as I
say and sail where I tell you?’ This does make sense but I think it
might be more appro­pri­ate to begin ‘Didn’t Artaphernes instruct you
. . .?’ This can be achieved by the change of one let­ter and read­ing
ἐπέϲτειλε.
5. 35. 4 Though I have not prin­ted 〈γὰρ〉 ὦν, Denniston, GP 445–7
shows that it could be the cor­rect text here.
5. 37. 2 Simon Hornblower drew my atten­tion to a dif ­fi­culty
that pre­vi­ous edit­ors appear to have over­looked. λόγῳ strongly
sug­gests deceit, but the nar­rat­ive gives no hint of what Aristagoras
in fact (ἔργῳ) achieved, and there must be some­thing wrong with
the text. The solu­tion is to read 〈ἐν ϲυλ〉λόγῳ. Deceit is not the
point of the story: he called a spe­cial assembly; LSJ attests this
usage.
5. 41. 1–3 Maas jus­ti­fied his trans­pos­it­ ion of ἐοῦϲα . . . Δημαρμένου
by not­ing ‘hätte 41. 1 ver­merkt wer­den sol­len’, in accord­ance with
H.’s nor­mal prac­tice. One must sup­pose that the words were ori­gin­
ally omit­ted, then added in the mar­gin with an incor­rect indic­a­tion of
where they were to be inser­ted; the recur­rence of the phrase
ἐπελθοῦϲα γυνὴ doubt­less led to con­fu­sion.
Maas’s dele­tion at the end of the ch. removes a clumsy repe­ti­tion in
which the words τὸ δεύτερον are hardly appro­pri­ate.
5. 42. 1 Denniston, GP 519 sup­ple­men­ted ἀκρομανήϲ τε 〈ἦν〉, but
the res­ult­ing sen­tence is far from eleg­ant. Others have pre­ferred to
emend τε οὐ. Richards pro­posed τι οὐ, which is plaus­ible, Blaydes
μὲν οὐ, which is less good, even if μὲν . . . τε may be accept­able. My
own sug­ges­tion would be οὔτε, if any change is needed. Stein
defen­ded the para­dosis by cit­ing 5. 11. 2 οἷά τε οὐ τύραννοϲ δημότηϲ
τε ἐών, but he failed to note that οἷά τε, found at 2. 175. 5, 5. 93. 2,
6. 5. 1, is an idio­matic unit, as recor­ded by Denniston, GP 525, and
that Bekker at 5. 11. 2 had achieved the required con­trast by read­ing
δημότηϲ δὲ ἐών.
5. 43 The present tense of αἱρέει is at first sight unex­pec­ted, but Stein
cited 6. 82 and Aesch. Ag. 125 for this usage; on the lat­ter pas­sage
Fraenkel remarked on ‘proph­etic presents’. At 67. 2 below an opt­at­ive
is found in a sim­ilar con­text, and αἱρέοι would be an easy change

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here. Cobet tried αἱρέῃ, pre­sum­ably a delib­er­at­ive sub­junct­ive, which

seems less appro­pri­ate. Richards, Aristophanes and Others (London,
1909), 309–11 stated: ‘One of the com­mon­est of mis­takes is the
sub­sti­tu­tion of a present tense for a future’; so he might per­haps have
con­sidered αἱρήϲει here.
5. 45. 1 οὐχ Ad, cor­rec­ted to οὐκ in CP, is not right, and I sus­pect a
cor­rup­tion of ὦν, first to οὖν and then to οὐκ, which was easy enough.
Bekker’s αὖ is con­ceiv­able but seems to me less suit­able; the same
applies to Legrand’s δὴ.
5. 47. 1 Powell was appar­ently the first to see that the MSS read­ing
δαπάνῃ can hardly be con­struc­ted with ἀνδρῶν and that δυνάμι
con­forms to H.’s usage. A copy­ist’s error was induced by asso­ci­ation
of ideas; obvi­ously there was a cost involved in mount­ing the exped­i­
tion. An altern­at­ive rem­edy might be to sup­ple­ment e.g. τῶν ἀνδρῶν
εἵνεκα δαπάνῃ, but I can­not offer a close par­al­lel.
5. 48 Since Cleomenes had a long reign, his­tor­i­ans have been keen to
find a way of absolv­ing H. from a ser­i­ous error. A plaus­ible sug­ges­
tion was made by A. H. Griffiths, in A. Powell (ed.), Classical Sparta:
Techniques behind her Success (London and Norman, Okla., 1989),
54, namely to read εἰ for οὐ. But Christopher Pelling in E. Irwin
and E. Greenwood (eds.), Reading Herodotus: A Study of the Logoi
in Book 5 of Herodotus’ Histories (Cambridge, 2007), 192 cor­rectly
objec­ted that when a con­di­tional clause is fol­lowed by apodotic
ἀλλὰ the protasis is nor­mally neg­at­ive, which it would not be in the
present instance. In addi­tion τινα seems wrong after εἰ. Pelling
added ‘We would just have expec­ted πολλὸν χρόνον’. But I note that
οὐ πολλόν τινα χρόνον occurs at 5. 16. 4 and 9. 10. 2, and only a
minor trans­pos­i­tion would be required to restore identical
word-­order. The con­text, how­ever, invites a dif­fer­ent solu­tion: after
say­ing that if Dorieus had tol­er­ated the reign of Cleomenes, he would
have become king of Sparta, it would be logical to con­tinue ‘for
Cleomenes did not reign much longer’, i.e. read οὐ γὰρ ἔτι πολλὸν
χρόνον.
5. 49. 6 Powell deleted τῶνδε, per­haps object­ing to the pres­ence of
two pro­nouns in the same clause. If so, he should also have deleted
τῶνδε in §5, which is imme­di­ately fol­lowed by οἵδε. But all these
pro­nouns can be jus­ti­fied as deictic; the speaker is demon­strat­ing
with a map.

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5. 50. 3 εὐεπέα (A) does not seem quite right in the con­text of robust
dis­missal, and εὐπετέα (d) is clearly wrong. Powell emen­ded to
ὑγιέα, but one can do bet­ter. Maas pro­posed with a query εὐπρεπέα,
which is so obvi­ously super­ior that Powell would surely have adop­ted
it had he known; I infer that Maas made the con­jec­ture after 1948. But
he had been anti­cip­ated by Richards.
5. 52. 1 The trans­mit­ted read­ing ϲταθμοὶ τείνοντεϲ is prob­lem­atic;
edit­ors accept it on the assump­tion that the noun can mean ‘a day’s
march’, as it seems to at Xen. Anab. 1. 2. 10. They do not com­ment on
the par­ti­ciple. Powell’s emend­a­tion is worth con­sid­er­ing, since one
expects a par­ti­ciple in the dat­ive refer­ring to the trav­el­ler rather than
one in the nom­in­at­ive giv­ing banal inform­a­tion about the dis­tances
to be covered.
5. 52. 3 καταγωγέων has been defen­ded as an explan­at­ory gen­it­ive
with the mean­ing ‘con­sist­ing of’, but I find this implaus­ible and think
that con­fu­sion may have been caused by the entirely legit­im­ate expres­
sion καταγωγαὶ ϲταθμῶν in §6. The word was deleted by Powell,
fol­lowed by Maas, I think rightly. I have also con­sidered sup­ple­ment­ing
〈μετὰ〉, but am not at all con­fid­ent that this would be idio­matic.
5. 52. 4 καὶ . . . αὐτοῖϲι is dif ­fi­cult: the pro­noun does not refer to
para­sangs, and the ques­tion is whether it can refer to ϲταθμοὶ. Hude
and oth­ers have evid­ently thought so, but the sen­try posts are more
likely to have been at the stra­tegic points such as the river cross­ings;
hence Powell’s trans­pos­i­tion.
5. 53 ἀπαρτὶ is con­firmed by P. Oxy. 4455, but the other vari­ant
read­ings of this papyrus are prob­ably just unim­port­ant slips. Cf. also
on 2. 158. 4.
5. 55 τῷ ἑωυτοῦ πάθεϊ del. Jacobs. But if the words are a gloss, should
it not be in the accus­at­ive or gen­it­ive rather than the dat­ive offered by
the MSS? Macan wondered if the words had been intro­duced from
Thuc. 6. 55. 4. Wyttenbach’s attract­ive con­jec­ture restores a word used
by H. else­where (×7), and Maas under­lined it, hav­ing also put a query
against Hude’s brack­ets indic­at­ing the dele­tion.
5. 57. 2 Madvig’s res­tor­at­ ion 〈οὐ〉 πολλῶν τεων καὶ οὐκ
ἀξιαπηγήτων seems a trifle inel­eg­ant, even though it is a fact that
neg­at­ives some­times get lost in trans­mis­sion (see above on 4. 49. 1).
Blaydes tent­at­ively pro­posed ὀλίγων, as had Scheibe; this reads

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 Book V 101

nat­ur­ally and scribes did make this kind of error as well. Scheibe
expressed a slight pref­er­ence for ἀναξιαπηγήτων, ana­log­ous to
ἀναξιόλογοϲ; this would be lex­icis addendum.
5. 59 τιϲι was the read­ing of the arche­type, cor­rec­ted by Y and
Dobree to τριϲὶ in order to match the descrip­tions that fol­low. Not all
edit­ors agree; I do not see why Powell, fol­lowed by Maas, deleted
the word.
In the inscrip­tion ἐὼν is unsat­is­fact­ory. Powell’s dele­tion of the
word may have been promp­ted by the con­sid­er­at­ ion that the two
fol­low­ing inscrip­tions are des­ig­nated as hexa­met­ers, and if the first
were also met­rical one might expect the fact to be men­tioned when it
is intro­duced. I record some con­jec­tures in the appar­atus, with one
fur­ther sug­ges­tion of my own: one could con­sider νεῶν, since the
Teleboae were pir­ates and Amphitryon could have ded­ic­ated trophies
taken from their ships.
5. 61. 1 αὐτὸν is the read­ing of the MSS, but this pro­noun in the
accus­at­ive can­not be right. Schweighäuser sug­ges­ted αὐτὸϲ, which is
simple, but the res­ult­ing sense is little bet­ter, and though Hude
accep­ted it, Maas marked it with a query and Powell obel­ized. Stein
(1871) tent­at­ively offered αὐτόθ’, but once again a min­imal change
only yields poor sense; in 1894 he also men­tioned ἆθλον, which is
ingeni­ous (he does not make it clear whether this was his own idea).
Blaydes claimed epi­graphic sup­port for ὄντα μ’, not so close palaeo­
graph­ic­ally but bet­ter in the con­text.
5. 62. 2 πειρωμένοιϲι was deleted by Powell. But it sits well with
κατὰ τὸ ἰϲχυρὸν. The repe­ti­tion of the par­ti­ciple in the next clause is
not eleg­ant; per­haps Powell was right, but in a text designed for oral
present­at­ ion I am not con­fid­ent that dele­tion is essen­tial.
κάτοδοϲ, though deleted by Krüger, ensures clar­ity in the con­text
and does not need to be seen as a gloss res­ult­ing from the sub­sequent
κατιέναι. L. Weber, RivFil 68 (1940), 273, noted that Arist. Ath. Pol.
19. 3 has τὴν κάθοδον in an account that clearly depends on H.
The name Paionia is puzz­ling. Küster pro­posed to emend it to read
Parnes, which might be thought to receive sup­port from Aristotle,
Ath. Pol. 19. 3; but the prin­ciple of utrum in alterum makes this most
unlikely. Rhodes in his com­ment­ary ad loc. (p. 235) says ‘H. has given
the deme name in incor­rect form (which a non-­Athenian might have
done) . . .’. That explan­a­tion can­not be excluded, but it might be

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 102 Book V

bet­ter to fol­low L. A.H.-­S.’s sug­ges­tion of restor­ing a ref­er­ence to the

rather obscure deme Paionidai.
5. 63. 1 According to the MSS it is the Athenians whose tra­di­tion is
repor­ted here; many schol­ars accept Schweighäuser’s view that it
was a Spartan tra­di­tion. An error of this type in the MSS is not out
of the ques­tion; but K. Kinzl, RhMus2 118 (1975), 194 n. 8, wrongly
attrib­ut­ing the con­jec­ture to Valckenaer on the basis of FGH 3 b II
Suppl. notes 357 n. 3, argues strongly against it, on the ground that
incon­gru­it­ies res­ult from the emend­a­tion.
The seem­ingly unique name of the Spartan com­mander is given as
Anchimolios in the MSS of H., but Arist. Ath. Pol. 19. 3 and the
scholium on Ar. Lys. 1153 con­cur in the form Anchimolos, which
looks lin­guist­ic­ally prefer­able and is accep­ted in LGPN IIIA.
5. 63. 3 The descrip­tion of the Thessalian king is prob­lem­atic. The
MSS have Κονιαῖον, and G. Kip, Thessalische Studien (Neuenhaus in
Hannover, 1910), 139–41 made the simple emend­a­tion to Κονδαῖον,
which has inscrip­tional sup­port. Wachsmuth’s Γόνναιον pre­sum­ably
depends on the men­tion of the town Gonnos in 7. 173. 4, but is less
eco­nom­ical as an emend­a­tion. Maas, with­out refer­ring to this last
sug­ges­tion, wondered about [ἄνδρα] Κονιαῖον, ‘filium Coniae’, for
which LGPN IIIB does not offer any sup­port, and he also con­sidered
delet­ing both words.
5. 65. 4 There are sev­eral dif ­fi­culties in this sen­tence. In accord­ance
with a sug­ges­tion by Powell in the Lexicon s.v. ἐπὶ A II 4, I take ἐπὶ
τούτου to mean ‘in the light of this’.
τὠυτὸ is at best loose phras­ing, since the names men­tioned just
before are Codrus and Melanthus, not Peisistratus. Stein’s τὸ is
attract­ive; the anti­cip­a­tion of this in Y may be a lucky acci­dent.
We expect a verb mean­ing ‘he decided’, but the MSS have
‘he remembered’. Powell obel­ized; a bold approach would be
ἀπομνημονεύ〈ων ἠθέλη〉ϲε. In the state­ment of the name the accus­
at­ive is dif
­fi­cult to jus­tify syn­tactic­ally. I sup­pose one might con­sider
dele­tion of the def­in­ite art­icle, leav­ing the name itself in agree­ment
with the rather dis­tant οὔνομα. Van Herwerden’s dele­tion of both
words looks bet­ter; it has to be assumed that a gloss ori­gin­ally in the
nom­in­at­ive was clum­sily adjus­ted after incor­por­a­tion into the text.
5. 66. 1 Blaydes here restored nor­mal usage, cit­ing 7. 26. 3. Other
schol­ars have not shown aware­ness of the dif ­fi­culty, with the

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 Book V 103

hon­our­able excep­tion of K. Kinzl, RhMus2 118 (1975), 196 n. 18, who

wondered if λόγον ἔχει is equi­val­ent to λέγεται.
5. 68. 1 Sauppe’s sup­ple­ment, though gen­er­ally accep­ted, has been
res­isted by P. J. Bicknell, GRBS 23 (1982), 193–201, on the grounds
(a) when the names are given at the end of the § the sequence ἕτεροι
. . . ἄλλοι . . . ἕτεροι is ‘pecu­liar if not impossible’ (the usual dis­tinc­
tion between the two adject­ives is not observed), (b) why should two
tribes be named after the same animal? The lin­guistic obser­va­tion
may not be decis­ive but deserves to be taken ser­io ­ usly, since he
claimed not to have been able to find a par­al­lel. He con­cluded that
the men­tion of Choireatai should be deleted as ‘a vul­gar gloss’. But
N. F. Jones, Public Organization in Ancient Greece (Philadelphia,
1987), 125 n. 8, argued against, since H. him­self provides the eponyms,
mak­ing explan­a­tion unne­ces­sary, and in any case such a gloss would
have been a case of explain­ing obscurum per obscurius. I think Bicknell
may have used the term gloss in a non-­tech­nical sense, to describe an
addi­tion by a reader with a sala­cious turn of mind. With regard to
Bicknell’s scep­tical ques­tion (p. 196) ‘how could Kleisthenes have
accept­ably rechristened a phyle Choireatai, given the ubi­quit­ous
obscene con­nota­tion . . . of the word χοῖροϲ?’, I note that per­sonal
names formed from this root are not infre­quent; there is even a
Choireas attested from Naxos (admit­tedly of rather later date).
5. 69. 2 ἀπωϲμένον seems more nat­ur­ally to mean ‘rejec­ted’ than
‘excluded from’. The lat­ter would go well with the trans­mit­ted πάντων
but requires the trans­pos­i­tion πάντων τότε, as pro­posed by Schaefer.
Though trans­pos­i­tion is an easy rem­edy, so also is Bekker’s πάντωϲ,
‘he then used every means’, and ἀπωϲμένον can be taken in the sense
I prefer. I see no advant­age in Powell’s 〈ὑπὸ〉 πάντων; who would be
meant? Stein (1894) con­sidered either sup­ple­ment­ing 〈τῶν〉 πάντων
〈μεταδιδοὺϲ〉, com­par­ing 9. 33, or that τότε should be deleted or
trans­posed after πάντων. But he did not print any of these sug­ges­tions.
Powell’s dele­tion of δέκα τε . . . ϕυλὰϲ was per­haps based on the view
that the sen­tence is an unne­ces­sary duplic­a­tion (cf. 66. 2 above); but
Denniston, GP 260 noted the great fre­quency of τε δὴ in H.
5. 70. 2 Powell’s dele­tion seems neces­sary because the pro­nouns
τούτου and αὐτοῦ are out of place; the story has yet to be told. The
sen­tence looks more like a note by a reader or scho­li­ast than an
authorial after­thought. Transposition to the end of the next ch. is

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 104 Book V

hardly a rem­edy; Cleisthenes’ name would have to be inser­ted and

even so the intro­duct­ory particles would be inap­pro­pri­ate.
5. 72. 4 The name Timasitheos is recor­ded in the Peloponnese but not
Sparta accord­ing to LGPN IIIA. It is com­mon in Boeotia and
Thessaly. This man is no. 3 in LGPN s.v.; see L. Moretti, Olympionikai
(Rome, 1957), 140,146. So Palmerius’ emend­a­tion of the trans­mit­ted
ἀδελϕεὸν is con­firmed.
5. 74. 2 χώρουϲ τῆϲ ᾽Αττικῆϲ was deleted by Van Herwerden. The
words could well be a slightly mis­placed gloss on the Attic loc­al­it­ies
named earlier in the sen­tence. But Hude noted D’s vari­ant χώρηϲ
and wondered if it could be right. It con­forms to H.’s usage but could
also be an error of assim­il­at­ ion. See above on 1. 149.
5. 77. 4 Powell deleted ἐϲ τὰ προπύλαια τὰ, and the res­ult­ing text
reads well. But is that really neces­sary? One might expect him to have
objec­ted to the repeated men­tion of the acro­polis; if any dele­tion is to
be made, I would prefer to omit τὰ ἐν τῇ ἀκροπόλει, which looks
more like a gloss.
5. 79. 1 ἐϲ πολύϕημον is accep­ted by edit­ors as imme­di­ately recog­
niz­able Homeric usage, qual­i­fy­ing ἀγορὴν at Od. 2. 150. But it may
be doubted whether such a rare usage would have been eas­ily under­
stood. Since τῶν ἄγκιϲτα δέεϲθαι in §2 looks like ver­batim quo­ta­
tion from the oracle, I would sug­gest that πολύϕημον is also part of
the quo­ta­tion but incom­pletely trans­mit­ted; the sen­tence is much
bet­ter with 〈ἀγορὴν〉 sup­ple­men­ted.
5. 79. 2 In the clause begin­ning ὡϲ ἐπυνθάνοντο Powell deleted δὲ,
which there was no need to do, and then sug­ges­ted exem­pli gra­tia
repla­cing λεγόντων αὐτῶν with δεῖν αὐτοὺϲ. But λέγω in the sense
of ‘com­mand/instruct’ is well enough attested.
5. 80. 2 The present infin­it­ive ϲυμπέμπειν is accep­ted by edit­ors and
has to be taken as rep­res­ent­ing ‘we are send­ing’. Blaydes emen­ded to
the future, which is per­haps pedantic. The com­pound is ellipt­ical,
imply­ing that the Aeacidae will be sent along with a force. Editors
have failed to give suf ­fi­cient con­sid­er­a­tion to the fact that ABC all
read instead ϲυμπείθειν. This verb means ‘win by per­sua­sion’. The
vari­ant leads me to sus­pect that the text ori­gin­ally stated that the
Aeginetans had been per­suaded and were send­ing the Aeacidae; in
which case one should read ϲυμπειϲθέντεϲ πέμπειν.

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 Book V 105

Shuckburgh took ἔϕαϲαν to mean ‘prom­ise’, but I do not find that

very plaus­ible here.
5. 82. 3 and 9. 93. 3 In the expres­sion ἔϕερε καρπὸν the noun
is omit­ted here by A, whereas at 9. 93. 3 it is omit­ted by d. Hude
may have been right to delete the word in both pas­sages, on the
assump­tion that the abso­lute use of the verb was not under­stood and
thought to be in need of a stated object. Stein retained the word,
pre­sum­ably on the ground that omis­sions of single words are very
com­mon.
5. 85. 1 τούτουϲ A: τουτέων d. The word is almost cer­tainly cor­rupt;
it was deleted by Krüger, while Stein pro­posed διηκοϲίουϲ and
J. C. Vollgraff, Mnemosyne2, 23 (1895), 124–32, tried τριηκοϲίουϲ,
assum­ing that the abbre­vi­ation of that numeral in the form of
the let­ter tau caused con­fu­sion. He cited Naber’s excel­lent pro­posal
at 1. 59. 5 but in the present pas­sage his con­jec­ture is open to a
ser­i­ous objec­tion, because the num­ber of men in such a ship was
200, to judge from 7. 184 and 8. 17, cited by Stein, who emen­ded
accord­ingly. As an altern­at­ive the lat­ter thought of tak­ing τούτουϲ as
‘nur diejeni­gen’, which is uncon­vin­cing. L. Weber, RivFil 68
(1940), 274, deleted τούτουϲ οἳ, which is hardly com­pel­ling. Legrand
sug­ges­ted ὀλίγουϲ. which in my opin­ion would be improved by
the addi­tion of τινάϲ. One might also expect ἄνδραϲ ἐκλεκτοὺϲ;
the adject­ive is not used else­where by H. but he has the verb
ἐκλέγομαι.
5. 85. 2 ἐκ πάντων ἕνα λειϕθέντα ἀνακομιϲθῆναι αὐτὸν ἐϲ Φάληρον.
After ‘from the whole party one’ the emphatic pro­noun αὐτὸν seems
out of place, and Van Herwerden deleted it. But why would a reader or
glossator have added it? αὐτόθεν yields the required sense.
5. 86. 4 The Argives cut off the Athenians from their ships. τὸ ἀπὸ
τῶν νεῶν pre­sum­ably means ‘the path from their ships’. But the
object of the man­oeuvre was to pre­vent the Athenians from going
back to their ships, as is made clear in trans­la­tions. One may won­der
if the pre­pos­it­ ion should be ἐπὶ ‘towards’. Another pos­sib­il­ity would
be to delete τὸ, so that the Athenians are under­stood as the dir­ect
object of the par­ti­ciple.
5. 92 α 2 ϲϕίϲι αὐτοῖϲι as a second per­son-­pro­noun is odd. LSJ cite
as par­al­lel only Iliad 10. 398, which is depend­ent on 10. 311, a

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 106 Book V

prob­lem­atic pas­sage where Hector’s instruc­tions are repeated with

min­imal vari­ation by Dolon. It had pro­voked dis­cus­sion in antiquity,
as is clear from the scho­lia; the text was seen to be dif ­fi­cult and it is
uncer­tain whether the read­ing of the MSS con­sti­tutes a valid
pre­ced­ent. Stein, how­ever, found a par­al­lel in Attic, cit­ing Xen. Hell.
1. 7. 19, which invites the hypo­thesis that this might be a habit
acquired by H. through res­id­ence in Athens. At 3. 71. 5 ϲϕέαϲ as a
second-­per­son pro­noun is the read­ing of A, but ϲϕεα is gen­er­ally
pre­ferred there, per­haps wrongly. Schwyzer ii. 197 cites the present
pas­sage as unique in H., thereby miss­ing the vari­ant at 3. 71. 5, but
adds fur­ther Attic examples from Andoc. 2. 8 and Isocr. 4. 106 (this
last a first-­per­son instance).
αὐτοῦ is the read­ing of A. If cor­rect it refers loosely to the exper­i­ence
of gov­ern­ment by tyr­ants (so Legrand), or con­ceiv­ably could be taken
as local, ‘there (in Sparta)’. αὐτοὶ is the read­ing of the other branch of
the tra­di­tion; but the emphatic pro­noun, which was appro­pri­ate in the
pre­ced­ing sen­tence, seems not quite so apt here. Wilamowitz deleted,
which may be right, but I think the text reads bet­ter if there is a ref­er­
ence back to τυράννων in the preceding sentence; αὐτῶν would
provide it and cre­ate a nicely bal­anced anti­thesis, and this was pro­posed
by L. Weber, RivFil 68 (1940), 275. But περὶ αὐτοῦ in the next clause
does not go so well with Weber’s sug­ges­tion.
5. 92 ζ 3 τά περ πρὸϲ Θραϲυβούλου ὀπώπεε is oddly expressed.
Stein noted ‘sc. ποιεύμενα’ and trans­lat­ors make this expli­cit. As errors
of omis­sion are not infre­quent, one is strongly temp­ted to sup­ple­ment.
5. 92 η 5 Editors seem gen­er­ally con­tent with οὐκ ὦν (or οὐκῶν)
παύϲεϲθε κτλ., and 4. 118. 2 is a par­al­lel of sorts. But A, and C for
what it is worth, insert ἢν μὴ, which with the trivial adjust­ment
required to obtain a sub­junct­ive in the verbs that fol­low, and only
light punc­tu­ation after Ἱππίην, yields excel­lent sense. οὐκῶν is then
pos­it­ive; it has to be admit­ted that Denniston, GP 438–9 does not cite
pos­it­ive οὐκῶν from H., but there are a few examples in other fifth-­
cen­tury prose authors. Blaydes tried ἢν ὦν μὴ, and I have wondered
if instead of remov­ing οὐκ one should replace it with νῦν, because νῦν
ὦν is found in sim­ilar con­texts in H. (see the Lexicon s.v. ὦν I. 4).
5. 100. 1 The spelling of Koressos is uncer­tain: does the ter­min­a­tion have
a single or a double sigma? Both are epi­graph­ic­ally attested; see R. Meriç
et al., Die Inschriften von Ephesos, vii/1 (Bonn, 1981), 13, no. 3013.

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 Book V 107

5. 102. 3 Powell wished to make H. state the num­ber of Eualkidas’

vic­tor­ies by insert­ing 〈τέϲϲεραϲ〉, but although Maas con­curred I do
not believe that this is neces­sary; it is not con­sidered by O. Poltera,
Simonides lyr­i­cus: Testimonia und Fragmente (Basel, 2008), 53–4 on
T54, or by J. H. Molyneux, Simonides: A Historical Study (Wauconda,
Ill., 1992), 45–6.
αὐτῶν is fol­lowed in d by αὐτίκα. Most edit­ors omit the word, and
the sense is com­plete with­out it. But with it one can render ‘Those
who fled from the battle at once . . .’, which is also accept­able, with the
implic­at­ ion that those who delayed or hes­it­ated were lost. On the
other hand edit­ors who reject the word pre­sum­ably take it to be a
faulty vari­ant, per­haps caused by a copy in which αὐτῶν was not
clearly legible, and this view is by no means absurd.
5. 104 and 7. 98 Nöldeke’s pro­posal to read Εἰρώμου (= Hiram) in
place of the trans­mit­ted Ϲιρώμου has found favour with the edit­ors
of LGPN i s.v., which refers to O. Masson, Études chyp­ri­otes (Paris,
1983), 319, no. 320. But the case is not expounded in detail there, and
as the name occurs twice in our text in the same form with­out vari­
ants I am pre­pared to believe if neces­sary that H. made a mis­take in
his attempt to deal with a for­eign name. Recently M. Egetmeyer, Le
Dialecte grec ancien en Chypre (Berlin, 2010), 377, has stated that
Siromos in a syl­lab­aric text is con­firmed by the lit­er­ary evid­ence of H.
Identification with the Phoenician name Hiram is in his view prob­
lem­atic because the ini­tial con­son­ant of the Semitic name can­not
cor­res­pond to the ini­tial sigma in Greek.
5. 106. 1 τὸν . . . πολλὸν was deleted by Stein. He pre­sum­ably felt that
the clum­si­ness of includ­ing the king’s name in the sub­or­din­ate clause
was not accept­able. The lengthy deten­tion of Histiaeus, how­ever, is a
fact that can per­fectly well be recor­ded here for the bene­fit of the
reader/listener. But a gentler medi­cine is simply to remove the words
ὁ Δαρεῖοϲ.
ἀπεϲτέρηϲε is A’s read­ing, whereas d offers the per­fect. Editors are
not agreed; I have ven­tured to prefer the aor­ist because fre­quent use
of the per­fect was an obses­sion with Byzantine liter­ati and there­fore
all too likely to be wrongly intro­duced by a copy­ist.
5. 111. 4 From what Krüger and Stein say it is clear that they would
have pre­ferred some form of πρόϲϕοροϲ (×2 in H.) rather than
προϲϕερήϲ, and I pro­pose to restore it, fol­low­ing a hint from Macan.

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I note that the error may well have occurred because of the prox­im­ity
of the verb προϲϕέρεϲθαι. Nenci attrib­utes a super­lat­ive adject­ive to
Stein, which I have not been able to loc­ate, but in any case the choice
offered by Onesilos to his squire lies between two altern­at­ives, not
more; so a com­par­at­ive seems right.
5. 117 If future research led to the con­clu­sion that the arche­type of H.
was a minus­cule MS, which is by no means assured, the cor­rup­tion
pos­tu­lated by Powell could be partly explained as the mis­un­der­
stand­ing of an abbre­vi­ation: μὲν was often abbre­vi­ated by writ­ing the
let­ter mu fol­lowed above the line by an angu­lar sign ∠, whereas μίαν
would have had the inflec­tion indic­ated by a very sim­ilar sign (the
iota would have been writ­ten sep­ar­ately). If instead one pos­ited
des­cent of our extant MSS from two minus­cule cop­ies, then one
would have to sup­pose the same error to have occurred twice inde­
pend­ently; this, how­ever, is a trifle far-­fetched, since the use of abbre­
vi­ations was not as com­mon as might have been expec­ted in a soci­ety
where writ­ing mater­ial was extremely expens­ive. One might con­sider
read­ing μὲν μίαν.
5. 122. 2 αὐτόϲ τε Ὑμαίηϲ caused Powell dif ­fi­culty and he deleted
the particle. Other edit­ors do not seem to have been bothered, and I
see noth­ing wrong with the particle. But it has to be recor­ded that d
reads μὲν, and Maas under­lined that entry in the appar­atus, with­out
indic­at­ing what sig­ni­fic­ance he attached to it. However, it seems to
me that this vari­ant is prob­ably an erro­neous anti­cip­a­tion of its
occur­rence in the fol­low­ing sen­tence, and the objec­tion­able fea­ture in
the text as trans­mit­ted is the repe­ti­tion of the name Hymaios at a
point where it is quite unne­ces­sary in con­junc­tion with αὐτόϲ, and
dele­tion yields a smoother text.
5. 126. 2 Maas marked a lacuna at the end of the final sen­tence and
noted in the mar­gin ‘nur Skizze’. He also wrote out the par­al­lel pas­sage
in Thuc. 4. 102. 2. In a let­ter to Powell dated 22 November 1938, which
is of some bio­graph­ical interest and is pre­served in the Powell
Archive at Churchill College Cambridge, he added to his obser­va­tion
about the lacuna the fol­low­ing com­ment: ‘die ein­zige tex­tkrit­ische
Bemerkung in meinem Herodot, die auf eigener Beobachtung ber­uht’.

