Volume 1

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

Herodotus

Date:: 1895

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

442/528 (page 314)

$VI AtyviTTLOL Kai 0 Ti aTToBe^dfievoL eXa^ov rd<f Acopiecou (3aaLX7jLa<;, aXXoLCTL yap wepl avroiv eipr^rai, edaopiev avTd' rd Be dXXoL ov 5G KareXa^ovTO, tovtcov p^v'pp.'qv 'KOi'pcrop.aL. yeped re Br) rdBe rolai jSacTiXevo'L A7rapTi7]TaL BeBoiKacn, Lpo)crvva<i Bvo, Ato9 re Aatce- 2. rds Aoipi^cov Pac^lXT]^as. In Sparta, Argos, Messenia, and perhaps Corinth and. Sikyon. 3. dWoio-i,. Whether Hdt. here refers to poets, or to prose authors, or to both, in any case this passage might seem to indicate that one of the canons for his OAvn work was to avoid repetition of stories which had already received literary treatment. Such a canon could not, however, he rigidly observed (cp. c. 137 infra) and such an inference would be misleading, cp. Introduction, pp. Ixxxiii f. The chief story here omitted is the legend of the expulsion and return of the Herakleids, cp. 9. 26. See Grote, Pt. i. c. xvii. § 1 (vol. i. 440-452, ed. 1872). Busolt, i.^ 205 note ^ for reff. That story had perhaps been treated in the Epic poem Aigimios ; hut cp. Bergk, Lit. Oesch,. i. 1006 f. and Bethe, in Pauly, R.-E. i.® 963. 56. 1. yepea. The notable passage which follows on the y^pea of the Spartan kings (cc. 56, 57, 58) can hardly be considered as complete or ac- curate, and might, perhaps, have been better arranged. It was, however, as the author has just asserted, the first essay upon the subject. The scheme in Hdt.’s mind apparently divided itself under the heads of privileges : (A) be- fore death, (B) after death. (A) is sub- divided into privileges, (1) in war, (2) in peace (van Herwerden would bracket rd elprjvaiai c. 57 infra as a gloss). (B) is not sub-classified. The most direct parallel to this passage is supplied by Xenophon, Rep. Laced, cc. xiii., xv. 2. STrapTLfjTai. SeSwKacru seems to imply that these yipea were of posi- tive institution (contrast MSorai c. 58 infra), the rather seeing that these ‘ Egyptians ’ fKa^ov rds jSacrL- Xrjlas. Hdt. does not say that the rights and duties enumerated are a residuum surviving from a time when the king was much more powerful; still less does he mean that these privileges have been but are not now given. The duplication of the king- ship may have been accompanied, or followed, by not merely a de facto limitation and diminution of the royal power, but by an express contract, or Rhetra, on the subject. That the dual royalty was believed to have been of distinct institution seems implied in the passage quoted c. 52 supra, from Thucy- dides, 5. 16, and, indeed, in the story given by Hdt. of its origin just above. The contractual basis of the Spartan kingships was attested by the menstrual oath, Xenoph. op. c. xv. 7 6 5^ 5pKos earl T(p p.kv /3acriXe? Kara rods ryy TrdXews Keip-ivovs vbpLovs paaCkeieiv, rg TrdXei ip,ire5opKovvTo$ iKelvov a.(xrv(f>LKtKTOv ipv PaaiXeiav Trapi^eiv. tpwcrvvas 8vo. Do these specially concern rd ip.TroXip.ia, or concern them at all ? Perhaps the &yo% which is in- curred by any one thwarting the kings on the war-trail may be connected with their hieratic functions. Xen. op. c. xiii. 2 represents the king as sacrificing to Zeus dyrjTup and to Athene, when going forth to war. How these two priesthoods were held, whether jointly or severally, and so forth, is unfortunately not stated. There was a special point no doubt in kings {dioyeveh' diorperpeh) being in- vested with priesthood of Zeus, who remained a ^acrtXeds even in democratic times and places. (Cp. Aristot. Fol. 1. 2, 7, 1252^.) The Spartan kings in particular were, as Herakleids, his descendants, and Zeus was their ancestor. The Herakleid kings of Macedon had a similar relation to the Bottiaean Zeus, and the Aeakid dynasty in Epiros to the Dodonaean (Preller, Griech. Mythologie, i.® 119). The relation of the Athamantidae to the Laphystian Zeus (7. 197), of the ancestors of Isagoras to the Karian Zeus (5. 66), and the remark of the Hellespontine to Xerxes (7. 56) may be compared. Add the satire on the ‘Olympian’ Perikles Aristoph. ^c7ior«.. 530 (which might partly insinuate a charge regni appcteiuli). Zeus Lakcdaimon Preller {l.c.) fanci- fully explains as the god-king from whom the Lakedaimonian and Spartan Basileia was deduced ; Zeus Uranios as the king-god of the polity in the heavens. With the surname Lakedai- f$