In the notes that follow I have tried to keep in mind the general reader’s need to know basic background information about names and dates, how the passage at hand fits into the larger ongoing narrative, and something of its more extended significance for Herodotus and the period he describes. The notes have been designed to be read section by section along with the corresponding chapters of the text. The cross-references and more lengthy notes are intended for the reader who is curious to pursue Herodotus’ narrative habits and explore his general interests and the historical content more fully; they are not meant to oppress, or to interfere with the reader’s ability to hear and enjoy Herodotus’ own voice.
Wherever possible, for historical information I have pointed the reader to the second edition of the Cambridge Ancient History, volumes iii–v (1982–92), here called CAH iii/1, CAH iii/2, CAH iii/3, CAH iv, CAH v, because these volumes are widely accessible, and their ample bibliographical references allow further exploration of many topics connected to the Histories. Please see the Select Bibliography on pp. xliii–xlv for titles of other works cited by author in the Notes, as well as some other works of general interest published in English. In the Notes, How and Wells (1913, repr. with corrections, 1928) is referred to as H & W; Meiggs and Lewis (1969) is referred to as M-L; Fornara (1983) as Fornara; West (1994) as West; and Jacoby (1957) as FGH. The reader who wants more information on topics of general classical interest (including figures from myth, individuals and authors, peoples, cities, and countries) is encouraged to begin by consulting the Oxford Classical Dictionary (third edition, 1996), edited by S. Hornblower and A. Spawforth.
The scholarly reader is encouraged at all points to consult the major commentaries, for instance, the Italian series published by the Fondazione Lorenzo Valla, Lloyd’s commentary on Book 2, and among the older works, How and Wells, and Macan. The outlines placed at the beginning of the notes for each individual book below are intended to serve only as a convenience for the reader, not as an analysis of the Histories’ underlying structure.
Many more scholars have given generously of their time in answering queries than I can thank by name here; S. Burstein, P. Cartledge, S. Cole, J. Marincola, S. Morris, M. Munn, J. Papadopoulos, K. Raaflaub, and R. Woodard have been particularly helpful. J. Appleby, M. Chambers, D. Boedeker, J. Ginsburg, A. Ivantchik, M. Jameson, A. Lloyd, W. K. Pritchett, A. Raubitschek, R. Stroud, W. G. Thalmann, P. Vasunia, and R. Waterfield have read and improved considerable portions of the Introduction or Notes. For efforts going far beyond the call of duty or even friendship, I would like particularly to thank B. T. Jones, D. Lateiner, P. O’Neill, and M. Ostwald. None of them, however, has seen the whole of what follows, or is responsible for the errors that remain therein.
Book I is very simply structured. It consists of four passages of increasing length that guide the reader gradually towards the theme that will underlie much of the rest of the narrative: the sixth-century growth of the Persian empire, beginning with Cyrus the Great (c.557–530 BCE). The first passage is only a single paragraph long, and sets out Herodotus’ name, the fact that the whole of what follows is the product of his own historiē or investigation, and the announced purpose of it: to preserve and celebrate great deeds of the past, both Greek and foreign. It ends by declaring that the enmity between Greeks and foreigners, and the cause for that enmity, will be of particular concern. The second passage then plays with this first announced topic by giving a quasi-humorous account several pages in length about a series of mythic abductions of Greek women by foreigners and foreign women by Greeks (1.1–5). The third passage, quite a bit longer still, moves from mythic to historical figures—in this case, Croesus of Lydia, nearest eastern neighbour of the Ionians, the Greeks who lived on the western coast of Asia Minor. Croesus (560–546 BCE) was famous in antiquity for his fabulous wealth, for his conquest of the eastern Greeks, and for his unlooked-for defeat at the hands of Cyrus the Persian, and all of these topics figure prominently in Herodotus’ narrative about him (1.6–94). Finally, Cyrus’ appearance as a conqueror in the Croesus story necessitates a fourth narrative (1.95–216) that begins by answering the question: who was this Cyrus, who came out of his stony eastern highlands to conquer Croesus in 546 BCE?
Introductory paragraph We use the textual tradition that calls the author ‘Herodotus of Halicarnassus’, but Herodotus (hereafter H) may well have written ‘of Thurii’, where he lived later in life. This is the version Aristotle knew (Rhetoric 1409a). Thurii was a Panhellenic Athenian foundation in southern Italy in the late 440s. Its appearance in H’s proem would have emphasized the connection of his historiē with the complexities of contemporary mid-fifth century politics and intellectual currents (Thurii’s lawgiver was the sophist Protagoras) rather than with the east Greek past of H’s original home town, Halicarnassus.
1.1 The first five chapters of Book 1 comprise a formal introduction, a proem markedly different in kind from what will come after. It consists of a tongue-in-cheek survey of a sequence of four mythic abductions of women. The women represent some of the major geographic regions theHistories will cover: Io is an Argive Greek who goes to Egypt; Europa is Phoenician taken to Crete; Medea is Colchian, from the region of the Euxine (Black) Sea, and goes first to Greece and then eventually to Media; and Helen is a Spartan who travels to Troy, on the north-west coast of Asia Minor. It is suggestive (though it cannot be pushed too far) that each of the first three becomes symbolically important for the country she ends up in. For the Greeks (though not for H himself), Io the Argive is often assimilated to Isis, a major Egyptian goddess (cf. n. 2.38–41); Europa the Phoenician gives her name to the continent of Europe (4.45); Medea eventually gives her name to the Medes (7.62). Perhaps H is suggesting that it will not be easy, in telling the long story of Greek-barbarian enmity, always to tell the ‘Same’ from the ‘Other’. (The last woman in the sequence, Helen, does not become a symbol of Trojan identity, although H might have expected his audience to see the pun on her name and the Greek verb helein, ‘to destroy’, since the Trojan War which her abduction gave rise to becomes the mythic moment at which enmity between east and west was established. Cf. Aeschylus’ pun in Agamemnon 687–8.)
Thus H in this clever proem makes several points at once. He writes an entertaining sketch that he can dismiss at its end as insufficiently factual (a flattened, rationalized version of the sort of tale that appears in literary treatments like a Prometheus Bound, an Argonautica, or an Iliad, unable even when carefully demythologized to overcome the fact that the original events have been transformed out of recognition). H seems to think that this is what happens to accounts of the past, if one doesn’t take the trouble to investigate things and write down one’s results. At the same time, for those who want to think more deeply, these stories of reciprocal violent abduction, rationalized and stripped of their literary embellishments, present the forcible exchange of women as a model for the ambiguity of resulting cultural identities—how will their children identifythemselves, or be identified by others? In the rationalized, non-mythic way these logoi, or stories, are presented here, at the beginning of the Histories, they serve as a warning that very often in what we are about to read things will not be as simple as they first seem. Greek myth here has become exotic and at the same time rationalized, by being looked at temporarily through Persian and Phoenician eyes.
