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

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σημαίνων δὲ ταῦτα, ‘with these significant hints.’ τῷ λόγῳ διέβαινε, together.

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μᾶλλον ἐπεστραμμένα: not more earnestly, vehemently, than he had spoken to Adeimantos—it could hardly have been so—but than before to Eurybiades. ἐπεστραμμένος, p.p. from ἐπιστρέφειν, seems here to = adj. ἐπι στρεφής, where it is not the ‘turn’ but the ‘attention,’ the aim, which is emphasized; cp. ἐπιστρεφέως 1. 30, and Plato Prot. 342 E ἐνέβαλε ῥῆμα ... συνεστραμμένον ὥσπερ δεινὸς ἀκοντιστής.

εἰ μενέεις ... καὶ ἔσεαι: the expression is hardly in strict grammar, and an aposiopesis, or a lacuna, might be suspected; so Baehr approves of Valckenaer's suggestion to supply mentally σώσεις τὴν Ἑλλάδα. But the excitement of the moment might account for some incoherence. Certainly καὶ μένων is tautologous, and de trop. Once might try to force a special point in it: ‘You, if you are going to remain—yea<*> in remaining (as you are now)—will be a good man and true.’

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ἀνατρέψεις τὴν Ἑλλάδα: this might be described as μᾶλλον ἐπεστραμμένοιν compared with κινδυνεύσεις ἁπάσῃ τῇ Ἑλλάδι c. 60 supra.

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τὸ πᾶν γὰρ ἡμῖν τοῦ πολέμου φ. αἱ νέες: cp. οὐδὲν πλέον ἐφέροντο 7. 211 supra, πλέον μέντοι ἔφερέ οἱ ἡ γνώμη κατεργάσασθαι τὴν Ἑλλάδα c. 100 infra, and more especially ταῦτα μέν νυν ἐπὶ σμικρόν τι ἐφέροντο τοῦ πολέμου 4. 130. ‘The whole fate, or issue, of the war depends for us on the ships.’ ἡμῖν need not be restricted to the Athenians.

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ἀλλ᾽ ἐμοὶ πείθεο: cp. Il. 1. 259 “ἀλλὰ πίθεσθ̓”, 2. 139 ἀλλ᾽ ἄγεθ᾽ ὡς ἂν ἐγὼ εἴπω πειθώμεθα πάντες.

εἰ ... ποιήσῃς: cp. c. 49 supra.

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ὡς ἔχομεν, ‘just as we are,’ without more ado.

τοὺς οἰκέτας: cp. c. 41 supra.

Σῖριν τὴν ἐν Ἰταλίῃ: there was another ‘Siris’ in Paionia; cp. c. 115 infra; the Italiote Siris was on a navigable river of the same name, twentyfour stades distant from the (later) Herakleia (Strabo 264); it was in the neighbourhood of this river that Pyrrhus fought his first engagement with the Romans 280 B.C., Plutarch Pyrrh. 16.