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6. 3 Editors all seem happy to accept asyn­deton of the sen­tence begin­

ning οὐδέν τι πάντωϲ. Maas marked it ‘Asynd.!! cf. 6, 132.1, 20 etc.
(Stein)’. Stein also com­pared 6. 21. 2, 6. 52. 4 and Plat. Rep. 351 a.
Though it is only a sub­ject­ive feel­ing I find this example of asyn­deton
very harsh (Krüger went so far as to declare it ‘uner­träg­lich’), and I
also think it worth while to raise a ques­tion about the sequence of
thought: should the gen­it­ive abso­lute be attached to the pre­ced­ing
sen­tence, with the next one intro­duced by e.g. 〈οὕτωϲ〉? Alternatively
the gen­it­ive abso­lute might intro­duce the next sen­tence more
smoothly with the simple addi­tion of a con­nect­ing particle, as Van
Herwerden sug­ges­ted (he also wondered about dele­tion of ἐδειμάτου
τοὺϲ Ἴωναϲ). My own con­jec­ture is designed to cre­ate a suit­able
con­trast with the begin­ning of the next sen­tence.
6. 12. 4 οἷα ϲτρατιὴ is the para­dosis (Hude records that in d the
noun is in the dat­ive, but that would be dif ­fi­cult to trans­late and
seems to be no more than a trivial slip; I have not felt it neces­sary
to check whether in fact it is found in all the con­stitu­ent MSS of
the group); but it is hardly sat­is­fact­ory. ὠϲ εἰ ἀϲτρατηίηϲ ἐούϲηϲ,
Powell’s adjust­ment of a pro­posal by Dobree, intro­duces a word not
used else­where by H. and is rather drastic any­way. A gentler
medi­cine, sug­ges­ted by ch. 43. 2, is to sup­ple­ment 〈πεζὴ〉.
6. 13. 1 ἐνταῦθα δὴ κτλ. The syn­tax in this period is far from clear,
and con­scien­tious trans­lat­ors struggle. Good sense could be restored
by the inser­tion after the name Syloson of a par­ti­ciple to mean ‘being
reminded of’, and Godley in fact rendered ‘they bethought them of
that mes­sage’. Stein in 1871 saw no prob­lem; in 1894 he took οἱ
Ϲάμιοι to be a restate­ment of οἱ ϲτρατηγοὶ τῶν Ϲαμίων, but that
does not seem to me to remove the dif ­fi­culty. It is very sur­pris­ing that

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 110 Book VI

Powell did not pro­pose an emend­a­tion, since his ver­sion reads: ‘And
when the Samian cap­tains per­ceived that the Ionians did thus, then
they received at the hand of Aeaces the son of Syloson the pro­pos­als
which he sent them . . .’. (my ital­ics; these words had in fact been
sup­plied already by Shuckburgh). A sup­ple­ment such as 〈ἀκούϲαντεϲ〉
or 〈δεξάμενοι〉, the lat­ter imply­ing accept­ance of the pro­pos­als, may
be the right solu­tion. κείνουϲ should be deleted.
6. 21. 2 In the account of the Athenian reac­tion to Phrynichus’
tragedy the pre­cise mean­ing of the lac­on­ic­ally worded clause
describ­ing the pro­hib­i­tion has been debated, as is also made clear by
dif­fer­ences between trans­la­tions. The prob­lem is dis­cussed by M.
Muelke in S. Goedde and T. Heinze (eds.), Skenika: Beiträge zum
anti­ken Theater und seiner Rezeption (Darmstadt, 2000), 233–46. He
makes a good case for tak­ing the verb χρήϲαϲθαι in the sense ‘sich
einer Sache zu bedienen’ and the clause as a whole to mean ‘die lit­er­
ar­ische Benutzung des Dramas . . . wurde für die Zukunft untersagt’.
One might, how­ever, expect the Athenians to decree not just that
Phrynichus’ play but all men­tion of the dis­aster should be avoided in
lit­er­ary com­pos­i­tion (and in other con­texts?). I am not aware that any
emend­a­tions have been pro­posed, but I have wondered if per­haps
τρώματι or even πρήγματι might be con­sidered.
6. 23. 3 ἑωυτῶν was deleted by Hude, a decision per­haps based in
part on its omis­sion by d. The pro­noun is not as emphatic here as in
most instances, but I would sug­gest that a sim­ilar usage is to be seen
below at 35. 2, where Miltiades is said to be sit­ting ἐν τοῖϲι προθύροιϲι
ἑωυτοῦ.
6. 31. 1 Van Herwerden, fol­lowed by Powell, deleted ὅκωϲ . . . νήϲων,
pre­sum­ably object­ing to the ple­onasm of the fol­low­ing words ὡϲ
ἑκάϲτην αἱρέοντεϲ, which are idio­matic (see the Lexicon s.v. ὡϲ H
2), and the awk­ward­ness of λάβοι fol­lowed by a plural. The res­ult­ing
asyn­deton is harsh but eas­ily remedied by sup­ple­ment­ing ἑκάϲτην
〈δ’〉. Stein may have been indul­ging in spe­cial plead­ing when he
noted ‘αἱρέοντεϲ schliesst an λάβοι an, = ἥρεον δὲ’. If the words
objec­ted to are a gloss, it is odd that they are couched in idiom
char­ac­ter­istic of H., with ὅκωϲ instead of ὅτε, which would have
been nor­mal for read­ers used to Attic or koine. I won­der if this is
another case of col­lo­quial redund­ancy. An easy solu­tion would be
to read λάβοιεν. To delete the par­ti­cipial phrase as a gloss would

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 Book VI 111

be implaus­ible, since Stein poin­ted to com­par­able expres­sions at

1. 114. 2 and 6. 79. 1.
6. 33. 1 αὐτοῖϲι τοῖϲι Πέρϲαιϲι is unduly emphatic; one does not
need both the pro­noun and the noun, and it is legit­im­ate to ask
whether the lat­ter should be deleted. If retained it would be yet
another instance of col­lo­quial ple­onaam.
Ϲηλυμβρία was stated by K. Meisterhans, Grammatik der attischen
Inschriften (Berlin, 1900), 84, con­firmed by Threatte i. 495, to be the
form of the name found in offi­cial doc­u­ments of the fifth and fourth
cen­tur­ies, whereas one funer­ary inscrip­tion of c.400 has Ϲαλυβρίαν.
Pasquali, Storia della trad­iz­ione e crit­ica del testo, 2nd edn. (Florence,
1952), 317 with n. 4, argued for the form with­out mu, which is
repor­ted from some of the less author­it­at­ive MSS of H. (P, Bpc, and r).
But des­pite the approval of Maas he seems to have been wrong. The
omis­sion of the let­ter mu is more likely to reflect the Byzantine form
of the name, as shown e.g. in the ex-­lib­ris of Ioannes Chortasmenos,
who had become met­ro­pol­itan of that city in 1431, in MS Vat. Reg.
gr. 6, fo. 2r, cited by H. Hunger, Johannes Chortasmenos (Wiener
Byzantinische Studien, 7; Vienna, 1969), 26.
6. 33. 3 In the con­text it makes no sense to say that the Cyzicenes had
become sub­jects of the Great King ‘still fur­ther back in the past’. Dobree
saw that ‘still’ had to be replaced by ‘year’, but H.’s usage at 3. 47. 2 and
6. 95. 1 makes it clear that the trans­mit­ted adverb should be an adject­ive.
6. 35. 2 In the final sen­tence of this § ἐδέοντο αὐτοῦ . . . μιν seems
ple­onastic. Editors offer explan­at­ ions which are plaus­ible with­out
being entirely con­vin­cing. Since the next sen­tence tells us that
Miltiades respon­ded to the request with­out delay, I have wondered
whether αὐτοῦ 〈ταύτῃ〉, ‘there and then’, should be con­sidered.
6. 37. 2 Hude recor­ded Henri Estienne’s τί θέλει for τὸ θέλει and Maas
under­lined this entry in his copy. But ref­er­ence to the Lexicon shows
that there are pas­sages such as 5. 80. 1 where the tra­di­tion is unan­im­ous
in read­ing τὸ; Cooper–Krüger 51. 8. 5B (p. 2300) cite 8. 40. 1 and 9. 54.
2. In the present pas­sage Powell may have been right to sus­pect a lacuna
to be filled by an expres­sion such as καὶ ἀπορεόντων. But πλανωμένων
is not so dif­fer­ent in mean­ing that I feel the need to emend.
6. 41. 1 ὥϲπερ in a tem­poral sense is unique in H. accord­ing to the
Lexicon, and par­al­lels offered by LSJ do not strike me as con­vin­cing.

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All we need is ὡϲ, assum­ing that περ is a cor­rup­tion induced by the

first syl­lable of the pre­ced­ing παρεόντων. Scott (p. 183) was on the
right track when he said ‘It is prob­ably equi­val­ent to ὡϲ.’
6. 46. 3 ἐκ Ϲκαπτῆϲ ὕληϲ is the read­ing adop­ted by mod­ern edit­ors
from A, but the loc­a­tion is prob­ably bet­ter indic­ated by ἐν with the
dat­ive as in d. On the assump­tion that the notion of proven­ance is
still dom­in­ant after the pre­ced­ing ἐκ Stein accep­ted ἐκ as jus­ti­fied by
προϲήιε. The RE art­icle sug­gests that Ϲκαπτηϲύλη as in d is a pos­sible
form. It receives sup­port from Steph. Byz. s.v. and prob­ably from
Marcellinus, Vita Thucydidis 14, plus epi­graphic evid­ence in the form
of the adject­ive Ϲκαπτηϲυλικόϲ (IG3 i. 376, ll. 105, 118, prob­ably
dat­ing from 413/12 or 411/10.
Blaydes adjus­ted the word-­order to read μετάλλων τῶν χρυϲέων.
As trans­mit­ted the art­icle and adject­ive come as a kind of after­
thought or sup­ple­ment after the pre­ced­ing sen­tence. They could well
be a gloss, which edit­ors seem not have con­sidered as a pos­sib­il­ity.
One might also think of read­ing χρυϲοῦ.
6. 56 As Krüger noted, the pos­i­tion of aαὐτόν raises doubts because
it appears to be emphatic; so a sup­ple­ment such as Bresler’s is prob­
ably the right solu­tion rather than trans­pos­ing the pro­noun to a later
pos­it­ ion in the clause.
6. 57. 1 After τῶν τυθέντων d adds προβάτων, but mod­ern edit­ors
do not favour this vari­ant. Though the word is not essen­tial it makes
good sense and does not cre­ate an unwel­come repe­ti­tion.
6. 58. 2 ἀριθμῷ seems to be gen­er­ally under­stood as mean­ing ‘a
cer­tain num­ber’. I find this implaus­ible, as did Blaydes, who sug­ges­ted
ἀνὰ ἑκατὸν, appar­ently in sub­sti­tu­tion of the rel­at­ively rare but
per­fectly accept­able ἀναγκαϲτοὺϲ. When a num­ber is spe­cified in
expres­sions of this kind the accus­at­ive ἀριθμὸν is nor­mal. Scott
(p. 249) cited Thuc. 2. 72. 3 δένδρα ἀριθμῷ, which is per­haps
adequate as a par­al­lel, but I note that Stein said ‘fehlt wohl ῥητῷ’; I
would slightly prefer to restore 〈τεταγμένῳ〉.
6. 58. 3 κατίϲταται, as pro­posed by Krüger, seems right; the uncom­
poun­ded verb does not yield good sense.
οὐδ’ ἀρχαιρεϲίη ϲυνίζει is puzz­ling. If the noun is cor­rectly trans­
mit­ted, the verb will not do; so Van Herwerden, fol­lowed by Powell,
wished to sub­sti­tute γερουϲίη. If they were right the cause of the

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pre­sumed cor­rup­tion would be obscure, and I see no objec­tion to the

idea that after the death of a king elec­tions to office were sus­pen­ded
along with other busi­ness. It is easier to retain the tech­nical term
offered by the MSS, which is intel­li­gible, and sup­ple­ment along the
lines sug­ges­ted by Van Herwerden, who tried οὐδ’ ἀρχαὶ οὐδε
γερουϲίη ϲυνίζει.
6. 68. 3 There is a slight dif­fi­culty in Demaratus’ earn­est request to his
mother. Since Cooper–Krüger 47. 12. 5C (p. 2056) do not cite any
exact par­al­lel for the exten­sion of the use of the gen­it­ive case in such
requests, it is pos­sible that πρὸϲ has fallen out of the text. Stein cited
par­al­lels from the Odyssey where the verb used in sim­ilar con­texts is
λίϲϲομαι. But I do not detect other Homeric influ­ence in this pas­sage.
6. 69. 2 Here Van Herwerden, fol­lowed by Powell and Maas, deleted
the phrase ἀπὸ τῆϲ πρώτηϲ. It is cer­tainly very odd to say ‘on the
third day after the first’, but one has to ask why any reader should
have inter­pol­ated the words com­plained of. I think it likely that a
scribe in a moment of dis­trac­tion sub­sti­tuted a second numeral in
place of a noun refer­ring to one of the main fea­tures of the mar­riage
cere­mony, e.g. the ban­quet.
6. 69. 5 Since the alsolute use of τίκτω is found in H. it is pos­sible
that παῖδαϲ should be deleted.
6. 72. 2 Leutychidas was caught in the act of accept­ing a bribe.
According to the MSS the coins were in his hand (χειρὶ), but then
fol­lows the unsuit­able adject­ive διπλῇ. Wesseling’s con­jec­ture, with a
modi­fic­a­tion of the accent due to Platnauer, CR2 10 (1960), 102, is
gen­er­ally accep­ted: χειρῖδι πλέῃ, a glove full of coins. As the Greeks
seem not to have had pock­ets in their gar­ments this makes good sense.
Nenci attempts to retain the men­tion of a hand by read­ing χειρὶ δὴ,
but I doubt whether the particle would have been used in this way.
6. 74. 1 Θεϲϲαλίην is the read­ing of all the MSS, but D. Hereward,
CR2 1 (1951), 146, sug­ges­ted Ϲελλαϲίην, a place near Sparta which
would have been con­veni­ent for Cleomenes to use as a base, espe­
cially as he planned to be act­ive in Arcadia. The con­jec­ture is ingeni­ous
and may well be right. One con­sid­er­a­tion which mil­it­ates against it,
men­tioned by Scott (p. 287) but ignored by Nenci, is that the prox­
im­ity of Sellasia to Sparta might have exposed the exiled king to the
danger of kid­nap.

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6. 75. 2 The obvi­ously cor­rect read­ing λυθεὶϲ has been found so far
only in Bpc, whereas the arche­type had αὖθιϲ, a mis­take arising from
mis­read­ing of uncial script. While such errors are not at all rare, this
example of a cor­rec­tion is inter­est­ing because it would appear to be
one of the rel­at­ively few cases where a copy­ist of the middle Byzantine
period appears to have suc­ceeded in remov­ing an error in the text. By
con­trast the fif­teenth-­cen­tury refugee Andronicus Callistus, the
scribe of S, who quite often suc­ceeded, failed in this pas­sage.
6. 76. 1 Denniston, GP 428 accepts ὦν here, which is the read­ing of d.
But A has δ’ ὦν, which is very suit­able. As Denniston him­self says on
p. 464, δ’ ὦν is ‘often in H., com­ing back to what is cer­tain after a
digres­sion, long or short, about a debat­able detail’. In this case the
debat­able detail is the under­ground course of the river Erasinos.
6. 77. 2 ἀέλικτοϲ, which does not fig­ure in DGE, was com­men­ded by
Wilamowitz, Die Textgeschichte der griech­is­chen Lyriker (Abh.
Göttingen2, 4/3; Berlin, 1900), 76 n. 1: ‘ἀέλικτοϲ die Recension A,
τριέλικτοϲ die R. Selbst die Anbeter von A neh­men R auf; aber wie
sollte ein Schreibfehler oder eine Correctur erzeu­gen was die später
anstössige nor­male Länge von ὄϕιϲ und eine so rare Form wie
ἀέλικτοϲ (aus ανϝ, αϝϝ, αϝ) bietet?’ Macan and Nenci both accep­ted
the rare word. For intens­ive alpha K.-­B. ii. 324 cite a num­ber of
examples. Schwyzer i. 433 has no ref­er­ence to this word but cites
F. Solmsen, Beiträge zur griech­is­chen Wortforschung (Strasburg,
1909), i. 16–24, but there too the word is miss­ing from the dis­cus­sion.
6. 79. 1 Cleomenes announces to the trapped Argives that he ‘has
their ransom’. The major­ity of edit­ors and trans­lat­ors seem not to
have been puzzled, but I feel bound to ask what the king’s words
mean in the con­text. The notion that he was claim­ing to have col­lec­ted
the money already implies an extraordin­ary tele­scop­ing of the
nar­rat­ive; at the very least one would expect not ἔχειν but ἐϲχηκέναι.
Scott (p. 301) sees that there may be a lacuna but does not attempt to
sug­gest what ought to fill it. What should we expect in the con­text? I
offer some pos­sib­il­it­ies. (i) He was will­ing to assess or pro­pose a
fig­ure. But if the text of the next sen­tence is sound and not an inter­
pol­ated note, we are told that there was a fixed tar­iff. (ii) He had been
author­ized to accept a ransom. This would require drastic emend­a­
tion, but can­not be abso­lutely excluded. (iii) He said that each of
them must be in a pos­i­tion to pay a ransom. This could be achieved

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 Book VI 115

by sup­ple­ment­ing αὐτῶν 〈ἕκαϲτον δεῖν〉 ἔχειν, and this is the solu­

tion I would advoc­ate.
6. 82. 2 The flame emer­ging from the statue is described by a
com­pound verb ini­tially and in the first of the two con­di­tional clauses,
but there is uncer­tainty about the verb in the second of those two
clauses. A has λάμψαντοϲ, and d once again offers the com­pound
verb. Even though there has been a change from indic­at­ive to par­­
ticiple this could be an example of the idiom by which the sim­plex
form of a verb fol­lows a com­pound, as exem­pli­fied in K.-­G. ii. 568,
where, how­ever, examples from H. are not cited. For a mod­ern
dis­cus­sion, again with­out examples from H., see R. Renehan, Studies
in Greek Texts (Hypomnemata, 43; Göttingen, 1976), 11–22. But cf.
1. 192. 3.
6. 84. 2 κελεύειν was deleted by Scaliger, fol­lowed by Cobet and
Powell but not other edit­ors. The syn­tax is much smoother with­out it.
I sup­pose one might pre­serve the trans­mit­ted word­ing by the use of
heavy punc­tu­ation after ἐϲβάλλειν, so that a new concept requir­ing a
change of con­struc­tion could then fol­low. But ϲϕέαϲ δὲ is closely
linked to αὐτοὺϲ μὲν, and in any case one hes­it­ates to pro­pose
rem­ed­ies that depend on punc­tu­ation, which was almost cer­tainly no
more than rudi­ment­ary in fifth-­cen­tury books. Since the pas­sage is
describ­ing a plan which involved a request it is easy to ima­gine that
asso­ci­ation of ideas might have led a scribe to sup­ply the notion lurk­
ing in the back­ground.
6. 85. 2 The name Theasidas is accep­ted by LGPN IIIA, p. 200, with a
men­tion of Wade-­Gery’s sug­ges­tion of Thearidas, which is well
attested in this volume, whereas Theasidas would be unique. So
Cobet’s con­jec­ture, based on the occur­rence of the name, admit­tedly
in the slightly cor­rupt form Theatridas, in Clement of Alexandria,
Stromateis 5. 14. 133, turns out to be jus­ti­fied. Hude reports that it is
the read­ing of Bpc any­way. Since it is incon­ceiv­able that any medi­eval
or Renaissance reader would have had the pros­opo­graph­ical know­
ledge needed in order to make this adjust­ment, it looks as if we are
deal­ing here with the pre­ser­va­tion of a cor­rect read­ing in the arche­
type that no other copy­ist took the trouble to notice.
6. 86 β 2 In Glaukos’ reply to the men from Miletus the infin­it­ive
εἰδέναι is dif­fi­cult. Powell deleted it, but it does not look like a gloss;
Cooper–Krüger 55. 3. 16B (p. 2532) take it to be con­sec­ut­ive. The

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 116 Book VI

gen­eral sense is ‘Nothing in what you say brings me round to acknow­

ledge the deposit’. One feels bound to ask why H. did not write 〈ὥϲτε〉
and whether εἰδέναι is the most suit­able verb. ϲυνειδέναι might be
bet­ter, to indic­ate acknow­ledge­ment. Nenci prints a comma after
περιϕέρει, but I can­not see how that helps.
6. 88 The clause begin­ning ἐν τῇ was rewrit­ten by Powell so as to read
ἐν τῇ ἡμέρῃ αὐτὸϲ τε ἐπιχειρήϲει καὶ ἐκείνουϲ ἥκειν δεήϲει
βοηθέονταϲ. His inser­tion of αὐτὸϲ improves the anti­thet­ical bal­ance
in the clause but is hardly essen­tial. The point where doubt arises is ἐϲ
τὴν, cor­rec­ted by Stein from ἐϲ ἣν; should ἐν τῇ be repeated, and if not,
what is the syn­tax? Those two words could be an inter­pol­a­tion res­ult­ing
from medi­eval/mod­ern usage, and ini­tially I was inclined to agree with
Powell with regard to this detail (whereas Macan had accep­ted what he
called ‘clumsy gram­mar’, and Nenci para­phrased). But at 7. 8. δ 1 τὸν
χρόνον ἐϲ τὸν ἥκειν δεῖ looks like an adequate par­al­lel.
6. 91. 2 ὡϲ A: om. d. C. S. Welser, Mnemosyne4, 63 (2010), 1–22, esp.
8 n. 13, has argued that ὡϲ with a future par­ti­ciple indic­ates non-­
ful­fil­ment or sig­ni­fic­ant delay of the action in ques­tion. This might
argue for dele­tion here, but Welser does not take that step, and on
p. 10 he notes ch. 111. 1 below as an appar­ent excep­tion because
battle does there begin with­out delay.
6. 92. 1 τοὺϲ αὐτοὺϲ καὶ is the read­ing of d and seems accept­able. A
has τούτουϲ οὓϲ καὶ. Blakesley tried τούτουϲ αὐτοὺϲ τοὺϲ καὶ
πρότερον, ‘Ἀργείουϲ, which seems a bit clumsy, since the demon­
strat­ive pro­noun looks out of place. But per­haps the Argives should
be men­tioned with the def­in­ite art­icle.
6. 92. 2 Hude accep­ted the read­ing of d and omit­ted ὦν ϲϕι. But δὴ
ὦν is in order; see Denniston, GP 470. The ques­tion is whether ϲϕι
can stand where it does; Legrand pre­ferred ταῦτά ϲϕι. Transposition
is not neces­sary if we choose to recog­nize here a case of Wackernagel’s
law.
In the next sen­tence Stein and suc­cess­ive edit­ors favour the read­
ing of d, omit­ting ἀνὴρ τῷ οὔνομα and adding ἀνὴρ before
πεντάεθλον. This addi­tion, how­ever, is only found in D, not the
other mem­bers of the Roman fam­ily, and Maas treated it as a con­jec­
ture. If so, it was a good one. But I have decided that with a minor
adjust­ment and trans­pos­i­tion A’s text is accept­able, as fol­lows:
ϲτρατηγόϲ, ἀνὴρ πεντάεθλον ἐπαϲκήϲαϲ, τῷ οὔνομα Εὐρυβάτηϲ.

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 Book VI 117

Stein noted a par­al­lel for ἀνὴρ κτλ. at 9. 105. Deletion of ᾧ/τῷ, leav­
ing οὔνομα as an accus­at­ive of respect, may be tempt­ing, but it looks
as if H. availed him­self of this usage only with geo­graph­ical names.
6. 95. 2 At the begin­ning of the second period ἐνθεῦτεν in Cr may be
scribal con­jec­ture, made inde­pend­ently to cor­rect the obvi­ously
faulty ἐνθέντεϲ of AD, pro­voked no doubt by the par­ti­ciple in the
pre­vi­ous clause, and this was Maas’s view. ἔνθεν would be a sim­pler
change, but in H. it seems to mean ‘from where’ intro­du­cing a sub­­
ordin­ate clause or oth­er­wise used in paired phras­ing, ‘on this side
and on that’. Maas appears also to have con­sidered ἐνθένδε.
6. 97. 2 κατανήϲαϲ is the read­ing of the MSS; this verb is not cer­tainly
attested else­where, and one would expect the com­pound in ἐπι‑­,
which H. does use. Powell’s καταγίϲαϲ pre­sup­poses an error which
could occur fairly eas­ily as a mis­read­ing of uncial or minus­cule script.
6. 98. 3 There is a com­plex prob­lem here. The quo­ta­tion from the
oracle is omit­ted by A and was deleted by Stein; the remarks inter­
pret­ing the names of the Persian kings were deleted by Wesseling.
But H. was so clearly inter­ested in oracles and lan­guages that one
should be cau­tious in athet­iz­ing. I prefer to think that we have here an
author’s addi­tion, not integ­rated into the con­text. It is worth
record­ing that Maas approved of Cook’s emend­a­tion of the sen­tence
about the kings, with­out which it is hard to see what mean­ing any­one
could have attached to it; the inter­pret­at­ ions offered can plaus­ibly be
attrib­uted to a period when lin­guistic inquiry was in its infancy. The
cor­rup­tion began with a mis­taken trans­pos­it­ ion of two words, an
error of a trivial and com­mon type.
6. 101. 1 The epi­graphic evid­ence assembled by W. P. Wallace,
Hesperia, 16 (1947), 115–46, esp. 132–3, sug­gests that the name of the
third loc­al­ity men­tioned here should per­haps be writ­ten Αἰγαλ-­with
alpha in the second syl­lable (the name is abbre­vi­ated and one can­not
be quite sure of the cor­rect form; the prob­lem recurs at 107. 2). The
inscrip­tions he refers to give the names of demes in Eretria, and
incid­ent­ally indic­ate that Temenos need not be altered to Tamunai,
which in any case would have been a less con­veni­ent loc­a­tion; so
Valckenaer’s emend­a­tion no longer fig­ures in the appar­atus.
6. 102. 1 A has κατέργοντεϲ, which if cor­rect ought to mean some­thing
like ‘put­ting great pres­sure on’; d offers κατεργάζοντεϲ, and if this were

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 118 Book VI

a middle form the mean­ing could con­ceiv­ably be ‘get­ting the upper

hand’. But that is not what is hap­pen­ing at this point in the nar­rat­ive; the
real pres­sure began when the Persians landed in Attica. Scott (p. 357)
describes as attract­ive Dietsch’s κατοργῶντεϲ, which he trans­lates
‘flushed with pride’; I think ‘full of enthu­si­asm’ might be more accur­ate.
LSJ cite the word only from Hesychius and Photius, and the former
glosses it by ὑπερακμάζειν with­out nam­ing a source; if his defin­i­tion is
accur­ate this word is not the solu­tion to the puzzle. Macan was aware of
the dif­fi­culty and remarked that the Persians do not seem to have been
in a hurry. That points the way to the truth: καταργέοντεϲ, ‘idling’. This
verb is intrans­it­ive; see Mastronarde on Eur. Phoen. 753, who also
cor­rects LSJ by inter­pret­ing accur­ately the other occur­rence of the
com­pound at Suda κ 10551, appar­ently a quo­ta­tion from Polybius.
6. 105. 2 When Philippides encoun­ters Pan near Tegea the god gives
him instruc­tions to take to Athens. According to the para­dosis the
verb κελεῦϲαι is fol­lowed by ἀπαγγεῖλαι δι’ ὅ τι, which would
nat­ur­ally be trans­lated ‘to report why (the Athenians pay no regard to
him)’. That makes no sense; the god was clearly ask­ing why the
Athenians neg­lected him, and Philippides was to put the ques­tion to
them. The verb ἀπαγγέλλω occurred in the pre­vi­ous sen­tence and
has been mis­takenly repeated here; one should read ἐπειρωτῆϲαι,
which matches more than one of the cur­rent trans­la­tions. Once
the verb had been cor­rup­ted, it fol­lowed that the Athenians could no
longer be men­tioned in the accus­at­ive and a dat­ive was sub­sti­tuted.
6. 107. 2 The pro­noun οὗτοϲ applied to Hippias is unex­pec­ted;
per­haps H. inten­ded to emphas­ize that it was he rather than a Persian
com­mander who dir­ec­ted the moor­ing of the ships and the dis­em­
bark­a­tion of the troops. But if that is so, the appro­pri­ate pro­noun is
αὐτὸϲ, and Nenci in fact trans­lates ‘lui stesso’. An error could eas­ily
have been induced by τοῦτο at the begin­ning of the clause. Proposals
to restore an adverb could also be con­sidered: Blaydes wondered
about ἐγγὺϲ, and I would not rule out αὐτοῦ.
6. 109. 1 Although Powell and Maas wished to delete the ref­er­ence to
Miltiades, it is not clear that any reader would have felt the need to
inter­pol­ate it. Naber’s sup­ple­ment is simple and ingeni­ous.
6. 109. 2 δίχα τε ἐγίνοντο καὶ was deleted by Maas in his copy of
Hude. The words repeat a notion con­veyed by the pre­vi­ous sen­tence.
My own view is that a cer­tain amount of repe­ti­tion has to be

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 Book VI 119

recog­nized as a fea­ture of H.’s style, and the words do not look like a
gloss.
6. 109. 4 δίχα A: διχαὶ d. The vari­ant may have arisen simply from
mis­read­ing a minus­cule alpha which ended with a super­flu­ous
ver­tical stroke; this form of alpha was not uncom­mon and often
caused con­fu­sion, since the addi­tional stroke could be read as an iota.
Though δίχα has occurred already in the con­text, it seems worth
con­sid­er­ing whether the rare form διξαὶ should be read here. At 9.
74. 1 we read of διξοὶ λόγοι. Cf. above on 4. 120. 1.
6. 112. 2 I see no need to fol­low Powell and Maas in delet­ing ὀλεθρίην.
The noun ὄλεθροϲ occurs in H. and the adject­ive formed from it is
hardly to be attrib­uted to a glossator. As to πάγχυ, even if it is more
com­monly found modi­fy­ing a verb, at 3. 157. 2 it is used with an
adject­ive.
6. 113. 2 πῦρ τε αἴτεον was obel­ized by Powell, who trans­lated ‘plunged
into the sea’ with­out offer­ing any sug­ges­tion as to the ori­ginal word­ing
of the text; the verb had already been quer­ied by Van Herwerden. A
min­imal cor­rec­tion gives bet­ter sense: the Greeks did not ask for fire but
lit it: αἶθον. The phrase πῦρ αἴθειν is found at 4. 145. 4. If one is to
defend the MSS read­ing, it has to be done by cit­ing Iliad 15. 718, where
Hector tri­umphantly climbed onto a Greek ship and gave the order
οἴϲετε πῦρ. But in the present pas­sage the trans­mit­ted verb does not
seem strong enough to indic­ate the giv­ing of an order.
6. 114 The MSS offer τῶν ἀϕλάϲτων, which has to be taken as a
plural noun describ­ing a sin­gu­lar object. Since no other example of
this usage is known, A. D. Fitton Brown, Hermes, 86 (1958), 379,
seems to have been right to delete νεόϲ as a gloss. But I do not share
his unease at the present par­ti­ciple describ­ing Cynegeirus’ attempt,
nor am I so sure that the word-­order is impossible; trans­pos­i­tion
would be easy, how­ever. Further ques­tions arise. If H. meant to say
‘the poop of one of the ships’, an indef­in­ite pro­noun would nor­mally
fig­ure in the text. Did Cynegeirus have to swim out to reach the poop
of a ship? If so, one might won­der if νέων was part of the ori­ginal text,
but one would expect this par­ti­ciple to pre­cede the one indic­at­ing his
attempt to climb on board; should a trans­pos­it­ ion be con­sidered?.
And how were the ships moored? At the start of the next ch. the verb
ἐξανακρουϲάμενοι sug­gests that they backed off, which per­haps
implies that the prow had faced the shore.