H has begun by narrating what Persian logioi, or ‘experts’, have told him. One has to decide whether to take him at his word here, or to see this statement as merely part of the joke, since it might well have been obvious to H’s audience that the stories the Persian logioi tell are Greek ones. Perhaps, however, there really were Persians loosely resembling African griots or professional storytellers, ‘remembrancers’, who were interested in telling both Greek and Persian stories; or, alternatively, H may have merely talked to Persians who knew a lot of information and therefore were called logioi. Possible candidates would have been knowledgeable and to some extent Hellenized Persian aristocrats who came west, like Zopyrus (3.160) or the families of the two Persian generals Hydarnes and Artabazus, who were given western commands after the Persian Wars and whose descendants continued to rule in H’s day.
The Red Sea: H uses this term mostly to mean the Persian Gulf (1.180, 3.30), the ‘southern sea’ (2.158, 4.37), and the Indian Ocean (2.11). The sea we call the Red Sea is generally called by him the Arabian Gulf (2.11, 102). H & W comment of the Red Sea that ‘H means by this all the water SE and E of Asia Minor’.
1.5 Here H presents his first variant version, that is, details in which Phoenicians disagree with the Persian story. Under cover of narrating an amusing set of myths, he is also making a procedural point. He will often cite a source from whom he has heard his version of past events, sometimes indicating its authority and contrasting alternative versions where they differ. By recounting the Phoenician version here—the Phoenicians were, they say, only helping Io escape her parents and an awkward situation—he also serves notice at the beginning of the Histories that everything told about the past is in fact tendentious, and is merely the version that the person telling it wants you to hear. That is why one needs historiē, or investigation, to help decode a story and sift the wheat from the chaff. The abduction sequence as a whole is perhaps mocked in Aristophanes’Acharnians 523–9 (produced in Athens, 425 BCE).
‘To my certain knowledge’: Without naming him, H is referring to Croesus. Here H moves into the spatium historicum, that is, the more recent past one can know things about, as opposed to the unrecoverable pasts of myth and legend he has just been discussing.
1.6–92 The story of Croesus of Lydia and his Mermnad ancestors (CAH iii/2. 643–55). The Euxine is the Black Sea. The Cimmerians (Gimiraia) were nomadic invaders from southern Russia who arrived in Anatolia before 679 BCE and stayed in Asia Minor until the early 630s, wreaking havoc on many kingdoms, including Midas’ Phrygia (c.675) and Gyges’ Lydia (c.645). They are the ‘Gomer’ of Genesis 10: 2 and Ezekiel 38: 6 and are mentioned in cuneiform sources as early as 714 BCE. See n. 4.11–12 and CAH iii/2. 555–60.
1.7 The mythic genealogy of Candaules here does not agree with the genealogy of 7.61, where Andromeda, the granddaughter of Belus, is rescued by Perseus, Heracles’ ancestor.
1.8 H begins with a digression that goes back to Croesus’ fifth-generation grandfather, Gyges and his usurpation of the Lydian throne. We learn at the end of the Croesus story (1.91) why H begins the story of Croesus here: Croesus will pay for his ancestor’s choices. The hapless Gyges is the first of many ‘warners’ in the Histories, wise advisers who try to bring those in power to a realistic sense of their own limitations—usually, as here, without success.
For the notion that misfortune was ‘bound to come’, see Gould, 72–3. Passages that concern the notion of fate include 2.133, 161, 3.43, 65, 4.79, 5.33, 92, 6.135. This is often connected with the theme of tisis, divine retribution for past misdoings; see nn. 1.23, 1.86, 1.91, 1.204, 3.126–8, 4.205, the end of n. 8.97–107, and Lateiner, 141–3, 153–5, 203–4. Genealogy will also be an important connecting narrative thread throughout the Histories. If someone has an interesting descendant or ancestor, H often interrupts his narrative to comment on the details. Gyges was a real seventh-century Lydian king (c.680–645 BCE; CAH iii/2. 644–7, iii/3. 197); there is a (probably Hellenistic) papyrus fragment of a tragedy based on the Gyges story found in H; cf. the more mythic version of Plato, Republic 359.
1.12 Archilochus of Paros: ‘Gyges and all his gold don’t interest me. I’ve never been prey to envy, I don’t … yearn for great dominion’ (Archilochus, fr. 19 West). Archilochus was an iambic and elegiac poet, the son of Telesicles of Paros, and took part in the colonization of Thasos in the early seventh century BCE (CAH iii/3. 255). His poetry celebrated (apparently autobiographically) the life of a wild and woolly poet and mercenary soldier.
1.13 Delphi: the most important oracular centre of archaic mainland Greece; see Iliad 9.404–5. (CAH iii/3. 305–20 reviews Delphi’s involvement in the archaic period in the affairs of neighbouring states, culminating in the embarrassment of Delphi’s pro-Persian stance in the Persian Wars.) Delphi and the priestess of Apollo’s oracle appear many times in the Histories, and Delphic tradition will be an important source for many of H’s stories of past events (see e.g. the story of the colonization of Cyrene, esp. 4.155–9). The end of 1.13 anticipates the end of the Croesus story and sets the stage for Apollo’s explanation in 1.91. As Gould points out (pp. 67 ff.), the religious explanations advanced at the beginning and end of the story do not render inconsequential all the ordinary, secular misjudgements that bring about Croesus’ downfall. Both levels of causation count.
1.14 Ancient sanctuaries were religious centres but were also like museums, where trophies and dedications were displayed and important states had their own treasuries. H is often interested in the current visible remains of past events; see, for instance, his comments about other treasures at Delphi at 1.25, 50–1, 4.162, 8.27 (see CAH iv. 385–8 for the financial operations of Greek religion). H is also interested in inventors and first instances of achievements (cf. Arion as the first producer of the choral dithyramb in 1.23), and he will often note them, as here in his comment about Midas and Gyges, since they are part of the ‘important and remarkable achievements’ he has promised in his introductory paragraph to record. See further n. 2.65–76. ‘Thirty talents’: see App. 2. For Midas’ Phrygia, see CAH iii/2. 622–43. Like Gyges, Midas the Phrygian became a figure of Greek myth and literature (Ovid, Metamorphoses, 11.90–193).
1.16–18 The war between Alyattes the Lydian and Cyaxares the Mede in the 580s BCE will be told at greater length in 1.74. For the historical achievement of the Mermnad dynasty from Gyges to Alyattes, see CAH iii/2. 643–51. Alyattes waged war on Miletus c.617–612 BCE.
1.20 See 5.92 for more connections between the two tyrants Thrasybulus of Miletus and Periander of Corinth; there Periander asks Thrasybulus for advice. Periander came to power about 627 BCE. The treasury of Corinth at Delphi is mentioned in 1.14 and 1.50, and is evidence for the wealth and importance of Corinth under the Cypselids. See CAH iii/3. 341–51 and n. 5.90–3 for tyrants as agents of social, economic, and cultural change in the archaic Greek world.
