previous next


ἐκ τῆς ἕξω ἠπείρου: not merely have the Peloponnesians precedence in this navy-list, but the remainder are enumerated from a Peloponnesian standpoint; contrast the list for Artemision c. 1 supra.


Ἀθηναῖοι μέν: to this μέν may correspond the δέ in c. 45 infra, Μεγαρέες δέ κτλ., but it looks somewhat ‘pendent.’ A kind of contrast is snpplied by the case of the Plataians, but without a δέ, its place, perhaps, supplied by γάρ; in fact the Plataians are resumed with οὗτοι μέν νυν, to which immediately corresponds Ἀθηναῖοι δέ. The parenthetical character of the passage, and especially of the learned parenthesis on the origines of the Athenians, is manifest even in the style.

πρὸς πάντας τοὺς ἄλλους, ‘to set against, to compare with all the other peoples.’ For this use of πρός Blakesley cps. 2. 35 πρὸς πᾶσαν χώρην, and 3. 94 φόρον ἀπαγίνεον πρὸς πάντας τοὺς ἄλλους ἑξήκοντα καὶ τριηκόσια τάλαντα ψήγματος.

Hdt. gives the number of the Athenian ships at Salamis as 180. He evidently conceives of the total number available as 200, 20 being manned by the men of Chalkis, cc. 1, 14 supra. The anonymous Athenian ap. Thuc. 1. 74. 1 claims a little less than two-thirds of 400— which might be about 250. Cp. 7. 144 supra.


μοῦνοι: by themselves alone, i.e. without the Plataians, as the next sentence explains. There was evidently a problem: why were the Plataians, who had assisted to man the Athenian squadron at Artemision (c. 1 supra), absent from Salamis? The reason appears to be somewhat conjectural (διὰ τοιόνδε τι πρῆγμα). They had landed opposite Chalkis in order to remove their households. The fact of the debarkation is plainly indubitable; the reason for the act is more doubtful. It implies that the complete evaeuation of Plataia, and therefore of Attica, had already been resolved on. In the light of c. 40 supra it is possible that the Plataians landed in Boiotia expecting to find the Peloponnesian army ready to eover and defend Plataia: they would naturally elect, and indeed be bound, to join the land-forces under such circumstances The removal was then neeessitated by the non-appearance of the Greek army. But had the Plataians been especially eager for further service at sea, they surely might have found a way of rejoining the Athenians at Salamis. Had the evacuation of Attica been already decided on when the Athenians and Plataians parted at Chalkis, surely Sa amis would have been given as the rendezvous. The Plataians did not perhaos escape some censure at Athens; there is some trace of an apologetic note in this passage. Athenian tradition had its revenge: this μοῦνοι became so emphatic that it was sometimes forgotten that the Plataians had fought at Marathon! Cp. 9. 27.


τὴν περαίην τῆς Βοιωτίης χώρην, “the Boeotian territory on the opposite shore,” Blakesley; “the opposite shore of Boeotia,” Rawlinson, Macaulay (sc. χώρης). The meaning is clear, though the more usual sense would be “the coast opposite Boiotia.” The ‘Peraia’ is looked at from Chalkis, not from Boiotia. Cp. App. Crit.


τῶν οἰκετέων must surely include ‘wives and children’ as in c. 106 infra κομίσας τοὺς οἰκέτας, at once followed by κομίσαι τὰ τέκνα καὶ τὴν γυναῖκα, or c 142 infra γυναῖκάς τε καὶ τὰ ἐς πόλεμον ἄχρηστα οἰκετέων ἐχόμενα πάντα, where it includes τέκνα. Cp. παῖδάς τε καὶ γυναῖκας c. 40 supra (where οἰκέται are not specified), τέκνα τε καὶ τοὺς οἰκέτας c. 41, where γυναῖκας must be included. Add τἐκνα καὶ γυναῖκες cc. 36, 60. The use of οἰκέτης as a domestic slave is perhaps something of a euphemism, or meiosis; cp. 7. 170. With ἐλείφθησαν cp. 7. 153 οὐκ ἐλείφθη.


Ἀθηναῖοι δέ: as the text now stands this phrase is antithetical to οὗτοι μἑν, but there is no true antithesis in the argument. This parenthesis on the Attic origines can hardly have been intended in the first instanee for an Attic public, and may very well be an insertion (belonging to the second draft); in which case Μεγαρέες δέ would follow on οὗτοι μὲν ... ἐλείφθησαν. But in that case too the antithesis is hardly correct. Perhaps the original text ran Ἀθηναῖοι μὲν πρὸς πάντας ... ἑκατόν, Μεγαρέες δέ κτλ., and the double parenthesis may all be later insertion, and even perhaps not all of the same date and draft (the Attic origins being of the second, the note on the Plataian desertion of Athens of the third hand, or draft, that revision which took place at Athens after the outbreak of the Peloponnesian war what time the case of Plataia was doubtless freely and frequently canvassed; cp. Introduction, § 9).