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 120 Book VI

6. 121–3 In this dif ­fi­cult and much dis­cussed pas­sage I adopt a bold
sug­ges­tion which Maas cred­ited to Powell, dated 1948, and evid­ently
accep­ted: the awk­ward­ness of what the MSS offer can be explained by
sup­pos­ing that it includes ‘a later addi­tion by H.’. The addi­tion begins
at 121. 1 οἵτινεϲ and ends at 123. 1 with ἀϲπίδα imme­di­ately pre­ced­ing
the next occur­rence of οἵτινεϲ. I would prefer to speak of an ‘alter­
nat­ive ver­sion not yet integ­rated into the text’, and have marked it
accord­ingly. If ch. 122, which is omit­ted by A, is a later inter­pol­a­tion,
as has been argued by some schol­ars, we must try to guess where the
author might have obtained his inform­a­tion. The scholium on Ar. Av.
283, at least in its present state, is far too brief to be con­sidered, but
other sources might have been avail­able in antiquity.
6. 121. 1, 123. 1, 124. 2, 129. 4 In all these pas­sages there is a ques­tion
whether we should accept ἂν, which is trans­mit­ted in Ad in the first
pas­sage, but not in the second, while in the third and fourth it is found
in d only. Richards adop­ted his usual for­mula of emend­ing to δὴ;
Powell thought ἂν should be added in the second pas­sage;
Cobet emen­ded to δὴ in the third. In the first and second pas­sages
one can­not feel sure what is right, but in the third I am fairly con­fid­ent
that Cobet was jus­ti­fied in emend­ing because of the word-­order; ἂν
should be next to the verb here, and it ought to be recor­ded in passing
that Blaydes trans­posed accord­ingly. In the last pas­sage Richards
observed that ἂν can­not be right and Cobet had fol­lowed A in
omit­ting it.
6. 125. 3 καταλιπόμενοϲ makes no sense; Maas obel­ized and Powell
tried κατέμενοϲ, which he rendered ‘let it fall’. The cor­rup­tion pos­tu­
lated does not have an obvi­ous explan­a­tion. I have wondered if a rare
meta­phor­ical usage could be the cause of the dif ­fi­culty:
καταλιπηνάμενοϲ, the idea being that the deep fold made a kind of
fat pouch. Though LSJ cite this verb only from a lemma in Hesychius,
the Lexikon zur byantin­is­chen Gräzität shows that it was well estab­
lished in the usage of patristic authors.
6. 127. 4 ἐξ αὐτῆϲ Πελοποννήϲου is puzz­ling. If one trans­lates ‘from
the Peloponnese itself’ the emphasis is inap­pro­pri­ate, as if there were
an implied con­trast. ἐξαυτῆϲ can mean ‘at once’, cf. Cratinus 37
K.-­A. But the adverbial expres­sion is slightly unex­pec­ted at this point
in the nar­rat­ive and would appear to require the sup­ple­ment 〈ἀπὸ〉.
Powell con­sidered sub­sti­tut­ing ἀπὸ for ἐξ αὐτῆϲ, in line with the

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pre­vi­ous state­ments in this ch. (but note ἐκ in §5 below). My own

sug­ges­tions would be ἐκ πάϲηϲ or ἐκ τῆϲ.
6. 129. 1 For κατακλίϲιοϲ Powell pro­posed κυρώϲιοϲ, not­ing the use
of κυρόω in 126. 2 and 130. 2. Maas approved of this and took the
fur­ther step of delet­ing τοῦ γάμου, which might be a gloss. Blaydes
repor­ted that Korais tried κατακρίϲιοϲ, which seems not to be
attested in the clas­sical period but should not be dis­missed out of
hand. It does, how­ever, anti­cip­ate the concept that fol­lows, and the
res­ult­ing duplic­at­ ion may be thought unsat­is­fact­ory. I have wondered
about καταινέϲιοϲ, as at Plut. Tib. Gr. 4, where LSJ render ‘formal
betrothal’ but per­haps simply ‘agree­ment’ would be more accur­ate.
However, at 1. 126. 3. κατακλίνω refers to the tak­ing of places for
din­ner, and I think it is just pos­sible that the text can be left unaltered.
6. 129. 3 Cleisthenes waited a while (ἐπιϲχὼν χρόνον as at 7. 223. 1,
9. 49. 1) and then issued an order. But the indef­in­ite τινα is puzz­ling.
It can hardly refer to a table and in any case might be expec­ted to
fol­low the noun. I sug­gest that the order was given to one of the
ser­vants, and have sup­ple­men­ted accord­ingly.
6. 132 τρῶμα here was taken by Maas to mean ‘battle’, for which he
cited 4. 160. 4 and 9. 90. 1 as par­al­lels. But L.A.H.-­S. points out that
both those battles are viewed through the loser’s eye. Scott (p. 432)
takes the word to refer to the defeat of the Persians. Maas noted that
Cicero, De re p. 1. 5, appears to have had the same text and mis­un­der­
stood it, since he writes non­dum sanatis vul­neribus. But Maas also
wondered if κατόρθωμα should be read. A bet­ter approach is that of
Stein: ‘Man ver­misst Περϲέων oder erwar­tet νίκην.’ The lat­ter would
pre­sup­pose a cor­rup­tion to polar oppos­ite but does not seem plaus­
ible in the present con­text.
The com­pound verb παρέδοϲαν is gen­er­ally accep­ted by edit­ors,
but was altered to the sim­plex by Cobet, and I think rightly. The error
in the MS is eas­ily explained: the next sen­tence begins with another
com­pound in παρα-­ and also soon after­wards includes the name
Πάρον.
6. 133. 1 In Miltiades’ accus­a­tion of the Parians Stein’s sup­ple­ment
〈ἀδικίηϲ〉 seems neces­sary; with­out it the sen­tence would have to be
trans­lated ‘the Parians first began a cam­paign with tri­remes’, which is
absurd.

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The best MS indic­ates a plur­al­ity of tri­remes, whereas if there had

been just one, H. might have been expec­ted to make that clear by
writ­ing 〈μιῇ〉. One tri­reme could be regarded as insig­ni­fic­ant, but
Miltiades is accus­ing the Parians and his case would be stronger if he
were able to accuse them of hav­ing sent a num­ber of ships. Assuming
that there was more than one, either a spe­cific numeral or a word to
indic­ate the size of the force, e.g. 〈πολλῇϲι〉, would be wel­come, but
per­haps is not essen­tial.
6. 135. 3 In the sen­tence report­ing the Pythia’s response the bal­ance
of the clauses in the text as trans­mit­ted may not be cor­rect. ‘She said
it was not Timo who was respons­ible, but since Miltiades was destined
to come to a bad end, she had appeared in order to lead him towards
his end’. It would be more nat­ural to say ‘She denied that Timo . . .’.
After the first clause one might expect another per­son or agent of the
divine will to be named. The change of con­struc­tion is not incon­ceiv­
able, but οὐ ϕᾶϲα, ‘deny­ing that Timo . . .’ would be easier. The
def­in­ite art­icle before αἰτίην could also be dis­pensed with.
6. 136. 1 The Athenian cri­ti­cism of Miltiades should per­haps be made
expli­cit by the addi­tion of a par­ti­ciple. Otherwise ἐν ϲτόμαϲι is to be
under­stood as imply­ing hos­tile com­ment, which is unusual; but Iliad
2. 250, though not exactly par­al­lel, is not impossibly far removed.
6. 138. 2 τῶν παίδων οἱ παῖδεϲ is clumsy, and some trans­lat­ors
gloss over the fact. The text would read more nat­ur­ally if one or both
of the groups were named in a more spe­cific way; altern­at­ively τῶν
παίδων by itself would be per­fectly clear. Though omis­sion was a
fairly fre­quent fault in the arche­type, I prefer to adopt the second
solu­tion here.

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7. 1. 1. Denniston, GP 257 suggested that καὶ δὴ καὶ introducing the

main clause at the end of the period is perhaps acceptable as a case of
anacoluthon. But one should at least register the possibility that the
second καὶ has been mistakenly inserted; the error would be trivial.
There is a similar uncertainty below at ch. 10 β 1.
7. 1. 2 Though I have not accepted Van Herwerden’s deletion, he may
have been right; one can imagine that A’s reading παρέχειν might
have been added to clarify ἐπιτάϲϲων, after which d tried to make
the word-­order more normal by adjusting this supplement to
παρεῖχον.
7. 5. 3 In the initial phrase Hude saw fit to follow SV in omitting the
definite article, but I cannot think that this is anything other than a
copyist’s minor error, not worth recording, and Maas deleted this
entry in the apparatus, rightly.
τιμωρόϲ, if correct here, means ‘asking for, demanding revenge’.
Pingel (1874), 11 found this extension of the normal meaning
inappropriate in H. and hesitantly proposed τοιοῦτοϲ. Baehr
compared ϲύμμαχοϲ at 5. 65. 1, but that is applied to a ϲυντυχίη
and is easily understood. Stein compared ϲύμμαχοϲ at ch. 6. 1 below;
I do not find that any more convincing. One might wonder if an
adjective or other descriptive word has fallen out and read τιμωρ〈ίαϲ
. . . 〉, with the meaning ‘an encouragement to exact revenge’, e.g.
γλιχόμενοϲ.
ϕέρει τὰ is the paradosis, to which two objections may be raised.
Firstly, one would expect the verb to be in the optative to match the
preceding verb. That difficulty can be solved easily by reading ϕέροι
or following d and omitting εἴη. Secondly, the article after παντοῖα is
out of place. Legrand’s ϕέρουϲα is elegant and economical.

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7. 6. 2–3 At the end of §2 καὶ δὴ is used in the non-­connective sense

discussed by Denniston, GP 250–2 and Blaydes’s supplement καὶ δὴ
〈καὶ〉 is unnecessary, apart from the fact that it creates anacoluthon.
But the enclitic pronoun οἱ at the end of the sentence is remarkable;
the fact that it is omitted by r may not be significant. Van Herwerden
proposed to interpret the letters as the relative pronoun οἳ. The
articulation of the clauses is not clear. One possibility is to attach
ἔχοντεϲ to what precedes, without Hude’s addition of 〈δ’〉, punctuate
after Μουϲαίου, and accept from CP the particle γὰρ following the
verb. But Pingel (1874), 12 declared the particle to be an obvious
interpolation, which it certainly could be, though I would not be
quite so confident myself. He also rejected asyndeton, whereas Maas
noted here asyndeton explicativum. Powell’s deletion of ἀναβεβήκαϲιν
leaves the following words hanging rather loosely and is not
intrinsically very plausible as a remedy. I have come to the conclusion
that the breach of Wackernagel’s law should not be accepted and that
Van Herwerden was right to read οἳ as the relative pronoun;
connecting relatives are acceptable (cf. ch. 205. 2 below and 8. 75. 2).
7. 8 α 2 εὑρίϲκω 〈ὧδε〉 is Powell’s supplement and he translated ‘I have
found a way . . .’ The text offered by the MSS is admittedly odd, but I
am not sure that he found the right solution. In the context we might
expect the participle describing the greatness of the Persian empire to be
in the future tense; Stein noted ‘bescheidener wäre προϲγενηϲόμενον’.
Another way to achieve the sense required might be to supplement
〈τοῦ λοιποῦ〉 or 〈ἐϲ χρόνον〉 as at ch. 29. 3, ‘in time to come’, which is
perhaps to be preferred. Legrand translated ‘Et, en y songeant, je trouve
que nous pouvons . . .’, which also entails emendation.
7. 8 β 3 Pingel (1874), 12–13 observed that ἐλθόντεϲ is too mild an
expression for Xerxes to use when he is in an angry mood, and at 1. 1.
above H. had written τὴν ἐϲ Ϲάρδιϲ ἐϲβολὴν. So here he proposed
ἐϲβαλόντεϲ. Though this does not receive support from the quotation
of this passage in Dion. H., De Dem. 41, it is a good idea; an even
easier possibility would be ἐλάϲαντεϲ (cf. 11. 2 below); in uncial
script the confusion would not be difficult. Pingel also noted the
omission of ἀπικόμενοι by Dion. H. and rejected Reiske’s proposal
ἀπιϲταμένῳ because the present tense is wrong; in defence of
Reiske one might claim that this is an instance of an ‘imperfect’
participle, and if that is not acceptable, ἀποϲτάντι would be worth
considering.

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7. 8 γ 1 Powell followed Bekker is reading μὲν δὴ for μέντοι, but

Denniston, GP 407 observed ‘μέντοι here has caused needless
surprise’, and included this passage among his illustrations of the
usage ‘marking a new stage in the march of thought’.
7. 9 β 1 καίτοι γε is unusual; Denniston, GP 564 accepted it. But
Blaydes may have been right to transpose the particle to follow the
verb.
Mardonios criticizes the Greeks for choosing to fight their battles
on level terrain with the result that the casualties are devastating;
instead each side ought to discover where the enemy is strongest and
direct its efforts there. Presumably the implication is that there would
be a stalemate with very few casualties; but this is not spelt out, and in
fact the consequence of his advice might equally well be a prolonged
struggle with no guarantee that the loss of life would be much lower.
Editors do not appear to see any difficulty here.
7. 9 β 2 Μακεδονίηϲ γῆϲ is the reading of A. γῆϲ is omitted by d, and
Hude deleted it. But the geographical name hardly needed γῆϲ as a
gloss. I think it more likely that H. used the alternative term which
appears below at ch. 127. 1, and that scribes converted it into the form
they were more used to.
7. 10. 1 ἐπιλεήναϲ was obelized by Maas, who noted the occurrence
of the uncompounded λεήναϲ at 8. 42. 4; this does not help much,
since there it can mean ‘making milder’. In the present passage,
whereas Macan wished to be able to translate ‘softened’, I think
‘support’ or ‘strengthen’ would be more suitable to indicate
Mardonios’ adherence to the king’s policy. There is also something to
be said for Powell’s approach, which was to propose ἐπαινέϲαϲ; Maas
failed to record this. His emendation at least provides appropriate
sense and from a palaeographical point of view it is not very drastic.
If Powell is right, however, the corruption from a common word to
an exceptionally rare one is strange, and alternative solutions need
to be considered. One might for instance wonder if in the original
text there was an unusual metaphorical usage which was too much
for the copyists. This is of course speculative, and I have not been
able to find a suitable verb for the context. Another rather less
speculative approach is to posit a lacuna, and two possibilities occur
to me. (a) Since the formula employed by H. at the end of Xerxes’
speech is ταῦτα εἴπαϲ ἐπαύετο, one might suggest here τοϲαῦτα

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〈εἴπαϲ〉 καὶ followed by a second participle, whatever it was. (b) If the

participle transmitted by the MSS is to be defended, one might
suppose that Mardonios had done his best to ‘smooth over’ potential
obstacles to the proposed course of action, which would require a
supplement such as 〈τὰ κωλύοντα〉. That leaves τοϲαῦτα adverbial,
which may not be satisfactory, but one could restore its normal usage
by accepting the other supplement I have suggested.
7. 10 α 1 αἱρεόμενον ἑλέϲθαι seemed impossibly tautological to Pingel
(1874), 13. Citing as a parallel ch. 16 α 2 he proposed 〈ἀν〉αιρεόμενον
in the sense of ‘accept’. He noted a similar correction by Bredow at 6.
30. 1, where the restoration of a compound in ἀν-­ serves to avoid a
tautology. But I am not convinced that his solution is adequate, and
Madvig’s ἔχεϲθαι is tempting, since in H. this usage to indicate
adherence to a view or persistence in an activity is not uncommon. It is
constructed with a genitive; so one should supplement 〈αὐτῆϲ〉.
7. 10 β 1 καὶ δὴ καὶ is the reading of the MSS. Denniston, GP 257
treats this as exceptional, instead of καὶ δὴ, to introduce a hypothesis.
But the Aldine reads καὶ δὴ, and the additional particle was probably a
mistake induced by other occurrences of this word later in the sentence.
7. 10 ε The oddity of ζῷα (instead of πάντα, as below) was remarked
on by Richards; he made the obvious point that trees or mountains
would be more appropriate to the context, as at Horace, Odes 2. 10.
9–12. They are in fact specified as the likely targets in the following
sentence, a point which Richards surprisingly did not make. Of the
three sentences dealing with the incidence of divine thunderbolts
the first can be taken as a very broad generalization, followed in the
second by a more specific rule and in the third by a restatement of the
general principle. If that is a correct analysis, living beings should not
figure in the initial statement; the interpolation is somewhat odd, but
I suppose ζῷα might have been inserted by a reader who wished to
continue or perhaps improve the train of thought outlined in the
remarks about careful planning and good fortune. The fact that the
word is attested in the quotation by Stobaeus merely proves that if
there is an interpolation here it dates back to antiquity.
7. 10 ζ The infinitive ἐπειχθῆναι without the definite article is
strange, and I have not found any justification of this usage in the
reference books. If one were to supplement 〈τὸ〉, the result is dubious
word-­order.

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7. 11. 3 L. Weber, PhW 54 (1934), 1071, preferred ἱκανῶϲ as read by

d, to A’s δυνατῶϲ, and compared Hesychius s.v. Although H. uses
both adjectives, neither adverb occurs elsewhere in his text. LSJ shows
that A offers a word which is rare in the classical period, and DGE
indicates that it became common in later Greek. It is unclear whether
Hesychius is here drawing on H.; the second half of the entry is a
reference to Job 9: 31. Weber’s interpretation of the passage is that A’s
reading does not suit the context. In his view the discussion no longer
centres on whether the parties are ready to go to war but whether by
retreating they can ensure that there will be no war. I would define the
situation slightly differently. If ἱκανῶϲ is right, Xerxes is not making a
simple statement about the impossibility of retreat; he means rather
that both parties have by now committed themselves by their actions
to such an extent that it is not sufficient for them to draw back from
further conflict, letting matters stand as they are. Xerxes has just said
that if the Persians remain inactive, the Athenians will not. I think it
possible that d’s reading is original and that the nuance of the adverb
was not perceived by the copyist of A or one of his predecessors, who
replaced it by a more explicit alternative. Whichever reading is right,
the sense would be improved by the addition of 〈ἔτι〉; note ἤδη in §4.
7. 13. 2 If the MSS are correct the words ἢ χρεόν are very clumsily
placed after πρεϲβύτερον, since the comparative that they relate to is
ἀεικέϲτερα ἔπεα. Errors of word-­order are so common in prose texts
that one need not hesitate to emend. But I do not exclude the possibility
that Naber was right to delete the two words as a gloss, even if, as it
seems to me, the wording of the sentence hardly requires elucidation.
7. 18. 2 Artabanos recalls that he had taken part in Darius’ campaign
against the Scythians. That was in the past, and the participle
recording the fact should be in the appropriate tense. Corruption was
doubtless due to the two preceding participles, which are perfect in
form but present in meaning, and perhaps by the present participle at
the beginning of the next sentence.
7. 18. 3 Pingel (1874), 13–14 pointed out that οὕτωϲ ὅκωϲ occurs in
contexts where the sense is ‘as best one can’, and the words are
introduced by ποιέειν (cf. 8. 143. 1, 144. 4, 9. 11. 1). That verb is
followed by ὅκωϲ alone in six other passages, and here one should
replace οὕτωϲ with αὐτὸϲ; confusion of these two words occurred in
reverse at 1. 84. 4, where Reiske made the substitution. The change

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creates a better balance within the period, emphasizing the contrast

between the duties of the Persians and those of the monarch.
7. 19. 1 The description of the disappearance of the garland from the
king’s head is clear enough but the word-­order seems odd: might one
not expect the definite article to precede περὶ?
7. 20. 1 ἀνομένῳ was obelized by Powell, who had translated this
verb as ‘proceed’ in the Lexicon, whereas LSJ give ‘wane’, which
appears to be supported by their other citations. ‘The end of the fifth
year’ follows satisfactorily enough after ‘four complete years’. Macan
translated ‘advancing’.
7. 21. 1 In the first sentence of this ch. the MSS diverge and editors
accept dubious syntax, despite the fact that in this eloquently written
passage syntactical oddity is implausible; but even Powell had no
comment. What was H. trying to say? I suggest two possibilities.
(a) ‘All those expeditions, and any others that took place in addition,
are not the equal of this one’; (b) ‘All those expeditions, not even if
others are added, are not the equal of this one.’ The latter is more
forceful, is close to the reading of A, and was accepted by Stein
and Macan, who completed the sense by supplying εἰϲὶ. But
the parenthesis requires a different finite verb; hence Blaydes
proposed ἐγένοντο; the variant in A suggests that a compound verb
would be still better. Stein, accepting the participle, wondered about
προγενόμεναι, which seems possible rather than necessary.
In the sentence about rivers being drunk dry the enclitic pronoun
referring to Xerxes is omitted by d. Legrand and Rosén follow suit,
but Stein did not. If it is to be retained it should be transposed in
accordance with Wackernagel’s law.
7. 22. 2 See below on 23. 4.
7. 23. 3 Powell objected to ϲτόμα referring to the width of the cutting
across Athos. Is it necessary to substitute a word meaning ‘width’
more literally than the word offered by the MSS? It does not seem
very bold to describe the opening at the top, i.e. ground level, as a
mouth.
7. 23. 4 Richards sensibly observed that these two sentences are out of
place but did not say exactly where he thought they belong. At the
end of 22. 2, after the mention of the plain and low hills, they would
fit very well. This kind of error arises if a section of the text is originally

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omitted and then added in the margin, only to be subsequently

incorporated into the text in the wrong column.
7. 24. 1 Rather than accept asyndeton at the beginning of the ch.
Pingel (1874), 14 suggested μέν 〈νυν〉 and proposed the same
adjustment at 8. 66. 1, made also by Powell (I presume independently,
because he seems to have been unaware of Pingel’s work). In the
present passage I feel fairly sure that he was right.
διειρύϲαι with double accusative is odd. Has no-­one previously
queried the text? I wonder if 〈κατὰ〉 should be inserted, or perhaps
〈διὰ〉, with the further adjustment of τοῦ ἰϲθμοῦ.
7. 26. 3 In the concluding sentence about the location of Marsyas’
skin the MSS have ἐν τῇ πόλι; these words are otiose and were
deleted by Valckenaer; it is easy to imagine that they were added as
a clarification of ἀγορὴ or τῇ. But other solutions have been tried:
(a) one could retain the words by the simple expedient of reading
ἔνθα for ἐν τῇ, as Blaydes suggested; (b) one could follow Emperius
and read ἐν πίτυϊ. However, Xen. Anab. 1. 2. 8, says that the skin was
hung up in a cave; if he is right his statement is inconsistent with ἐν
τῇ πόλι and provides a further argument in favour of deletion.
In the clause τὸν . . . ἀνακρεμαϲθῆναι the first occurrence of ὑπὸ
is superfluous; ‘the story of the Phrygians’ is what we need. There is
an error of anticipation. If any preposition is needed πρὸϲ might be
acceptable in the light of 7. 5. 2 πρὸϲ ἀνθρώπων λόγοϲ, but the
nuance of that passage seems different.
7. 28. 1 Pingel (1874), 14, claiming to follow Schweighäuser, thought
αὐτὸϲ in the nominative had been assimilated by error to the
preceding word Ξέρξηϲ. The narrative is improved if the king’s first
question is addressed to his entourage and the second to Pythios
himself. There is in any case little point in a pronoun giving emphasis
to Xerxes here. Powell took the same view, which he had found in a
paper by Tournier dating from 1877, as had Macan. Two doubts
remain: (a) one might wonder if Πύθιον is a gloss added for extra
clarity; (b) is the word-­order correct, or should we expect αὐτὸν
Πύθιον? Krüger and Blaydes preferred αὖτιϲ, which is combined
with δεύτερα at ch. 141. 1 below, perhaps for emphasis, which seems
to me unnecessary here.
7. 28. 2 The number of staters that Pythios had accumulated, almost
four million, is exceptionally large and one is tempted to ask whether

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he could have taken so much gold currency out of circulation. Of

course it is possible that H. was given exaggerated figures and none
the less saw fit to report them without an expression of doubt. But I
do wonder if the original reading was the perfectly well attested
numeral τετρακιϲμυρίαϲ, with perhaps ἑκατοντάδων for χιλιάδων,
to give 39,300 instead of 33,000. The figures are repeated in ch. 29. 2;
but a sceptical critic would argue that once the error had been made
in ch. 28 the text in ch. 29 was altered to make it consistent. In
acrophonic numerals one can imagine confusion of IIII MMMM
and HHHH MMMM.
7. 31 In the account of the guardian Stein (1871) wondered if ἀνδρὶ
should be transposed so as to precede μελεδωνῷ. He later deleted
ἀθανάτῳ on the ground that it was an intrusion from ch. 83. 1; to me
this seems extremely implausible. Pingel (1874), 15 wanted to delete
ἀνδρὶ as a gloss added to make it clear that ἀθανάτῳ did not refer to
a god. He seems to have thought that the adjective meant that one
guardian was regularly succeeded by another. Legrand printed the
adjective with a capital letter.
7. 33 What adjective did H. use to describe the coastline? παχέα is the
reading of A, accepted without comment by Macan; Stein had also
accepted it. But d’s τε τραχέα is plausible if one follows Abicht and
removes the particle, which could be a faulty repetition from the
preceding clause. Stein also made a good conjecture: ‘Statt παχέα ist
wohl πλατέα zu lesen. Es ist ein hügeliger bewaldeter Küstenvorsprung
von einer Meile Ausdehnung.’ On ch. 34 he notes that erosion of the
coast has made it difficult to identify the locality with any precision.
7. 36. 1 ἀνακωχεύῃ is puzzling: the subject of the verb and its meaning
here are both in doubt. Stein and How and Wells took ἡ γέρυϕα to be
the subject (Stein suggested ἡ ϲχεδίη as an alternative); How and
Wells interpreted it to mean ‘give the strained cables support’, which
I do not understand. Stein (1889) cited the scholium μετεωρίζῃ,
ἀναβαϲτάζῃ, seemingly with approval, but that looks like guesswork,
and in any case ‘raise’ is hardly the concept required here; he also took
τόνον ‘in konkretem Sinne, “Überzug, Bezug” ’, adding ‘τὸν τόνον
τῶν ὅπλων ist hier wie unten 24 = τὰ τεταμένα ξύλα, die Spann-
und Tragtaue’. If the phrase has to be interpreted in that way, H. was
seriously misleading his readers. Macan suggested that the subject of
the verb is ῥόοϲ, in which case the meaning will have been that the

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current kept the ropes taut. But it seems more appropriate that the
aim was to reduce the tension (Godley, unlike some other translators,
has ‘that they might lighten the strain on the cables’). Elsewhere the
verb seems to indicate the maintenance of something in its current
state or condition; in later Greek the noun derived from the same root
means ‘(self)-­restraint, forbearance’; see I. Avotins, On the Greek of
the Novels of Justinian (Hildesheim, 1992), 14–15. This is consistent
with the notion that here the sense is ‘to keep stable’. In the light of all
this I think Reiske was probably right to desiderate a plural verb; Stein
remarked that the optative would have been equally suitable.
7. 36. 2 The arrangement made for the passage of cargo vessels to and
from the Euxine is far from clear. The MSS offer καὶ τριχοῦ, which
makes no sense, and καὶ τριηρέων, omitting the adverb, as proposed
by the anonymous critic of 1802, though accepted by Stein, is not a
complete answer; the latter’s claim that ‘die alte Lesart τριχοῦ statt
τριηρέων ist aus einer missverstandenen Abkürzung entstanden’
does not have the slightest palaeographical plausibility, since no
scribe would have thought to abbreviate the letters -­ηρέων beyond
using the standard compendium for -­ων. The combination τριηρέων
τριχοῦ was accepted by Hude, who was wise enough to see that the
notion of three transit channels for traffic travelling in two directions
is ridiculous, and made the far superior suggestion τρι〈ηρέων δι〉
χοῦ, which he should have had the courage to print.
7. 36. 4 κατύπερθε τῶν ὅπλων τοῦ τόνου is translated ‘over the
taut cables’, but if that were strictly accurate the text would almost
certainly have read τῶν τεταμένων. Macan saw the truth: τοῦ τόνου
is to be deleted; although he does not say so, he must have seen that is
was wrongly repeated from earlier in the ch.
7. 38. 2 Although Denniston, GP 248 accepts the MSS reading καὶ
δὴ as ‘a lively connective’ in the king’s reply to Pythios, the presence
of τε preceding the first infinitive leads me to think it likely that H.
wrote καὶ δὴ 〈καὶ〉.
7. 39. 2 The period beginning ὅτε μέν νυν is syntactically difficult.
Commentators seem untroubled, while translators either gloss over
the problem by disregarding the temporal conjunction or produce a
bizarre anacoluthon. Powell for example has ‘Therefore when thou
hadst done good deeds and promised more, thou canst not boast . . .’.
Godley at least saw that the apodosis has a future verb when he wrote

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‘At that time when you did me a good service and promised more,
you will never boast . . .’. One way to restore normal syntax would be
to begin with a conjunction meaning ‘if/even if/although’; another
approach would be to substitute for the future καυχήϲεαι an apodosis
meaning ‘you would not have boasted’, e.g. οὐκ ἂν ηὔχηϲαϲ (this
verb is ×2 in H.). But this is more drastic. An easier solution from the
palaeographical point of view is to read ὁκότε, which can have a
causal sense (‘inasmuch as’ says the Lexicon, citing 2. 125. 7, and it is
adequately attested in other authors). The train of thought is ‘Since
your latest offer is so extravagant, I shall ensure that you do not outdo
me’. The connection between the clauses is slightly awkward; does
this reflect the angry king’s inability to be as logical as he would
normally be?
7. 40. 3 Powell deleted ἵπποι. He may have thought that the word had
been added as a gloss or that it was a faulty repetition from the
previous sentence. Neither assumption seems necessary; the word is
acceptable, and I think it equally possible that 〈οὗτοι οἱ〉 should be
supplemented. This suggestion is once again based on the principle
that in prose texts the loss of words is likely to have been as frequent
as the addition of glosses.
7. 43. 2 Powell deleted Τευκρούϲ, which could easily have been
added by a reader who recalled 5. 122. 2. But the variant in d,
Γέργιθάϲ τε καὶ Τευκρούϲ, underlined by Maas in his copy of
Hude, invites the question whether H. is giving an alternative name;
is it conceivable that he wrote Γέργιθαϲ τοὺϲ καὶ Τευκρούϲ? But I
have left the text unaltered because it seems possible that the reading
of A can be defended by comparing Φοίνικεϲ Ϲιδώνιοι at ch. 44
below and Ἕλληνεϲ Ϲκύθαι at 4. 17. 1.
7. 46. 1 εἴρετο was obelized by Powell; the presumed corruption is
difficult to explain; Maas did not comment. The verb is a regular
feature of H.’s usage, but the text as transmitted does not contain any
question. Yet it is easy to introduce one, by the addition of a single
letter: for ὡϲ read κῶϲ.
7. 47. 1 μεμνεώμεθα, corrected by some editors to μεμνώ-­, can
probably stand. It is the reading of the MSS and of Eustathius 763. 37
on Iliad 9. 436 (see Van der Valk ad loc., correcting previous reports).
Smyth § 620, p. 515, accepts this form, noting that CP have μνεώμενοϲ
at 1. 96, as does Schwyzer i. 692, who refers to L. Weber, Glotta, 26

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(1938), 269 n. 1 (actually n. 3), for other subjunctives formed with an

epsilon that might not be expected.
7. 49. 4–5 After the proposition about the likelihood of setbacks
beginning εἰ θέλει one might expect the argument to continue with
a clause introduced by ‘even if 〈there is no such problem〉’ rather than
by ὡϲ. Pingel (1874), 15 noticed this and proposed οὕτω for ὡϲ. If
ὡϲ is to be retained, it should be translated ‘on the assumption that’.
It is tempting to delete.
Powell’s deletion of πείϲεϲθαι is probably unnecessary, since at ch.
52. 2 we find ἐπιλέγεϲθαι with a future infinitive in the sense
‘reckoning that’.
7. 50. 4 καὶ ἔθνοϲ seems to have been first questioned by Powell, who
obelized. The text would read well without these words, but Powell
unexpectedly did not delete them, and it is not obvious why anyone
should have added them. Other solutions have occurred to me. (a) ἢ
ἔθνοϲ. Minuscule eta resembled one of the abbreviations for καὶ. (b) An
adverb, which would belong to the next clause and mean ‘at once’, e.g.
ἰθὺϲ. If that is thought suitable, should one make a minor transposition
so as to read καὶ τούτων ἰθὺϲ, ‘we shall at once have their crops also’?
7. 51. 1 If the meaning is ‘when there are many matters to discuss’,
the expression would be more precise if some word like προκειμένων
were added. Or perhaps the preposition περὶ should be replaced by
this participle. For similar phrasing see 1. 207. 3 and 8. 56.
7. 56. 2 The man from the Hellespont region ends his remarks, if the
MSS are to be trusted, by saying to Zeus ‘You could in fact have
achieved this without these men/forces’ (τούτων A: τούτου d).
Though the wording can be understood, one might have expected
τοϲούτων rather than τούτων, and his complaint would have been
much more forceful if he had expressed it by means of a question
beginning οὐ γὰρ. This is the usage discussed by Denniston, GP 79;
the question ‘gives, in rhetorically interrogative form, the answer to
the preceding question’, and he noted that it is highly colloquial,
being found mainly in Aristophanes and Xenophon, which suggests
that it would be very suitable in the present context.
7. 69 πρὸϲ δεξιὰ ‘on the right’ is usually accepted by editors, following
the Aldine, as a minor adjustment of the transmitted reading προϲδέξια.
One might expect ἐπὶ or ἐϲ in this usage, but DGE cites Hipp. Aff. 10 for

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πρὸϲ τὰ δεξιὰ (where the text is uncertain; πρὸϲ is accepted by P.

