Volume 1

Herodotus : the fourth, fifth, and sixth books / With introduction, notes, appendices, indices, maps by Reginald Walter Macan.

  • Herodotus
Date:
1895
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Herodotus : the fourth, fifth, and sixth books / With introduction, notes, appendices, indices, maps by Reginald Walter Macan. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    427/528 (page 299)
    EPATfi Ol»to? Be 6 K.i/jlcovo(; MtA-rtaS?;? vecoarl fiev iXrjXvOee e? rrju 40 Xepaovyjcrov, KareXd/x^ave Be puv eXOovra dXXa rwv KaraXa^ov- T03V 'Trpr]y/xdT(ov '^oXeTTcoTepa. rplrtp puev 'yap erel ^TTpof tovtcov ^Kv0a<i eKcpev'yec. XKv6ac <ydp ol vopLdBe<i epe6ta6evTe<; vtto served iu the fleet of Dareios with that number, 4. 137. 7a|i€£i. This was at least a second marriage, as his eldest son Metiochos was kXKrjs c. 41 infra. Oloros might have been a chief among the Dolonki: there were many tribes of Thracians, and even the Dolonki had several ‘ kings,’ c. 34 supra. This Hegesipyla, who has a Greek or Graecised name, was the mother of Kimon the victor at the Eurymedon (cp. Plutarch, vit. Kim. 4), and perhaps, by a second marriage, the mother of Oloros the Athenian, father of Thucydides the historian ; Kimon who was Strategos in 477 B.c. may have been born about 508-7 B.c. The marriage of Miltiades and Hegesipyla might have taken place about the time of the expulsion of Hippias from Athens. Miltiades died about 488-7 B.c. Hegesipyla, then perhaps 35-40 years old, may have con- tracted a fresh marriage in the same family. Thucydides the historian might have been the grandson of this lady, and her second husband, and quite old enough in 431 B.c. to form the design of recording the war which began in the spring of that year. He could not then however have been {pace Pamphila apud Aul. Gell. 15. 23) forty years old (though he must have been at least thirty in 424 B.C.), nor could he be identified with Thucydides the colleague of Pericles in the Samian war (Thuc. 1. 117). That the historian w’as connected with the house of Kimon and with Thrace may be regarded as certain. Plutarch, 1. c., ilarcellinus, Suidas, et al. 40. 1. oDtos ktX. This chapter is a mass of cruces. The material difficulties are aggravated by ambiguities of expres- sion, and as in other like cases (cp. c. 57 infra) it seems not unreasonable to sup- pose that Hdt. is reproducing traditions which did not present a lucid argument or persjKictive to his own mind. We are in fact in the presence of an obscure self- contradiction or a clumsy tautology. The central sentence of the chapter is clear enough. It states as a matter of fact that the nornad Scyth.s, having received provocation from Dareios, ad- vanced as far as the Cher.souesc, and that Miltiades fled before them. The Scyths afterwards retired, and Miltiades was restored by the Dolonki. Whether these statements are accurate is a further cj^uestion : they are not obscure. Besides this clear statement of possible matters of fact, we have three sentences, two before and one after, of the utmost obscurity, in which vague and abstract terms are used {(LXKa. x^Xe- TTibrepa—tQv KaraXa^dvruv irp-qyp.6.Twv —to6tuv—raura—tQv rbre p.iv /care- XbvTUJv). Difficult questions arise as to the significance of these terms, and as to their relations one to another. Any one reading the first sentence of the chapter would suppose that the words vewcrrl jj-kv eXrjKiOee referred to the first advent of Miltiades in the Chersonese. So in fact Rawlinson in his translation understands the words. The question remains, to what events, or matters of fact, do the twm phrases ruv KaraXa^bv- Twv {v. 1. KarexbvTuv PR, adopted by van Herwerden and Holder) irp-qyixaruv and 6XXa xaAeTrcore/ja jefer ? Rawlinson takes TU3V Karexbvrwu irp'qyp.a.Twv to refer to the advance of the Phoenician fleet (in 493 B.c.) and &XXa x^XeTrcirepa to the advance of the Scyths ; Hdt. wishing to say that, bad as might be what Miltiades experienced from the Phoe- nicians, it was not so bad as what he had experienced from the Scyths, “three {sic) years earlier.” According to this interpretation tQv KarexbvTwv Trpt]yp.dT0Jv and Tovrcoif and tQv rbre puv Karexbvrwv refer to one and the same event or series of events (flight from the Phoenicians), while dXXa x^XeTTwrepa and raura refer to another series of events, that namely specified in the sentence S/o50at yap . . birlcrcu. The principal objections to this interpretation are three: (1) vecoarl is nonsense, or, as Rawlinson says, shows “a curious laxity of expression, or a curious forgetfulness of dates.” (2) The argument is inverted and well - nigh absurd. ‘ Miltiades had not been long in the Chersonese Avhen something occurred worse than what (afterwards) happened to him, for, less than three years before being driven clean out by the Phoenicians, ho had been obliged by the Scyths to retire for a time, but was