The foundation legend is given by Strabo, l.c. Siris, originally a settlement of the Chonians (i.e. native Italians of that region, but cp. 9. 93 infra), was occupied by fugitive Trojans after the fall of Troy (hence the worship of the winking Athene in the city, Strabo l.c.). At a later time Ionians flying from the Lydian conqueror (temp. Gygis?) occupied the town. The Ionians were apparently from Kolophon, and under them the Ionian city, in the midst of Achaian neighbours, rose to great prosperity, and rivalled Sybaris and Kroton in wealth and luxury. (Athen. 523 καὶ οἱ τὴν Σίριν (sic) δὲ κατοικοῦντες, ἣν πρῶτοι κατέσχον οἱ ἀπὸ Τροίας ἐλθόντος, ὕστερον δὲ Κολοφώνιοι, ὥς φησι Τίμαιος καὶ Ἀριστοτέλης, εἰς τρυφὴν ἐξώκειλαν οὐχ ἧσσον Συβαριτῶν.) The fertility of its soil was proverbial: οὐ γάρ τι καλὸς χῶρος οὐδ᾽ ἐφίμερος οὐδ᾽ ἐρατὸς οἷος ἀμφὶ Σίριος ῥοάς, Archilochos ap. Athen. l.c., Bergk ii.4 389, No. 21. Among the suitors of Agariste (circ. 570 B.C.) figured Damasos, son of Amyris, τοῦ σοφοῦ λεγομένου, 6. 127 supra. It must have been after that epoch, and before the destruction of Sybaris by Kroton (see 5. 44), that the Achaian colonies, Metapontion, Sybaris, and Kroton, combined to destroy Siris (Trogus Pomp. ap. Justin. 20. 2. 3 ff.), and apparently accomplished their purpose, notwithstanding the alliance of the Sirites with Lokroi. Siris must have continued to be inhabited, as ‘a member of the Achaian confederacy’ (B. Head, Historia Numorum, p. 69), and stood in intimate commercial relation with the town of Pyxos, a town on the Tyrrhene sea, probably of Sybarite foundation, and afterwards, perhaps, involved with Siris in the ruin of that city 510 B.C.— a catastrophe not inconsistent with the dim record of a projected occupation of Sirite territory by Samian adventurers (cp. 7. 164 supra), which may have been an anticipation of the Athenian project: Σάμιοι, πλεύσαντες εἰς Σύβαριν καὶ κατασχοντες την Σιρῖτιν χώραν, περδίκων ἀναπτάντων καὶ ποιησάντων ψόφον, ἐκπλαγἑντες ἔφυγον, καὶ ἐμβάντες είς τὰς ναῦς ἀπέπλευσαν, Hegesander of Delphi ap. Athen. 656 = Fr. 44, Mueller IV. 421. The dream of an Ionian restoration at Siris was part of the heritage which Athens accepted in placing, or replacing, herself at the head of the Ionian race, after the fall of Miletos; but there shows no definite trace of an earlier connexion between Siris and Athens. The dream was not destined to be fulfilled. Thurioi was, indeed, founded in 443 B.C., but at a considerable distance from the Siris (330 stades, Strabo l.c.), nor was Thurioi a successful settlement from an Athenian point of view (cp. Busolt, Gr. G. III. i. 518-541). Somewhat later, however (in 431 B.C.), Tarentum succeeded where Athens had failed: Ταραντῖνοι τοὺς τὴν Σῖριν καλουμένην οἰκοῦντας μετοικίσαντες ἐκ τῆς πατρίδος καὶ ἰδίους προσθέντες οἰκήτορας, ἔκτισαν πόλιν τὴν ὀνομαζομένην Ἡράκλειαν. The new city was founded on healthier ground than the old, but Siris remained the port (χρόνῳ δὲ τῆς Ἡρακλείας ἐντεῦθεν οἰκισθείσης ὑπὸ Ταραντίνων, ἐπίνειον αὕτη τῶν Ἡρακλεωτῶν ὑπῆρξε, Strabo l.c.); though Pliny 3. 15. 3 seems to identify the two (Heraclia, aliquando Siris vocitata). Cp. F. Lenormant, La GrandGrèce (1881) i. 201 ff.

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τὰ λόγια λέγει κτλ.: the formula is noticeable, as the λόγια in question were no doubt in writing. This passage may fairly be taken as evidence of the antiquity of the idea at Athens of an extension or colonization in the West. To see in the speech of Themistokles, more or less fictitious though it be, nothing but the reflexion of ideas and discussions current in Athens about the date of the foundation of Thurioi is to ignore the points above adduced as antecedents of that very undertaking itself There is also other sufficient evidence to connect the name of Themistokles with the conception of an expansive policy in the West; cp. Thucyd. 1. 136. 1, Plutarch Themist. 32 (names of his daughters, Italia, Sybaris). Busolt's defence of the claim of Themistokles in this connexion against the adverse critique of Beloch, Hermes 29 (1894), 604, concedes perhaps too much in sacrificing the antiquity of these λόγια and seeing in them mere products of the Θουριομάντεις. Athens had long been nursing commercial relations with the West (as Busolt well shows), and, moreover, Themistokles and the Athenians would probably have claimed as their own λόγια which in the first instance might have been intended to promote relations between the Ionians and the West (cp. 1. 94, 163-167, 170, 3. 136-138, 4. 152, 5. (42-47), 106, 6. 2, 21, 23-24, 7. 158, 163, 8. 22). Themistokles, if any man, was likely to have taken into account the Ionian precedents in the West. Whether he used any such threat upon this occasion, as is here fathered on him by Hdt., is another question. It would not have been easy to carry out, and the threat of joining the Mede would have been still more efficacious (cp. 9. 11). But the anecdote implies that Eurybiades and the Peloponnesians were on the point of withdrawing from Salamis, and this implication is hardly acceptable; cp. Appendix VI. § 1.