1.23 This is the first real pendant or parenthetical digression in the Histories, a story about the poet Arion, apparently included here only because at the end of his adventure Arion appears in the court of Periander of Corinth. This account of Arion and his production in Corinth of the dithyramb, a choral song in honour of Dionysus, figures as part of the scanty evidence for the origins of tragedy (see also n. 5.67–8). H implies that the story of Arion is told here simply because it is remarkable, but there are clear thematic resonances linking it to the more important narratives of Book 1 as well. In particular, the story of Arion illustrates a favourite move of H’s, similar to Aristotle’s notion of ‘recognition’ (anagnōrisis, Poetics 1452a29): leaping out to confront the astonished sailors, Arion provides the datum, inconvenient but true, that gives the lie to the Corinthian sailors’ self-serving version of events and makes the onlookers quickly revise their previous assumptions. It is also another example of tisis, retribution: attempted murder will out (cf. n. 1.8). The cape of Taenarum is the southernmost point of the Peloponnese.
1.26–94 The story of Croesus (560–546 BCE) now officially begins. H first reverts to the theme of 1.6, Croesus’ subjugation of Greek cities. Croesus’ story introduces or develops themes that will be repeated throughout the Histories, in particular the tendency for those in power to engage in wishful thinking and to fail in their schemes because they have overestimated their own comprehension and control of events. For Croesus as a historical personage, see CAH iii/2. 651–3.
1.27 Bias of Priene, Pittacus of Mytilene are two of the famous Seven Wise Men of archaic Greece (cf. Plato Protagoras 343a); a third, Solon of Athens, appears in 1.29. As H & W comment, their connection with Croesus is not likely to have been historical. Six of those later named among the seven appear in H’s first book: to Solon, Bias, and Pittacus add Thales of Miletus (1.74, 170, with Bias), Chilon of Lacedaemon (1.59), and Periander of Corinth (1.20, 23, 27). Two others often found in the list appear later: Anacharsis (4.46, 76) and Pythagoras (2.81, 4.95). For the spirit of Ionian rationalism and problem-solving with which these figures were often associated, see CAH iii/3. 220 ff.
1.29 Solon, archon of Athens c.594 BCE. For Solon’s historical importance, see CAH iii/3. 375–91. H largely ignores both his poetry (although see 5.113) and his political role in Athens’ constitutional history (although H has him borrowing a law from Egypt, 2.177). It is not impossible but it is unlikely that Solon visited Croesus at the very beginning of Croesus’ reign (560 BCE); it was not within ten years of his archonship. The meeting between Solon and Croesus has immense thematic importance for H’s Histories. It sets up Croesus to become an example of ‘small becoming big and big small’ (1.5) and introduces the complementary traditional Greek theme of the uncertainty of human life, summed up in Solon’s warning to count no man happy until he is dead (1.32). Solon, like the Scythian sage Anacharsis (4.76), learns about the world by theōriē, sightseeing. Although H does not use the same word for his own travels, it is hard not to read Solon here as somehow suggestive of H himself, a Greek traveller seeing the world and making sense of it.
1.31 Two statue bases have been found with archaic inscriptions which probably refer to the dedication of Cleobis and Biton. Two sixth-century Argive statues of young men (kouroi) that are often associated with these bases were discovered by the French excavation of Delphi in 1893; they can still be seen in the museum at Delphi. Note that, although they were not wealthy like Croesus, Tellus and the two Argive brothers were all memorialized concretely and publicly after their deaths.
1.32 The gods begrudge happiness to humans: see Gould, 78 ff., and in the Histories, 3.40, 7.10, 46, 8.109. The idea is always expressed not by H himself but by characters speaking in the narrative. (Note, however, that in 1.34 H states that a divine nemesis or vengeance fell on Croesus, possibly because he assumed that he was the happiest man alive.) This whole cluster of ideas has less to do with Greek ideas about the personality of divinity than with the observed fact that human life is very difficult. Solon’s calendar reforms for Athens were well known, so it is not surprising that H here allows him a little pedantic arithmetical calculation about the number of days in a human life. The intercalary month did not occur every other year, but was sometimes inserted into the Athenian and many other ancient calendars to make the solar and lunar years (365.25 days versus 354 days) agree more closely; without this adjustment, the lunar year quickly lost all connection with the four seasons. For the general treatment of numbers in the Histories, see Lateiner, 32. For the notion that the world is an interlocking and balanced whole, see the Introduction, pp. xxxvii–xxxviii, 3.106, 108, and 116, and the end of n. 1.142–51; Immerwahr, 306–26; Gould, 93 ff.; Lateiner, 194 ff.
1.34 Solon had used the word atē to denote disaster in 1.32 (and the same term is found in the historical Solon’s poetry, although not elsewhere in H); Croesus’ son is called Atys. Atys, however, is also a recognized Lydian name (1.7, 7.27), and may be linked to the myth of Attis, the companion of the Phrygian goddess Cybele or Cybebe, another young man killed by a wild boar (cf. 5.102 for Cybebe’s temple in Sardis and n. 4.76–81 for her worship in the Propontis region). Was the story told to H merely rationalized myth? (The name Adrastus, ‘inevitable, inescapable’, has some of the same problems. There was a Mysian city Adrasteia, but in 1.43 H probably emphasizes the name because of its connections with a Greek cult title for the goddess Nemesis, divine vengeance.)
1.46 The seven shrines (significant number? cf. 1.98) consulted here do not, according to Asheri, match sixth-century realities. Note that in 1.92 Croesus is said to have rewarded Branchidae too, although we are not told why. Delphi will play an important role in the narrative of the Persian Wars: 7.140, 220, 8.36–9.
1.51 An amphora holds as much as nine gallons (c.39 litres), so this was a very large silver bowl, as extraordinarily large as the Scythian bowl at Exampaeus (4.81). We do not know enough about ancient metallurgy to say that such sizes were impossible; consider the famous oversize crater found in a tomb at Vix in France (CAH iii/3. 141). Theodorus was a renowned ancient craftsman; he also made Poly-crates’ ring (3.41). H notes here that the inscription on one of the aspergilla, or sprinkling bowls, is misleading; visual evidence often needs to be supplemented with other kinds of investigation (cf. the statues of 2.131 or the tomb of the Aeginetans in 9.85). This is the first inscription mentioned in the Histories; cf. n. 5.57–61. On its engraver: H not infrequently refrains from stating something he knows, for religious reasons, or because it is unnecessary, or from general disapproval, as here (Lateiner, 64–9).
