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.

    495/528 (page 367)
    3C7 a'lrocT'KevhovTCdv rrjv avfx^oXr^v eXy, virdp^eu rot, rwv iy^ KarkXe^a .dyaOcov rd ivavria.” Tavra Xeycov 6 XUXrLd8r]<^ TTpoaKrarat rbv KaXXip,a‘)(^ov' 110 Trpoayevopevrjt; Be rod noXepdp'^ov rrj<; yvcbprj^i eKeKvpcoTO avp,- PdXXeiv. pLerd Be ol arpar^yol to)v rj yvcbpLrj e^epe avpjSdXXeiv, W9 eKdarov avTOiV iyivero 'irpvTav'qir) rrj<; 7)p,ep7]<;, M.LXTidBp Trap- Marathon Kalliniachos and Miltiades may have been discussing the questions whether to expect or to deliver an attack, and at what moment: but hardly the prospects of an Athenian primacy. 110. 3. ol oTpaTT]yol . . irapeSlSocrav, cp. c. 109 mpra. There were four of them, and apparently the -irpvTavTjlTj came to each one of them, before it reached Miltiades. Each yielded the honour to Miltiades, yet he postpones the engagement until his own day comes round: an inexplicable incon- sequence on the showing of Hdt. Per- haps the real question with Miltiades, or rather wdth Kallimachos, was that the Athenians should deliver the attack, and not act merely on the defensive, rather than the question of delivering the attack on any particular day. To attack without waiting for the Spartans — unless some special circumstance arose to make an immediate attack advisable—might well have seemed an act of folly. Van Herwerden cuts the knot by inserting ov before dcKSfievos. 4. irpxrravqlT]. The word has been generally supposed in this passage to mean ‘the command-in-chief,’ cp. L. & S. sub V. where no parallel is adduced. Plutarch seems to have taken this view of the passage, see Aristeid. c. 5. If, however, the supreme command was really vested in the Polemarch, and the Strategi commanded each only a Phyle, some other meaning must be sought for -irpvravylrj, or the word is here used in- correctly. Whether Hdt. understood its correct use is another question. In what sense, or senses, could there be a daily change in the TrpvravyLrj of the Strategi, the yyefiovla of the Pole- march remaining intact ? In one sense irpvTavda was the period during which the povXevral of each Phyle were, so to speak, in office, i.e. one-tenth of the year. That order was determined by lot. Did the order of the Phylae in battle follow the order of the phylic prytanies for the year ? Did the TrpvTav€ijov(ra for the time being hold the post of honour, with its Strategos, on the right wing, immedi- ately in touch with the Polemarch ? (So Rawlinson, cp. note infra.) Might the Strategos be said to be rrpvTOLveiojv while his Phyle was irpvTavei/ovca ? One great objection to that explana- tion may lie in the succeeding words cis apidp.iovTo ai (pvXai, but another ob- jection already lies in the clear indica- tion that the irpvTaveia in the army changed every day. So also the Scholiast on Thuc. 4. 118 (qu. by Kruger) has yfi^pa Kad’ fjv i^ovalav, though the TrpvTdveis men- tioned there are civil officials. If the Trpvravela on the field of battle changed day by day, it can hardly have been identical with, or dependent on, the allotted order of the buleutic prytanies for the year. It is not in itself improbable that there was a daily change in the order of the Phyles in battle-array, or some rotation of primacy, or dignity, among the phylic regiments, and their com- manders, the supreme lead and com- mand of the Polemarch remaining un- affected. Such an arrangement obtained in the army of Alexander the Great, and would have been thoroughly in accord with Athenian spirit (cp. 5. 78 supra). The term in Alexander’s army appears to have been yyeyovla, applied whether to the regiment, or to its com- mander (cp. Arrian, Anabasis, 1. 14. 6, 28. 3 ; 5. 13. 4). The TrpvravyLr] here may correspond to the Tj-yripLovLa there, the former word being, perhaps, em- ployed in order to avoid clashing with the yyefiovla of the Polemarch. If this explanation be adopted, it follows that, on the day of battle, Miltiades, with the tribe he commanded, stood on the right wing. What tribe did Miltiades command ? What tribe stood right, on the day of Marathon ? If Miltiades belonged to the demo Laki- adai, and if he was in command of his own Pkylctai, the Oineis was the tribe