Reginald Walter Macan, Herodotus, The Seventh, Eighth, & Ninth Books with Introduction and Commentary

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θυμωθείς. Xerxes is represented by Hdt. as a man of violent passions, easily stirred; cp. Introduction, § 11.

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ῥύσεται μηδένα: ῥύεσθαι here has the force of a preventive, prohibitive; hence μή, Madvig, Gr. Syntax, § 210.

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μὴ γὰρ εἴην ἐκ ... γεγονώς, ‘I would I were not (son) of.’ The genealogy which follows is remarkable. Since the discovery of the Behistun inscription (cp. Records of the Past, i. 107 ff.) it has been obvious that the list here corresponds with the genealogy of Dareios as there given (Achaimenes, Teispes, Ariaramnes, Arsames, Hystaspes, cp. 1. 209), but is con<*>aminated with two or three names (Kyros, Kambyses, Teispes), two of which could not belong to direct progenitors of Xerxes, exeept in so far as he was the son of Atossa, the daughter of Kyros the Great, here apparently described as ‘Kyros son of Kambyses,’ as iu 1. 111, where Kyros appears as the son of Kambyses, and grandson of another Kyros. Nowhere in Hdt. (except 7. 11) does Teispes appear in the Kyreian pedigree, but in 3. 75 the line is referred to Achaimenes (ἀρξάμενος δὲ ἀπ᾽ Ἀχαιμένεος ἐγενεηλόγησετὴν πατριὴν τὴν Κύρου). Since the discovery of the Babylonian cylinder of Kyros now iu the British Mnseum (cp. O. E. Hagen, Keilschrifturkunden zur Gesch. d. Konigs Cyrus, 1891), it has become evident that Hdt. has, all places taken together, the official pedigree of Kyros as son of Kambyses, son of Kyros, son of Teispes, son of Aehaimenes (though oddly enough this last name is omitted on the Babylonian record). The interpretation of the present passage has now become obvious; the words τοῦ Κύρου have probably dropped out after Καμβύσεω, and καὶ after the first Τεΐσπεος, and Xerxes is represented as enumerating his Achaemeuid descent, on both sides—though apparently with omission of his mother's name. The accompanying table will make the point plain.

Achaimenes

Teispes

Ariaramnes Kyros

Arsames Kambyses

Hystaspes Kyros

Dareios = (Atossa)

Xerxes

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μάλα: “one of the commonest of Greck words” (L. & S.), but not, for that reason, the easiest to render, whether with verb (as here, cp. 9. 40), adjective, or even adverb (c. 103 infra). Cp. c. 186 infra. The formula τοῖσι ὑπαργμένοισι σταθμώσασθαι is noticeable, and ‘gnomic.’ The absence of the augment in ὑπαργ. is an ‘Ionism.’

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πρόκειται ἀγὼν ἵνα κτλ. The clear alternative, and especially the possibility of a Greek conquest of Asia, ean scarcely be historical, as put into the king's mouth, or ascribed to this date; they belong to a period subsequent to the Greek successes against Xerxes, cp. 5. 49 (with note ad l.), and could hardly have been formulated before the victories of the Eu<*>ymedon. This is a much more serious anachronism in the king's mouth than the hysteron proteron just above (Σάρδις τε ... ἐς τὴν Ἀσίην). Cp. Introduction, § 11.

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τὸ γὰρ μέσον οὐδὲν τῆς ἔχθρης ἐστί. (1) Without the words τῆς έχθρης this sentence would have given a good sense: ‘between the two alternatives, just specified, there is no mean’; i.e. there is no third alternative. Perhaps this meaning might be substantially retained by taking τῆς ἔχθρης as (a) causal, (b) predicative (‘that there is no alternative is due to the intensity of our quarrel’). (2) Sitzler apparently takes τὸ μέσον τῆς ἔχθρης together to signify “means of agreement, reconciliation” (does not exist); and so Stein renders: “between our hostile tempers (Gesinnungen) there exists no mediation (Vermittlung).” In these renderings οὐδέν (or οὐδὲν ἐστί) is, of course, the predicate. (3) The simplest grammatical construction of the sentence would make τὸ μέσον subject and οὐδὲν τῆς ἔχθρης ἐστί predicate. The μέσον might be understood of what lies between τάδε πάντα and ἐκεῖνα πάντα, and the meaning would be that ‘the intervening parts have nothing to say to our quarrel’—which is absurd, and the very opposite of what Hdt. would have been likely to make the king say. But the phrase is at best a confnsed one; even Hdt. is not always quite lucid; cp. c. 152 infra, Introduction, § 11.

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τὸ δεινὸν τὸ πείσομαι: ironical (in Hdt.), sarcastic (in Xerxes, with reference to c. 10 supra). τό, relative.

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πατέρων τῶν ἐμῶν. Xerxes is rhetorically antedating the supremacy of his fathers. (Stein takes it as a precise reference to the pedigrce of Perses c. 190 infra; Kepheus being son of Belos (1. 7) the Persian power might be regarded as in hereditary succession to the Assyrian.) The Persian claim, or principle, formulated in 9. 116 τὴν Ἀσίην πᾶσαν ... τοῦ ἀεὶ βασιλεύοντος might in itself justify or explain the anachronism. On Πέλοψ ὁ Φρύξ vide c. 8 l. 35 supra.