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

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χαρίζεσθαι: gratificari, 6. 130.

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προορᾶν: in regard to the future fame of Pausanias.

ἄγαμαι: perhaps not without a slight touch of irony or persiflage; cp. 4. 46, 157, 6. 76, 8. 144.

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καὶ τὴν πάτρην καὶ τὸ ἔργον. On the strong co-ordination cp. c. 26 supra. On πάτρη cp. c. 76 supra. In the speech of Lampon reference has been made to Kleombrotos and to Leonidas, but hardly to Sparta, as a state or fatherland (except in the words ἔπαινον ἕξεις πρῶτον μὲν ὐπὸ πάντων Σπαρτιητέων). The accusatives are “of reference”; cp. c. 72 supra.

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ἐς τὸ μηδὲν κατέβαλες: sc. ἐμέ. With τὸ μηδέν cp. 8. 106.

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ἄμεινον ... ἀκούσεσθαι: cp. 8. 93, also c. 107 infra (the active is usual).

τὰ πρέπει μᾶλλον βαρβάροισι ποιέειν ἤ περ Ἕλλησι: this sentence gives the two-edged moral of the anecdote, cutting the barbarians and the Aiginetan to boot; while Pausanias again emerges as the chevalier sans reproche; cp. c. 76 supra. πρέπει is strictly relative; cp. 8. 68, 114. In the latter passage may be found an undesigned commentary or complement to the present anecdote: the recompense made by Mardonios, as prophesied, was in a double sense οἵας ἐκείνοισι (sc. Ἕλλησι) πρέπει.

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ἐπιφθονέομεν: non tam invidiae quam odii significatione, Baehr: ‘we grudge it them even,’ we think none the better of them therefor. With καὶ ἐκείνοισι δέ cp. 2. 44 καὶ δοκέουσι δέ μοι, 4. 105 καὶ ὀμνῦσι δὲ λέγοντες. The καί is emphatic.

δ᾽ ὦν, ‘however that may be.’ Cp. Index.

τούτου εἵνεκα, ‘as far as that is concerned’; or, if it depends on that.

μήτε Αἰγινήτῃσι ἅδοιμι: the animus of the anecdote is very plainly revealed in this pious wish; the Aiginetans one and all were to be damnified, otherwise there seems no very obvious reason for making them responsible for the unholy propositions of their fellow-citizen. The animus here evinced is presumably Attic, and of long standing (cp. 7. 145); and such stories would have been greedily swallowed in Athens about the time of the first Peloponnesian war and the reduction of Aigina (462-457 B.C.). It seems, then, unnecessary to bring this passage down to the final expulsion of the Aiginetans in 431 B.C. (cp. 6. 91), much less with H. B. Wright, Campaign of Plataea (1904) p. 79 (following Knapp), to see in it a justification of the massacre of 424 B.C. See further, Introduction, § 9.

ἁνδάνω with personal subject is unusual.

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ἀποχρᾷ: cp. 8. 130, also 7. 148; with an expressed subject c. 94 infra.

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τῷ ... τιμωρῆσαι, ‘to avenge whom,’ in the normal construction. The perf. pass. neut. construction which follows implies the government of an accusative rei by the active. Cp. previous chapter, note to l. 14.

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ψυχῇσί τε ... τετίμηται: as by a sacrifice, hecatomb on hecatomb. The animistic idea underlying this magnificent utterance is not perfectly clear. What has become of ‘the countless souls of these men here,’ and where now are ‘those who met their end at Thermopylai’ (οἱ ἐν Θερμοπύλῃσι τελευτήσαντες)? The antithesis between αἱ ψυχαί and τῶνδε might recall the Homeric antithesis between the πολλὰς ἰφθίμους ψυχὰς ἡρώων sent to Hades and the ἡρῶας αὐτούς left lying on the earth, a prey for dogs and vultures (Il. ad init.). The souls of Leonidas and his men must surely be down there too: the barbarians' souls are sent to bear them company, and to wait upon them, in strict conformity with animistic beliefs. Such a sacrifice upon a snialler scale Achilles performed at the tomb of Patroklos (cp. Il. 23. 19 ff.); and the battle of Plataia, from this point of view, was a superb άγὼν ἐπιτάφιος in honour of Leonidas and his fellows.

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χάριν τε ἴσθι: the τε is cumulative, ‘and indeed’; cp. c. 70. χάριν εἰδέναι 3. 21. Cp. χάριν ἔχειν 7. 120. With the ‘sentiment’ cp. the Athenian remark to Alexander, 8. 143 ad f.