1.55 For Croesus’ tender feet in the oracle, cf. n. 1.79.
1.56–68 This is the second common type of digression in the Histories, not a complete interruption like the Arion episode, but a long parenthesis that adds background information only tenuously related to the main narrative. This particular digression concerns who the most important Greeks are, and how they got to be the way they were when Croesus investigated which Greek state to take for an ally in the early 540s. Until after the battle of Salamis in the Persian Wars proper (8.40–82), the main narrative thread continues to concern eastern initiatives. Other important stretches of Greek material appear in 3.39–60, 139–49, 5.39–96, 6.49–94, 7.132–78, as well as in briefer treatments of individuals or families, like Arion, Polycrates, Miltiades, or the Alcmaeonidae. Much Greek material in the Histories occurs in digressions like this one (Immerwahr, 34–42).
1.56–7 Pelasgians. Historians agree with H that Greece itself had originally been home to a pre-Greek population. In its material culture Athens was Greek from the Mycenaean period on; unlike H here, many historians distinguish at least two waves of Greek migration into the Balkan peninsula: an earlier, Mycenaean invasion that had taken place c.2000 BCE, and possibly a much later set (c.900–800?) that brought Dorians (the ‘children of Heracles’, n. 4.147–8) down into the Peloponnese. (Increasingly, however, historians doubt that a ‘Dorian invasion’ was responsible for an apparent decline in population and living standards in the eleventh to ninth centuries.) For the Greek concept of ‘Pelasgians’, see also n. 6.137–40 and Lloyd, ii. 232 ff. For the Hellenes, Deucalion was the Greek mythic equivalent of Noah, survivor of the flood. Cadmus the Phoenician was the mythic son of Agenor, brother of Europa, and founder of Thebes (n. 5.57–61 and Lloyd, ii. 226–31). The Cadmeans of Illyria claimed descent from Cadmus in his old age (5.61); those in Boeotia had come with him originally from Phoenicia (5.58). Cadmus, his sister Europa, and the Cadmeans will reappear many times, implicitly linking many parts of the earliest Greek world together (1.2, 146, 173, 2.49, 145, 4.45, 147, 5.57–61, 9.27). By Creston H probably means the area in Thrace called Crestonia; on nearby Lemnos inscriptions have been discovered in a language resembling Etruscan (CAH iv. 725; see however n. 1.94).
1.59 For Pisistratus, the famous tyrant of Athens (561–527 BCE), see CAH iii/3. 392–416 and iv. 287–302. This passage is an important piece of evidence for the history of the tyranny. It is placed here because of the importance Athens will have in Books 7–9; as a piece of sixth-century history it is anachronistic, because Corinth was more powerful than Athens in the 540s BCE, and other states were arguably as powerful. Chilon the famous sixth-century Spartan ephor was one of the Seven Sages; cf. n. 1.27.
1.61 The curse of Megacles’ family, the Alcmaeonidae, is explained in 5.71. For the Alcmaeonidae see n. 5.62–3 and for the founding of the family’s fortunes see 6.125. The Alcmaeonidae were important in H’s own day because Pericles of Athens was through his mother an Alcmaeonid (6.131); Thucydides describes the tactical uses to which the Lacedaemonians put the ancient curse at the beginning of the Peloponnesian War, trying to discredit Pericles as Athens’ political leader (Thucydides 1.126–7).
1.62 For Hippias’ return as an old man in 490 BCE to Marathon as a landing-site for the Persian attack against Attica, see 6.102, 107 ff. (The family of the Pisistratids, like the Philaids (n. 6.102–7), originally came from Brauron, just south of Marathon.)
1.65–8 This passage is the earliest extant mention of Lycurgus, the (mythic? eighth-century?) lawgiver of Sparta (CAH iii/1. 736–7, 741–3). Tyrtaeus (c.650) seems not to have mentioned him in his elegies, but according to Plutarch (Life of Lycurgus I), Aristotle saw a bronze discus at Olympia with Lycurgus’ name on it that connected him with the establishment of the first Olympic Games in 776 BCE. All full Spartan citizens are Spartiates and in this translation are called either Spartans or Spartiates. (The other two classes of inhabitants of Laconia were perioeci, citizens but without full legal rights, and helots, land-based slaves. Cf. nn. 3.46–7, 6.58–60.)
For sixth-century Spartan history, see CAH iii/3. 351–9 (355 for the Tegean War). The treaty between Sparta and Tegea occurred c.550 BCE. Tegea is on the main road from Sparta to the Isthmus and therefore strategically important; Tegea will play an important role as Sparta’s ally in the battle of Plataea, 9.9, 26–8, 62, 70. (Greek heroes bring protection after their deaths; see n. 5.108–17. For the skeleton’s height, see n. 7.105–27.)
1.70 Another set of alternative versions, with both Lacedaemonians and Samians reporting versions of the story that reflect well on their own actions (n. 1.5). This will be one of H’s most important tools for instilling in his readers a healthy scepticism about stories from the past (Lateiner, 76–90). The Lacedaemonians arrive too late to help Croesus; they also arrive late for Marathon (6.106, 120), but do finally bestir themselves to march to Plataea (9.7–11; H however gives them full credit for Thermopylae: 7.209, 211, 224). For Sparta as a member, together with Croesus and Amasis, in a defensive alliance against Persia in the 540s, see CAH iv. 464.
1.71 Sandanis is another wise adviser (n. 1.8 above). He prefigures such important advisers to Xerxes as Artabanus (4.83, 7.10) and Demaratus (7.101, 234). Notice the tension here between the vigorously uncivilized Persians and the overcivilized Lydians (cf. 1.55), as later between the overcivilized Persians and the poor but vigorous Scythians or Greeks. The very end of the Histories (9.122) has Cyrus the Great drawing the same contrast as a generalization.
1.72 H makes the time for the journey from Sinope on the shore of the Euxine (Black) Sea to the Mediterranean (about 350 miles or 560 km.) much too short, both here and in 2.34. Cf. the astonishing speed of Philippides (6.106), who ran about 140 miles (225 km.) in two days. The interest in geography evinced here will be displayed many times in the Histories; see Gould, 86–109, and e.g. nn. 1.93, 2.6–12, 2.30–1, 4.37–45.
1.73 The prehistory of Croesus’ alliance with the Medes. Notice the multiple causation for Croesus’ decision, and how the behaviour of Gyges is here entirely omitted by H as a cause. It comes in only at the end, when Croesus himself learns of it (cf. 1.13). For more on the Scythians, see nn. 1.103, 1.105, and Book 4.
1.74 Two possible candidates for the eclipse: 28 May 585, or 21 September 582 BCE. Although H rejects Thales’ engineering feats in 1.75, he accepts the prediction of the eclipse. Cf. n. 1.27 for the Seven Sages.
1.75 H looks forward here to 1.107. Authorial cross-references dot the Histories, sometimes to passages at a considerable remove: 7.93 refers back to 1.171. Three of them remain unfulfilled: 1.106, 184, 7.213.
1.77 Amasis of Egypt was also alarmed by Cyrus (CAH iii/2. 721, 725; cf. n. 3.44); it is not clear that Labynetus (= Nabonidus) was actually part of Croesus’ alliance (CAH iii/3. 23–4). The Nabonidus Chronicle perhaps dates Cyrus’ conquest of Lydia to April 547 (CAH iii/3. 401).
