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

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ἑτέρας δύο ἡμέρας: i.e. 9th and 10th. The ἔργον, or furious slaughter of slave and beast (not without misplaced irony!) had taken place on the night of the 8th.

διέτριψαν, ‘wasted’—a little hard upon them, especially on the Persian cavalry, which, though neither side wished μάχης ἄρξαι (a pitched battle), did some useful skirmishing, as is immediately admitted.

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μέχρι ... τοῦ Ἀσωποῦ ἐπήισαν. Mardonios apparently drew out his men, day by day, on the left bank of Asopos, opposite the Greek Laager, and by sending his cavalry round their position tried to draw and drive them north across the Asopos.

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οἱ γὰρ Θηβαῖοι κτλ. The passage exhibits a manifest animus against the Thebans, who were medizing ‘wholesale’ (μεγάλως). Hdt., following no doubt a vicious source, Attic or philAttic, represents the Thebans as heading ‘Persians and Medes,’ until it came to actual fighting (μέχρι μάχης), and then leaving it to the ‘barbarian’ cavalry to do all the derring deeds (ἀρετάς). In reality no doubt the Theban, Thessalian and Makedonian cavalry on the right of the Persian line rode round the Athenians on the left wing, even as the MedoPersian cavalry on the left rode round the Lakedaimonians on the Greek right, and the two may have met about the springs of Gargaphia; it is possible, however, that the Greek left, on higher ground, or less concerned for Gargaphia, suffered less from the medizing Greeks than the Greek right from the Persians. Only the Thebans are mentioned here: with Thessalians and Makedonians the Athenians were afterwards on better terms.

It is not very likely that the Greeks had been eight days in the second position (‘on the Asopos’) before Mardonios adopted these very obvious tactics; nor again very likely that he owed their adoption to Theban suggestion.

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ἔφερον τὸν πόλεμον: cp. c. 18 supra.

κατηγέοντο: sc. τῇ ἵππῳ. Cp. c. 104 infra, 7. 183 supra.

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μέχρι μάχης κτλ. is not inconsistent with οὐδέτεροι βουλόμενοι μάχης ἄρξαι above, which plainly refers to a general or pitched battle.

τὸ δὲ ἀπὸ τούτου παραδεκόμενοι: in a somewhat different sense 1. 18 παραδεξάμενος παρὰ τοῦ πατρὸς τὸν πόλεμον προσεῖχε ἐντεταμένως. Still more. 2. 166 τὰ ἐς πόλεμον ἑπασκέουσι μοῦνα παῖς παρὰ πατρὸς ἐκδεκόμενος. Cp. also 1. 102 παρεδέξατο τὴν ἀρχήν. In all those cases the redecessor has done what the success is doing. ἐκδέκεσθαι is the commone <*>rb with Hdt. Cp. 7. 211. 2 (ὑποδέι <*>αι c. 21. 15 al. sens.).

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μάλα ἔσκ<*>ν: the verb has the frequentative form; cp. 7. 119. μάλα is the positive of μᾶλλον and μάλιστα, and seems here to have a corrective, adversative, or intensive signification, differentiating still more emphatically the action of the Persians from that of the Thebans. It is comparatively rare with verbs: 1. 93 θώματα δὲ γῆ ἡ Λυδίη ἐς συγγραφὴν οὐ μάλα ἔχει, 1. 134 οἱ δὲ (sc. ἄρχουσι） μάλα τῶν ἐχομένων, 1. 181 ἐπὶ τούτῳ τῷ πύργῳ ἄλλος πύργος ἐπιβέβηκε, καὶ ἕτερος μάλα ἐπὶ τούτῳ, where it very nearly = αὖθις or πάλιν. Cp. also 7. 11, 186, etc.

ἀρετάς: a significant plural; not a number of different virtues, but a number of cases of one virtue (courage): ‘derring deeds.’ Cp. 1. 176 Λύκιοι δὲ . . ἐπεξιόντες καὶ μαχόμενοι ὀλίγοι πρὸς πολλοὺς ἀρετὰς ἀπεδείκνυντο.