The epitome which follows is the quintessence of primitive Attic history. Hdt. has taken it from some predecessor (possibly Hekataios), though there were perhaps already native Ἀτθιδογράφοι at work, cp. 6. 137. But this passage is hardly of strict Attic provenience, nor does it represent the orthodox Athenian tradition or theory. An Athenian would not have admitted Pelasgianism, nor allowed Κέκροφ a merely secondary place, nor described Ion as στρατάρχης (but rather as πολἑμαρχος) of Athens. In this passage, as in 1. 57, the Athenians are Pelasgians, virtually from first to last, for the changes they have undergone are merely, or mainly, nominal—a change of names; but Hdt. does not here go so far as to assert that they had changed their language too, or that time was when the Athenians, yea the Ionians, spake a non-Hellenic tongue. The early history of Attica, or at least of Athens, is resumed in four stages, of which the Ionian (with the Ionian tribes, and so forth) was but the last, and imposed ab extra. Before there were Ionians there had been Athenians; the Athenian is older than the Ionian name—in Attica. But the names of Kekrops and Kekropidai are older still than the Athenian. So fai back the stages, the epochs, are marked by proper names, Ion, Erechtheus, Kekrops. Before Kekrops there is a dim Pelasgian prime, and the forbears of the Athenian people, seemingly one tribe or section of the Pelasgian stock, were hight Kranaoi. But here it is the difference rather than the identity between Athenian and Pelasgian that is emphasized.


ἐπὶ μὲν Πελασγῶν ἐχόντων τὴν νῦν Ἑλλάδα. Hdt., so far as he has one single consistent view on the ‘Pelasgian question,’ regards the Pelasgoi as the fore-Hellenic and non-Hellenic population of all the continuous area afterwards invaded and occupied by the Hellenes, and so hellenized. Thus (i.) he places Pelasgoi in Peloponnese (1. 146, 2. 171, 7. 94): in Attica (1. 56, 2. 51, 4. 145, 6. 137): N. Greece (2. 52, 56): in the Islands (2. 51, 4. 145, 5. 26, 6. 136, 140): Asia Minor (7. 42, 95); (ii.) he makes Pelasgia the older name of the Hellenic peninsula (2. 56); (iii.) he believes that the Pelasgoi spake a non-Hellenic language (1. 57). On this view many or most of the early tribal names are subdivisions of the Pelasgic stock: Αἰγιαλέες Πελασγοἰ (7. 94), Κραναοἰ Πελασγοί, and so forth; the Dorians become the Hellenes κατ̓ ἐξοχήν, and the area occupied by Hellenic or hellenized tribes in the historic period has, ex hypothesi, becn occupied in the prehistoric by non-Hellenie tribes, exterminated or absorbed and hellenized by the invaders, leaving only a few isolated survivals here and there (1. 57). But the case of Athens, where there was no record of a Dorian conquest, is a difficulty on this theory, though Herodotus, the Dorian, nevertheless, or perhaps for that very reason, represents the Athenians as Pelasgic, without ever explaining their adoption of Hellenism. Thucydides, the Athenian, represents an opposite, or at least a corrective and rival view. He nowhere commits himself to the doctrine of the non-Hellenic character of the Pelasgoi, or the nonHellenic character of their language. Hellene and Pelasgian are not with him alternative or exclusive terms at any period; the distinction is merely nominal and verbal. The Pelasgic is indeed older than the Hellenic, but the Pelasgoi are but one, the most considerable, of many tribes inhabiting the potentially Hellenic area (1. 3). The Hellenic name is a matter of fashion, culture, exchange, adoption. The exact relation of Athens to the Pelasgoi is not clear. It is possible that Thucydides did not connect τὸ Πελαργικόν (2. 17) with the Pelasgoi; but if the words καὶ Ἀθήνας in 4. 109. 4 are authentic (to me they have the air of a gloss), Thucydides admitted Πελασγοὶ Τυρσηνοί as quondam inhabitants (οἰκησάντων) of Athens: an excursion into the rival hypothesis! In any case he will hardly have regarded the Athenians as Pelasgoi in his own time, much less allowed the Dorian claim to the flower of ‘Hellenism.’