1.78 Portents, along with dreams and oracles, are the most important ways in which the gods foreshadow to human beings what will happen. Croesus’ story contains all three. Cf. 3.10, 6.27, 7.57.
1.79 The Lydians are more cultivated than the Persians (1.71), but they are warlike until Croesus effeminizes them, 1.156. The Lydians’ warlike nature is also mentioned in 2.167.
1.80 Harpagus the Mede will figure crucially in Cyrus’ coming-of-age story, esp. 1.109, 117–19, 123, 129. Later he also subdues Ionia, 1.164–77. Camels are the object of H’s attention in 3.102–3 for the strangeness of their behaviour in India and their odd physiology; Xerxes will bring them down into Greece, 7.125.
1.82 The Spartans do not help; cf. the end of n. 1.70. The battle of Thyreatis between Sparta and Argos (c.546 BCE) consolidated Sparta’s place as the leading power in Greece (CAH iii/3. 356).
1.86–7 Cyrus understands something here that he forgets later (1.204), that as a human being he is not inherently exempt from the kind of tisis that befalls Croesus here. The tradition of Croesus’ last-minute rescue from the pyre is not attested before H, although Croesus on his pyre was a theme of earlier poetry and vase-painting. Cf. Bacchylides 3.23–62, where Croesus is transported by Apollo to the Hyperboreans. The Babylonian Chronicle seems to record that Cyrus killed Croesus in the sack of Sardis (CAH iv. 33–4).
1.89 Croesus has become a wise adviser himself, though his advice does not always continue to be as good as it is here (1.207, 3.36; cf. n. 1.71).
1.91 This is a full statement of the theme of tisis, or divine retribution; see n. 1.8. Ring composition (see pp. xxii–xxvii) brings us back to the topic that originally introduced the long narrative of Croesus and his family. Apollo does not entirely exonerate Croesus from responsibility, however; Croesus should have enquired more carefully concerning the oracle he received.
1.92 The first conquest of Ionia: this looks forward to the second submission in 1.169 and the third in 6.32. Cf. the two Ionian revolts in 5.30 and 9.104. Asheri notes that the same enumeration is made of Spartan campaigns in Asia (3.56, looking ahead to 9.96) and the first and second Persian conquest of Babylon (1.192, 3.159). Cf. 5.76, for the enumerations of Dorian invasions of Attica. For Croesus’ dedications, see n. 1.14 above.
1.93 Ethnography, biology, geography, and a report of local thōmata, wonders, will be a regular feature in the Histories (Immerwahr, 317–23; Gould, 86–109; Lateiner, 143–62). The Persians are described in 1.131–40, the Babylonians in 1.178–87 and 192–200, the Egyptians in 2.2–182, Indians in 3.98–106, Scythians and their neighbours in 4.5–82, and Libyans in 4.168–99. Smaller passages reflecting the same interests are scattered throughout the Histories. In such narratives H may sometimes be borrowing from earlier writers of periploi or travel narratives, like Hecataeus of Miletus (n. 5.36) or Scylax of Caryanda (4.44). On Alyattes’ tomb, see CAH iii/2. 650–1.
1.94 Whether Lydian colonists came to Etruria to become the Etruscans (H’s Tyrrhenians) is very doubtful; see CAH iv. 639. Coinage was indeed a Lydian invention, from as early as the reign of Alyattes, CAH iii/2. 649.
1.95–216 H now moves from lower to upper Asia, by going on to the second major narrative, the story of Cyrus the Persian (c.557–530 BCE). Cyrus’ campaigns will not be treated until 1.141; first, as in the earlier Croesus story, H gives background: the rise of the Medes, the reign of Cyrus’ Median grandfather, Astyages, the story of Cyrus’ miraculous rescue as a child, and his defeat of Astyages. Finally, a brief ethnography of the Persians precedes the account of Cyrus’ reign. At the end, Cyrus, like Croesus, will fall (214).
For the Medes and their dislocation by the Persians in c.550 BCE, see CAH iv. 1–33, esp. 24–33. H’s account seems to be ‘a potpourri of Median and non-Median legends which have been woven into a national folk-epic’ (p. 17). For a historical summary of the rest of Cyrus’ career, seeCAH iv. 33–46.
1.96 Media is a rural society in the process of urbanization or, more precisely, synoecism, as a Greek would see it. The Median story and chronology of H do not completely fit the current state of eastern evidence. Working backwards from 550 as the defeat of Astyages gives the following chronology: Deioces (700–647), Phraortes (647–625), Cyaxares (625–585), Astyages (585–550). For H, Deioces is a paradigm of the absolute monarch who grows more inaccessible and tyrannical as his power increases (cf. 3.80); see also the portraits of Cambyses (3.30–7) and Darius (3.84, 118), and even Xerxes’ lack of sober judgement (7.11, 39, 8.69, 118, 9.108–13).
1.98 The circuit of Athens was about sixty stades (6.62 miles or 10.66 km.). Cf. 2.7 and 4.99 for other attempts to interpret foreign measurements for Greeks.
1.103 See n. 1.74 for the eclipse that dates the battle between Medes and Lydians. Cyaxares gave the Medes real hegemony; he is attested in the Babylonian Chronicle as Umakistar, who finally conquered Nineveh in 612 BCE. The sudden invasion of the Scythians is difficult to date; A. Ivantchik believes that it occurred late in the seventh century (c.630–615?) and did not result in a continuous period of domination (cf. CAH iii/2. 564ff. and iv. 19–20). H’s Protothyes might have been Partatua (mentioned in a text of c.672 BCE), ally and probably son-in-law of the Assyrian king.
1.104 Lake Maeetis is the Sea of Azov.
1.105 Cf. n. 1.131 for the ‘Heavenly Aphrodite’. Again in 2.44 H is interested in the connections that link various temples of the same god. The Scythian enareis are mentioned again in 4.67 as a caste of androgynous diviners who owe their powers to Aphrodite. The fifth-century HippocraticAirs, Waters, Places 22 claims that both the Scythians’ excessive equestrianism and their habit of wearing trousers led to their effeminization. The Scythians were not remembered with fondness in Asia Minor; they may be the enemy from the north mentioned in the Bible as a scourge of apocalyptic proportions (Jeremiah 1:14, 5:15–17, 50:41–2, Ezekiel 38:15), and the Ashkenazim of Genesis 10:3, I Chronicles 1:6, Jeremiah 51:27 (cf. cuneiform Ash-gu-za-a). H’s Scythians enter the Histories most fully in H’s account in Book 4 of Darius’ attempt (c.513 BCE) to conquer them in their homeland.
1.106 Cyaxares’ trick here is later used also by Cyrus against the ‘uncivilized’ Massagetae, though with less success (1.207, 211). H’s comment that he will elsewhere tell of the fall of Nineveh is the first of three notorious unfulfilled promises in the Histories (1.184, 7.213). Both 1.106 and 1.184 refer to an ‘Assyrian logos’ that seems not to have been written. See 1.178–200 for H’s treatment of Babylon.