Potter in his Loeb edition (1988) from MS. M, whereas θ has ἐϲ). In the
present passage a difficulty which remains is that the final adjective is
loosely tacked on to the end of the sentence. So I am inclined to think
that Powell was right with his suggestion πρὸϲ δὲ ξί〈ϕε〉α. μακρά then
becomes much more appropriate, and the adverbial use of the
preposition which results is very common in H. (×50).
7. 81 For τελέων Powell proposed πολίων, which Maas recorded
with a query and an exclamation mark. Neither of them knew that
they had been anticipated by Pingel (1874), 16, who compared 8. 108.
3 κατὰ πόλιϲ τε καὶ κατὰ ἔθνεα. It is admittedly odd that a very
common word should have been corrupted so as to produce a
relatively rare usage, but certainly in uncial script the confusion
would not be totally implausible. τέλεα is transmitted in ch. 87. If any
emendation is required it would be easier to read ταξίων, in line with
ch. 212. 2, where τάξιϲ is found in conjunction with ἔθνεα.
ἄλλοι ϲημάντορεϲ is vague; Stein’s rendering of the adjective as
‘verschiedene’ does not help at all. There should ideally be a statement
of how responsibilities were shared among the regiments or cities and
nationalities. Macan assumed an error of haplography and wrote ἄλλοι
〈οἱ〉. Powell in typically archaic style translated ‘the several cities’; I
think this is a clue to the right answer, which he failed to spot; at ch. 96.
2 we have to restore ἁπαξοί, and that is what is needed here as well.
7. 83. 2 διὰ πάντων Πέρϲαι struck Dobree as objectionable and he
deleted the noun. Macan noted that the prepositional phrase could
mean ‘in all respects’ but preferred to understand it as ‘among all the
barbarians’. This leads me to think that there is a case for reading
Περϲέων, on the assumption that the nominative was assimilated to
the nominatives that follow or by Πέρϲαι three lines above.
At 5. 23. 2 the adjectives πολλόϲ and ἄϕθονοϲ within the same
clause refer to different nouns, and at 2. 6. 2 the adjectives are in
parallel clauses making a contrast. The paradosis here is therefore
odd in applying both adjectives to gold, and Powell’s supplement is
convincing. The fact that χρυϲὸν is followed in d by τε is further
support for his suggestion.
7. 84. 1 Macan’s supplement 〈πάντα〉 creates an excellent contrast
with the following clause. Pingel (1874), 16–17 thought of reading
ταὐτὰ {τὰ} or ταὐτὰ ταῦτα; the latter may be worth considering, as

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is Stein’s ἵππευε, creating parallelism in the two verbs, which receives

some support below at ch. 87.
The headgear worn by some of the cavalry is termed ποιήματα, a
word that can describe manufactured objects, here ‘objects of beaten
bronze and iron’. Is it used because H. had no more specific term
available to describe a strange form of headgear? That is the usual
view and it may be right, but I am not absolutely certain that this is
what H. wrote. A rare word that would be apt here is πιλήματα, as
found e.g. in Callimachus, Hekale 46 and 65 (Hollis) = 304 and 292
Pfeiffer. πῖλοϲ is the regular word for a close-­fitting felt cap. The
compressed material in question was normally cloth, but extended
usage to apply to any compressed substance is possible. πεποιημένην
in the next sentence could have induced a corruption. If my conjecture
is right one may wonder if ἐξεληλαμένα is a gloss.
7. 93 The particles τε . . . καὶ link two participles describing the
Dorians from Asia Minor; their equipment and their origin are
treated as facts of equal importance. But their origin is stated in order
to provide an explanation of their choice of weapons, and this leads
me to suggest that it would be more logical to delete τε and read ἅτε
or ὡϲ for καὶ.
7. 96. 2 See above on 2. 79. 1.
7. 97 ἱππαγωγὰ πλοῖα {ϲμικρὰ}. Powell followed Kallenberg in
deleting the adjective, which is in any case the variant reading of the
generally inferior family. But it is important to note that the reading
of A is μακρὰ, which seems acceptable in the context. Might one also
consider 〈καὶ ἄλλα〉 ϲμικρὰ?
7. 100. 1 Pingel (1877) suggested that εἴρηται should be emended
to εἰρήϲθω. Though he did not cite a parallel, there are plenty, e.g.
1. 92. 4, 2. 34. 2, 2. 76. 3.
7. 102. 1 Demaratus’ assurance that he will speak the truth contains a
syntactical difficulty which editors seem to overlook, whereas
translators, to judge by the diversity of their versions, struggle. There
is no helpful variant in the MSS or in Stobaeus 3. 7. 58. Assuming
that the accusative of the relative pronoun is an accusative of respect,
‘in regard to which’, and that a supplement such as 〈διὰ〉 is not
required, we are left with a puzzling indefinite pronoun and a switch
to the third person: ‘the sort of things which, should someone say

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them, he will not later be detected as a liar by you’. This is intolerably

clumsy. Robert Fowler put me on the right track by suggesting that
here τιϲ is to be taken in the same way as at Theocr. 14. 56, so that the
sense will be ‘a lying sort of fellow’. That is not a complete solution,
because this phrase has now become the predicate of the clause and a
subject has to be sought. We can achieve this, and at the same time
remove the oddity of the change of person, by reading ἁλώϲομαι.
The error arose because the rather rare usage of τιϲ was not recognized
and so it seemed that a verb in the third person was needed. It is also
necessary to remove the relative pronoun, which resulted from
dittography.
7. 105 The MSS offer ἐν τῷ Δορίϲκῳ τούτῳ, but the demonstrative
pronoun serves no useful purpose, since Doriskos has not been
mentioned in the immediate context; Macan showed awareness of
this fact but Stein thought the reader would still have the locality in
mind. In my opinion this is simply a case of erroneous repetition of
the first word in the sentence, and I am surprised that Hude did not
accept Krüger’s deletion.
7. 106. 1 Richards proposed 〈ὕϲτερον〉 γενόμενον, because the paradosis
can only refer to past events, whereas the gifts received by Maskames
were in the future at the time of this campaign; Macan inserted
‘afterwards’ into his translation, without acknowledgement to Richards;
Stein also inserted ‘nachher’ into his paraphrase. It looks to me as if a
further change is necessary: the repetition of the name Maskames is an
obstacle to the natural flow of the sentence and is an intrusive gloss.
Similarly μούνῳ, omitted by A, does little more than duplicate the sense
of ἀριϲτεύοντι, and perhaps Stein was right to delete. it.
Pingel (1874), 17 found the adjective Μαϲκαμείοιϲι poetic and
inappropriate. He proposed Μαϲκαμέω αἰεὶ. Was his objection to
the form in -­ειοϲ justified? Macan asked ‘Is it Herodotean?’ Schwyzer
ii. 177 cites this as the sole example from H. Stein quoted Plat. Gorg.
482 a ὁ Κλεινίειοϲ οὗτοϲ, on which Dodds ad loc. did not see fit to
comment.
7. 107. 1 αἴνου, the reading of A, should probably be preferred. Maas
underlined it in his copy of Hude. It is a Homeric and poetic word,
likely to be altered by ignorant copyists.
7. 109. 1 Stein’s proposal to restore the name Trausos is attractive
because it assumes that the reading of A preserves a trace of the truth

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and the error is no more than a minor metathesis. It is not difficult to

suppose that that the river and the tribe mentioned at 5. 3 and 4 and
Livy 38. 41 bore the same name. The Barrington Atlas does not throw
any further light on the question.
7. 111. 2 In the sentence οὗτοι ἐκτημένοι the word-­order as
transmitted is dubious. Pingel (1877) transposed οἱ to follow εἰϲὶ. He
was right to object, but his remedy is not entirely satisfactory. One
can do better by restoring the enclitic εἰϲι to its natural position after
οὗτοι, in accordance with Wackernagel’s law.
7. 114. 2 The Persian queen Amestris gave thanks to a divinity for
according her long life by the sacrificial burial of fourteen young
Persians. This is reported as an event in the past, but the verb indicating
her gratitude is in the present. Stein noted ‘Inf. Impf. “habe ihnen
Dank . . . beweisen wollen”.’ This suggests that one should supplement
a verb meaning ‘wished’. Cooper–Krüger 56. 7. 11A (p. 2569) include
this case in a category which they recognize, and K.–G. i. 135 take a
similar view; but I find it very harsh. Macan thought the text should
include the word ζώονταϲ, which was also a good suggestion, since
without it the verb describing the action is a long way from its object
παῖδαϲ. Whether or not this supplement is thought necessary, the
difficulty of the inappropriate present tense can be elegantly removed
by L.A.H.-­S.’s emendation; although the corruption postulated is not
exactly the typical inversion of inflections, it is very similar.
7. 116 The general sense is clear but the exact wording cannot be
established with any confidence. ἀκούων was deleted by Krüger and
obelized by Hude, who contemplated ἀνυϲθέν; Pingel (1874), 19,
suggested αἰνέων, meaning that the king was pleased with the canal.
Valla’s translation reads audiens fossam esse absolutam, and in similar
vein Blaydes proposed ἕτοιμον. Legrand, following Stein, assumed a
lacuna and remarked in his apparatus ‘alii alia’. The occurrence of the
name Akanthos in the next sentence may have influenced the process
of corruption.
7. 119. 3 While the king dined in his tent, the rest of the army ate al
fresco. d repeats the verb ἔϲκε, ‘they were in the open air’, and Macan
regarded this sequence of verbs as ‘almost too much of a good thing’.
He reported Stein’s tentative μένεϲκε. Some editors follow A in
omitting the verb, which results in a less well balanced sentence. I
wonder if δειπνέεϲκε is the solution.

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7. 121. 1 τὸν ναυτικὸν ϲτρατὸν is open to doubt; Pingel (1874), 19

converted it into a genitive, which reads more naturally. I have
wondered if these words or τὰϲ νέαϲ could be a gloss.
7. 129. 2–3 Powell deleted ὀνομαζόμενοι. He was anticipated by
Pingel (1874), 20. The participle is superfluous after ϲυλλεγόμενοι,
and the five principal rivers have been named above. Pingel thought
that the word had been added as a gloss prompted by ἀνωνύμουϲ just
below, but it does not look suspiciously like a gloss; scribal distraction
is a more likely explanation of the error. One could perhaps defend it
by supplementing 〈καὶ ἰδίῃ〉. Legrand in fact translated ‘portant
leurs noms respectifs’, which makes good sense, but can the Greek as
it stands mean that?
Pingel also argued that τὸ δὲ παλαιὸν should mark a clear contrast
with modern circumstances and proposed to obtain this by emending
οἳ μέν νυν to οἳ νῦν μὲν. The transposition results in an anacoluthon
which he was prepared to accept. οἳ μέν νυν leads one to expect a
following reference to other rivers, which does not occur; perhaps it
could be claimed that the transmitted text exhibits a slight anacoluthon
anyway. There is also a question of word-­order to be taken into
account: μέν νυν is normally connective, occurring near the beginning
of a sentence, and the only parallel example in H. for what most
editors accept here is at 2. 44. 1, where the text is not secure. A further
difficulty is that one has to ask how the ancient reader, who did not
have the benefit of accurate punctuation and diacritics, would have
made sense of the passage; it may be that there is more serious
corruption. A solution which does not appear to have been proposed
would be to delete νυν.
7. 130. 1 The MSS have ἀλλ’ ἥδε αὕτη. Hude, following a suggestion
of Matthiae, recorded but did not print ἀλλ’ ἢ. This appears to receive
support from J. Chadwick, Lexicographica Graeca (Oxford, 1996),
126, who terms this expression ‘semi-­adverbial’. Hude printed ἀλλ’
ἥδε αὐτή, following Abresch, but it seems to me that the emphatic
pronoun is not required.
7. 130. 2 The king’s comment on the motives of the Thessalians is
obscurely phrased, as Macan and others have noted. I wonder if 〈διὰ〉
τἆλλα would be an improvement.
7. 134. 2 ἐδύνατο is accepted by editors as impersonal, and they cite
9. 45. 2, where the context of sacrifice is similar, but the subject τὰ

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ϲϕάγια is expressed, which makes all the difference. Macan invited

us to understand τὰ ἱρά, while Legrand’s translation is free ‘les
Spartiats . . . ne pouvaient . . .’. Perhaps one should supplement
accordingly; or is Valckenaer’s ἐγίνετο to be preferred?
7. 136. 1 Powell (in 1950 according to Maas) obelized καὶ . . .
ἐχόμεθα; he also wished to eliminate this idiom at 1. 120. 3. and
1. 193. 4. But the Lexicon lists several passages where the verb is to be
rendered ‘to be of the nature of’, including this one, and though the
expression seems a bit clumsy or redundant, perhaps it should be
accepted. Macan took καὶ as meaning ‘or’. Though this translation of
the particle is perhaps not obligatory here, it would be just as easy to
read ἢ. The words are frequently confused owing to the similarity of
eta and kappa in minuscule script, and kappa with an additional
stroke descending below the line served as the compendium for καὶ.
Legrand translated ‘en ces termes et termes approchants’.
7. 137. 2–3 Some elements of the narrative here look like later
insertions which H. did not manage to integrate. I incline to favour
the solution put forward by Legrand, who placed in this category
both ὃϲ εἷλε . . . ἀνδρῶν and οἳ πεμϕθέντεϲ . . . Κορίνθιοϲ ἀνήρ;
Macan had tentatively suggested that it applied to μετὰ δὲ . . .
Κορίνθιοϲ ἀνήρ. Powell’s surgery was so drastic that I think it has to
be disregarded, given that a reasonable alternative has been proposed.
Denniston, GP 429 accepts δῆλον ὦν as resumptive here. If γὰρ is
retained at the beginning of the next sentence—it is the reading of
A—οἱ is the article, not the relative, and this is satisfactory up to a
point, but one would expect a pronoun rather than the article in
order to make a smooth transition. If the particle is to be deleted, the
first of the two passages in question has to be treated as an addition or
as spurious.
7. 140. 3 Van Herwerden objected to ἀκροτάτοιϲ ὀρόϕοιϲι in l. 10
of the oracle and proposed κορυϕῇϲι. He was anticipated by Pingel
(1874), 21 (except that the latter by oversight printed the Attic form
in -­αῖϲι). Pingel noted that with this emendation the text would
contain a Homeric reminiscence, which is acceptable in a Delphic
oracle. The point at issue is that the relative pronoun in l. 9 should
refer to the gods, as represented by their statues, not their temples as
a whole. The difficulty can be avoided if one is willing to accept that
the antecedent of the relative is in fact ἀθανάτων, which is not at all

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elegant from a stylistic point of view; but in the text of an oracle one
is perhaps well advised not to insist on the highest standards. Pingel
was unwilling to contemplate this possibility. He also referred to
Diodorus Siculus 17. 10. 5, an account of a portent observed in the
year 335: the roof of a temple appeared to be covered in blood. Rather
pessimistically he concludes his note by expressing the view that this
account of a similar phenomenon in Diodorus will be thought by
many to justify maintaining the reading in the MSS of H.
7. 142. 2 οἱ μὲν δὴ κτλ. is a difficult sentence. Pingel (1874), 22
thought κατὰ impossible here, and though the Lexicon s.v. B III 9
gives many examples of the sense ‘concerning’, the result of accepting
that usage here seems clumsy. Krüger and Abicht deleted the
preposition, but as Pingel said, it is hardly likely that anyone would
have inserted the word into the text. A further objection to their
suggestion is that it also requires the change of τοῦτον to τοῦτο; but
that is not a serious difficulty. Pingel proposed κατὰ τὸν χρηϲμὸν,
citing as parallel 1. 68. 3 κατὰ τὸ θεοπρόπιον and noting that
ϕραγμόϲ is a gloss on ῥηχόϲ, which has occurred in the preceding
sentence of the present context, in the Lexeis Herodoteae, Hesychius
ρ 293, and the Suda ρ 156. This last consideration is important, and in
my opinion makes his solution better than that of Gomperz, who
deleted the phrase κατὰ τὸν ϕραγμὸν, and was followed by both
Stein and Macan.
7. 148. 2 τῶν δὴ εἵνεκα 〈καὶ〉 πέμπειν was proposed by Pingel
(1874), 22. He claimed that in H. one should expect καὶ to follow
εἵνεκα, and that in this position the word was particularly likely to be
omitted. Though he did not make the point explicitly, he was right to
suggest that a kind of haplography could easily occur. He also failed
to cite parallels; but I suppose he had in mind such passages as
5. 13. 3 and 9. 25. 1.
7. 148. 3 H. Diels, Sibyllinische Blätter (Berlin, 1890), 60 n. 2,
considered that in l. 3 of the oracle ‘ein geschulter Dichter’ would
certainly have written δέ τε, and probably that was the wording of
the oracle. But he thought it ‘misslich’ to emend. However, it is so
easy and obvious that one should not declare it to be beyond the
capacity of a less than expert poet, and I think his view verges on the
perverse. Maas proposed the emendation, admittedly with a query. In
similar vein Diels thought it best below at ch. 220. 4 to leave ἢ μέγα

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ἄϲτυ ἐρικυδὲϲ as it stands, despite the serious breach of normal

metrical rules.
In the phrase ἐϲ δὴ τὸ Ἄργοϲ the position of the particle led Stein
to suggest transposing it so as to precede ἐλθεῖν. But the word-­order
given by the MSS can be accepted; see Denniston, GP 229.
7. 149. 1 Powell’s deletion of the second concessive clause καίπερ . . .
ϕοβεομένοιϲι should be taken seriously. The first of the two clauses
is clear and the second adds very little, while interrupting the sequence
of thought, which makes me wonder if it is just a gloss. An alternative
would be to suppose that the original text had only the second clause
and H. later drafted the first as an improvement, leaving both in his
master copy. But I do not feel confident enough to mark this passage
accordingly. Stein deleted the second καίπερ, which does not seem
to help.
7. 151 ‘At this time the Argives themselves had sent a delegation to
Susa.’ The demonstrative pronoun τούτουϲ is out of place. In
expressions of this kind καὶ is followed by αὐτόϲ.
7. 152. 3 Powell typically resorted to deletion of the first sentence of
this §, probably without necessity. Assuming that it is genuine, what
seems to follow naturally from the suggested comparison of the
misfortunes of various individuals or societies is the statement that in
the light of such comparison the Argives had not fared worst of all. If
that is the meaning I would rather expect the verb to be πέπρηκται.
Macan may have felt the same difficulty, since he thought H. guilty of
confused thinking, starting with the notion of κακά as ‘misfortunes’
and then using the word to mean ‘crimes’. Another way of avoiding
athetesis is to transpose the sentence to the end of the ch.: the
desperation of the Argives after their defeat at the hands of the
Spartans was so great that they did nothing dishonourable by their
policy of neutrality. That interpretation does not require any further
emendation of the text.
7. 153. 1 To say that the man from Telos was not left behind (οὐκ
ἐλείϕθη) when Gela was founded makes good sense if the other
colonists also came from Telos. But the text as transmitted implies
that the main body came from Lindos; it was the remaining
inhabitants of Lindos who could be said to be left behind, not
volunteers from a neighbouring community. I would expect H. to say
that the man was no less enthusiastic than the main body of emigrants;

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one needs a supplement such as 〈ἐϲ προθυμίην〉. Otherwise one may

suppose that Antiphemos, who is not registered in LGPN I, came
from Telos, which would explain why Gelon’s ancestor joined him.
In that case the supplement could be 〈ἐκ Τήλου〉.
7. 153. 2 Stein, followed by Macan without comment, deleted ἑνόϲ
τευ τῶν προγόνων. This seems to me too drastic a remedy for a
phrase which admittedly sits ill with ἀπόγονοι in the previous clause.
Pingel (1874), 23 suggested ἑνόϲ τευ αὐτῶν or ἑνόϲ τευ τῶν
προτέρων; this last proposal is much the neatest solution.
7. 153. 3 ἢ αὐτὸϲ . . . ἐκτήϲατο is the paradosis, which is a pointless
repetition. Since the sense is plain there is no reason to treat one
clause as a gloss on the other, and so I have preferred to supplement
rather than delete with Powell. The sense ‘or if he was the first to
possess them’ would be clearer with the addition of 〈πρῶτοϲ〉.
7. 157. 1 Stein’s τὰ γὰρ ἐπιόντα is a very simple solution of the
syntactical oddity. Koen’s remedy was to transpose γὰρ to follow
πάντωϲ, which received the approval of Pingel (1874), 23, and is
possible, since the consequent change of punctuation is easy. Pingel
added that if one has doubts about the transposition, τὸ ἐπιὸν could be
considered. He cited ch. 145. 2, where the plural is used (δεινῶν
ἐπιόντων) and ch. 164. 1, where the singular is found (δεινοῦ ἐπιόντοϲ).
7. 158. 3 ‘But in fact the situation has settled down so as to be better
for us’, says Gelon. κατέϲτη is intelligible, but I think it worth asking
whether H. wrote μετέϲτη, ‘changed for the better’, the corruption
being caused by κατ’ two lines above.
7. 160. 1 Syagros’ remarks according to the MSS are described as
ἀπεϲτραμμένουϲ, which has to be translated ‘hostile/adverse’ and
understood as a metaphorical usage (cf. the Lexicon s.v.). I am not
convinced by this, and there are two ways of dealing with the difficulty.
One is to postulate the meaning ‘rejected’, which requires the fairly
simple emendation ὑπὸ for τοῦ, as Blaydes proposed. The other is to
accept as valid the parallel from 8. 62. 1 and with the even easier
emendation by Schweighäuser read ἐπεϲτραμμένουϲ, meaning
‘earnest’, which presupposes that the initial alpha of the MSS reading
resulted from assimilation to the final letter of the preceding word.
This suggestion gains further support from the adverb ἐπιϲτρεϕέωϲ
at 1. 30. 3.

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7. 161. 3 After ὧδε d inserts γε. The particle seems less appropriate in
this sentence than it was after αὕτη three lines above, since the adverb
‘here’ does not need to be emphasized. I regard this as another case of
erroneous repetition, as did Stein (1871) and Hude. But I note that
Maas underlined this variant and inserted it into his copy of the text.
πάραλον is the reading of A; Stein remarked that it is ‘ungewöhnlich
für ναυτικὸν’, and LSJ do not cite any parallel for this adjective in the
sense ‘naval’. d has παρ’ ἄλλων, which makes the Athenians claim
credit for assembling a large and diverse Greek force. A complication
is that Dac has ἄλλον. Maas underlined this as well, and one has to ask
why. The meaning would appear to be ‘alongside another very large
force of Greeks’, but then the verb is left without an expressed object;
one could simply supply 〈τὸν ἡμέτερον〉, but Maas gave no indication
that he intended to deal with the passage in this way. I am inclined to
think that the Dac variant is a trivial slip which the scribe himself
immediately corrected.
7. 162. 2 The whole of §2 was deleted by Wesseling. In defence of the
text it could be argued that it is unusual to find a scholiast or
interpolator writing in Ionic dialect, as is seen here. So one must
suppose that a clever scribe or reader at some point composed this
passage in Ionic or converted koine into Ionic, which is not impossible.
Some, including Stein, have thought that the text is a note by H.
himself; Legrand posed the question but did not delete. The syntax of
the last sentence is rather clumsy and invites suspicion. Stein deleted
only the words τὸ ἐθέλει λέγειν.
7. 163. 2 ϕιλίουϲ Ad: διϕαϲίουϲ Jacoby, recorded by Maas as arising
out of a conversation. The instructions given by Gelon to his emissary
Kadmos were not friendly; they were alternatives. The relatively rare
adjective restored by Jacoby could easily have been corrupted by
inattentive scribes. The proposal had occurred to Wesseling, who
rejected it. Maas wondered if Kadmos was dispatched with earth and
water.
7. 164. 2 Gelon selected Kadmos as his emissary to Delphi because of
his honesty τήν οἱ αὐτὸϲ ἄλλην ϲυνῄδεε ἐοῦϲαν. ἄλλοϲ followed by
a balancing statement or description to mean ‘in general . . . and in
particular’ is standard idiom, but the participle ἐοῦϲαν is otiose in
such constructions. An error of assimilation has occurred; ἄλλωϲ is
needed, ‘in other respects’.

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In the balancing clause Kadmos’ outstanding merit is introduced.

But οὐκ ἐλάχιϲτον can hardly be followed by τούτων, which is very
weak; πάντων should be read. Less plausibly one could emend to
ἔλαϲϲον τούτων.
καὶ δὴ καὶ is the reading of Ad, while C has καὶ δὴ. C’s omission
gives a plausible text, but the other MSS may be correct, if the second
καὶ can be taken as going closely with the word that follows.
Denniston, GP 257 did not wish to rule out this possibility.
7. 167. 1 ἐν τῇ Ϲικελίῃ is omitted by d and was deleted by Hude. But
H. is reporting a Carthaginian tradition, and if he is citing it in full it
could well have included the phrase in question; he may also have
wished to make it clear that he is not referring to the clash between
Greeks and barbarians at Salamis. P. Oxy. 1375 does not omit the
phrase, and Stein did not query it.
7. 167–8 The transition here reminds one of the ‘catchline’ transitions
that occur between some books as currently divided. It is not
commented on by S. Cagnazzi, Hermes, 103 (1975), 385–423, who
attempts to establish that the original division of H.’s work was into
28 books.
7. 168. 1 Previous references to Corcyra are as far back as chs. 145
and 154; the return to this strand of the narrative is abrupt and the
sequence of ideas is not as clear as it might be. Is this just another sign
that the ultima manus is lacking? The passage would be clearer if the
messengers were identified as representatives of Athens and Sparta.
7. 169. 1 The present γίνεται is probably correct. It may be justified
by the parallels cited in K.–G. i. 138 and by the possibility that it
anticipates an oracular response in which the present is used instead
of the future. Blaydes expressed s preference for the future, and
Gauthier Liberman points out to me that Thuc. 1. 118. 3 can be cited
in support of this view.
7. 170. 3 The name Mikythos, as found in the MSS, is supported by
LGPN IIIA (×2 in Magna Graecia), but this evidence from H. is not
mentioned. Macan’s proposal to adjust the name to Smikythos is
unnecessary; LGPN gives only a single instance of Smikythion from
Corinth.
As Pingel (1874), 23 saw, the syntax of τῶν ἀϲτῶν is not acceptable,
nor does Stein’s deletion of καὶ help. The answer is to supplement

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Ῥηγίνων 〈τῶν〉 οἱ, a relative pronoun and an article both being

essential. He also noted that οὕτω is meaningless here and had been
deleted by Reiske, whose proposal οὗτοι was adopted by Hude. In my
opinion this is the wrong pronoun. The appropriate contrast between
the losses suffered by the two Greek contingents can be obtained by
reading αὐτοί followed by τῶν δὲ. In other words, the force from
Rhegion suffered 3,000 casualties themselves, but the Tarentines had
losses beyond counting. As to the connecting particle, I think a good
effect results from combining A’s δέ with d’s γε.
7. 172. 1 ὡϲ διέδεξαν has rightly puzzled editors, and Powell deleted
the following clause. Gentler medicines must be considered. Pingel
(1874), 24 proposed to read καὶ instead of ὡϲ, noting that the
compendia for these two words can look very similar. One has
to question, however, whether this was the case at the time when
the archetype was written, or else assume, in view of the bipartite
nature of the transmission, that the same error occurred twice
independently. As the palaeographical solution offered by Pingel is of
uncertain validity, other suggestions may well be better. Schenkl tried
〈ὅμ〉ωϲ δὲ, and I have wondered about supplementing 〈ὕϲτερον〉.
7. 176. 1 It does not make sense to say that Artemision is reduced to
a narrow strait, and Stein deleted the first occurrence of the name in
this passage as a gloss. But deletion leaves one needing a subject for
the verb, and Pingel (1874), 24 suggested τὸ πέλαγοϲ τὸ Θρηίκιον,
since ϲυνάγεται cannot be taken as impersonal. He also objected to
ἐϲ ϲτεινὸν ἐόντα τὸν πόρον and preferred ἐϲ ϲτεινὸν ἔϲ τε τὸν
πόρον, which is plausible, because the position of ἐόντα in A is
dubious (d omits the word). The second occurrence of τὸ Ἀρτεμίϲιον
is also unacceptable, as Stein and Powell saw.
7. 180 διαδέξιον, seemingly a hapax legomenon, is rendered ‘ominous’
in the Lexicon, ‘of right good omen’ by LSJ and ‘ofrecido en sacrificio
como primicia’ by DGE, but one may doubt whether it is sound.
ὄρνιθα δεξιὸν was Madvig’s suggestion, which suits the context; but
would H. have used the word ὄρνιϲ in this sense? Legrand saw a
difficulty in the syntax of the text as it is usually printed and emended
καὶ to εἶναι, translating ‘considérant comme de bon augure que le
premier des Grecs qu’ils avaient pris fût très beau’. One might expect
the meaning to be ‘as an exhibit’. Since διαδείκνυμι is a regular part
of H.’s vocabulary in the sense of ‘declare/display’, I put forward very

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tentatively the hypothesis that the adjective found in our text is

derived from this verb. There is the further question of why the
Persians selected for execution the most good-­looking of their
captives, and I note that Stephanus-­Dindorf in reference to this
passage render strenuissimus propugnatorum, implying that there
must be some doubt about the meaning of the adjective used to
describe Praxinos.
7. 181. 1 Asonides is the form of the name in A and is accepted in
LGPN IIIA, but as a unique instance. The variant in d, Astonides,
which Maas underlined, is not attested; but Aston is cited from
Eretria and Croton; there is also a Hellenistic instance from Aetolia.
As to Macan’s Asopides, LGPN I reports a single Asopidas from
Thera (vi/v bc) The alleged form Ason from Paros (? vi bc), is unique
and in any case uncertain; the editors wondered if the name was
really Thrason.
7. 182. Exactly where did the Athenian commander Phormos manage
to beach his ship after eluding the Persian pursuit? According to the
MSS it was at the mouth of the Peneios, but Pingel (1874), 25 observed
that this is a long way from the scene of the engagement (about
90 km) and there were various nearer localities on the coast where
he could have found safety, two of which, Kasthanaia and Meliboia,
are mentioned by H. soon after. So tentatively he proposed τὰϲ
προβολὰϲ (or προβλῆταϲ) τοῦ Πηλίου (Sauppe had anticipated
him in suggesting that Pelion should figure in the text). While one
can hardly feel confident enough to print the conjecture in the text, I
strongly suspect that Pingel was right.
7. 183. 2 Maas drew attention to the variant reported from R (Vat. gr.
123), where the word δοκῶ is an admission by the scribe that he is
making a conjecture. If it were found in this MS only one would
attribute it to a scholar of the Palaeologan period, since the watermarks
point to a date c.1331–44 (Hemmerdinger 31, 143; the copyist of
the MS has not yet been identified). But I have discovered that the
word is not found in R only; it is shared by U and Xac and must derive
from a common ancestor, which may have been a good deal earlier
in date.
ὁρμηθέντεϲ αὐτοὶ is the reading of the MSS, but the pronoun can
hardly be right, since it gives an oddly misplaced emphasis to the
departure of the fleet. With typical application of translators’ massage

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Legrand rendered ‘toute la flotte’. At first I was tempted to consider

αὐτίκα as an improvement; the meaning would be that the fleet set
out as soon as an obstacle had been cleared. But H. tends to express
that notion by ἐπείτε τάχιϲτα. A better possibility is to accept
Legrand’s notion and read ἀθρόοι, even if it is slightly tautological
with the following πάϲῃϲι τῇϲι νηυϲὶ.
7. 185. 1 δόκηϲιν λέγειν means ‘at a guess’. All the MSS here insert
δεῖ, which is not essential for the sense and may have been introduced
under the influence of προϲλογιϲτέα. Even if at first sight Powell’s
restructuring of the sequence of clauses looks a bit drastic, it is clear
that in the following sentence μέν νυν is inappropriate, and the
second particle should be deleted, having wrongly intruded from the
following sentence.
7. 185. 2 There are two serious difficulties here. The first was pointed
out by Pingel (1874), 25. The contribution of the Thessalians to the
Persian war effort must have been one of the most important. Can H.
really have forgotten it or has it fallen out of the text? Secondly, the
repetition of Thrace at the end of the list is unwanted. Legrand
thought of reading instead Οἰταίηϲ, a region which included
Herakleia in Trachis and Anticyra.
7. 188. 1 Pingel (1874), 26 emended the dubious middle form
ὁρμέοντο to ὅρμεον τὸ, citing 4. 99. 1 τῆϲ δὲ Ϲκυθικῆϲ γῆϲ ἡ
Θρηίκη τὸ ἐϲ θάλαϲϲαν πρόκειται as parallel. In that passage
the meaning is: ‘on the seaward side’; here we need to render ‘out
to sea’. That is not quite the same, but I suppose it is in order, since
there appears to be no parallel for the middle voice of the verb,
and the emendation is commonly accepted; Macan attributes it to
Cobet.
7. 193. 2 τὴν Κολχίδα is omitted by d and deleted by Hude (though
not by Macan and Legrand). The identical wording is found at 1. 2. 2
and in the genitive at ch. 197. 3 below.
The accentuation of the name Aphetai is uncertain. D here and at
8. 4. 1 makes it oxytone, and so do the MSS of Stephanus Byzantius
s.v., where Fowler’s correction to paroxytone is accepted by Billerbeck.
Chandler 12 and 18, §§37 and 59, gives the rule as paroxytone for
nouns in -­ετηϲ and proper names in -­ηϲ. The oxytone form is found
in D at 8. 4. 1 and, if editorial reports can be trusted, at Hesiod fr. 263
(= sch. Ap. Rhod. 1. 1289) and Plut. Them. 7. 5.