Hdt.'s theory in this passage may be diagrammatically exhibited:

ἈθηναῖοιI.ἦσανΠελασγοί<ἀπ᾽ ἀρχῆς>Πελασγῶν ἐχόντων
ὠνομάσθησανΚραναοίἐπὶ Πελασγῶντὴν νῦν Ἑλλάδα καλεομένην
II.ἐπεκλήθησανΚεκροπίδαιἐπὶ Κέκροποςβασιλέος
III. μετωνομάσθησανἈθηναῖοιἐπ᾽ Ἐρεχθέοςἐκδεξαμένου τὴν ἀρχήν
IV.ἐκλήθησανἼωνεςἐπ᾽ Ἴωνοςστρατάρχεω γενομένου Ἀθηναίοισι


Κραναοί. Hdt. knows nothing apparently of the king or hero Kranaos, who is mentioned by Aischylos (παῖδες Κραναοῦ Eumen. 1011 = Athenians), and whose monument (μνῆμα) was to be seen, in the time of Pausanias (1. 31. 3), in the deme of Lamptrai; yet, on the other hand, he seems to anticipate the later traditions (i.e. theories) in denying the primacy of Kekrops. κρα-ναός may be rightly etymologized (καρ-, κρα-, and ναίειν) as the Dwellers-on-high (Stein: the antithesis to the Δα-ναοί = Ἀργεῖοι ‘dwellers below, on the plain’ looks daring, though attractive). Aristophanes has Κραναὰ πόλις Ach. 75 for Athens; cp. Birds 123 (τῶν Κραναῶν πόλιν) and (more specifically for the Akropolis?) Lys. 481 (μεγαλόπετρον ἄβατον). But Pindar has the word as an epithet not merely of Athens (Nem. 8. 11, Ol. 7. 82, 13. 38) but of Delos, Isth. 1. 4, and with Homer it is the standing epithet of Ithaca (Il. 3. 201, Od. 1. 247). The primitive meaning would seem to be rather ‘hard’ than ‘head’ or ‘high.’

The word is, however, also found as a proper name already in Homer, Il. 3. 445, of an island, variously identified (but in no case Ithaca!); cp. Pausan. 3. 22 1. Perhaps the names “ΚράνιοιThuc. 2. 30. 2 etc., Κραννώνιοι 2. 22. 3 may be traced to the same root. Cp. also next note.

Κέκροπος βασιλέος: for Thucydides, at least, Kekrops is apparently the first king in the land, 2. 15. 1, and the only one named by him previous to Theseus, though others are implied. Hdt. here adds Erechtheus, and in 1. 173 supplies the names of Pandion and Aigeus. Whether these four names would have comprised for Hdt. the complete list of Attic, or even of Athenian, kings before Theseus it is not easy to determine. As pointed out in the previous note, Kekrops can hardly be the first king for Hdt. What exact date he would have assigned to Kekrops must also remain an open question; but here at least the period of the Kekropidai is post-Pelasgian and praeIonian, nay, even prae-Athenian!

‘Kranaos’ appears to be an epithet localized, and then converted into a tribe-name and a tribe-ancestor. The eponym has here been generated from the epithet Is the case to some extent similar with ‘Kekrops’? The etymology and meaning of Kekrops are, indeed, obscure. G. Curtins ccnnected the word with καρπ-, fruit, fruitful (vid. L. & S.), in which case the Κέκροπες, Κεκρόπιοι, κεκροπίδαι—terms all used = Ἀθηναῖοι— would be the πέδιοι, or πεδιαῖοι, under another aspect (and contrast well with the κραναοί as above explained). But is not κέκροψ a variant of κέρκοψ, κέρκωψ, the beast, or man, with the tail? (cp. 7. 216 supra). It was under such a form that Kekrops was found and worshipped on the Akropolis; and the serpentine image was, or became, symbolical of the autochthonous claim; cp. c. 41 supra. Apollod. 3. 14. 1 probably gives the orthodox Attic theory: Κέκροψ αὐτόχθων, συμφυὲς ἔχων σῶμα ἀνδρὸς καὶ δράκοντος, τῆς Ἀττικῆς ἐβασίλευσε πρῶτος (except that the unification, the synoikism, of the land should be left for Theseus).


Ἐρεχθέος: of the true essence of Erechtheus there need be comparatively little doubt; he is one with Poseidon (cp. c. 55 infra), although, of course, tradition, i.e. early speculation, divided them, and then multiplied Erechtheus by two, or more, into Erechtheus, Erichthonios, in order the better to harmonize discrepant legends. Etymologically he is ‘the Render’ (cp. ἐρέχθω, Ποσειδὼν ἐρεχθεύς = ἐννοσίγαιος (?), though the connexion with χθών even in Erichthonios is pseudetymology). Like Kekrops, with whom he was sometimes, reasonably enough, identified (cp. Eustath. p. 283, ap. Clinton, Fasti, i. (1834) p. 62a), Erechtheus is in Attic legend αὐτοχθών. But his divinity is even more incontestable, and he had his temple on the Akropolis, in close association with Athene; cp. above all Homer, Il. 2. 547. This close association accounts for the metonomasia from Κεκροπίδαι to Ἀθηναῖοι here associated with his régime; not but what Ἐρεχθεῖδαι is found in the poets as an equivaleut, Pindar, Isth. 2. 19, cp. Pyth. 7. 10; Sophokles, Antig. 969, Aj. 201, etc. etc. Yet it is perhaps a pity that Hdt. did not complete his schematic history of Athenian titles by employing the term; so would he have had ‘Athenians’ all through as the common element underlying Pelasgians, Kranaians, Kekropids, Erechtheids, Ionians! Cp. App. Crit.