1.107 Astyages is the Istumegu of the Babylonian Chronicle’s report on the conquest of the Medes by the Persians in 550 BCE, CAH iv. 17. Asheri comments that urine in Assyrian sources seems to be linked to the birth of a son.
1.110 H has already commented (1.95) that of all the stories about Cyrus the one he tells is the most plausible. The rescue and rearing of the king by a sacred animal, as in the Romulus legend at Rome, has here been rationalized (Cyno in Greek, Spaka in Median, means female dog or bitch). Cf. the connection of Mitradates’ name with the god Mitra, 1.131; the privileged status of dogs among the Persians, 1.140; and the widespread Indo-European notion of the warrior as a dog or wolf, n. 4.102–9.
1.114 For the office of the King’s Eye, see also Aeschylus, Persians 979.
1.119 The Scythians had done the same to one of the Median boys entrusted to them by Astyages’ father, Cyaxares (1.73). Dining can be problematic in H; see e.g. 1.106, 211, 2.100, 107, 5.18–20. See also his other mentions of cannibalism: 3.25, 38, 99, 4.18, 26, 106.
1.123 See 5.35, 7.239 (if it is genuine), and 8.128 for other secret written messages. Writing is often associated with cleverness, and even the excessive cleverness of tricks and tricksters: cf. 1.187, 3.40, 128, 5.14, 29, 8.22.
1.127 For the conflict between Cyrus and Astyages, we have the Babylonian Chronicle and the Dream Text of Nabonidus as well as the story in H, CAH iv. 30–3. In both the Babylonian Chronicle and the Dream Text it is not clear whether Cyrus is a vassal of the Medes. When he entrusts Harpagus with a command, Astyages is theoblabēs, deluded by the gods, the same word that is used of the Macedonian king in 8.137.
1.129 H enjoys creating a sudden shift in perception, a ‘recognition’ (Aristotle’s anagnōrisis, Poetics 1452a29), either on our part as we read or on the part of the participants in events. Cf. the revelation of Astyages’ responsible loyalty here to Arion’s sudden appearance to the sailors (n. 1.23), and to Croesus’ exclamations on his pyre (1.86); see also the middle of n. 4.121–32 (on 4.132 and 134). Astyages is not exonerated from the charge of cruelty, however (1.130).
1.131–40 Persian ethnography, cf. n. 1.93 above, and CAH iv. 79–111 for a modern survey.
1.131 Mitra. Mithra is the ancient male Iranian sun-god. Anahita is the Persian mother goddess mentioned with him in the Avesta, an ancient Persian collection of religious texts, and in Persian inscriptions. It is not clear that Cyrus was a Zoroastrian or that H here describes the Persian religion of his time accurately. H does not mention the most important god, Ahura Mazda, by name but rather seems to call him Zeus, the Greek equivalent (n. 1.181). It is true, however, that mountain sacrifices are still practised by present-day Zoroastrians in rural Iran. For the syncretism of Persian religion under the Achaemenids, see CAH iv. 99–103. The ‘Heavenly Aphrodite’ is the great Semitic queen of heaven Ishtar, some of whose titles are here given: Mylitta = ‘lady’, and Alilat = ‘goddess’. Here, as throughout in discussions of religion, H is interested in religious practices, and in cultural borrowings from one people to another but not in stories about the gods or in what we would call dogma (2.3).
1.133 See 9.110 for another, more sinister, account of a Persian royal birthday. The Roman historian Tacitus (Germania 22) ascribes the same custom of alternating sobriety and inebriation to the Germans. In 1.71, Sandanis the Lydian calls the ‘uncivilized’ Persians water-drinkers; cf. the Ethiopian’s assessment of Persians and wine (3.22).
1.134 Prostration, proskunēsis, was a habit that filled Greeks with dismay (7.136); much later, Alexander the Great notoriously required it of, among others, Aristotle’s nephew (Arrian, Anabasis 4.10.5 ff.). The method of governing by proximity seems to have been modified by Cyrus and especially Darius, ‘the retailer’ (3.89), who finally established a complete system of administrative units (satrapies) and regular payment of taxation in the empire. See CAH iv. 41–3, 87–91, 129–33.
1.135 It is odd that H here does not mention that Persians wear trousers (1.71, 7.61–2). The tolerance for foreign customs seems genuine (CAH iv. 103–4, 111, 475–6; cf. n. 1.156). Cyrus is celebrated in Isaiah 40–8 for returning the Jews to Jerusalem in the 530s BCE, after their fifty-year exile in Babylon; his decree authorizing the rebuilding of the Temple and providing for its funding is found in Ezra 1:1–11 (cf. Ezra 6:2–12). Cambyses pays for the obsequies to bury the Apis bull in Egypt (n. 3.27–9). See also n. 6.97 for Delos and Darius’ respect for the ‘sacred gardeners’ of Apollo.
1.136 Horsemanship, archery, honesty: H will make ironic implicit reference back to this general observation with Cambyses’ skill at the bow (3.35) and Darius’ verbal virtuosity (3.72). See also the sarcastic comment of the Ethiopian concerning Persian archery and honesty (3.21). Archery and cavalry against Greek heavy-armed troops will play a part both at Marathon (6.112) and at Plataea (9.49 f., 62–3), CAH iv. 512, 599 f.
1.137 Cf. the treatment of Sandoces (7.194).
1.139 The observation is only valid for the Greek forms of masculine Persian names; many see this as proof that H did not know Persian.
1.140 Only in H are the Magi Medes. They have disastrously interpreted Astyages’ dream (1.120), and later they will attempt to take the government away from the Persians, between the reigns of Cambyses and Darius (3.61–79). CAH iv. 103 notes, however, that they are present in the depiction of rituals at Persepolis. H says that on one day of the year, a great festival day for Persians, they are persecuted by the Persians for their attempt at revolt in Cambyses’ reign (3.79).
1.141 After the conquest of Croesus (546 BCE), H moves to Cyrus’ reign and (the subject of most interest to Greeks) his conquest of Ionia (cf. 1.26); the narrative takes up where 1.94 left off. Before conquering Croesus, Cyrus had attempted to get Asiatic Greeks as allies (1.76). The anecdote about the fish is also found among Aesop’s fables. Cyrus makes a treaty with Miletus because of its record of successful earlier resistance to Alyattes (1.17–22).
1.142–51 As usual, H begins with a background of the major players. Here the Ionians, Dorians, and Aeolians of east Greece are very generally surveyed before we hear of the outcome of their embassy to Sparta in 545 BCE. See CAH iii/3. 196–221 for the eastern Greeks. There seems to have been no aristocratic and politically oriented oral tradition that H could have drawn on to make his account more specific, and this tendency might have been exacerbated by competitiveness between cities and a general feeling of defeat after the collapse of the Ionian revolt and the later imposition of Athenian rule: CAH iv. 470–1.
Cf. the Hippocratic Airs, Waters, Places 16 for the mildness of Asian men and countryside and Aristotle, Politics 1327b for climate as responsible for making the Greeks a mean between northern Europeans and Asians. For H’s further thoughts on geography and natural balance, see the Introduction, pp. xxxvii–xxxviii and 3.106, 116.
1.143 We do not know how accurately H is portraying Ionians here. Is he a witness to real demoralization, or is he, a Dorian from Halicarnassus, expressing an unjust bias? Cf. 4.142, 5.69, 88, 105, 6.13. H does hold the Ionians and Athenians responsible for stirring up the enmity of the Great King (5.97). No traces of archaic building have been found at the Panionium, the Ionian meeting place near Priene; there is little archaic evidence of the formal organization or membership in an exclusive league mentioned by H for both Ionians and Dorians (CAH iii/3. 217).
1.146 H often pricks the pretensions of founders of lineages with claims to importance: cf. n. 6.125–30. Whether 1.146 is more of the same, or a restatement of the themes discussed in the abduction sequence in 1.1 f., or a prejudice against Ionians per se must be left to the reader to decide. H’s own (originally Dorian) home town of Halicarnassus had a large Carian element.
1.147 The Athenians did retain the four Ionian tribes as the basis for their political organization until the Cleisthenic reorganization of 508/7 BCE (see n. 5.66), and as religious and kinship units after that. They also celebrated the Apaturia (a three-day Ionian festival), and used a dialect close to Ionian. All of this testifies to earlier kinship, and the likelihood that Athens sponsored the original settlement of Ionia (CAH iii/3.361). That said, H’s protest that all of these eastern Greeks show a considerable admixture of foreign blood is no doubt justified.
1.150 In an extant fragment the seventh-century poet Mimnermus writes, ‘and from there (Colophon) we … took Aeolian Smyrna by God’s will’ (Strabo 14.634 = Mimnermus, fr. 9 West).
1.152 The story resumes from 1.141. Lacedaemonian suspicion of luxury, long-windedness, and involvement in foreign adventures probably plays an implicit part here; cf. 3.46, 148, 5.50–1, 9.91. For Phocaea’s leadership, see n. 1.163–4 below. For Sparta’s uncompromising and long-standing hostility to the extension of Persian domination into Greece, see CAH iv. 464 f., 497–8, and nn. 3.44, 3.148. It will culminate in the Spartan resistance to Persia narrated in Books 7 to 9 (see esp. 7.102, 104).
1.153 Cyrus’ gnomic powers, and the hardy simplicity that go with them, are also displayed in 1.141 and 9.122. The Lacedaemonians have their own pretensions in this sphere (4.77).
1.156 Croesus’ advice here has the same odd flavour as his later advice to trick the Massagetae (1.207). Notice that two Medes, Mazares and Harpagus, are Cyrus’ agents in the west, demonstrating the co-operation with other peoples that made Persian administration of the empire possible and Cyrus’ approach so welcome later in places like Babylon (n. 1.188–91; see also. nn. 1.35, 6.97; CAH iv. 42–3, 475–6). It backfires with Pactyes the Lydian as it does later with Psammenitus the Egyptian (3.15).
1.163–4 This siege took place c.540 BCE. The Phocaeans were the founders of Massalia (Marseilles) about 600 BCE and traded in Italy, southern France, and Spain, CAH iii/3. 139–43, 214; the Mediterranean Sea south of Italy was called ‘Ionian’ because of Phocaean and Samian activities there. The remnant who stay in Phocaea will retain their naval skills but they will only have three ships and a talented general to give later to the Ionian cause, 6.11–12.
1.165 Cyrnus is Corsica. This anecdote poignantly displays some of the terrors of colonization. H is interested in cities being founded and destroyed, as part of ‘great becoming small’ and vice versa (1.5). For a general description of Greek colonization, see CAH iii/3. ch. 37. Cf. n. 4.150–3.
1.166 Tyrrhenians (Etruscans) and Carthaginians are the principal powers in the western Mediterranean at this time. For the commercial and geopolitical implications of the battle of Alalia (c.535 BCE), see CAH iv. 750 f. A Cadmean victory is one where the cost is too high, as in the war fought between Cadmus’ descendants, Polynices and Eteocles, over Thebes, in which both brothers died (see 5.59 for a Theban genealogy).
1.167 For Delphi’s role in founding colonies, see CAH iii/3. 144 f. Here Delphi’s original advice was apparently misunderstood, as in the colonization of Cyrene; there also those who sailed off were not supposed to come back (4.156). At Hyele (Elea) the Phocaeans finally flourished. (A philosophical school was later founded there whose most famous members were Parmenides and Zeno.)
1.168–9 For the Greek hero, see n. 5.108–17. This second conquest of Ionia occurred in 546 BCE. For the first conquest (and H’s fondness for enumeration), see n. 1.92, and for the third, 6.32. The Milesians’ bargain has already been mentioned (1.141).
1.170 See n. 1.27 for the Seven Sages. H resumes here his irony about ‘pure’ Ionians (1.147), but is probably referring not to Thales himself but to the tradition that the Milesians originally descended from Cadmus. Cf. a ‘Cadmean’ Lacedaemonian (4.147), the Gephyraei of Athens (5.57), or the Phoenicians supposed to have settled Boeotia (2.49). This advice rounds out the section on Ionian resistance to Cyrus much as Cyrus’ advice ends the Histories as a whole in 9.122.
1.171–5 As earlier (n. 1.142–51), a brief review of peoples to the southwest before Harpagus attacks them. For the Carians, cf. n. 5.117–21. The Lycians in inscriptions do refer to themselves as Trmli (Termilae); cf. 7.92 and CAH iii/2. 655–65. Delphi does not counsel resistance to Persia, now or later (7.140, 148). A slightly different story of the priestess of Pedasa (175) is found in the MSS of H at 8.104. Such repetition is rare in H; much more common is deliberate cross-referencing, even across many books; e.g. 7.93 (regarding the Carians) refers back to 1.171.
1.176 The last several chapters have, as Asheri notes, shown several different types of response to the invader: submission, reasonable resistance, and suicidal resistance.
1.178–200 A survey of Babylon is broken into two parts by the chapters on Cyrus’ capture of the city (188–91). Chs. 178–87 survey Babylon itself (giving information useful for understanding the narrative of the siege in 188–91), while chs. 192–200 give a brief description of its taxable wealth, agriculture, boats, clothing, customs, and food.
1.178 In 612 BCE Cyaxares the Mede, father of Astyages, in alliance with Babylon, had captured Nineveh, the Assyrian capital city (CAH iii/2. 180). H does not distinguish the (Chaldean) neo-Babylonian rulers from the earlier Assyrians. Between 612 and 539 the Chaldean overlords of Babylon controlled the Fertile Crescent; they were responsible for the ‘Babylonian captivity’ of the Jews, massive deportations from Jerusalem in 597, 586, and 582 BCE (CAH iii/3. 22–3, 2 Kings 24–5).
1.178–83 Eyewitness account is mixed with hearsay. In the description of Babylon’s fortifications and temples, H makes Babylon too big, and his description does not conform to our current archaeological understanding, since now, at least, the monuments are on the east bank of the Euphrates. He is trying to describe a huge non-Greek city to Greeks. He is correct that it was mostly built of baked brick, and about the breadth of the walls. For Babylon at this time, see CAH iii/2. 236–9, 261–4.
1.179 Natural asphalt is a petroleum by-product, from a region that is still petroleum-rich today. The Red Sea in ch. 180 is the Persian Gulf.
1.181 Zeus as Bel (Ba‘al). Bel-Marduk was the most important god of the Babylonians who, on the evidence of the Babylonian Chronicle, welcomed Cyrus’ coming to supplant the Chaldean Nabonidus (H’s Labynetus, 1.188), CAH iv. 37 f. H tends to call the chief male god of various peoples Zeus; cf. 1.44, 131, 171, 2.29, 42, 54, 4.59, 127, 180, 5.119, 8.115.
1.183 For Babylonian rebellion in Darius’ and Xerxes’ reigns, see CAH iv. 129–38 (cf. 3.159).
1.184–7 Semiramis and Nitocris. Semiramis was the wife of a late ninth-century Assyrian king around whom legends were collected (H & W say ‘a sort of Assyrian Catherine II’ of Russia), later embroidered by the Greek historians Ctesias and Arrian. Nitocris does not seem to have existed (cf. 2.100 for an Egyptian Nitocris), but may be H’s misunderstanding of the role played by Nebuchadrezzar II, the strong predecessor of Nabonidus at Babylon, who built the fortifications north-west of Babylon known as the ‘Median Wall’. The waterworks served as irrigation as well as a secondary line of defence. Nebuchadrezzar’s wife was a Median princess and perhaps to her in the Persian period was given the achievement of her husband (confused with the strong, priestess mother of Nabonidus?). The later historian Berosus makes the Median princess responsible for the famous hanging gardens of Nebuchadrezzar, which H does not mention, CAH iii/2, 236–9. Darius’ portrayal in ch. 187 reminds us of his Persian appellation, ‘the retailer’ (3.89). He reconquered Babylon in c.521, at the beginning of his reign (CAH iv. 130; 3.159).
1.188–91 See CAH iv. 36–41 for Cyrus’ conquest of Babylon in 539 BCE. Nabonidus (H’s Labynetus) was disliked and the city fell without effort. Aristotle (Politics 1276a) says Babylon was so big it took three days for all the inhabitants to hear it had been conquered. According to the Babylonian Chronicle, vigorous fighting occurred at Opis, north of Babylon in October 539 BCE. The account H gives of the complex punishment of the Gyndes (cf. 7.35, even though Persians respect water, 1.138) may be a 100-year-old echo of real engineering feats performed to lower the rivers to make them fordable to Cyrus’ army. Babylon itself fell though treachery, not the diversion of the Euphrates (191). The Red Sea in 1.189 is the Persian Gulf. For the general history of Babylonia through the period covered by H, see CAH iv. 112–38.
1.192 Tritantaechmes may have been the satrap or governor of Babylon when H was there. If his father was H’s Artabazus, he brought the Persian land forces home safely from Greece after the disastrous battle of Plataea in 479 BCE (8.126, 9.89). Cf., however, a Tritantaechmes son of Artabanus in 7.82 and 8.26. For H’s weights and measures, see App. 2.
1.193 With regard to the width of the grain, H is sensitive to the possible incredulity of his audience (cf. 6.43 with reference to 3.80).
1.194 This recalls H’s pledge in the introduction to talk of ‘important and remarkable things’—clearly he thinks the boats that ply the Euphrates remarkable. His interest in such matters, in Book 2 in particular, led earlier scholars to guess that H was at some point a merchant; it is certain he had a lively curiosity about how things worked. Cf. 2.40, 86–7, 96, 4.61, 7.36.
1.196 H may have heard of the Eneti (Lat. Veneti), who lived on the Adriatic coast (5.9), in Thurii. He enjoys making cross-cultural comparisons: see the beginning of 1.198, 4.195, 6.58, 59, and, more ambitiously, 2.104. The conquest referred to at the end of the chapter is probably that under Darius (3.150 f.), although Babylon continued to give trouble (CAH iv. 129, 133).
1.199 For the cult of Aphrodite on Cyprus, cf. 1.105.
1.201–16 Cyrus’ final campaign. Nothing is known of this historically. As usual, H begins with the background of the people to be conquered (201–4). He confuses several great rivers in the part of Cyrus’ empire towards central Asia, to the north-east. See CAH iv. 41–6 and 170–1 for other speculations on Cyrus’ last years. He seems to have been buried at Pasargadae, with or without his head.
1.203 H’s figures for the Caspian are small; it is actually 750 miles long (1,210km.) and 130–300 miles wide (209–480km.). Unlike many other Greeks H knew it was self-contained. H & W call it ‘one of his geographical triumphs’.
1.204 Although not explicitly identified as such here, this is the resumption of a theme already introduced in the Croesus episode (1.32, 34). Cyrus here forgets something he once knew about human vulnerability and divine tisis, ‘retribution’ (1.86). See also nn. 1.8, 1.91, 4.205.
1.207 Croesus remembers his own experiences, but it doesn’t help much. He refers to the Massagetae in much the same terms as Sandanis had used for the Persians themselves (1.71). He does not, however, draw the same wise conclusion, but counsels Cyrus to use their ‘uncivilized’ ignorance to trick them, just as Cyaxares had tricked the uncivilized Scythians in 1.106. His use of the theme of men versus women is taken up again later by Persians in defeat (8.88, 9.107). Cf. 4.162 for a Greek example.
1.209 Darius will not appear until 3.70, after Cambyses has died and the Magi have taken over Persia, CAH iv. 53–8, 172. This episode looks like justification for Hystaspes and Darius, but we don’t know who told it or why it was necessary.
1.214 H enjoys reporting ‘firsts’ and ‘bests’ as part of the record of the remarkable he promises in his introduction to include; cf. 1.14, 23, 94, 2.68, 3.122, 4.42, 58, 152, 183, 6.112, 8.105. For the most savage Greek battle, see 7.170. H ends the Cyrus account by assuring his audience that he is interested in reporting facts, not myths (cf. n. 1.193). Cyrus died in 530 BCE.
1.215–16 As in the Babylonian account above, H sandwiches the account of Cyrus’ deeds between two more generally descriptive passages. For comparable sexual customs, see 1.203, 3.101, 4.104, and 172. For dining habits, cf. 3.99, 4.26.