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7. 194. 1 καί κωϲ κατεῖδον is perfectly acceptable, but Pingel (1877)

contemplated substituting ὡϲ for the particle and removing the heavy
punctuation after νέαϲ. The fact that both the preceding and the
following word begin with kappa could have induced an error, and it
is arguable that the resulting articulation of the narrative is slightly
better.
7. 194. 3 περιῆν followed by ἔϲεϲθαι in the next clause may be
acceptable as an example of the idiomatic usage whereby a compound
verb is followed by a simplex. In this case the change of mood from
indicative to infinitive creates at least a momentary difficulty for the
reader. Renehan, HSCP 89 (1985), 28–9 saw no problem here, but I
am not so confident.
7. 197 The text of this ch. is hopelessly corrupt and modern surgery
has only been partially successful.
After the aorist ἐμηχανήϲατο the present προτιθεῖϲι is
unacceptable, and Powell was sensible to posit a lacuna after
βουλεύϲαϲ.
Powell rejected Valckenaer’s ληίτου for πρυτανηίου and deleted
the parenthesis as a gloss; this is plausible but hardly essential. αὐτοὶ
remains obscure but would doubtless become clear if we knew what
has been lost in the lacuna.
πρὶν ἢ θύϲεϲθαι μέλλῃ makes no sense; the repetition of the verb
μέλλω arouses suspicion, and translators are in difficulty. Some of
their renderings suggest that the verb needed here is δέῃ, and this is
worth considering. Macan acutely noted that τῶν μελλόντων
θύϲεϲθαι implies that the men had entered the λήιτον despite the
taboo, and there is therefore a question how they could escape. That
speaks in favour of Van Herwerden’s deletion. An alternative would
be to change the participle to κινδυνευόντων.
ἢν ἁλίϲκωνται does not fit into the historical narrative, and
Powell’s ἂν ἡλίϲκοντο is essential, as is his removal of ὡϲ.
τὸ ἄλϲοϲ could refer to something lost in the lacuna, but Powell’s
τὸν Ἅλον may equally well be right.
7. 199 The figure of 22,000 plethra is at first sight puzzling, since it
would normally be taken to indicate a distance of some 420 miles. But
W. M. Leake, Travels in Northern Greece (London, 1835), ii. 11,
iv. 572 took the figure to refer to square measurement, assuming an
area of 25 stades square between Trachis and its boundary with

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 Book VII 149

Anticyra, the river Dyras, which he calculated to be equal to 22,650

plethra, and Pingel and Macan followed him. To this Rawlinson
objected that H. does not use square measurement elsewhere (has
no-­one thought to supplement τετράγωνα?) and that ‘such a rendering
drops altogether the important particle γὰρ’; the first objection seems
to me not to be decisive, and I have to admit that I cannot understand
the force of the second. His idea that we should emend to read 22,
assuming that there was at some point an error by which the diacritics
accompanying the letters kappa and beta were misplaced, is hardly to
be accepted—not on the ground that H. must be presumed to have
used acrophonic numerals, but because the figure of 22 is obviously too
low. For a modern calculation see M. H. Hansen and T. H. Nielsen, An
Inventory of Archaic and Classical Poleis (Oxford, 2004), 713.
7. 201 At the end of the final sentence τὸ ἐπὶ is difficult, and d
omitted the article. Blaydes deleted both words, but it is hard to see
why they were inserted. Stein was content to accept an adverbial
expression and translated hanc continentem versus. But an exact
parallel is lacking and doubt remains, as becomes clear if one consults
modern translations. ‘Areas stretching west and south in the direction
of this continent’ would be literal but clumsy; Godley saw that ‘this
part of the mainland’ is what is required, and this leads me to
conjecture that κατὰ τοῦτο followed by the genitive may have been
the original reading.
7. 203. 1 αὐτοὶ at the beginning of the second sentence is odd; is it
emphatic and if so, why? It could well be an erroneous anticipation of
its occurrence in the subordinate clause. One might expect αὐτόϲε, but
that word does not occur elsewhere in H. except as a variant reading at
3. 124. 1. So I rather hesitantly agree with Macan in accepting Stein’s
αὐτόθεν. An objection might be that the adverb would normally hint
at a single locality identifiable from the context; is it equally appropriate
when the context refers to two different, even if neighbouring,
populations? αὐτίκα might be another possibility, on the supposition
that the Greeks lost no time in summoning local support.
7. 203. 2 Whereas Krüger deleted γινομένῳ in the sentence about
the fate of mortals, Stein translated statim nascenti, which seems
satisfactory.
Much more plausibly Krüger deleted ἄν, which is syntactically
dubious and in any case should not stand at the end of the sentence.

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Richards tentatively suggested ἤδη, perhaps influenced by his

undoubtedly correct view that δὴ and ἂν are often confused. But if an
adverbial expressison is required, Stein’s proposal ἀνὰ χρόνον
‘sooner or later’, is clearly better.
7. 205. 2 The MSS give a text which means ‘the 300 men of mature
years and those who had children’. But (a) it is curious that the
category should have been limited to 300, and (b) the total contingent
under Leonidas did not exceed that number. Pingel (1874), 26–7 saw
the difficulty; he thought the letter tau signifying the numeral 300 had
been misunderstood and converted into an article, and so he read
ἄνδραϲ τριηκοϲίουϲ κατεϲτεῶτάϲ τε καὶ κτλ. This could well be
the right solution; I have rather hesitantly adopted the simpler
remedy proposed by Gomperz, which is to delete the article.
7. 208. 2 The Persian scout κατώρα πᾶν μὲν οὒ τὸ ϲτρατόπεδον
according to the MSS and editors, and after what amounts to a
parenthesis the second half of the statement about him follows. In
this type of sentence where the first element includes a postponed
accented negative, that negative is normally the last word in the
clause. I think that should be the case here: τὸ ϲτρατόπεδον is a gloss
or a repetition due to scribal error.
7. 208. 3 The Persian scout passed by without attracting attention.
Which verb did H. use here? The MSS offer the compound of κυρέω
with ἐν-­, but as Valckenaer saw, the construction with a genitive is
not normal. Rather than adopt his suggestion of the uncompounded
verb I would propose the compound in ἐπι-­. L. Radermacher, WS 48
(1930), 198, retained ἐν-­ but obtained a dative by reading ἀλογίῃϲι
. . . πολλῇϲι. Though the plural of this noun is found at 2. 141. 1, the
singular is more usual and natural.
7. 211. 2 Not all editors agree with Hude in deleting χώρῳ, which is
omitted by d. The result of that is to make ϲτεινόπορον a noun, which
it certainly can be, but LSJ also indicate that it could be an adjective.
7. 214. 3 The first sentence of this § is unclear. Onetes is one of two
suspects; why is the other not named? One might take the view that
neither needed to be named; hence Cobet substituted τιϲ for Ὀνήτηϲ,
and Legrand tried ἀνήρ τιϲ. Cobet’s proposal has the drawback of
placing the enclitic pronoun unexpectedly late in the sentence, since
it ought to follow ἄν. Legrand was perhaps nearer the mark; he may

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 Book VII 151

have treated the name as a mistaken repetition. Another possibility is

that a mention of the other suspect has been omitted.
7. 220. 2 d’s addition of ὄχλοϲ is very odd. It tempted L. Weber, RFIC
14 (1935), 358–9, to conjecture ἔνοχοϲ, with the deletion of πλεῖϲτοϲ.
But that does not yield the right sense. Conceivably the word is a
corruption of ὅλοϲ, added as a gloss.
7. 220. 4 At the end of the fourth line of the oracle οὖροϲ is the reading
in the direct tradition, whereas Oenomaus, quoted by Eusebius,
Praeparatio evangelica 5. 25. 2, has οὖρον according to most MSS
and εὑρον (sic) in A (Paris grec 451). This variant confirms Stein’s
and Van Herwerden’s proposal, on which Macan and Rosén do not
comment and which Legrand does not even record in his apparatus.
W. Beck in Lexikon des frühgriechischen Epos s v. gives as the meaning
‘guardian’ in domestic or politico-­military contexts.
7. 223. 4 The MSS here give a text with an abrupt change of subject,
and Pingel (1874), 28 anticipated Van Herwerden by supplementing
ἐπιϲτάμενοι 〈Λακεδαιμόνιοι〉, to which the latter added the definite
article, probably without necessity. Stein thought that the preceding
period ἔπιπτον . . . ἀπολλυμένου would be suitable at ch. 210. 2 and
that it looked like a later addition, which I find implausible when a
simpler explanation is available.
7. 225. 3 ϲτόμαϲι is translated by Godley as ‘teeth’, and Legrand
similarly has ‘dents’. One might have expected the striking effect,
admired by ps.-­Longinus 38. 4, to be still further enhanced by ὀδοῦϲι.
A similar vignette is found in two accounts of the death of Cynegeirus
at Marathon: a scholiast on Aristides, Panathenaicus 122. 19 (iii. 126
Dindorf) has ναῦν καταϲχὼν ἐχειροκοπήθη εἶτα πάλιν καταϲχὼν
τοῖϲ ὀδοῦϲι ἀϕῃρέθη τὴν κεϕαλήν, which is an embroidered
version of a report in Plut. Mor. 305 c, and Trogus 2. 9. 18 has cum
quoque amputata dextera navem sinistra comprehendit; quam et
ipsam cum amisisset, ad posterum morsu navem detinuit.
7. 226. 1 For πλήθεοϲ Eustathius at 704. 56 and 1762. 15 has νέϕοϲ,
which was preferred by L. Weber, Glotta, 26 (1938), 269–70, and is
recorded by some editors. Van der Valk has an excellent note on the
former passage: verba tamen coniuncta νέϕοϲ βελῶν apud H. non
reperiuntur; error iteratur apud Eust. 1762. 15. I think we are entitled
to agree with his inference that Eustathius was quoting from memory.

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L.A.H.-­S. suggests that he may have been influenced by the use of the
noun at Iliad 17. 243.
7. 228. 3 In the first line of the epitaph for the seer Megistias κλεινοῖο
seems to be the reading generally accepted, but d has κλειτοῖο, which
can be preferred on the principle of utrum in alterum.
7. 233. 1–2 ὥϲτε A; τε d: om. Plut. Mor. 866 e. Editors punctuate
after βαϲιλέϊ, and Hude took the additional step of following Plutarch
by omitting the conjunction. The asyndeton that results seems
acceptable, but it is worth taking note of d’s variant τε, which suggests
an alternative possibility with adjustment of the punctuation; one
could read γεγονότοϲ. βαϲιλέϊ τε. For the connective use of the
particle see Denniston, GP 499, who indicates that it is well attested
in H. and even more so in Thucydides.
7. 233. 2 Powell’s supplement 〈προϲ〉ελθόνταϲ coupled with deletion
of προϲιόνταϲ has a certain logic to it. But if he is right, the fault had
entered the text by Plutarch’s day, since at Mor. 866 f, while omitting
the first clause, he cites the second with the participle as in our MSS.
This objection is far from being decisive, since it is certain that some
errors crept into the text at an early date. My own preference here
would be to read προϲιόνταϲ in the first clause and to omit the
participle in the second.
7. 235. 4 Demaratus tells the king that all the Peloponnesians have
sworn to oppose him at the Isthmus. But both of them knew perfectly
well that the Peloponnesians were not so united, a notable exception
being the Argives. So Pingel (1874), 28 read 〈τῶν〉 ϲυνομοϲάντων.
This affects the syntax; one way of dealing with the difficulty would
be to make the further supplement of 〈ἀπὸ〉 πάντων and perhaps
delete Πελοποννηϲίων. One may do better to follow Macan and
accept ‘Peloponnesians’ as a loose way of referring to Sparta’s
allies. One would like to be able to take the wording of the MSS
as a conditional clause, but that is not the most natural way to
interpret it.
7. 236. 3 ἀνιεῦνται is the reading of the MSS, a vox nihili. Stein’s
ἀκεῦνται has been the favoured solution. But does Menander fr. 474
K.–A. make it safe to assume that the present and future of the
verb were identical in form? In that fragment I think the infinitive
could be present rather than future. Maas indicated doubt but did not

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offer a solution, and Powell was uncharacteristically silent. What

should the speaker be saying here? I suggest the following possibilities.
(a) ‘They will not undo their current setback in any way.’ (b) A mixed
conditional: ‘They could not . . .’ ἂν ἰῷντο might be considered as a
means of achieving this result, but H. regularly uses ἀκέομαι. (c) ‘I
am not at all bothered by our current setback.’ That was the view of
Pingel (1874), 28–9, who proposed ἀνιεῦμαι instead of the expected
ἀνιῶμαι and was obliged to make the further change to τρώμα〈τι〉.
He countered the objection that the Persians ought not to admit to a
setback by emphasizing the huge cost of their victory and referring
to the Thebans’ similar use of τρῶμα at ch. 233. 1. My suggestion is
ἀϕανιεῦνται. The middle voice can be justified in either of two ways,
the self-­interest of the Spartans or the fact that many verbs describing
or implying physical action have a middle future tense. This
phenomenon is discussed in K.–B. ii. 243–5 and W. G. Rutherford,
The New Phrynichus (London, 1881), 377–412. Although these
authorities do not list ἀϕανίζω, it is obvious that the verb will
frequently have implied vigorous action.
7. 237. 2 Xerxes says that he has based his judgement of Demaratus’
loyalty both on what he has said in the past καὶ τῷ ἐόντι, ὅτι κτλ.,
which can be translated ‘and the fact that . . .’ (Stein has ‘aus der
Tatsache’). I would not rule out the possibility that this part of the
period was meant to create a balance with πρότερον, in which case
‘by his present remark’, i.e. τῷ παρέοντι, or perhaps ‘at this moment’,
i.e. 〈ἐν〉 τῷ παρέοντι would be appropriate.
τῇ ϲιγῇ has caused difficulty; Pingel denied that it could be
translated ‘by his silence’, and Naber tried τῇ ϕύϲι. The mention of
silence anticipates the context in which advice is sought, as outlined
in the following clause, and one must wonder if the words are a
clumsy interpolation. The variant τῇ τε γῇ in d is odd, but does not
seem to point to a better solution.
7. 237. 3 ἔχεϲθαι in the middle in the sense ‘abstain from’ is what is
needed here, and the Lexicon cites this usage from 6. 85. 3 and 7. 169.
2. But since an almost exactly opposite meaning is at least as common,
the ambiguity is unfortunate, and A’s variant περιέχεϲθαι may be a
hint that the uncompounded verb is not what H. wrote. πέρι just
above may have caused confusion, but I suggest that ἀπέχεϲθαι
would be more suitable.

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7. 239. 4 ταῦτα μὲν δὴ οὕτω λέγεται γενέϲθαι. The presence of

clauses serving as catch-­lines at the end of Books VII and VIII in A
(and B) led R. Stefec, Gymnasium, 119 (2012), 183–8, to suggest that
these clauses should be printed at the beginning of the following
book, with any duplicated words deleted. If one transfers the last
sentence of Book 7 to the beginning of Book 8, the ending becomes
very abrupt, and the same may equally well be said if a similar transfer
is made at the end of Book 8. This matter is in any case more
complicated than Stefec realized. In the Milan MS Ambr. A 163 sup.
there are catch-lines at the end of each Book except Book 1 (Hude
had already recorded their presence at the end of Books 2, 3, 4 and 6).
It is unclear whether such catch-­lines are the invention of Hellenistic
or later booksellers; could they be due to authors who foresaw the
need to make book-­divisions clearer? Similar transitions involving
μὲν and δὲ clauses occur above at 167–8, below at 9. 88–9 and in
Thucydides 2. 54. 6 and 4. 41. 4,. These facts invite speculation as to
whether the currently accepted book-­divisions correspond in all
cases to the authors’ intentions.

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8. 8. 2 τὸ ἐντεῦθεν ἔτι is defended by Bowie, who cites ch. 62. 2 ἐκ

παλαιοῦ ἔτι and ch. 98. 2 ἐντεῦθεν ἤδη. But in 62. 2 ἔτι is not
pleonastic, nor in my opinion is ἤδη in 98. 2. Cac has ἤδη, perhaps
influenced by such passages as 98. 2. Powell’s deletion may be right;
but perhaps ἔτι is a colloquial pleonasm.
8. 10. 1 Neither Powell nor Bowie refers to the asyndeton of
καταϕρονήϲαντεϲ ταῦτα. Might one not expect ὦν or ὦν δὴ? For
the latter see Denniston, GP 468–9; it is apparently less common in
Books VII–IX, ‘which were perhaps written first’.
8. 10. 2 The Ionians loyal to the Greek cause express their dismay.
Pingel (1874), 30–1 partially anticipated Van Herwerden by recognizing
that the main clause begins with ϲυμϕορήν, which means that the τε
which follows in the MSS is intrusive. Van Herwerden was probably
right to transpose it to follow the first of the two participles rather than
delete.
8. 13 ὅκωϲ ἂν ἐξιϲωθείη τῷ Ἑλληνικῷ τὸ Περϲικὸν is the reading
of A and universally adopted. It seems that no-­one has commented
on d’s variant ’s variant τὸ περιέον, which makes sense: ‘the gods
ensured that the surviving part of the fleet was reduced so as to match
the Greek fleet in size . . .’ τὸ ναυτικὸν, though not the expression
used in the previous clause, is easily inferred. If τὸ Περϲικὸν was
corrupt in the hyparchetype, it was an unusually able copyist who
proposed a different reading that yielded good sense. If περιέον had
been the original reading, Περϲικὸν was an obvious gloss; but the
converse is not impossible. περίειμι is used of ships at 1. 166. 2 and
8. 96. 1. The paraphrase in Diodorus Siculus 11. 13. 1 does not make
it absolutely clear what his text read, but the words τῶν βαρβαρικῶν

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perhaps imply τὸ Περϲικὸν. I accept the reading of A, which makes

for a satisfactory antithesis, but I am not sure that it is correct. Is it
possible that both readings are correct? τὸ Περϲικὸν τὸ περιέον
would be a trifle redundant as an expression, but that is hardly an
objection in this text.
8. 14. 2 ἀπεχρᾶτο as an impersonal verb appears to be unique in
Greek and is suspect. Powell printed ἀπεχρᾶ[το] and Pingel (1874),
31 ἀπέχρα ἔτι, which is perhaps better.
8. 15. 1 The accusative τὰϲ αὐτὰϲ ταύταϲ ἡμέραϲ given by d is the
difficilior lectio and is to be preferred; but Powell was wrong to say
that the variant in A in the dative with Attic terminations presupposes
an implausible change from Ionic; inattentive scribes, if brought up
in the tradition of Atticism which persisted right through the
Byzantine period, often adjusted dialect forms.
8. 20. 2 ἐϲ Van Herwerden: πρὸϲ Ad. This simple change removes an
anomalous use of the preposition; the corruption was presumably
induced by the occurrence of προϲδοκίμοιϲι just before.
8. 25. 1 ταῦτα ἐπαγγειλαμένου, μετὰ ταῦτα. Neither Powell nor
Bowie commented on the repetitive and somewhat clumsy expression.
Should it be treated as a colloquialism, a feature of style adopted for
the purpose of public readings? I would prefer to delete μετὰ ταῦτα.
8. 27. 4 ἄλλο τι εἶναι [τέραϲ] was Macan’s preferred text, taking the
last word to be an intrusive gloss. A better possibility is to read
ἀλλοῖόν τι τέραϲ with the euphemistic use of the adjective as at
5. 40. 1. Polyaenus 6. 18. 1, cited by Powell, could be taken to suggest
that ἀλλόκοτον should be read here, but that word is not used
elsewhere by H., and it is best to assume that Polyaenus was
paraphrasing. Though ἄλλοϲ can sometimes imply something
sinister, that usage is not attested for H.
8. 28. 1 The plural πολιορκέονταϲ is in theory possible after the
collective noun, but the parallel of 7. 40. 1 cited by Bowie is not wholly
satisfactory, since there the participle is appositional. A plural here
makes the sense less obvious for the reader, and no doubt it arose
because both the preceding and following words end in sigma.
8. 31 Macan stated that the clause ἥ περ . . . Δρυοπίϲ must refer to the
whole of the Δωρὶϲ χωρὴ and in its present position after Φωκίδοϲ

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χώρηϲ it is misplaced. But in his text he neither deleted nor transposed.

Powell extended Macan’s objection to include the next sentence,
noting, however, ‘Yet the interpolation represents Herodotus’ view’
and citing 1. 56. 3 and ch. 43 below. More recent editors do not
address the problem; I think it best to see here another case of an
authorial addition which has not been adjusted to suit the context.
8. 34 τῇδε is problematic. It was deleted by Van Herwerden, and
Powell posited a lacuna to follow it. Bowie defends it by saying that it
looks forward to the participial clause. But that clause reports a
motive, whereas τῇδε should be followed by an indication of the
method employed. Powell did not know that he had been anticipated
by Pingel (1874), 32, who observed that there is nothing in what
precedes or in what follows for τῇδε to refer to.
8. 37. 1 ἱρά makes good sense. Naber’s ἀρήια is attractive, but it does
not seem essential to read here the same adjective that is used in the
continuation of the narrative. A further consideration is that ἱρά
could be a gloss induced by the following clause; the text is perfectly
clear without it, and Kallenberg may have been right to delete.
8. 37. 3 κατέλαβον in the sense ‘catch up with/overtake (fugitives)’ is
well attested. Reiske’s emendation κατέβαλον assumes an error of
metathesis which scribes often made. Powell accepted it, but I doubt
if it is essential. The reading of the MSS might, however, be clearer if
a word for fugitives appeared in the text; hence my tentative
emendation.
8. 38 In the description of the two superhuman figures there is some
doubt about the precise wording. ϕύϲιν ἔχειν is an attested expression
(cf. Headlam on Herodas 4. 69, p. 205 n. 1), and while Koen’s ἐόνταϲ
for ἔχονταϲ, designed to make good sense with the adjective, is easy
enough, I incline to the view that Wesseling was right here: he
supposed that corruption began with assimilation of the inflection of
μέζονα to that of the preceding word. Legrand makes an unnecessary
difficulty out of the fact that μέζω is more frequent in H. than
μέζονα. Editors usually accept κατ’ ἀνθρώπων ϕύϲιν, but one
may suspect that H. would have used the adjective ἀνθρωπηίην as at
3. 65. 3 (Powell compared Thuc. 2. 50. 1).
8. 41. 2 ταῦτα referring to persons and property to be removed from
Athens is strangely vague, and since πάντα is transmitted in the

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sentence at the end of the ch. which reports the conclusion of

the operation, I think it might perhaps be read here as well. For the
frequency of confusion between the two words see Aristophanea
48–9. But Stein cited 3. 91. 1 in defence of the transmitted reading,
and rather hesitantly I have followed him.
8. 50. 2 On reaching Athens the Persians destroy πάντα ἐκεῖνα. The
pronoun has no obvious reference and is often not translated
(Godley’s ‘all the country round’ is an attempt). The adverb ἐκεῖθι
would be clear; is the reading of the MSS a colloquialism?
8. 53. 1 ἔϲοδοϲ has caused difficulty. ἔξοδοϲ, accepted without
comment by Bowie, is the proposal of Gomperz, who had been
anticipated by Pingel (1874), 32. The latter argued that the Greeks
would probably have spoken of going up, not in to the Acropolis, and
in any case there was no entrance for the Persians to use. Powell
found the conjecture attractive but hesitated to accept this
metaphorical usage. I would propose ἔποδοϲ in the sense of ‘a way
forward’. Though H. does not use the word elsewhere, it would be
consistent with usages recorded in LSJ. If ἔϲοδοϲ is to be accepted, H.
was not being precise in his choice of words.
8. 54 Krüger’s deletion of ἐνετέλλετο ταῦτα may be right; the words
could have been added by a reader who did not like the imbalance
created by a participial construction in the statement of the first
possible motive followed by an indicative in the second, for which
1. 19. 2 and 9. 5. 2 can be cited as parallels. His text has the advantage
of removing a slightly clumsy pleonasm.
8. 55 νηὸϲ creates a puzzle, because it is not clear what temple of
Erechtheus stood on the site before the construction of the well-­
known one in 421–406. Powell denied that there was any such temple,
and noted that the paraphrase in Dionysius of Halicarnassus 14. 2. 4
uses instead the term ϲηκὸϲ, which was preferred by Furtwängler, SB
München 1898, 363. But more recent research has made it likely that
there was a ‘Pre-­Erechtheion of some sort’ on the site of the classical
temple, and this and adjacent buildings could have been referred to as
‘the Erechtheion’. For discussion of the archaeological and epigraphic
evidence see J. M. Hurwit, The Athenian Acropolis (Cambridge,
1999), 145 with fig. 115, and E. Greco, Topografia di Atene (Athens
and Paestum, 2010), 132.

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8. 57. 2 οὐδὲ περὶ μιῆϲ, the variant reading in Plut. Mor. 869 d, was
accepted by Hude, but rejected by Powell on the ground that H.
nowhere else separates οὐδείϲ into its two constituent elements. This
is wrong (cf. 3.125.2 and 8.65.2); perhaps he should have added “by a
preposition”. But do we not have here an example of pleonastic
double negation (cf. K.–G. ii. 204)?
Powell rejected the words περὶ . . . ναυμαχήϲειϲ as a gloss to
explain the ellipse of ναυμαχήϲουϲι. I find the resulting text
impossibly harsh.
Powell was unaware that Pingel (1874), 32 proposed to retain the
verb, but in the third person plural. But Bowie accepted the text as
transmitted.
8. 58. 2 The variant reading in the final sentence of this §, where d
adds the name of Eurybiades, looks attractive at first sight, but it
could well be a gloss; repetition of the name at this point is not
necesary. On balance Stein’s supplement of 〈μιν〉 seems easier.
8. 61. 2 How did Themistocles conclude his attack on the Corinthians?
The meaning of his last sentence must be that no Greeks could repel
an Athenian fleet. Bowie accepts without discussion the future
infinitive, which is the reading of d, whereas A offers the clearly
impossible present infinitive. But as Powell had seen, the future is
unsuitable, since the Athenians were not threatening aggression. His
tentative solution was to supplement ἂν and introduce an aorist, and
I have had no hesitation in adopting it.
8. 65. 1 In his copy of Hude, Maas underlined the variant recorded
from one branch of the Roman family, where the infinitive
ἀποθωμάζειν is converted into a participle, which makes the syntax
awkward. I imagine that he was intrigued by the fact that the scribe of
V managed to introduce a dual form, which the Byzantines prized
highly as a feature of elegant style.
μάλιϲτά κῃ is a regular usage; A has the variant κου, which may
be possible, but seems more normally to follow the numeral.
8. 67. 2 προΐζετο has caused difficulty; ‘here only in Greek’ noted
Powell, and Maas underlined it with a query. Editors generally
understand the sense to be ‘sat on a prominent seat at the front’ and
note that the Persian king enjoyed proedria (4. 88. 1). The scene
envisaged is that he sat in front of the regular court entourage. But
Powell took the compound in προ-­ to be chronological rather than

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local. I offer another suggestion: since the king is reviewing the fleet,
I wonder if H. intended to say that he took his place facing the ships;
if so, one could read πρὸ 〈τῶν νεῶν〉 ἵζετο.
8. 69. 1 Since it is generally true that A preserves the truth or a trace
of it more often than the other branch of the tradition, its reading
ἀνακρίϲει should be the critic’s point of departure. A simple remedy
is Blaydes’s ἀποκρίϲι, and Richards favoured ὑποκρίϲι, which would
also be in accordance with H.’s usage. The parallel of 3. 34. 5 cited in
support of κρίϲι is uncertain, because in that context ‘reply’ is not the
only suitable translation.
8. 73. 3 ἐκδεδωρίαται in A is a hint that the termination of the verb
should be ‑ίδαται, as proposed by Dindorf and accepted by
Wackernagel, Sprachliche Untersuchungen zu Homer (Göttingen,
1916), 96. In A there is a marginal variant ‑ιϲται, which may be no
more than a scribe’s attempt at correction. d has ἐκδεδωρίευται,
which is the form one might expect. The problem is that δωρίζω
would normally mean ‘to speak Doric’, whereas (ἐκ)δωριῶ is the
Attic form of the transitive verb that one expects to find in the present
context. Is it conceivable that H. used the passive of a verb formed in
‑ίζω with the meaning ‘were converted to speaking Doric’?
‘No amount of time dorizes in itself’, said Powell, and he
commended Stein’s supplement τοῦ χρόνου 〈προϊόντοϲ〉. But I
would submit that χρόνοϲ can be the subject of a transitive verb. This
results in a striking zeugma, but should not be ruled out as a possibility.
8. 74. 1 Eustathius on the Iliad appears to be citing this passage at
342. 21 with the reading 〈τὸν〉 περὶ . . . δρόμον, but here too it is
likely that he was relying on his memory and in practice has just given
us a paraphrase. Maas, who thought highly of his capacity as a textual
critic, took the reading to be his conjecture. Lobeck was right to delete
the noun as a glosss; the expression then conforms to H.’s usage
elsewhere. The superficially similar expression at 1264. 18 is less
relevant, since it lacks the introductory definite article.
8. 74. 2 ἕωϲ ‘for a while’ is Homeric and perhaps to be accepted, if the
phrase ἀνδρὶ παραϲτὰϲ in the same clause can be regarded as another
Homeric touch (cf. Odyssey 8. 238).
8. 75. 1 The spelling of the name Sikinos is uncertain. The form with
a single nu is found here in r only, but receives support from LGPN II

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(×3); for the form with double nu there is so far very little epigraphic
support, a single example from Crete. Does the reading of A and D
preserve a minor error on the part of H.?
8. 76. 1 Pingel (1874), 33 found great difficulty here and recommended
reading Ἐλευϲῖνα for Ϲαλαμῖνα. This gives appropriate meaning to
κυκλούμενοι and brings H.’s account into line with Aeschylus’
narrative. As Legrand remarked, if one accepts the usual text, H.
‘ignore l’encerclement par une division de la flotte barbare de ‘l’île
d’Ajax’ tout entière, signalé par Eschyle’.
The verbs reporting the movements of the ships are problematic.
Bowie merely notes that ἀνῆγον is transitive in the first clause and
intransitive in the second, which Powell had declared to be impossible.
An easy way to remedy this is to emend the second occurrence to
ἀνήγοντο. I am less sure that one should understand τὰϲ νέαϲ,
because in the next sentence H. avoids that ellipse.
8. 77 If references to Bakis and Musaios are suspect, one needs to
determine whether they are addenda of the author, not integrated
into his text, or additions by a reader. What sort of reader can
plausibly be supposed to have done this, and when? While I think
Bowie is right to follow Krüger and Powell, these questions need to be
considered.
8. 79. 3 ἔν τε τῷ ἄλλῳ καιρῷ should mean ‘and on the other
occasion’, a specific reference, as Powell saw, rather than ‘in the past’,
as Bowie translates. Unless one can point to that other occasion,
which H. does not help us to identify, it is better to accept an
emendation. Gomperz’s ἔν τεῳ is simple; Stein (1893) has εἰ ἔν τεῳ
and cites as parallel 9. 27. 5, where the expression εἰ τέοιϲι καὶ
ἄλλοιϲ Ἑλλήνων is slightly different.
8. 81 As Naber, Mnemosyne, 3 (1854), 486, realized, ἐκπλῶϲαι
implies a blockade of Aegina, not of Salamis, and he proposed
διεκπλῶϲαι. Powell followed him, citing Plut. Arist. 8. But Pingel
(1874), 34–5 saw that it is simpler to read ἐϲπλῶϲαι, the corruption
having been caused by the preceding ἐξ Αἰγίνηϲ.
8. 82. 1 Attempts have been made to justify the expression ἀνὴρ
Παναίτιοϲ as poetic diction, but I am sceptical, as there is no other
trace of poetic usage in the immediate context. An easy supplement is
Powell’s, and Schenkl had a similar idea: 〈τῶν ἀϲτῶν δόκιμοϲ〉.

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8. 83. 1 The first sentence of this ch., though clear enough in meaning,
is syntactically unacceptable. Powell made various suggestions.
Initially I was attracted by his transposition of τὰ to follow ἦν, but I
now prefer his alternative of deleting τῶν Τηνίων ῥήματα, which
looks like a gloss.
His proposal for dealing with the anacoluthon in the second
sentence, which many editors have been content to accept, is more
drastic. In his edition of 1938 he eliminated εὖ ἔχοντα, converted the
plural verb into the singular, removing the prepositional prefix (this
point he retracted in 1948) and substituting it for ἐκ. The result is
ἡγόρευε μὲν πρὸ πάντων. Gentler medicines need to be considered.
Legrand thought a lacuna should be marked after ποιηϲάμενοι,
which is not implausible. Pingel (1874), 35 took εὖ ἔχοντα μὲν ἐκ
πάντων to indicate that the other generals addressed their own
forces, only with less effect, the particle μὲν marking a significant
contrast. The position of the main verb immediately after the
participle and separated from the mention of Themistocles led him to
adjust the verb to the plural προηγόρευον, explaining the corruption
as a simple case of assimilation by copyists who looked ahead to the
noun in the singular at the end of the sentence.
The passage was discussed by A. J. Graham, CQ2 46 (1996), 321–6,
who defended the paradosis. To take the verb to mean ‘foretell’ rather
than ‘make a proclamation’ is possible, but to translate εὖ ἔχοντα as
‘victory’ is to extract too much from words that ought to mean ‘well
balanced’ or ‘coherent’, especially when given better definition by the
phrasing that follows, which appears to mean that Themistocles gave
a measured assessment of the pros and cons of giving battle. As to the
parallel cited for the anacoluthon, Xen. Hell. 2. 3. 54, the word-­order
there ensures that the reader will not find the sentence inelegant or
hard to follow. One may add that a rather similar anacoluthon below
at ch. 87. 2 is also made acceptable by a parenthesis containing
information which leaves the reader in no doubt as to what is
happening, and the result is not harsh. In my opinion one should
accept Pingel’s or Legrand’s solution, preferably the latter, but in
either case the text would be easier if one read 〈μοῦνοϲ〉 ἐκ πάντων
(cf. 5. 87. 2, 7. 52. 2).
8. 84. 1 Παλληνεὺϲ was deleted by Cobet and Powell because in their
view it makes no sense to state first the name of Ameinias’ deme and
only afterwards that he was an Athenian. But (a) not all H.’s readers

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would recognize an Athenian deme name as such, and (b) the

description ‘from Pallene’ could indicate origin in Chalcidice.
8. 84. 2 Valla restored the future ἀνακρούϲεϲθε. The present tense
was defended by A. Giusti, PhW 57 (1937), cols. 173–4. But he did
not allow for the fact that the presence of ἔτι strengthens the case for
a future.
8. 85. 1 G. Loeschke, Jahrbücher für classische Philologie, 23 (1877),
31–2 substituted Salamis for Eleusis. the latter being geographically
irrelevant at this point, as Powell saw.
8. 85. 3 The repetition of the word βαϲιλέοϲ in the last sentence could
perhaps be a scribal error, as A. D. Fitton Brown, Hermes, 86 (1958),
379 tentatively suggested, noting the unusual word-­order; but if there
is an element of colloquialism in the style here, the word is hardly
objectionable.
8. 86 Stein’s supplement of καὶ, anticipated by Valla, was not thought
necessary by A. Giusti, PhW 57 (1937), cols. 173–4, but Powell noted
the conjunction of the same two concepts linked by the particle at
9. 59. 2; also here in the next clause there is a corresponding pair of
concepts.
The redundancy of ἦϲαν and ἐγένοντο was described by Powell as
idiocy. καὶ ἐγένοντο was deleted by Blakesley, who supposed that
the words originated as a variant to ἦϲαν; they can hardly be a gloss.
Powell’s restoration 〈ἐναυμάχ〉ηϲάν γε εὖ is typically clever, if rather
speculative. I am sure that he was on the right track in assuming that
something had been lost. The same assumption led J. C. Vollgraff,
Sertum Nabericum (Leiden, 1908), 419–22, to supplement ἦϲαν γε
〈ἄνδρεϲ ἀγαθοὶ〉, which I have preferred.
Ad have the aorist infinitive θεήϲαϲθαι (or θηή-­), but K.–G. i. 199
listed this passage as one that they regarded as corrupt. It would be
difficult to take the aorist as meaning ‘had been watching/ had caught
sight of’. Powell emended to the present, but I think it is simpler to
adopt the future, which is found in the Nuremberg MS that served as
printer’s copy for the Aldine edition.
8. 87. 2 ϕέρουϲα is explained by commentators as an example of a
very rare intransitive usage of the verb indicating speed or energy; the
Lexicon renders ‘rush’, and there is no other example in H. Since the
point is that though she was being pursued Artemisia managed to ram

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the other ship before she was caught, I should find it odd if H. did not
avail himself here of the more common and highly suitable ϕθάνουϲα.
8. 87. 3 Powell rewrote the first sentence of this section, observing ‘The
μὲν-­clause has no verb and none can be supplied’. This laconic dismissal,
which I do not fully understand, seems to be based on the assumption
that οὐ μέντοι κτλ. governs the two clauses that follow and is not to be
construed with εἰ μὲν κτλ. Other editors take those two clauses to be
loosely attached and accept a colloquial structure. It is worth noting that
Denniston, GP 409 seems not to have had any difficulty here. There is,
however, one further point in Powell’s emendation which is to be noted:
the combination μέν νυν is extremely common in H., and I think it
ought to be restored here. Corcella disagrees with Denniston and takes
εἰ . . . καὶ to be equivalent to etsi, which I find unconvincing because of
the intervening μὲν. This clause also seems to be improved by Legrand’s
supplement of the enclitic pronoun for greater clarity.
8. 92. 2 As L.A.H.-­S. observes, the sense required is that Polykritos
abused Themistocles for having charged the Aeginetans with Medism
and he suggests reading ὀνειδίζοντα. Another simple way to obtain
the required meaning would be to add the particle δῆθεν, which as
Denniston, GP 266 said ‘is seldom devoid of all trace of scepticism,
irony, or indignation’.
8. 95 Though many deletions by Cobet (and others) seem excessively
logical, in this context νῆϲον followed in the next clause by τῇ νηϲῖδι
seems to me too clumsy to be acceptable.
8. 96. 2 If Powell’s excision of the clumsily worded sentence about the
oracle is not accepted, (a) the joint authorship of the oracle has to be
removed by deletion of Mousaios’ name or reading ἢ for καὶ; (b) τὸ
needs to be emended to τὸν, provided that Λυϲιϲτράτῳ means ‘given
to Lysistratus’, which is open to doubt. Legrand proposed but did not
print τῶν τε χρηϲμῶν τῶν ἄλλων and translated ‘tous les détails
des oracles’, which tempted Corcella to make the ingenious suggestion
τῶν χρηϲμῶν τά τε ἄλλα πάντα τὰ . . . εἰρημένα. With some
hesitation I have followed Powell; it is not clear who added the
intrusive material and why the need was felt.
8. 97. 1 τῶν τιϲ, as proposed by Krüger, would be the normal
Herodotean word-­order, but perhaps Wackernagel’s law operates
here to defend the paradosis. L.A.H.-­S. cites as a parallel ch. 138. 1.

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I have failed to trace a reference to this passage in Wackernagel’s

articles.
8. 98. 2 κατ’ ἄλλον 〈καὶ ἄλλον〉 The preposition is at first sight
puzzling. Powell denied that it had any proper meaning, and Bowie
admitted that it is hard to find convincing parallels. I should like
to propose that it be treated as an instance of the usage listed by LSJ
s.v. B III, with the sense ‘in the direction of’. If that is acceptable,
Powell’s more drastic κατὰ τὸν αὐτὸν λόγον (why not τρόπον?)
becomes unnecessary. In the light of the verb used to indicate the
handing over from one messenger to the next παρὰ might also be
considered.
Powell deleted the clause relating to the torch-­race in honour of
Hephaestus. I do not share his view that the word λαμπαδηϕορίη
must be rejected because H. elsewhere uses λαμπάϲ (only once, be it
noted), and that Stein’s supplement 〈ἐν〉 or 〈παρ’〉 Ἕλληϲι is neither
necessary nor grammatical. But if it is the case that the only torch-­
race in honour of Hephaestus, as opposed to other deities, is the one
that took place in Athens (cf. L. Deubner, Attische Feste (Berlin,
1932), 213, citing Nilsson), the description of such races as being held
among the Greeks is extremely puzzling, and I do not feel that Bowie’s
reference to the beacons in Aesch. Ag. 281–310 rescues us from the
difficulty. My solution is to suppose that H. did in fact refer to Athens,
but a careless scribe wrote Ἕλληϲι instead of Ἀθήνῃϲι.
8. 99. 1 The pronoun αὐτοί has no point. It has been emended so as
to yield the sense ‘all of them’ (πάντεϲ) or ‘all the time’ (αἰεί), both of
which are acceptable but not very plausible palaeographically. Better
possibilities are ἄνετοι ‘with uncontrolled joy’ or ἀνύποπτοι ‘without
suspicion (of what was to follow)’ or ἄπαυϲτοι ‘unceasing’, which is
well attested in the classical period and is my preferred solution.
8. 100. 5 ἐμὲ δέ ϲοι] The second pronoun should be taken as enclitic,
and was so printed by Krüger and Powell. Other editors seem
insensitive to the distinction between emphatic and enclitic pronouns.
8. 101. 2 ‘They do not share the responsibility for any reverse’ can be
taken as an attempt not to admit that there has been a serious defeat,
while recognizing a minor setback. But Powell’s parallel from 9. 88
makes his proposal attractive. ἀπόδεξιϲ without ἔργων can perhaps
be taken as ‘performance’. Again Powell’s supplement is well worth
recording.

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8. 102. 2 The phrase beginning with περὶ only becomes acceptable

with the addition of the definite article τῶν, as suggested by Krüger
in order to rectify what looks like a case of haplography. That still
leaves the problem of the pronoun ἐκείνων. Although Powell saw no
difficulty, I am not satisfied with renderings such as ‘that 〈well-­
known〉 situation’ or Stein’s ‘der dortigen Macht’, and I have therefore
adopted Wessseling’s solution. Stein’s deletion of περὶ οἶκον τὸν
ϲόν also deserves mention, but without these words the parallelism of
concepts in this and the following sentence is lost.
8. 104 The statement about Pedasa interrupts the narrative and is
essentially a repetition of 1. 175, but with some linguistic variants that
have aroused suspicion. Stein, while noting that Strabo 13. 1. 59
(611C) seems not to have read the passage here, did not include it
among passages that might be regarded as authorial additions or
variants. Such a view has been expressed by Rosén: explicationem
quasi adnotationem nostri esse iudices, But in view of the facts just
stated this does not seem very plausible. The passage is not included
in the Excerpta Constantiniana. Maas noted that this omission might
be due to conjecture, i.e. that the tenth-­century Byzantine excerptor
was aware of the oddity of the text and the way it interrupts the
narrative. But in my opinion it is equally likely that the excerptor
simply realized that, given the purpose of the encyclopaedic
compilation he was working on, this section of the text was irrelevant
to the theme being illustrated—examples of virtues and vices—and
therefore left it out.
8. 105. 1 The name Panionios is cited from this passage only in LGPN
I and there is no example in VA, but Paionios is listed (×5 in I, ×8 in
VA, one of them from the fifth century). S. Hornblower in P. Derow
and R. C. T. Parker (eds.), Herodotus and his World (Oxford, 2003),
50–2, noted ‘an unattested name like Panionios may show the bearer
to be unhistorical’. That suggestion prompts the reflection that if an
unhistorical character is to be invented, the fiction gains in plausibility
if the man is given a real name. From the evidence available I would
draw a different conclusion: we should adopt the reading of d, which
gives a fairly rare but adequately attested name. The error could result
from a scribe reflecting on the mention of the amphictyony just above
and remembering that the Panionion was referred to several times in
Book I and at 6. 7. Note also the remark of P. M. Fraser, Greek Ethnic

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Terminology (Oxford, 2009), 139: ‘Although there was a κοινὸν τῶν

Ἰώνων, presided over by a religious official, the basileus, there is no
evidence that this association had a political function expressed in an
ethnic formula’.
8. 108. 2 As Powell saw, the Greeks at this point had to choose
between the alternatives of pursuing the Persians along the coast or
sailing by a more direct route through the islands to reach the
Hellespont. ἐπιδιώξανταϲ was altered by L. Weber, PhW 57 (1937),
col. 221, to ἔτι διώξανταϲ, but this is not convincing. Powell rightly
wanted ‘some word of the opposite meaning, e.g. ἐάϲανταϲ’ (ibid.,
col. 1200). He deleted καὶ . . . νέαϲ, but has not been followed. The
words could be an addition by a reader who failed to understand the
situation, but I think Powell’s aim is easily achieved by supplementing
〈μὴ〉, which I prefer to his earlier proposal 〈οὐκ〉έτι διώξανταϲ. Cf.
ch. 111. 1 below μήτ’ ἐπιδιώκειν.
ϲϕεῖϲ, the emendation in the Aldine, is plausible. A has ϲϕι, which
is wrong, but d has ϲϕέαϲ, which could be accepted if one deletes τὴν
Ἑλλάδα, which could well be a gloss. Maas wondered if the pronoun
should be deleted, but went no further than asking the question.
8. 108. 3 πειρῷτο ‘try’ is not the mot juste in the context, though only
Powell has queried it, suggesting that the sense required is ϲυμϕέροι
ἂν αὐτῷ, which even he did not venture to print. The period
continues with a statement of the options open to the Persian leader;
the text ought to refer to his preference. προαιρέοιτο is needed, even
if this compound of αἱρέειν is not otherwise attested in H. One might
also expect the verb to be reinforced by πάντωϲ.
8. 109. 2 ἡμέαϲ . . . Ἑλλάδα was deleted by Powell, who presumably
took this to be a gloss. Bowie hesitantly retains it as a cognate-­
accusative expression. I too am inclined to accept it as a kind
of colloquial idiom. But it must be said that if the pronoun were in
the nominative or dative the transmitted text would be easier to
accept. An objection to Powell’s view is that the words are not the
most obvious choice if a reader wanted to add a gloss. Other solutions
can be considered, such as 〈ϲώϲαντεϲ〉 (Bowie) or 〈κατὰ〉; for
the latter see the Lexicon s.v. B 11, where the meaning is ‘amongst’.
One might also wonder if the original text read ἑρμαῖον instead
of εὕρημα; the error presupposed would be of a common enough
type.

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8. 109. 5 ἀποθήκην ποιήϲαϲθαι is rightly regarded by all

commentators as an odd expression for establishing a store of credit
(Legrand has ‘un dépôt de bons offices’). I have wondered if the word
ἀποϲτροϕὴν just below induced a scribal error; παραθήκην would
be natural in the context (cf. 9. 45. 1). If there was a question of a
physical object, some of the money he had received in bribes (8. 4. 2)
would have served. But money is not mentioned in ch. 110.
8. 110. 1 Macan remarked ‘The contrast between δεδογμένοϲ εἶναι
and ἐϕάνη ἐὼν is emphatic but inappropriate; the word δεδογμένοϲ
is, however, a strong one, and weakens the grammatical or idiomatic
antithesis.’ The logic of this I cannot follow, but he did record that Van
Herwerden had noted that the word ϲοϕόϲ fortasse melius abesset.
Powell used stronger language: ‘the whole sentence . . . is insufferably
silly’. Though his objection to εὔβουλοϲ as hapax legomenon in H.
cannot have decisive weight he was right to point to the repetition of
ϲοϕόϲ and ought to have mentioned Van Herwerden’s tentative deletion
of its first occurrence. Nor did he see fit to observe that δεδογμένοϲ
in the perfect implies an established fact, which renders the rest of
the clause otiose. More drastic intervention is required. The words
δεδογμένοϲ εἶναι ϲοϕόϲ are an attempt by some reader or rhetorician
to paraphrase or improve the text; the perfect tense was very popular
with readers and writers brought up in the Atticist tradition.
8. 111. 2 κατὰ λόγον looks forward to an explanatory clause
introduced by a conjunction or a relative pronoun. Stein’s 〈αἵ 〉, which
appears to be a modification of a proposal by de Pauw, is usually
adopted. One might rather expect 〈αἵ γε〉. But Pingel (1874), 37
made a simpler suggestion: for καὶ read εἰ. It seems to me that a
conditional clause improves the sense. Stein (1893) tried 〈αἳ 〉 καὶ.
8. 111. 3 ἐϲ τὰ μέγιϲτα ἀνήκονταϲ, if sound, needs to be
accompanied by a noun in the genitive, hence Krüger’s γεωπεινίηϲ,
adjusted by Pingel (1874), 37 to γεωπείνηϲ. I think this is acceptable,
since there is a somewhat similar use of ἀνήκειν at 5. 49. 3; but Powell
may have been right to delete ἀνήκονταϲ as a gloss explaining the
phrase τὰ μέγιϲτα. Whether a glossator would have been likely to
choose that verb is hard to say; perhaps it was a natural choice after
ἥκοιεν in the preceding sentence.
8. 113. 2 τοὺϲ Πέρϲαϲ πάνταϲ τοὺϲ ἀθανάτουϲ καλεομένουϲ is the
reading of A, accepted by most editors, whereas Legrand followed d.

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To me it does not make sense; but τῶν Περϲέων does, and one then
has a construction which is paralleled in the clause relating to the
Persians other than the ‘immortals’. The error was one of assimilation.
For Πέρϲαϲ πάνταϲ d has μυρίουϲ Πέρϲαϲ, but μυρίουϲ could well
be a gloss on ἀθανάτουϲ. πάνταϲ looks sound, since it makes good
sense when followed by πλὴν.
8. 113. 3 The second and third sentences of this § interrupt the flow
of the narrative. Stein, Pingel, and Hude are silent on the question
whether they are spurious or the author’s second thoughts. Powell
deleted them and was followed by Legrand, who at least asked
the question, without, however, suggesting an answer. As Powell
emphasized, πλεῖϲτον contradicts οὐκ ἐλάϲϲοναϲ, unless one takes
the adjective to mean ‘very large’ rather than ‘largest’; but H. would
have expressed that concept with κάρτα. Powell also, if I understand
him correctly, did not believe that ἓν δὲ πλεῖϲτον ἔθνοϲ could be
accepted as meaning ‘the single most numerous race’, perhaps because
he expected this idiom to include a genitive of the category of persons
referred to. L.A.H.-­S. suggests supplementing ἐόν or ἐόνταϲ as an
alternative solution. Stein (1893) thought otherwise and cited some
passages of Thucydides such as 3. 39. 1 and 113. 6, in all of which the
concept of μία πόλιϲ occurs in conjunction with a superlative; but
the parallel is not quite exact, because in those passages the numeral is
not in agreement with the superlative. I have come to the conclusion
that Powell was probably right; my only doubt is whether the first of
the two sentences in question is perhaps genuine, even if it is a slightly
awkward parenthesis, and the interpolation begins with οὗτοι κτλ.,
which looks very like a scholiast’s note.
8. 115. 1 Powell, following Van Herwerden, insisted on deleting τῆϲ
διαβάϲιοϲ as a gloss, originally in the accusative and later altered in
order to provide some sort of construction. I have wondered if another
solution might be to read χῶρον for πόρον, to yield the meaning ‘the
spot where they would cross’. If πόροϲ can be taken as ‘bridge’ or
‘causeway’, which the Lexicon allows, perhaps no change is needed.
8. 116. 1 In his enthusiasm for deletion Powell here wished to remove
the additional information given by γῆϲ τε . . . Θρῆιξ on the ground
that it is ‘a curious appendix’. Stein had contented himself with the
excision of Θρῆιξ, and it has to be admitted that in the transmitted
text the word is loosely attached to its context. That can easily be put

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right by inserting 〈ἐὼν〉, which makes it clear that the king’s brutal
act was consistent with his nationality.
8. 119 The syntax of the sentence beginning εἰ γὰρ δὴ is sufficiently
odd (‘hardly tolerable’ was Powell’s verdict) to have provoked
conjecture and athetesis of all or most of chs. 119–20 by various
nineteenth-­century critics. Pingel (1874), 37–8 was inclined to accept
a certain degree of anacoluthon by introducing a direct question; for
ὅκωϲ he proposed κῶϲ, and I think that is best. The postponement of
the interrogative to a point near the end of a long period might have
caused difficulty to scribes.
8. 120 Editors report that the second hand in B added a note to the
effect that twenty lines of text are missing here at the end of the ch.
This is puzzling; Rosén admitted that he had no idea of what was
meant, and Maas similarly remarked ‘woher das?’ Another puzzling
case of the same kind occurs in the p-­group of MSS at Ar. Pax 440,
where a lacuna of nine lines is indicated, and again at 1348, where the
alleged lacuna is of six lines. My tentative explanation of all three
cases is that the scribes were reporting damage in the exemplar, i.e. a
sheet of faulty parchment or paper, where nothing had been written
and they wrongly inferred that some of the text was missing.
For the statement about the location of Abdera see above on 1. 149.
8. 123. 2 In this passage Powell’s surgery involved three deletions and
therefore presupposed wholesale interpolation; he did not venture to
speculate about the date and authorship of these interventions. One
must consider whether gentler medicines might be adequate. As
Bowie rightly says, the details of the procedure for voting are not
clear. But Powell asserted that ‘the votes were taken from, not cast on,
the altar’. So he accepted ἔϕερον from d and altered the end of the
clause so as to make it conform to the description given in Plut. Them.
17. 1 and Aristides 3. 338 Dindorf. On his view the generals fetched
their ostraka or sheets of papyrus from the altar and then voted (if
papyrus was used, an extension of the original meaning of ψῆϕοϲ has
occurred). This is possible, but it is not what the other branch of the
tradition offers and it could be the result of ancient interpolation. The
alternative is to suppose that the voting took place at the altar in order
to emphasize the solemnity of the occasion. If ἔϕερον is accepted as
meaning ‘placed their ostraka/papyri’ on the altar, ἐνταῦθα is used in
its temporal sense. But if one accepts διένεμον from A (or διενέμοντο

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from P and the Aldine) in the sense ‘they distributed (among

themselves)’, which is a difficilior lectio that seemed acceptable to
Stein, ἐνταῦθα could indicate location, a less common but by no
means rare usage in H. Van Herwerden proposed διέϕερον,
comparing 4. 138. 1, which presumably was an attempt to account for
the divergent readings of the MSS, and κρινέοντεϲ, which is quite
plausible.
8. 124. 2 Having failed to receive due honour from other Greek
commanders Themistocles at once goes off to Sparta to seek
recognition there. The immediacy of his action is emphasized in the
main clause, and this leads me to wonder whether ὅτι might be
emended to ὅτε, which often includes the notion of cause. (This
correction seemed to me essential at Ar. Eq. 267.)
Stein felt some uncertainty about the participle νικῶν and
hesitantly suggested ϕιλονεικέων (not otherwise used by H.).
8. 126. 2 With the reading of the MSS it is tempting to take both
genitive participles as agreeing with Mardonios. Powell, preceded by
Pingel, objected that the position of τε is against this. It would be easy
to transpose it, but I also wonder if we have here an irregularity of
word-­order of the type dealt with by Denniston, GP 518–20. Bowie
usefully cites 9. 55. 1 as a parallel. Pingel (1874), 36–7 proposed
κατεπείγων αὐτὸϲ ἥκειν, which introduces an intransitive use of
the verb not found otherwise in H., though known from Ar. Eccl. 293
and Xen. Hell. 4. 2. 18. This is clever but I doubt if it is essential. οὐδὲν
as an adverb modifying the verb seems to have been found
objectionable by Powell; I do not see why, but Schweighäuser’s
οὐδενὸϲ is worth considering.
8. 128. 2 When Timoxenos was wounded by the arrow people
crowded round and noticed that the arrow had some papyrus
attached to it. But the verb ἔμαθον does not seem to be the right word
for what happened; as Powell saw, one expects a verb of seeing. The
account of this episode in Aeneas Tacticus 31. 26 οὕτωϲ καταϕανὴϲ
ἐγένετο ἡ πρᾶξιϲ might suggest that ἐϕάνη is the right word. In that
case it is just possible to imagine that the occurrence of μαθοῦϲι a few
lines below caused a scribal error. Another remedy would be to posit
the loss of a word such as περιειλιχθὲν (cf. § 1).
8. 129. 2 In the description of the tidal wave γινομένηϲ, the reading
of d, is accepted by Hude, Powell and Corcella. But what is the syntax

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of the genitive? I suppose we are to supply πλημυρίδοϲ from the

context. In view of the close proximity of θαλάϲϲηϲ I do not find this
very attractive. MS A has the nominative γινομένη, preferred by
Krüger, Stein and others. The meaning must be, as Bowie rightly says,
‘though a flood-­tide often happens’, but as the Greek stands πολλάκιϲ
γινομένη after ὅϲη οὐδαμοῦ κω seems too abrupt, and I prefer to
achieve clarity by supplementing 〈καίπερ〉.
8. 129. 3 καὶ τῆϲ πλημυρίδοϲ was deleted by Valckenaer, and most
editors, with the exception of Stein, have followed him. Since the
words are preserved in P. Oxy. ined., if they are a gloss, they are an
early corruption, and it has to be accepted that this may be the right
view. If retained, they must be treated as a colloquial redundancy.
8. 132. 2 The name Basileides with Ionic spelling is found once in
LGPN V; it comes from a fragmentary list of names, probably of the
fifth century; see H. Engelmann—R. Merkelbach, Die Inschriften von
Erythrai und Klazomenai (Bonn, 1972–3), i. 262, no. 158, who note
that he may have been a member of the oligarchical family in Erythrae
mentioned by Arist. Pol. 1306a18–22. Was the man named by H. a
member of the same clan?
8. 134. 1 πρῶτα was queried by Van Herwerden and deleted by
Powell, because Thebes is not the first place visited by Mys, Lebadeia
and Abai having been mentioned beforehand. Macan wondered if H.
meant ὡϲ πρῶτα, ‘as soon as he reached Thebes’, and this is what
Stein seems to have thought. But the formula for that is ἐπείτε
τάχιϲτα. What is really needed here is ὕϲτατα or ὕϲτερα; dare one
posit another case of corruption to the polar opposite of what the
author intended?
8. 136. 1 ἅμα μὲν . . . ἅμα τε has been defended by Corcella, who
referred to Denniston, GP 374–6. There quite a number of occurrences
of this combination in poetry and prose are listed, but none are from
H. I incline to the view that τε was mistakenly introduced in
anticipation of its occurrence in the next clause.
8. 136. 3 κατελπίζειν is otherwise first attested in Polybius. Pingel
(1874), 39 wondered if one should read καὶ ἤλπιζε. I see no particular
virtue in καὶ here and draw attention to the presence of
κατεργαϲμένουϲ in the previous line and κατύπερθε not far below.
These forms may have led to an erroneous repetition of the prefix.

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8. 137. 2 Van Herwerden, followed by Powell in 1939, deleted as a

gloss the sentence ἦϲαν . . . δῆμοϲ. Stein transposed it to follow
ἔπεϲϲε. Pingel (1874), 39 had a more elegant solution. Since the
sentence is a justification of what follows and A reads γὰρ rather than
δὲ, one should recognize here the typically Herodotean usage of a
γὰρ-­clause preparing the way for the main statement. So we must
read 〈καὶ〉 ἦϲαν γὰρ and delete the particle δὲ transmitted after ἡ in
what most editors treat as the next sentence.
8. 137. 3 The first sentence of this § was described by Powell as
‘clumsy but not ungrammatical’, a comment which I find surprisingly
mild. I suppose it is just conceivable that the text can stand, but one
should begin by taking stock of various deletions proposed by
Valckenaer and Stein. To excise the mention of Perdiccas is plausible
enough; Stein’s view that τοῦ θητὸϲ was a marginal addition to
improve the text is also possible, since the word is used just below.
There may be other remedies: θητεύοντοϲ would be an improvement
which does not seem to have been suggested, but my own preference
is to delete τοῦ παιδὸϲ, which could well be a gloss.
8. 138. 1 The river was identified by Stein as the Erigon or the
Haliakmon. Pingel (1874), 39 found it very odd that H. should have
failed to name it in view of its importance; Bowie cites Asheri for the
suggestion that the omission contributes to a fairy-­tale atmosphere.
Pingel rather implausibly considered the possibilities that either
ἀπ’ Ἄργεοϲ was a corruption of the river’s name or that the original
text spoke of Ἀργέαδαι ἀπ’ Ἄργεοϲ. Van Herwerden’s supplement
of 〈τῶν〉 is easy and convincing; but he also wondered if ἀπ’ Ἄργεοϲ
should be deleted because it duplicates ἀπόγονοι, and Powell
followed him.
8. 140 α 4 ἔϲτε ἐλεύθεροι κτλ. is cited by Denniston, Greek Prose
Style (Oxford, 1952), 114, among his examples of asyndeton, and
Stein had found it acceptable. But Powell thought it harsh and was
willing to posit the loss of a conjunction linking ἔϲτε with
καταλύϲαϲθε, in which case παρέχει . . . ὁρμημένου is parenthetical.
Pingel (1874), 40 tried ἔϲτε 〈τε〉.
8. 142. 2 ἀρχῆϲ is the reading of the MSS, and it puts an anachronism
into the mouth of the Spartans, since the Athenians at this date could
hardly be described as having an empire. Was this deliberate or a slip
on the part of H.? The oddity is very easily removed, by assuming an

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error of assimilation involving a single letter, as Schaefer proposed.

Against Wesseling’s similar ἀρχῆθεν D. Gilula, in P. Derow and
R. C. T. Parker, Herodotus and his World (Oxford, 2003), 85–7, notes
that it ‘eliminates the polemic (sic) spirit of the passage’, but I feel that
that is not quite correct as an assessment. I do not myself favour
Bowie’s view that the Spartans speak proleptically, because the
preceding and following clauses both include chronological
indications that fit in well with Schaefer’s proposal.
8. 142. 3 γενέϲθαι 〈καὶ〉 Bowie, an ingenious suggestion, yielding the
sense ‘And besides it is not at all tolerable that Athens should be
responsible for all these things and the enslavement of Greece’. This
may well be right; with considerable hesitation I have preferred to
achieve the same sense by accepting Renehan’s articulation with
χωρίϲ; his chief parallel is 1. 207. 5 where ἀναϲχετὸν is again the
point in a similarly structured concept (HSCP 89 (1985), 32 n. 8).
8. 142. 4 λεήναϲ τὸν Μαρδονίου λόγον has caused difficulty. Powell
at one point claimed that the sense required is ‘repeat as one’s own’,
but in his translation he proposed instead to read ἐπαινέϲαϲ. The
corruption postulated is not easy to account for. But along with Bowie
I reject this view and accept the sense ‘making it milder’. Maas
here noted the difficulty caused by a compound of the same verb at
7. 10. 1 and marked the word with what looks like an obelus.
8. 143. 3 ἔρδειν is regular in H. (×16), whereas d’s ῥέζειν is not found.
Is the latter a mistake caused by a scribe remembering what he had
read in Homer, where the word is found in conjunction with
ἀθέμιϲτοϲ, or is it a deliberate epicism?
8. 144. 1 Powell urged that since the Lacedaemonians’ fear was
ἀνθρωπήιον it did not deserve to be called αἰϲχρὸν, a point which
Bowie does not consider. A less severe criticism would seem to be in
order, such as ἀλόγωϲ or ἀναξίωϲ. Pingel (1874), 40 felt that an
essential contrast was lacking and wished to supplement the text with
a clause meaning ‘if they did not know us’, but he did not go so far as
to supply the wording. I have also wondered if the text would be
improved by reading οἴκατε 〈ἅτε〉, which presupposes a simple error
of haplography.

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9. 2. 2 περιγενέϲθαι cannot govern an accusative, as Pingel (1874),

41 saw. Reiske introduced by emendation the genitive that one
expects, but Pingel’s change to χαλεποὺϲ is a gentler medicine, and
Stein printed it without comment in his later editions.
ἰϲχυρὰ d: om. A. This adjective can hardly be right here, but it does
not look like a gloss. Corcella’s tentative ἴϲχειν gives excellent sense:
‘you will be able to check all their schemes’. This seems preferable to
his alternative of deleting both adjective and noun. Flower–Marincola
translate ἕξειϲ as ‘know’, but I do not find that wholly convincing,
despite their reference to ch. 4. 2 below, where προέχων is also
doubtful, to say the least. Legrand conjectured ἄξειϲ, ‘tu briseras’, but
LSJ say that this verb is never used in the active in prose, and DGE
does not contradict that.
9. 4. 2 προέχων is translated in the Lexicon as ‘know already’, which
does not seem plausible, even though LSJ concur; Wesseling interpreted
the word as equivalent to πρότερον ἔχων. Krüger’s προϲδοκῶν gives
good sense, and Pingel (1874), 42 tried παρεχομένων, which is even
better, as the middle of this verb is frequent in H.; to explain the
corruption one merely has to assume that the following μὲν τῶν led to
a kind of haplography.
9. 7. 1 At the end of the first period the reading of the MSS καὶ ἤδη
may be sound. It is included among examples of unusual word-­order
involving καὶ by Denniston, GP 326, who by implication rejects
Richards’s ἤδη καὶ. But Schäfer’s καὶ δή would fit into category (iii)
given at GP 251. Another way to solve the difficulty is to supplement
with Stein ϲϕι 〈ἤνετο〉. Legrand did not emend but said ‘vix
intellegitur’; in view of the solutions available such pessimism seems
unnecessary.

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9. 9. 1 There does not seem to be any epigraphic evidence to determine

the correct form of the name of the man from Tegea. LGPN IIIA
accepts the spelling given by Plutarch. No other instance of the name
is recorded.
9. 11. 2 ὁκοῖον ἂν ἐκβαίνῃ is syntactically odd; Pingel (1874), 42
admitted to having been puzzled for a long time until he came across
what looks like a parallel at Plat. Meno 82 b πρόϲεχε δὴ τὸν νοῦν,
ὁπότερ’ ἄν ϲοι ϕαίνηται. This passage also is difficult; see E. S.
Thompson and R. S. Bluck ad loc. I have wondered if the reading of
the MSS should be taken to mean ‘Whatever happens to you as a
result, you will learn a lesson’. On this view we are not dealing with an
indirect question.
9. 13. 3 The statement that Attica was unsuitable terrain for cavalry is
clumsily worded and perhaps colloquial. If χώρη is the predicate, the
article which precedes it in the MSS should be deleted. It is equally
possible that ἡ ’Ἀττικὴ is a gloss and should be excised.
In the consecutive clause the sense is much improved if with
Blaydes we read κἂν instead of καὶ. The sentence then falls into the
category given by K.-­G. ii. 507 para. 2. Mardonios is not worried that
a few men are actually preventing his retreat, but that they could.
9. 14. 1 πρόδρομοϲ in the nominative describing the ἀγγελίη, i.e.
‘advance notice’, is the reading of the MSS. Editors who accept it
translate ‘premature’, but the primary meaning is ‘forerunner’; so
here it ought simply to indicate that this message preceded the one
mentioned in the next ch. Flower–Marincola follow L. Weber, RFIC
14 (1935), 360–1, who argued that the use of the adjective implied
that there was something false about the message. Weber relied on
the entry in Hesychius which reports the use of the adjective to refer
to the early crop of figs (he should instead have cited Theophrastus,
CP 5. 1. 4–5 and 8). According to reliable authorities the early crop,
though inferior to the second and/or third, is edible (pace Einarson-­
Link in the Loeb Theophrastus). Since this usage of the adjective is
secondary and not necessarily as negative as has been claimed, I am
not at all sure that Flower–Marincola are right in saying that the
message ran ‘the risk of being wrong’. They reject Schweighäuser’s
emendation to make it accusative in agreement with ϲτρατιὴν on the
ground that ‘there is no evidence that the 1,000 Lacedaimonians
were an ‘advance guard”. That is not the point; the message may

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have been false to the extent that in fact no such detachment existed—
but someone thought that it did. Legrand accepted the emendation,
which Asheri/Vannicelli describe as attractive, but he went further,
emending to 〈ἄλλη〉 πρόδρομον [ἄλλην] and justifying this change
by asking the question ‘What other army could it be?’
The answer to that is obvious: any detachment as large as 1,000 could
be so described.
θέλων εἴ κωϲ is accepted by editors; Flower–Marincola say that it
is equivalent to θέλων ἑλεῖν εἴ κωϲ δύναιτο, which does not wholly
convince. Pingel (1874), 42–3 thought the possible parallel at 6. 52. 4
open to question, since Cobet had emended there, and so he tried
ἐλθὼν, which is clever but leads to rather odd word-­order. The
participle is not essential and Reiske deleted it; could it be a misplaced
gloss? λέγων in B looks like a scribe’s attempted remedy.
9. 15. 1 Flower–Marincola intelligently remark on the oddity of τοὺϲ
προϲχώρουϲ τῶν ’Ἀϲωπίων and wonder if the text is corrupt. They
are right. τῶν προϲχώρων τοὺϲ ’Ἀϲωπίουϲ gives the sense required.
Confusion of inflections is not infrequent.
9. 15. 2 The position of the particle in ἔρυμά τε is awkward, and
Legrand deleted it. Stein instead omitted βουλόμενοϲ but offered no
comment; the resulting syntax is not easy to understand. One might
also consider reading τι. Denniston, GP 517 lists the rare cases
of deviation from the normal word-­order, including 6. 136. 2, which is
perhaps just similar enough to justify leaving the text unaltered here.
9. 15. 4 Attaginos invites Mardonius and ‘fifty of the Persians, the
most important’. This is intelligible, but H. might have put the
numeral at the end of the phrase, as in ch. 16. 1 or written Πέρϲαϲ
τῶν λογιμωτάτων.
9. 16. 4 The train of thought is so hard to follow here in the text as
transmitted that Powell’s transposition seems to me essential.
9. 19. 2 According to Flower–Marincola καλλιερεῖν in other passages
of H. and fifth-­century writers means ‘obtain favourable omens’, but
this is not what the Lexicon or LSJ suggest. Krüger’s excision of τῶν
ἱρῶν is plausible but probably not essential. Powell thought the verb
could be impersonal and cited 6. 76. 2, 7. 134. 2, 9. 38. 2, 9. 96. 1.
9. 21. 2 The Megarians emphasize their determination and courage
despite being hard pressed. The last sentence of this § opens with νῦν

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τε, but the context seems to require an adversative particle, since the
meaning is ‘But if you do not send us reinforcements, you must realize
that we shall abandon our position’. That being so, δὲ should replace τε.
9. 22. 2 τὸ ποιεύμενον was excised by Krüger and Pingel (1874),
43; the latter had earlier thought of τὸ ἐὸν, comparing 6. 37. 2 and
7. 209. 1. The occurrence of ἐποίευν in the previous line could have
led to either putative mistake. In favour of deletion Pingel compared
5. 80. 1, where in a similar sentence the object of μαθὼν is not
expressed. Stein defended the MSS reading and translated ‘den Vor­­
gang’, but it might be argued that this would be the correct rendering
if the text had τὸ γινόμενον, which in fact occurs in the next §.
9. 25. 1 ταῦτα ἐποίευν was deleted by Krüger, but the wording of the
immediate context is not complicated enough to make the assumption
of a gloss very plausible. On the other hand his proposal to adjust δὲ
to δὴ strikes me as an improvement, and this tiny change was adopted
by Stein and Macan. Most editors have taken ταῦτα as referring
forwards, but in H. it more usually refers back, and recognition of
this fact led Valckenaer to suggest 〈καὶ〉 ἐκλείποντεϲ, while Pingel
(1874), 44 preferred ἐκλείποντέϲ 〈τε〉; I think 〈δὲ〉 is better, as will
become clear. The logic of the passage is further improved if we read
ὁ γὰρ νεκρὸϲ, making this and the next sentence a parenthesis; after
μὲν a scribe might well have made a mistake over the particle at
the beginning of the next sentence. Then 〈δὲ〉 can serve to introduce
the expected antithesis to πρῶτα μὲν. Powell offered more drastic
surgery: 〈ἵνα μὴ〉 κλιπόντεϲ ϕοιτῷεν. This seems to be an attempt
to remove what looks like an inconsistency in the narrative, in that
the troops initially stayed at their posts while the corpse was driven
past them, but then broke ranks in order to get a better view. But that
is not so implausible as to justify substantial emendation.
9. 27. 2 τοῦτο μὲν, though omitted by d, perhaps because it seemed
to make the sentence too complex or clumsy, is a Herodotean
mannerism. It is difficult to say whether a scribe familiar with the
style of our author would have introduced is suo Marte, but that was
evidently Hude’s view.
9. 31. 1 Powell’s οὕτω for οὗτοι may not be essential, but it deserves
a mention because it would correspond to ὧδε a few lines below
where Mardonios’ formation is described, and also to οὕτω in §2.

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9. 31. 5 Macan and others have seen that the two mentions of Thessaly
in the text of this § as transmitted require careful translation; as
Macan put it, the seond mention refers to “dwellers in the parts about
Thessaly’ other than Thessalians proper’. Powell thought this
distinction artificial and deleted καὶ Θεϲϲαλοὺϲ. Flower–Marincola
ignore this, but I feel that it should be noted in the apparatus.
9. 32. 1 Two of Powell’s three interventions in the text here seem to
me unjustified. (a) His deletion of τὰ μέγιϲτα removes a perfectly
acceptable redundancy of expression and can only be attributed to
cacoethes delendi. (b) His rewriting of the list of tribes in the following
sentence so as to read Παιόνων τε καὶ τῶν ἄλλων Θρηίκων is
again unnecessary, since at 7. 185. 2 the Paiones and Thracians are
named as distinct ethnic entities. (c) But he was right to insist that the
Ethiopians should be mentioned in the nominative.
9. 33. 1 As Flower–Marincola put it, could Teisamenos be both an
Iamid and a Klytiad? Asheri/Vannicelli think that the two families
adopted mutually, so that a person could count as a member of both;
there appears to be later evidence for this practice. Κλυτιάδην was
deleted by Valckenaer and Macan. Is it too fanciful to suggest that H.
was not sure which family he belonged to and wrote ἢ Κλυτιάδην,
hoping to find out the truth before finalizing his text?
The formation of λεωϲϕέτεροϲ is sometimes justified by appeal to
Archilochus 226W, where the adverb λέωϲ is found in a context
which is not entirely clear. The source is Photius λ 233 λεωκόρητοϲ.
Ancient grammarians asserted that λέωϲ was equivalent to τελέωϲ
(Erotian 57. 15, Galen 19. 118. 7K.). The compound in our text is not
discussed by P. Chantraine, Glotta, 33 (1954), 23–36, but F. Stolz, WS
26 (1904), 183–4 suggested that derivation from λεὼ ϲϕετέρου in
conjunction with ἐποιήϲαντο should be accepted in preference to
emendation. Pingel (1874), 44 objected to the word as a hybrid
comparable to the Egyptian Sphinx or a Greek centaur and cited
Naber’s νεωϲτὶ ϲϕέτερον and Cobet’s πολιήτην ϲϕέτερον. His own
suggestion was τελέωϲ or παντελέωϲ, certainly an improvement
from the palaeographical point of view. ‘Fully one of their own
number’ seems acceptable; an alternative that one might expect in the
context is ‘finally/in the end one of their own number’, i.e. after initial
refusal and subsequent negotiation, but in that case a different adverb
would be required.

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9. 33. 5 d’s reading μετιόντεϲ is popular with editors, who cite ἤιϲαν
from ch. 34. 2 in the sense ‘go after’ as parallel, despite the fact
that the verb there is not the compound which could justify the
rendering ‘after’ and make the verb transitive. 3. 19. 2 should be cited
instead for the compound meaning ‘fetch’. Pingel (1874), 44–5 cited
as parallel 7. 15. 2 and thought it worth while to suggest μεταγνόντεϲ.
He rightly saw that μετίεϲαν two lines above could have caused
confusion.
9. 35. 2 It is extraordinary that Legrand was apparently the first editor
to see that the genitive Μεϲϲηνίων cannot imply ‘against’. If a genitive
were to be retained one might supplement 〈κατὰ〉 Μεϲϲηνίων, a
usage of the preposition that has just one parallel in H. A further
oddity in the reading of the MSS is that though πρὸϲ with the dative
is intelligible, the location of the other battles in the list is indicated
with ἐν. But it is not difficult to restore the wording of this clause so
as to make it parallel to the three preceding clauses. One only needs
to assume that the genitive arose from assimilation to Μαντινέων in
the preceding clause and that πρὸϲ was misplaced, with the ensuing
loss of ἐν. Flower–Marincola are reluctant on palaeographical
grounds to adopt such a solution, but it really is not hard to imagine
that a muddle of this kind occurred, and I see no need to obelize as
they have done. With regard to the mention of Tanagra as the scene
of the last battle, the repetition of ὕϲτατοϲ may be thought a trifle
clumsy even in a work designed for oral delivery, and Powell’s μετὰ
δὲ ὁ is at least worth a mention.
9. 37. 3 The use of ὥϲτε with a participle in a causal sense, as also
found just above in §2, is discussed by Denniston, GP 527. But there
is an odd feature in the narrative here. To dig through a wall is an
activity which takes time and is likely to leave all too visible traces, so
that even careless guards could hardly fail to notice that something
was going on. One might expect a concessive clause here, or else an
adverb meaning ‘inadequately/scarcely’.
τῆϲ τε τόλμηϲ] A has τε, which is otiose, while d has τότε. But a
chronological indicator is out of place here. Legrand deleted, which is
probably better than trying γε, despite the frequency of confusion
between the two particles.
9. 41. 4 ‘Since he too knew something more’ is acceptable, except that
the demonstrative pronoun τούτου is not right here. It has been

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 Book IX 181

mistakenly repeated from the beginning of the sentence; αὐτοῦ is

required.
9. 43. 1 The tentative athetesis of this ch. by Macan, who did not rule
out the notion of an authorial addition, has been ignored by more
recent editors but received the approval of Maas. He noted a point
not mentioned by Macan, that ϲτρατόν is unsuitably vague. Stein had
tried to defend the word by reference to 1. 6. 3, but the word used
there is ϲτράτευμα, which can mean ‘invasion’. In the next sentence
d’s reading τάδε, though not accepted by most editors, was rightly
preferred to A’s τὰ by Pingel (1874), 45 and Maas.
9. 43. 2 Μουϲαίου in the genitive is the reading of D and seems right;
I am not sure why Maas described it as a ‘falsche Konjektur’, when it
looks like the correction of an error of assimilation. A dative could be
understood with πεποιημένα, but the four lines of the oracle separate
that participle from the clause in which Musaeus is named. Either the
participle needs to be repeated as a supplement so that the dative is
no longer impossibly obscure, or, as Stein suggested, in the clause
introducing the oracle ἐϲτὶ should be deleted. Perhaps that is what
Maas had in mind, but he did not mark his copy accordingly.
9. 45. 3 ἐξαίϕνηϲ A: om. d. The adverb is not essential for the sense,
but is acceptable. Elsewhere H. uses ἐξαπίνηϲ (×2). I am prepared to
believe that he used it here too, and that it has subsequently been
Atticized by the scribes. Legrand treated the word as a gloss, but did
not know who had first identified it as such.
9. 48. 3 ἄρχομεν A: ἄρξομεν d Editors are divided, but the present
seems to me more forceful: ‘we are beginning it instead’.
9. 51. 2 The article in ϲχιζόμενοϲ ὁ ποταμὸϲ was deleted by Pingel
(1874), 45. The river in question is the Oeroe, but Pingel realized that
the article would have to refer to the Asopos. It was inserted by a careless
copyist or reader who was influenced by the words τοῦ ’Ἀϲωποῦ.
9. 54. 1 μοῦνον . . . λελειμμένον is difficult. Flower–Marincola
translate ‘had stayed behind’, citing 7. 229. 1 and 8. 44. 1 (they might
have added ch. 56. 1 below). But since the commanders of the main
part of the Spartan force had not yet moved, still hoping to persuade
Amompharetos, it cannot strictly speaking be said that the latter had
been left behind. Pingel (1874), 46 proposed μούνων . . . λελειμμένων
and Powell had the same idea. Macan retained the singular but took

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 182 Book IX

it to be a rhetorical exaggeration and saw that despite the form of the

participle it must be present or imperfect in sense. Legrand also noted
that a present would have been more precise. In addition I have
wondered if a word has been lost, the original sense having been
‘failing in obedience’, e.g. ἐϲ πειθαρχίαν. For this usage one could
compare 1. 99. 2 ἐϲ ἀνδραγαθίαν λειπόμενοι, and it is worth noting
that in this idiom the perfect tense is often used.
9. 54. 1–2 Powell transposed the clause ὡϲ . . . ϲτρατόπεδον to follow
τοιάδε, deleting the particle δὲ and reinserting it after ἐπιϲτάμενοι.
This is ignored by more recent editors, and it is not obvious to me
that there is anything wrong with the text at this point. Perhaps
Powell thought the asyndeton transmitted by the MSS objectionable,
but in this instance I would not agree.
9. 55. 1 The Athenian messenger saw both that the Spartans were
still in their position and that their leaders were arguing. But
the particle τε seems oddly placed. That is noted by Flower–Marincola,
who refer to Denniston, GP 515–18. There, however, the discussion
relates to postponement, whereas here the particle occurs earlier
than is natural; it would normally follow κατὰ χώρην or
τεταγμένουϲ.
9. 55. 2 Of the three proposed deletions in this §, the first and third,
due to Werfer and Krüger, do appear to succeed in removing glosses.
But the second, {πρόϲ τε}, due again to Krüger, does not seem to me
to fall into the same category. I think it better to make sense of the
passage by a supplement. Stein suggested adding 〈τραπόμενοϲ〉 after
κήρυκα, while Corcella, on the strength of Plut. Arist. 17. 4, thought
of πρόϲ τε 〈ταῦτα ἀπορῶν ὅ τι βουλεύϲηται〉.
9. 56. 1 In the description of Pausanias’ action the following morning
the phrase ἐν τούτῳ τῷ χρόνῳ is oddly emphatic, since τότε
would have been quite sufficient and Flower–Marincola are obliged
to render it ‘during the whole time’, as if the demonstrative
were equivalent to παντί. Though there are places where confusion
of πᾶϲ and οὗτοϲ has caused corruption, in the present passage a
more important consideration is that a construction with the
accusative would have been appropriate. It seems to me that
the narrative is vastly improved by Powell’s χώρῳ κατημένουϲ,
which makes the point that the argument continued all night and
no-­one moved.

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 Book IX 183

9. 64. 2 (and 72. 2) The name of the man who killed Mardonios is
given as Arimnestos in d here, with the support of Plut. Arist. 19. But
LGPN IIIA cites no instances of it from Sparta or indeed the
Peloponnese. The variant Aeimnestos provided here by CP, is cited
only from the present passage and Diod. Sic. 14. 4, about a man from
Henna in Sicily active in 403 bc. But the entry in LGPN fails to
mention that the form in Aei-­ receives support from Aristodemus
FGH 104 F 1. 2. 5; this is a substantial fragment of an obscure historian
of uncertain date preserved in MS Paris suppl. grec 607. Additional
support comes from Plut. Mor. 873 d, where the MSS give the name
as Deipnestos; the nature of the corruption there is obvious (uncial
alpha misread as delta).
9. 66. 2 Artabazos gave orders for his forces to follow wherever he led
them, marching at the same speed as they could see him maintaining.
As Flower–Marincola remark, thre is a rather harsh asyndeton in the
text as transmitted, which can be remedied by Stein’s supplement
〈καὶ〉. Another way of achieving the same result would be to write
ἔχοντα〈ϲ〉, in agreement with πάνταϲ, ‘making speed exactly as they
saw him doing’, with the participle not needing to be repeated in the
singular.
9. 70. 1–2 The comparative ἐρρωμενεϲτέρη followed by ἰϲχυρὴ
without some modifying adverb such as κάρτα to describe the next
and more intense phase of the battle has troubled editors, and rightly
so. Translations of the comparative such as ‘violent’ or ‘increasingly
fierce’ are not strictly accurate. Macan translated ‘more than they
could cope with’, which implies the loss of a phrase beginning ἢ
κατὰ. But it was the Lacedaimonians who were the underdogs at this
stage, and ϲϕι should refer to the Persians. That difficulty was
addressed by Stein and Abicht, who substituted ’Ἀθηναίων for
Λακεδαιμονίων in §1. This solution, however, results in a curiously
awkward and repetitious narrative in §2, as was seen by Pingel (1874),
47, who objected that an essential contrast between πρὶν ἢ . . .
ἀπικέϲθαι and προϲελθόντων is lost. His remedy was to read 〈οὐκ〉
ἐρρωμενεϲτέρη or ἀρρωϲτοτέρη, in order to achieve the expected
contrast with ἰϲχυρὴ. He accounted for the error by supposing that a
reader failed to understand how the struggle for control of the wall, in
which the Persians are stated to have had the upper hand, could be
described as not particularly fierce. Powell solved the problem by
wholesale deletion, excising ἔϕθαϲαν . . . ἐρρωμενεϲτέρη and the

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connecting particle γὰρ in the following sentence; this passage does

not look like an interpolation, and one may wonder if Powell thought
it could be an alternative draft. Pingel’s solution may be best. I have
even wondered if his alternative suggestion should be modified to
ἀρρωϲτημονεϲτέρη to account for the comparative termination that
is given by the MSS; this word is only attested as fr. 79 of Eupolis, and
there it is positive, not comparative.
9. 71. 2 The paradosis is ὁ ϲπαρτιήτηϲ, except that d omits the article.
The distinction between Amompharetos and the other two men
named is ground for suspicion, as Macan saw. Many editors accept
Krüger’s ϲπαρτιῆται, but Maas was inclined to follow Van Herwerden
and delete the word; in his copy of Hude he marked the word with a
query, and in a letter to Powell dated 22 November 1938, preserved in
the Powell Archive at Churchill College Cambridge, he stated his
opinion that any mention of Sparta here is ‘bedenklich’. Powell
nevertheless was willing to accept the dative plural ϲπαρτιήτῃϲι, and
this has been adopted by Corcella, who translates ‘tra gli Spartani’.
But I would not expect an ‘ethic’ dative here. Stein’s Πιτανάτηϲ
restores an uncommon word likely to have been glossed.
9. 72. 2 With regard to the name Arimnestos Flower–Marincola state
that there is a question about the correct form of the name. But if they
mean by this that the MS tradition is divided their observation is
misleading. In the present passage the variant Aeimnestos is reported
only from S, the MS noted for numerous conjectures by its scribe
Andronicus Callistus and not a reliable representative of the tradition.
In his copy of Hude Maas quite reasonably deleted the report of S’s
variant as being of no significance, whereas Stein had given it some
consideration.
9. 73. 1 Δεκελεῆθεν by itself was sufficient to convey the information,
as Flower–Marincola correctly observe. It is hard to say whether the
words ἐκ δήμου are colloquial redundancy, additional information
for the non-­Athenian reader, or a gloss.
9. 73. 3 Stein noted that οὕτω has no proper connection with what
precedes and inferred that the word introduces the author’s
afterthoughts. But if one supplemented an adjective meaning
‘unchanged’, his hypothesis might seem less plausible. L.A.H.-­S.
suggested 〈ἔμπεδοϲ〉.

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 Book IX 185

ἀπέχεϲθαι refers to the current state of affairs. The present tense

was changed to an aorist by the excerptor working for the emperor
Constantine Porphyrogenitus c.950, for whom the facts belonged to
the distant past. This is an interpolation, not a genuine variant.
9. 74. 1 πελάϲαϲ ἀπικνεόμενοϲ can at a pinch be translated ‘as he got
close in his approach to the enemy’, but Pingel (1877) thought the
participle should be ἐπικείμενοϲ, meaning ‘as he got close enough to
attack’, which is vastly superior.
9. 77. 1 ἄξιοι . . . ϲϕέαϲ is a syntactical oddity that can hardly be
justified. Pingel (1874), 47–8 proposed ϲϕεῖϲ, while Van Herwerden
argued for this or ἀξίουϲ, but recent editors have ignored the matter.
The accusative of the adjective is unlikely to be right because one
expects a construction with the nominative and infinitive. Richards
did better to suggest ἄξιον, for which there are parallels in H. (×4).
9. 78. 3 τῷ is referred by Flower–Marincola to Mardonios, but I
follow Macan in thinking that Leonidas is meant. With τὴν ὁμοίην
one should understand a word such as χάριν. Macan noted that this
view gains support from the introduction of the name Μαρδόνιον
γὰρ just below and the way that Leonidas is mentioned at 79. 2. The
problem is that the expression ‘pay back in kind’ is appropriate in
contexts where one party retaliates against an opponent who is still
alive and will feel the effects of revenge. But here Lampon is
recommending a course of action designed to benefit someone
now dead.
9. 79. 2 χάριν ἴϲθι τε is what the MSS offer, and the word-­order was
adjusted by the Aldine editors. Denniston, GP 517 shows that this
variation from the normal word-­order would be a rarity. But is it
possible that the combination of noun and verb was regarded as a
single concept? If so, change would be unnecessary.
9. 82. 1 The repetition of καταϲκευὴν followed by the perfect
participle of the cognate verb creates a clumsiness which I think goes
beyond the limits of informal style. Powell’s deletion of τὴν Μαρδονίου
καταϲκευὴν is possible, but still leaves an elliptical expression.
Schweighäuser’s ϲκηνὴν restores the sense that one expects.
καθὼϲ with internal aspiration is most unlikely to be right, even
though it figures in Athenaeus’ citation. Abicht’s deletion is possible,
but I have preferred Schaefer’s καὶ.

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9. 83. 2 Flower–Marincola find no difficulty in the description of the

skull and follow the MSS; but they print a text in which καὶ . . . καὶ
seems out of place and the repetition of γνάθοϲ/γνάθου is
unacceptable. Some editors delete καὶ τὸ ἄνω τῆϲ γνάθου, but the
words do not make a coherent gloss. κατὰ τὸ ἄνω {τῆϲ γνάθου} was
Stein’s suggestion, and it is an easy way to make the text acceptable.
His προϲθίουϲ is also a good idea, on the assumption that the word
was replaced by a gloss.
9. 84. 1 Of those editors who discuss the difficulty here some are
content with ἐπείτε δὲ, ‘loosely attached’ as Flower–Marincola put
it, but Hude obelized without offering any help. Pingel (1874), 48–9
proposed Μαρδονίου δὲ, omitting ἐπείτε. He wondered if that word
could be the relic of a word belonging to ἐϕάνη, e.g. ἔτι, ἐκεῖ, τότε.
In addition, if δὲ had been lost by haplography before δευτέρη, a
reader might have made a clumsy and inappropriate alteration of the
text in order to supply the expected connection. This is probably the
best approach to the problem. Stein in some editions tried ἐπεί γε
δὴ, rejected by Macan, and it does create anacoluthon.
Legrand’s view of this ch. is that it consists of miscellaneous
information, probably not all collected at the same time, and so he
thinks it could have been put together independently of the rest of the
narrative. This in practice puts it in the same category as Stein’s
authorial adjustments, and Stein (1869, p. xliii) had in fact made
a similar suggestion with regard to a longer passage (83. 1 ἐϕάνη—
85. 2 ἐτάϕη).
9. 85. 1 The beginning of this § is problematic, since ‘he was buried in
such a way’ does not go well with what precedes. H. should either say
‘Mardonios was buried somehow’, which is achieved by Hude’s
ὁτεῳῶν, or ‘Mardonios disappeared like that’, which prompted
Powell to try ἠϕανίϲθη. Stein thought the MSS reading could be
interpreted to mean ‘secretly’ (heimlich), and Legrand agreed
(clandestinement). I cannot believe that that is legitimate, nor am I
much inclined to accept the Flower–Marincola paraphrase ‘the
business of Mardonios’ burial’.
9. 85. 1–2 The sentence beginning ἔνθα is one of the most difficult in
the whole work; it is awkwardly placed between what precedes and
what follows, and there is much uncertainty about the category of
persons referred to in the first clause. Sitzler in Bursian, 191 (1923),

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10 found the difficulty so great that he wished to delete the whole

sentence, and Legrand followed him. In support of this view it may be
argued that an interpolator could have gathered the four names from
chs. 71–2 and copied from the next sentence the word indicating the
category of citizens in question. And if the sentence is genuine, ἔνθα
needs explanation; Stein translated ‘auf der einen Seite’, but Krüger
had already formulated the objection ‘Denn ἔνθα wird auch bei Her.
so nicht vorkommen’, and the Lexicon supports him. He emended to
ἐν τῇ, which is a great improvement, even if the cause of the
corruption is not obvious. The word I would have expected is πρῶτον
(or πρώτουϲ), but it is hard to see how the corruption occurred.
Another possibility which may be worth considering is that the tomb
of the most distinguished casualties was set apart from the others at a
little distance. If that was so ἔνθα should be replaced by χωρίϲ.
The more serious problem here arises from the MSS reading ἱρέαϲ
. . . ἱρέεϲ. This is unlikely to be right. There is no mention of priests in
the narrative and no hint that the four men named were priests. In
any case it was seers, not priests, who accompanied armies. Valckenaer
proposed to introduce the rare Spartan term ἰρένεϲ, which is thought
to have referred to youths of a certain age, probably about 18 to 20, so
corresponding to the ephebes at Athens. But there are difficulties in
this view as well. The information we have about Spartan terms for
age groups is not entirely clear and reliable. It is also far from certain
that the four men named belonged to the age group in question. Even
if they did, the three tombs are listed in what appears to be a
descending order of social importance, in which ephebes would not
be expected to rank above others. Valckenaer eventually opted for
ἱππέεϲ (an elite force of Spartan cavalry is mentioned at 8. 124. 3),
but the narrative suggests that at least Callicrates and Amompharetos
did not belong to the cavalry; the latter was a λοχαγόϲ and cannot
have been an ἰρήν if that term refers to very young men, as A. R.
Burn, CR2 30 (1980), 137–8 correctly observed (but his assertion that
priests were prominent in war, as an attempt to defend the MSS
reading, seems to be without foundation). An interesting suggestion
was made by R. F. Willetts, Mnemosyne4, 33 (1980), 272–7. He
proposed ϲϕαιρέεϲ, a word found in Pausanias 3. 14. 6, where it is
defined as a term for youths passing from the status of ephebe to
adult. Willetts noted, however, that ϲϕαῖρα is occasionally the term
for a weapon used by boxers and thought the term might have applied
to winners of boxing competitions; it is not difficult to imagine that

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winners enjoyed special respect and retained an honorific title for life.
This is at least in part too speculative in my opinion, but I think that
he may nevertheless have hit on the right idea. It would be much
more natural for the term to apply to the winner of the Spartan
version of the ball game which resembled rugby football, described in
Pollux 9. 104 and mentioned by Lucian, Anacharsis 38 (it seems to be
shown on an Athenian relief discussed by W. S. Hett, Greece and
Rome, 1 (1931), 25–9 with pl. 5a). N. M. Kennell, The Gymnasium of
Virtue: Education and Culture in Sparta(Chapel Hill, NC, 1995),
38–9, notes that inscriptions referring to ball games have been found
in various places and ‘these different locations point to the ball games
possessing a significance different from the other ephebic contests’.
He does not infer that these facts could be taken to support Willetts’s
conjecture.
Yet another difficulty in this passage was noted by Sitzler: he found
it strange that there is no mention of the perioikoi and did not wish to
assume that they were included among ‘the other Spartiates’ named
in the text. Kennell, op. cit. 14–15, addresses the problem of the
mention of the helots and conjectures that ‘the original helots were
not the enslaved pre-­Dorian population of Laconia, but the Dorian
‘third caste’, gradually degraded’. I rather doubt this myself, but it
ought to be given consideration.
9. 89. 3 Flower–Marincola take the demonstrative pronoun in ὁ
ϲτρατὸϲ αὐτοῦ οὗτοϲ to be deictic, to accompany a gesture pointing
in the direction of the alleged second army. Koen and Valckenaer
preferred εὐθὺϲ, which was rejected by Pingel (1874), 49 because the
correct form is ἰθὺϲ. He thought the word might be deleted as a kind
of dittography arising from αὐτοῦ. My view is that the correct dialect
form of the adverb should be seriously considered.
9. 92. 2 μετὰ ϲϕέων γὰρ ποιεύμενοϲ was deleted by Stein, since it
contradicts what was said in ch. 91; Leotychidas had there told the
Samians to take an oath and then sail back to rejoin their main force.
If the sentence is an interpolation it is singularly unintelligent. There
is a better alternative remedy. Bekker’s οἱ μὲν 〈δύο〉 has point, but it
is not a complete cure, because the subject of the verb ἐκέλευε ought
to be specified and the pronoun ϲϕέων is obscure as it stands. So
Legrand did well to suggest a lacuna, which he posited after ἀπέπλεον,
thinking to supplement 〈πλὴν ‘Ἡγηϲιϲτράτου〉. But this does not
meet the objections I have just stated, which suggest the need for

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 Book IX 189

something along the lines of οἱ τῶν ‘Ἑλλήνων ϲτρατηγοὶ. I would

also remark that perhaps μένειν should be read instead of πλέειν;
Hegesistratos was to stay behind in order to sail with the main force
when it was ready.
9. 93. 1 παρὰ ποταμὸν is the paradosis, but one would expect H.
to follow his normal practice and name the river, especially as he tells
us where it rises and where it enters the sea. The identification,
however, is uncertain: the Ἄωοϲ which rises in Mount Lakmon flows
into the sea at Apollonia, whereas it is a smaller river which enters
the sea at Orikos. Stein supplemented παρὰ 〈Χῶνα〉 on the strength
of Theognostos, Canones 794, but this may not be correct, because
Theognostos goes on to say that H. uses the term Χωνία for Epirus,
which is false. The correct name for the smaller river appears to
be Kalydnos (Ptolemy 3. 13). So C. G. Vollgraff, Sertum Nabericum
(Leiden, 1908), 429–31, tried παρὰ 〈Ἄωον〉, assuming that in the
source used by the Byzantine grammarian the name had been
corrupted first into Χῶον and then into Χῶνα. The sequence of
corruption is plausible. Vollgraff did not mention Orikos.
9. 93. 3 (cf. n. on 5. 82. 3) After the explanatory clause introduced by
γὰρ the conjunction ἀλλά upsets the syntax; one should either delete
it or accept Stein’s ἀλλά κωϲ. Although Stein in 1893 did not print
the emendation he had tentatively proposed in 1871, Legrand did,
and rightly so. It is consistent with H.’s usage; cf. 6. 79. 2 and 9. 22. 3
for ταῦτα δέ κωϲγινόμενα ἐλελήθεε. In both of those passages κωϲ
is separated from the verb it modifies because of the operation of
Wackernagel’s law.
καρπὸν, omitted by d, is taken by Flower–Marincola to be a gloss on
ἔϕερε; they cite 5. 82. 3 for the use of the verb without expression of an
object, but fail to report that there d does have καρπὸν. Pingel (1874),
49 preferred to emend to καὶ πρὸ τοῦ by analogy with 6. 139. 1.
9. 93. 4 As Flower–Marincola rightly say, whether or not one accepts
Stein’s deletions, the pronoun αὐτοὶ is problematic; if it is right, it
refers to the gods of the oracles. Since it is not rash to postulate
omissions in prose texts, I feel inclined to recommend αὐτοὶ γὰρ 〈οἱ
θεοὶ〉 as an alternative remedy. If the transmitted text is accepted,
with or without Stein’s deletions, H. is guilty of careless writing. The
suggestion πρόϕαντα δὲ 〈τάδε〉 by Corcella does not address the
main difficulty.

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9. 94. 1 Judging by the Lexicon the transmitted προέθεϲαν is

acceptable and does not need to be replaced by Cobet’s προϲέθεϲαν.
Admittedly it has to be borne in mind that confusion between the two
prepositions in question is extremely frequent. But this sentence
requires further discussion. What the text appears to say is that the
authorities in Apollonia treated the matter as confidential and laid it
before members of the citizen body to be dealt with. I suppose this
means that they wished to avoid external involvement. But Gomperz
surely had a point with his proposal to supplement ἀνδράϲι 〈τριϲὶ〉,
citing as parallel 8. 135. 2, where three people are appointed by the
city of Thebes. If the matter was really to be treated as confidential,
knowledge of it had to be kept to a minimum, and not allowed to
circulate uncontrolled.
9. 97 Flower–Marincola retain the transmitted text, while noting
Krüger’s deletion of καὶ ὡϲ . . . παρεϲκευάζοντο. If he was right, one
must ask what kind of interpolator was at work; was he an ancient
reader anxious to ‘improve’ a classic? Is there anything wrong in
the Persians preparing for either eventuality? Pingel (1874), 49–50
thought this went too far and proposed to delete only the last two
words. Presumably he thought, though he did not say so, that the
repetition of the verb in a different tense is unacceptable. I find his
suggestion marginally preferable to others; it removes the clumsiness;
but other remedies deserve mention. Macan deleted ἐπ’ ἀμϕότερα
κτλ., which could be a scholiast’s note, while Legrand transposed
γὰρ to follow ἀμϕότερα.
9. 99. 3 κατεδόκεον was taken by Stein to be modelled on the usage
of ϲυνειδέναι (one might also suggest ἐνορᾶν τινι), which would
then account for the construction with the dative, and this is the view
favoured by Flower–Marincola. But despite tacit acceptance by other
modern editors the dative as it stands is hardly satisfactory. It may
have arisen because of the intransitive usage of δοκεῖν. Pingel (1874),
50 assumed an error of assimilation initially affecting the accusative
ἐπιλαβομένουϲ. That is also a possibility. The following τρόποιϲι
τοιούτοιϲι may equally well have been a factor. Pingel noted with
approval that Valckenaer’s κατεδόκεον 〈ἐνεὸν〉 had received no
support. But I wonder if the insertion of 〈ἡδομένοιϲι〉 might be
considered; cf. 9. 46. 3 and 8. 10. 3. The assumption underlying this
suggestion is that the Persians thought the Milesians would like to
make trouble if they got the chance.

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 Book IX 191

9. 100. 1 The first sentence of this ch. is problematic. The change of

subject from the Persians to the Greeks is abrupt; one expects the text
to say ‘When the Greeks also had made their preparations’ and it is
easy to restore 〈καὶ〉 τοῖϲι Ἕλληϲι. A more awkward difficulty is that
the plural form of the verb παρεϲκευάδατο, though accepted by
many editors, is doubtful. It could be a mistake caused by recollection
of the occurrence of that form in ch. 97 or a misguided attempt to
introduce a typically Herodotean form where it does not belong,
replacing the form in -­αϲτο; I am not sure which explanation is more
likely to be correct. Reiske offered two solutions, the restoration of
the regular form or the addition of 〈πάντα〉. πάντα in conjunction
with the verb in -­άδατο is conceivable; Cooper–Krüger 2. 63. 2. 1 (pp.
2683–4) cite a few examples of neuter plural subject with plural verb.
9. 100. 2 ϲυμπιπτόντων is due to Blaydes, who remarked ‘causa
mendi in aperto est’. Reiske had already tried ϲυμπίπτοντοϲ, and
Flower–Marincola demonstrate by their note that they are aware of
the problem.
9. 101. 2 μῆνόϲ τε τοῦ αὐτοῦ was deleted by Macan as ‘a very frigid
addition’. Legrand followed him, noting ‘il est peu vraisemblable que
l’incertitude se soit étendue jusqu’à la désignation du mois’. The phrase
is justified if opinion was divided not only as to the day but as to the
month. Whereas Plutarch gives the date as the 3rd or 4th of Boedromion,
he also reports a Boeotian tradition that it was the 27th of the local (and
elsewhere widely attested) month Panemos, which according to his
statement in Camillus 19. 5 is supposed to correspond to the Athenian
Metageitnion. The matter is complicated by the fact that according to L.
Ziehen in RE s.v. Panemos, col. 585, this month did not have the same
place in the sequence of all the calendars in which it figured. At Aristides
18. 9 Plutarch remarks on the discrepancy without specifying in detail
what it was. H. could have made his meaning clearer by specifying
precisely the day and the month in the relevant calendars.
9. 101. 3 τῶν ‘Ἑλλήνων, though accepted by Flower–Marincola
without comment, is inadequate as a contrast to ϲϕέων αὐτῶν.
Krüger supplied τῶν 〈ἄλλων〉, Stein (1871) tentatively suggested
τῶν 〈ἐκεῖ〉 and my own proposal would be τῶν 〈πάντων〉.
Flower–Marincola remark that περὶ is odd, and they rightly say
that πρὸϲ would be normal, citing 1. 65. 2 and 6. 45. 2. In this usage
the preposition could be constructed with the dative or accusative.

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 192 Book IX

περὶ is likely to be a corruption induced by its occurrence in the line

above. One might also expect something on the lines of 〈πρὸϲ τοὺϲ〉
περὶ Μαρδόνιον.
9. 102. 4 κατ’ ὀλίγουϲ γινόμενοι can be understood as ‘being reduced
to small groups’. But as Pingel (1874), 50 remarked, the participle is a
curiously weak addition to a phrase that makes good sense without it.
He also noted correctly, but without citing examples, that καὶ and κατὰ
are often confused, which led him to propose καὶ ὀλίγοι γενόμενοι.
The alteration of tense from present to aorist is simple enough, but
raises a question. Pingel argued that if the Persians had been reduced to
tiny groups their subsequent retreat would have been much less easy to
manage; some did succeed in reaching Sardis eventually.(ch. 107. 1).
But this does not make the change of tense essential. καὶ ὀλίγοι with
the present participle means ‘even though they were becoming few in
number’, and this give excellent point to the sentence.
9. 104 ἄλλαϲ τε is the paradosis, but though it is accepted by editors
I fail to see what purpose the particle serves. Was it a mistaken
insertion caused by misinterpreting ϕεύγουϲι as an indicative instead
of a participle?
αἳ διέϕερον is the paradosis, a reading underlined by Maas in his
copy of Hude, and the verb can be taken to mean ‘carry over/across’,
a sense recognized by LSJ but not by the Lexicon. Powell, CQ 32
(1938), 219, argued that δι-­ was a dittography of αἳ. δὴ is an
emendation of the Aldine first edition, and if correct would stress the
importance of the antecedent, as indicated by Denniston, GP 218. But
it seems to me that neither emendation imposes itself.
9. 105 Euthoinos is the form of the name in CP, rightly adopted
by Hude; this man is no. 16 ad in LGPN II. Maas noted ‘coni.?’
He must have expressed his view tentatively because it is not at all
likely that any medieval scribe or reader would have had sufficient
prosopographical sense to make a correction of this kind. The correct
spelling here, unless it was a lucky accident, points to the preservation
of sound tradition in CP.
9. 106. 3 τὰ ἐμπόρια is odd, because the communities that had
Medized were not conspicuous for their mercantile activities. Powell’s
deletion of the words leaves difficult syntax. Legrand’s ἔπιπλα is little
better; it was the people, not their goods and chattels that had to be
moved, and in any case their effects might have been offered as a

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 Book IX 193

reward to the incoming settlers. The same objection applies to

ἐμπολαῖα, Stein’s attempt to see in A’s variant a hint of the truth. The
double compound ἐξαναϲτήϲαντεϲ strongly suggests compulsory
resettlement of population, and I think a lacuna must be posited here.
9. 107. 3 ἐπὶ πλέον τούτων is an idiom restored by Werfer’s
conjecture here and in ch. 121. The Lexicon s.v. πλέων I. 1 suggests
that he was right.
9. 108. 1 πρήϲϲει, rendered by Flower–Marincola ‘arranges’, is odd
enough to have been obelized by Powell, who also took exception to
the anticipatory τοῦτον and so excised τὸν γάμον τοῦτον. Though
the position of the pronoun, where τόνδε would be more usual, is not
impossible, the verb is more difficult to accept, and is not made secure
by πρήϲϲων in ch. 109. 3 where the meaning is probably simply
‘behaving’. At first I supposed that what the context requires, in place
of the four words in question, is the verb ἐγγυᾷ, but a very complex
chain of error would be needed in order to explain how such a
corruption came about. I think the solution is far simpler: read
διαπρήϲϲει. At 3. 61. 3 this compound is used transitively with an
expressed object in the sense that we need here.
9. 109. 2 The sentence which gives the king’s response to Artaunte’s
request is elliptical as transmitted and there are variants that need
to be considered. The problems are interconnected. Madvig’s
supplement 〈ἂν〉 probably reflects better the thought that went
through the king’s mind, and the aorist αἰτῆϲαι in A can then be seen
to be the original reading, whereas the future infinitive in d looks
like an adjustment made after the loss of the potential particle. But
is the sense then complete? Earlier editors’ reference to a similar
passage at 7. 38. 2 doubtless inspired Powell’s elaborate but convincing
supplement 〈ἢ τό περ ᾔτηϲε〉. If it were not for the parallel one
would gladly accept Corcella’s 〈ἂν ἄλλο〉.
9. 110. 2 Commentators and translators take μοῦνον with τότε, ‘on
that occasion only’. While that makes good sense it assumes extremely
dubious word-­order. The difficulty can easily be removed by reading
μοῦνοϲ, ‘the king alone’. Pingel (1877) suggested μύρῳ, which may
be better.
9. 117 The transmitted participle πολιορεομένοιϲι is presumably
passive, not middle. Valla thought the active was called for, to make a

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 194 Book IX

closer link with the preceding sentence. The emendation is not

drastic, but I doubt if it is necessary. There is, however, doubt about
the articulation of the period. In A the next clause is introduced by
καὶ, but d omits the particle. If that text is adopted the transition
from mention of the besieged to the Athenians is a trifle abrupt. On
the other hand if we retain καὶ, one means of giving it its usual
meaning is to suppose that a phrase such as ἤδη κακῶϲ πρήϲϲουϲι
has fallen out, so that the troubles of the besieged were neatly balanced
in the original text by the irritation of the Athenians. An alternative is
to transpose the particle to follow the verb; the resulting sense is
slightly elliptical. A further possibility is given by Denniston, GP 309.
Rejecting the explanation of the particle as apodotic and noting the
textual uncertainty here he mentioned a few passages where ‘in fact’
might be a suitable rendering, 1. 79. 2 being among them. I find that
less convincing.
9. 119. 1 ἐκϕεύγοντα is the reading of A. I follow Macan and Legrand
in accepting the participle in the present tense; it indicates that the
man was caught while still attempting to escape, which seems
preferable to the aorist.
9. 120. 3 The MSS read οἱ, emended by Pauw to μοι. Powell thought
the reading of the MSS could be retained, with the sense ‘to pay to
him’, i.e. the god. But this required four deletions, and I cannot
believe that such drastic surgery should be contemplated. The
drawback to Pauw’s μοι combined with an active infinitive as in d is
that if the sentence means ‘I wish you to impose ransom payments on
me’, the Greek lacks the pronoun ‘you’, which is odd. But with a
passive verb, as hinted at by the variant in A, there is no difficulty.
Two Byzantine scribes apparently did introduce a passive by
conjecture: T and MS Marcianus gr. 364 are reported to read
ἐπαχθῆναι, ‘imposed’; cf. LSJ s.v. ἐπάγω I 7. More in accordance
with H.’s usage would be ἐπιταχθῆναι; cf. 3. 94. 1, 7. 1. 2. This also is
very close to A’s reading; d’s variant may have been influenced by
καταθεῖναι just below.
9. 122. 1 Artembares’ opening sentence as transmitted in the MSS is
disjointed. Powell accepted ϲύ from DS in place of ϲοι and commented
(CQ 29 (1935), 163) ‘It gives ἀνδρῶν a proper meaning, in opposition
to Zeus (θεῶν μὲν Ζεὺϲ). Were ϲοι correct, ἀνδρῶν would be
pointless, and we should desiderate Περϲέων in its stead’. He

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 Book IX 195

rendered the text ‘Forasmuch as the sovereignty is given to the

Persians by Zeus, and after him, by thee, O Cyrus, who hast put down
Astyages, come now, seeing the land we possess is little . . .’ I have
italicized words for which I find no equivalent in the Greek. Powell
clearly did not know of Richards’s conjecture, nor did Legrand, who
saw a difficulty and posited a lacuna after Ζεὺϲ. Richards saw how to
restore a logical link between the clauses: transfer the comma that is
usually printed after διδοῖ to follow ἀνδρῶν, and then supply
〈Περϲέων〉. For periods with a similar structure he cited 2. 121. ζ 2
and Plut. Them. 18.

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 Herodotea Addenda

A problem of accentuation: Powell, Lexicon 347, states that ϲϕεα and ϲϕεαϲ
are paroxytone after paroxytone words. Thanks to the very helpful advice of
Philomen Probert I have come to the conclusion that this rule is not valid,
because it makes nonsense of the classification of these forms as enclitics. In
pseudo-Arcadius’ epitome of Herodian there are two relevant statements at
161.7-21 Schmidt. (i) When a paroxytone word is followed by a disyllabic
pronoun beginning with ϲϕ- it carries an additional accent on the final
syllable and the pronoun itself is enclitic. (ii) If it is followed by a monosyllabic
pronoun, no second accent is written.
Another problem involving these pronouns occurs at 6.37.1. The sentence
runs εἰ δὲ μή, ϲϕεαϲ πίτυοϲ τρόπον ἀπείλεε ἐκτρίψειν. Macan seems to
be the only editor to notice that the pronoun is enclitic, which raises the
question whether it can stand as the first word in the clause. The difficulty
could easily be avoided by supplementing 〈αὐτὸϲ〉.
1.60.3 The logical structure of the transmitted text does not stand up to
scrutiny. The point of the narrative is that although the Greeks in general had
long ago ceased to be simple-minded, nevertheless even the Athenians on
this occasion allowed themselves to be duped by an absurd ruse. A contrast
is required, and I have emended accordingly.
2.19.3 Additional paragraph at the beginning of the note
In the first sentence here there is a question about the accentuation of the
preposition, which was printed with anastrophe by Stein and Hude. In the
present passage I think that is a mistake, because the preposition is directly
linked to the word which follows. In other passages the rule is less clear:
Chandler §§ 910–11 takes the view that anastrophe does not occur if one or
more words intervene between the preposition and the word it governs,
but he notes that there was disagreement among the ancient authorities.
P. Probert, A new short guide to the accentuation of ancient Greek (London
2003) 127–8, citing West’s edition of the Iliad I xix, follows Hermann and
others and accepts anastrophe in such cases. That was the view of Ptolemy of
Ascalon, as cited in the scholium on Iliad 5.308, where it is rejected (cf. also
the scholium on 5.283), apparently by Herodian. It is not explained, nor is it
obvious, why the interposition of a word should make a difference, unless
perhaps the object of the rule was to establish a separate category for clauses
where there was tmesis of a verb; but that is not how the scholium in its
present form, no doubt considerably abridged, is phrased.

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 198 Herodotea Addenda
6.56 As Krüger saw, in the statement of the curse there is something wrong
with the personal pronoun in the text as transmitted: no special emphasis is
required, and it is in the wrong position if merely anaphoric, as L.A. H.-S.
notes. A supplement such as Bredow’s is needed.
7.55.3 ἤδη seems to be regularly translated “also”, and How and Wells say
that the sentence ‘gives a variant tradition discredited by the author’, citing
4.77. But in that passage the wording is different and it is not safe to use it as
a parallel. In the present passage it occurs to me to ask why one should not
translate “now”, the implication being that H. is offering newly acquired
information.
8.76.1 As the emendation may seem drastic and arbitrary it is appropriate to
add that the cause of the corruption posited by Pingel is that Salamis was
mentioned only three lines above, and the scribes mistakenly repeated it.

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 Appendix

(i) I add here some information about the Cambridge MS Nn. ii. 34 in the
University Library, which is cited as K or Codex Askewianus. It was written by
two scribes; the second took over on fo. 130. Hemmerdinger, Les Manuscrits
d’Hérodote, 43–4, reported that his wife had identified one of them as Manuel
Tzykandyles, which therefore suggested to him that the book was written
between 1354 and 1374, when that scribe is known to have been active. The
identification was not taken up in the Repertorium der griechischen Kopisten
I, and I am fairly sure that it is mistaken. The evidence for a slightly earlier date
comes from the paper, which is watermarked with six designs. Two of these
are cited by Hemmerdinger, who had received information from the Library;
but the information should have puzzled him, since the identifications offered
were with Briquet’s designs 3201 (‘cercle’, dated 1401–2) and 5150 (‘deux
coutelas en sautoir’, dated 1337). The discrepancy between the dates would be
acceptable if the manuscript consisted of two parts written at different dates;
but that is not the case. It also has to be noted that the ‘cercle’ design was
popular with paper manufacturers for many decades, and the numerous
minor variations in the design make identification extremely hazardous if not
impossible. Closer examination of the other watermarks, however, permits a
reasonably secure identification of four of them. The one described as Briquet’s
‘deux coutelas en sautoir’ is indeed now listed as no. 3367 in V. A. Mošin and
S. M. Traljić, Vodeni znakovi XIII. i XIV. vijeka/Filigranes des XIIIe et XIVe ss.
(Zagreb, 1957), dated 1337, but there is also a horse-­shoe design, no. 3804,
dated 1325–7, a bell, similar to no. 2791, dated 1326, and a ‘grelot’ (cow bell),
nos. 4499–4500, dated 1330–3. I was unable to identify the two remaining
designs, but the evidence is sufficient to prove beyond any reasonable doubt a
date in the period c.1320–40. Further support for this view is provided by a
marginal note on fo. 14r, written in a rather distinctive hand which looks as if
it was modelled on that of Demetrius Triclinius and would be unlikely to
occur later in the fourteenth century.
With regard to the readings of K cited by Hude as worthy of note, I found
that his reports were correct except at 1. 125. 1 (καὶ) and 4. 72. 3. The variants
in question can probably be treated as conjectures made by the scribes. The
manuscript was examined by Porson, whose hand can be seen occasionally
marking a chapter number. Rightly or wrongly I decided that a complete
fresh collation would not have justified the time expended.

(ii) I have accepted Stein’s view that there are a number of short passages
exhibiting two versions of the text, both of which seem to be genuine and not the

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 200 Appendix
product of interpolation. A comparable phenomenon has been observed
elsewhere, most obviously in the final scene of Aristophanes’ Frogs: the report
that a second performance was called for makes the hypothesis of authorial
revision highly likely. A much later example has been identified in Dio
Chrysostom, 11. 22–4. In his discussison of that passage H. von Arnim, Leben
und Werke des Dio von Prusa (Berlin, 1898), 168–71 observed that the author
himself in §6 provides the explanation of the doublet; he remarks there that his
oration has to be delivered in many places, which implies that occasional
modifications might be appropriate. I suspect that this is what Herodotus did,
especially in view of the geographical statements apparently offered to audiences
in order to inform them about distant parts of the Greek world. But a question
arises: if the alternative version of the text consisted of more than a single phrase
or sentence, how was it incorporated into the author’s master copy? It is difficult
to imagine that a typical scroll had enough space in the margins or between the
columns. Did authors make it their practice to leave a blank space at the end of
the scroll, or did they cut it in two so as to insert an extra sheet? Galen reports
that he sometimes drafted alternative versions, one as the main text, the other
placed in either margin: In Hipp. Epid. I 1. 36, p. 43. 23–9, ed. E. Wenkebach,
CMG 5. 10. 1 (Leipzig and Berlin 1934). But it seems likely that in the space
available only a small amount of text could be accommodated.
More thoroughgoing revision, e.g. the four quite substantial passages in
Arist., De anima II and III where alternative texts are transmitted, is another
matter, which requires separate discussion. My concern here is with
occasional variant wording or adjustments to the narrative, not with
reworking of a text designed to produce what could properly be regarded as
a second edition.

(iii) Addendum on 2. 145. 2. Apart from the evidence from papyri and rearly
manuscripts there are statements by Galen which appear not to have been
taken into account in previous discussions. From De antidotis 1. 5 (xiv. 31–2
K.) it is clear that in his day texts that one could consult in libraries exhibited
abbreviated numerals, and he takes the trouble to explain how the figures
might be corrupted as a result. But he says that following the example of
Menecrates (a Syracusan doctor of the second half of the fourth century bc)
he will write them out in full. This promise is repeated in 1. 7 (xiv. 44 K.),
where the existence of copies with incorrect numerals is noted. He refers
again to Menecrates’ practice in slightly more detail in De compositione
medicamentorum per genera 72 (xiii. 995–6 K.), once more noting that some
copyists of his work had used abbreviations. What he states about his
predecessor proves that abbreviations were already in use in the fourth
century, and this is consistent with the established fact that acrophonic
numerals have caused diffiulty in various texts.

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 Index

abbreviations in papyri and MSS  33, 85,
108, 131, 139, 145, 197
for numerals  41, 44, 105, 130, 149,
150, 200
see also nomina sacra
accentuation  87, 88, 89, 90, 147
see also enclitics
accusative absolute  21
with verbs of division  22
Aeolic dialect  75
Aldine edition  xix, xxiv, 10, 88, 90
anacolouthon  4, 138, 162, 170, 186
Andronicus Callistus  xvii, xxiii, 5, 34,
61, 71, 85, 114, 184
aorist  73
archetype  xiii–xiv, 114, 115
article, definite  16, 38, 51
assimilation see errors
asyndeton  88, 109, 110, 124, 152, 155,
173, 182, 183
Attic forms, Atticism  xxi, xxii, 23, 28, 34,
36, 106, 156, 168, 181
authorial revision/variants  1, 3, 10, 18,
30, 56, 64, 67, 71, 94, 96, 103, 117,
120, 157, 161, 166, 169, 181, 184, 200
bowdlerization  xvi
Byzantine conjecture/interpolation  52,
67, 84, 114, 116
cognate accusative  167
colloquial style/syntax  2, 5, 26, 30, 32,
37, 38, 41, 60, 93, 110, 111, 155, 156,
163, 164, 167, 172, 184
compound followed by simplex  18,
115, 148
connecting relative  124
Constantine Porphyrogenitus  xx, 166,
185
demonstrative pronouns  64, 77, 67, 83,
136, 180, 188
diacritics in MSS  37
difficilior lectio  7, 9, 13, 14, 51, 74, 75,
156, 171
dittography see errors
division of logoi, original  18, 154
Doric forms  87, 94
dual  159
enclitics  11, 12, 24, 124, 164, 165, 197
epic usage/influence see Homer
errors in MSS
assimilation  4, 10, 12, 17, 26, 53, 63,
76, 79, 81, 85, 104, 134, 142, 143,
157, 162, 169, 174, 181
confusion of words  13
dittography  36, 74, 136, 192
glosses passim
haplography  15, 74, 140, 166, 175
inversion of inflections  74, 137, 177
iotacism  64
loss of negatives  78, 100
metathesis  137, 157
omission  35, 51, 54, 78, 106, 122
polar opposite  17, 78, 121, 172
repetition  21, 60, 74, 88, 98, 118, 136,
150, 172, 181, 198
transposition  10, 117
Eustathius  xxi, 57, 77, 86, 89, 151, 160
Galen  xi, xxi, 7, 200
haplography see errors
hyperbaton (see also word order)  38
hyperionism  2
improvement of the text, attempted  190
indirect question  176
indirect tradition  xx, 87
interpolation  3, 10, 13, 38, 62, 67, 170
Ioannes Chortasmenos  111
Ionic forms  73, 86, 93, 94
iotacism see errors
lexicis addenda  76, 82, 91, 101
manuscripts
Roman family of  xii, xiv, xvi–xviii, 11,
26, 27, 159
A  xiii–xiv, 10, 11, 14, 26, 27, 37, 47, 53,
54, 62, 74, 96, 159, 160, 172, 193, 194

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 202 Index
B  xv, 111, 114, 115, 170, 177 καὶ  13, 33, 48, 77, 139, 175, 194
C  xv–xvi, 15, 26, 63 καὶ δή  124, 131, 144, 175
D  xvii, 47, 48, 84, 147 καὶ δὴ καί  2, 123, 126, 131, 144
E  xviii, 48, 50 καίτοι γε  125
K  xix, 65, 199 μὲν  78, 172
M  xix μὲν γὰρ δή  31
m  xv μὲν δή  72
Nor  xix, 163 μέν νυν  29, 147, 164
P  xvi, xix, 8, 15, 111 μέντοι  125
R  xvii, 146 μήν  41
r  111, 160 μήτε τε  82
S  xvii, 5, 12, 34, 61, 71, 73, 85, 91, 184 οὐκῶν  106
T  xx, 5, 194 οὐ μέντοι οὐδέ  41
U  xvii–xviii, 8, 24, 44, 146 τε  4, 14, 33, 57, 82, 98, 152, 171, 172,
V  xviii, 12, 73, 159 177, 178, 180, 182, 185, 192
X  xviii, 8, 24, 77, 90, 146 τε δή  67, 82, 103
Y  xviii τοι  66
Marc.gr.  194 ὦν  16, 114, 139, 155
marginal notes  71 ὦν δή  155
medieval/modern usage  56, 116 perfect/pluperfect tense  xvi, 36, 67, 68,
middle voice  147, 153 107, 168
minuscule letter forms  33, 40, 66, 74, 79, pleonasm  48, 111, 158
117, 119, 133, 139 polar opposite, corruption to see errors
present tense  144
nomina sacra  42, 74 punctuation  115
numerals  39, 200
redundant wording  72, 156, 179
oral delivery  49, 101, 180 repetition, as a feature of style  118

papyri  xi–xiii scholia  xvi, 10, 143

P. Amherst 12  xxi, 24 scribal conjectures  26
P. Fackel. 7  41 singular/plural alternation  16, 22
P. Oxy. 1375  144 Stephanus Byzantius  74, 75, 89
P. Oxy.1619  55 Stobaeus  126
P. Oxy. 3376  34 syntax of ἄν  22
P. Oxy. 3381  xii
P. Oxy. 4455  xxi, 100 tmesis  16
P. Oxy. inv. 85/40  xiii Triclinius, Demetrius  197
P. Ross. Georg. I 15  xii
P.S.I. 1170  23 uncial script  18, 39, 40, 47, 63, 74, 81,
participles  13 117, 124, 134, 183
particles utrum in alterum  89, 101, 152
γάρ  88, 133, 139, 142, 173, 178
γὰρ ὦν  98 verbs, compound and simplex  15
γε  49, 53, 83, 143, 180
δέ  3, 15, 38, 46, 77, 178 Wackernagel’s law  2, 20, 24, 60, 88, 90,
δέ γε  145 116, 128, 137, 164, 189
δέ τοι  61 word order  xii, 4, 5, 8, 9, 12, 22, 31, 39,
δ’ ὦν  114 42, 52, 54, 66, 72, 85, 88, 94, 95, 96,
δή  15, 23, 26, 39, 57, 66, 68, 77, 113, 112, 123, 126, 127, 128, 137, 138,
120, 141, 178, 192 141, 145, 177
δὴ ὦν  116
δῆθεν  57, 68, 164 Zonaras  58

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