Ἴωνος δὲ τοῦ Ξούθου. The conventional pedigree of the sons of Hellen, for which our oldest authority is the Boiotian Hesiod (Frag. 25 = Rzach 7), is everywhere presupposed in Hdt., even though the Hellenic character of the Ionians is thus guaranteed, in conflict with his theory (1. 56) of their Pelasgic descent. The insertion of Xuthos does, however, put Ion (and Achaios) one step further from Hellen than Doros (and Aiolos); unless, indeed, with Euripides we make Doros also a son of Xuthos. In Attica Ion (and the Ionians) are immigrant, not autochthonous (though Enripides places his birth in one of the holy caves under the Akropolis), and no Attic tradition gave Ion a place in the suc cession of kings, though he is recognized here (as in Αθην. πολ. l.c. infra) as war-leader, war-lord. Was there never an Ionian conquest of or in Attica? The Ionian elements in Attica seem closely welded with the native, and yet distinct (the analogy of Great Britain, with its Saxons and Britons, is perhaps admissible). In Attica, however, the Ionian can hardly have been the aboriginal element, and the ‘Athenian’ the immigrant, albeit snch complete inversions of the truth, such hystera protera, are found in Greek legend (cp. 4. 145). One thing is clear: there was no ‘Norman,’ no Dorian conquest of Attica (cp. 5. 76 and my notes); and the settlement of population in Attica went back to a much more primitive date than in Peloponnese, or in the rest of Central Greece; hence the relative continuity of Attic history and culture, the priority and scale of the ‘Theseian’ synoikism


στρατάρχεω: elsewhere Ion had been perhaps a king (cp. Pausan. 7. 1. 5ἑπὶ τῆς Ἴωνος βασιλείας κτλ.”), though Hdt. does not expressly say so in 7. 94. The ‘Aristotelian’ theory traced the origin of the πολεμαρχία, as distinct from the βασιλεία, to the appointment of Ion: δεύτερα δὲ ἐπικατέστη πολεμαρχία, διὰ τὸ γενέσθαι τινὰς τῶν βασιλέων τὰ πολέμια μαλακούς, ὅθεν καὶ τὸν Ἴωνα μετεπέμψαντο χρείας καταλαβούσης, Ath. Pol. c. 3. (The need was the war with Enmolpos of Eleusis.) Something very like this theory, this story, is already implied in Hdt. Strabo 383 possibly preserves the ‘Aristotelian’ version: Ἴων δὲ τοὺς μετ᾽ Εὐμόλπου νικήσας Θρᾷκας οὔτως ηὐδοκίμησεν ὥστ᾽ ἐπέτρεψαν αὐτῷ τὴν πολιτείαν. δὲ πρῶτον μὲν εἰς τέτταρας φυλὰς διεῖλε τὸ πλῆθος εἶτα εἰς τέτταρας βίους τοὺς μὲν γὰρ γεωργοὐς ἀπέδειξε τοὐς δὲ δημιουργοὺς τοὺς δὲ ἱεροποιοὺς τετάρτους δὲ τοὺς φύλακας: τοιαῦτα δὲ πλείω διατάξας τὴν χώραν ἐπώνυμον ἑαυτοῦ κατέλιπεν. This looks like the πρώτη μετάστασις τῶν ἐξ ἀρχῆς, the κατάστασις Ἴωνος καὶ τῶν μετ᾽ αὑτοῦ συνοικισάντων (or συνοικησάντων Blass). τότε γὰρ πρῶτον εἰς τὰς τέτταρας συνενεμήθησαν φυλάς, καὶ τοὺς φυλοβασιλέας κατέστησαν, c. 41. 2. Ion, on that showing, is warlord and legislator, though not strictly ‘king.’ The four βίοι ap. Strabon, are, of course, a rationalization of the tribal names, as in 5. 66 supra; cp. notes ad l.c. The tomb of Ion was to be seen, in Pausanias' time, at Potamoi, Pausan. 1. 31. 3 (n.b. ἐπολεμάρχησε), 7. 1. 5.

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.

An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.

hide Display Preferences
Greek Display:
Arabic Display:
View by Default:
Browse Bar: