Παυσανίης δὲ ὁρῶν. Hdt. speaks as though Pausanias himself had not issued, or agreed to, the order for retirement; as though οἱ πολλοί were stampeding out of laager, or station; as though in consequence he issued orders to the Lakedaimonians to retreat. ὁρῶν, however, need not be pressed against Hdt., cp. c. 34. 9 supra (=μαθών). Pausanias could hardly have ‘seen’ the movement, in the literal sense of the word.
παρήγγελλε καὶ τοῖσι Λακεδαιμονίοισι: the Spartan method of the παράγγελσις has been immortalized by Thucydides, 5. 66. 3: βασιλέως γὰρ ἄγοντος ὑπ᾽ ἐκείνου πάντα ἄρχεται, καὶ τοῖς μὲν πολεμάρχοις αὐτὸς φράζει τὸ δέον, οἱ δὲ τοῖς λοχαγοῖς, ἐκεῖνοι δὲ τοῖς πεντηκοντῆρσιν, αὖθις δὲ οὗτοι τοῖς ἐνωμοτάρχαις, καὶ οὗτοι τῇ ἐνωμοτίᾳ. καὶ αἱ παραγγέλσεις, ἤν τι βούλωνται, κατὰ τὰ αὐτὰ χωροῦσι καὶ ταχεῖαι ἑπέρχονται: σχέδον γάρ τι πᾶν πλὴν ὀλίγου τὸ στρατόπεδον τῶν Λακεδαιμονίων ἄρχοντες ἀρχόντων εἰσί, καὶ τὸ ἐπιμελὲς τοῦ δρωμένου πολλοῖς προσήκει. On the present occasion, however, as the whole movement had been discussed and determined in the Council of War hours before (cp. c. 51 supra), one must suppose that all the necessary orders had already been given, at least to the officers. Pausanias may still have had to give the word for the actual moment of departure.
ἀναλαβόντας τὰ ὅπλα: the shields were piled, but of course there must have been some men under arms, if only those on the watch.
ἰέναι κατὰ τοὺς ἄλλους can hardly have been the precise form of the commander's order, but rather gives the effect of the order, as the writer conceived that effect. With the expression cp. c. 89 infra, κατὰ πόδας ἐμεῦ ἐλαύνων.
νομίσας αὐτοὺς ... ἐς τὸν συνεθήκαντο, ‘for he believed the others to be going to the place agreed upon,’ i.e., according to Hdt., the island: συνεθήκαντο, sc. ἰέναι. The ‘agreement’ had been made at the Council of War, c. 51 supra. Hdt. describes (i.e. follows an authority which conceived) the movements of the Greek army in the field of battle as the results of compacts, agreements, bargains, argument, persuasion, but not of definite orders, originating from headquarters or the commander-inchief. In any case the result of his παράγγελμα to the ‘Lakedaimonians’ (10,000 strong) must have been to set Λακεδαιμονίων ἅπαν τὸ στρατόπεδον in motion, unless indeed the order was addressed only to a portion of the forces.
οἱ μὲν ἄλλοι ... τῶν ταξιάρχων: not ταξιαρχέων. ταξίαρχος is the usual Attic form of the word. The term is not a Spartan one at all. All but one of these good Spartan officers, whatever their proper title, were willing and ready (ἄρτιοι, cp. c. 27 supra) to obey their commander! No very astonishing circumstance in an army where πειθαρχία was so sedulously enforced as in the Spartan (cp. Xenophon, Lac. Rep. 8).
Ἀμομφάρετος δὲ ὁ Πολιάδεω: Amompharetos is hardly a mere Ehrenname (Stein); a Spartan of the name appears as one of the five arbitrators in the early Megaro-Athenian dispute about Salamis, Busolt ii.2 (1895) 248; cp. Plutarch, Solon 10. The younger might be a grandson, or descendant, of the elder Amompharetos. But those are the only two known wearers of the name. The (father's) name Poliades is found elsewhere, but not again at Sparta. If Pape - Benseler sub v. is correct in deriving it from Athene Πολιάς, the Spartan might have been named by his father in compliment to Athens; cp. the case of the Spartan Σάμιος 3. 55. Was there even perhaps an Athenian ξενία or προξενία in the family?
λοχηγέων, ‘occupying the rank of a Lochagos,’ or commander of a Lochos, a strictly Spartan office and command. But the exact duty and rank of a Lochagos are not so clear. In Xenophon Rep. Lac. 11. 4 a λόχος is one-quarter of a μόρα, and there are six μόραι in the army, each apparently under the command of a Polemarchos. That would give a total of 24 Lochoi. In an army of 5000 that total allows about 292 men to the Lochos. But Xenophon is writing in the fourth century, when a Spartan army in the field never approached a strength of 5000. The numerical strength of Spartan divisions varied with the levy probably. The Spartan Mora destroyed in the Korinthian war numbered 600 men, Xenoph. Hell. 4. 5. 11-12. If it consisted of four Lochoi, the Lochos was numbering 150 men, but there may have been six Lochoi of 100 men each in it. Thucydides, writing of the battle of Mantineia (418 B.C.), with the air of an eye-witness, expressly notices the difficulty of ascertaining the exact number of men in a Spartan force. He uses the term λόχος apparently for the division commanded by a Polemarch (perhaps only under exceptional circumstances), and makes the army of Agis on that occasion consist of 7 Lochoi, exclusive of the Skiritai 600 strong. It is obvious that the Lochos in that passage corresponds to the Mora of Xenophon, a term not emp<*>yed by Thucydides (cp. Hell. 2. 4. <*> earliest case): the number 7 remains a problem, which Arnold in geniously solves by the hypothesis that the army really consisted of six divisions, together with the corps of Βρασίδειοι and Νεωδαμώδεις. (Gilbert, Gr. Staatsalt. i.2 77, 1893, apparently identifies this corps with the Skiritai, and gives up the number of Lochoi as hopeless.) In the Lochos at Mantineia there were four πεντηκοστύες, each consisting in turn of four ἐνωμοτίαι. If the numerical strength of the Pentekostys necessarily and always corresponded to its name, that would give but 200 men to the Lochos, and (roughly) but 12 to the Enomotia; but on the possibility of variations in the numbers of men composing the various subdivisions, Arnold's note to Thucydides in l. (of which G. Gilbert, for example, took no account) is still worth consulting. The normal number of the Enomotia is not really quite certain, it may have been 15 (cp. Gilbert, op. c. 75, n. 4), it may have been 24, besides the captain, as Arnold supposes; but it is certain that the tactical organization of the Spartan army underwent modification not merely between the time of Thucydides and of Xenophon, but between the time of Herodotos and of Thucydides; nor is it to be supposed that the indications of the narrative in Hdt. will correspond exactly with the traditions of the Lykurgean system. An army of 5000 men might very well consist of 5 Lochoi of 1000 men each; and as a matter of fact 5 is the number of Lochoi suggested by some of the authorities for the older period (say, sixth century), cp. Gilbert, op. c. p. 76. A Lochos of 1000 men would probably have been subdivided into 10 companies of 100 each, possibly ‘double Pentekostyes,’ such as Arnold speaks of (possibly even, though to my thinking less probably, also called Lochoi as he suggests). Amompharetos is emphatically not one of the ‘Polemarchs’ (cp. 7. 173), but may have been in command of 1000 men. He was no mere ‘centurion,’ or the story that follows could hardly have been told about him.
τοῦ Πιτανητέων λόχου. Thucydides, still in this respect employing the same terminology as Hdt., goes out of his way to assert that it was an error to say that there was, ‘or ever had been,’ a Πιτανάτης λόχος (<*>. just below) in the Spartan army, 1. 20. 3. Whether Thucydides is contraverting the source from which Hdt. gets this story, or, as seems likely enough, Hdt. himself, the express assertion of the Athenian on this matter is final, if rightly understood. But what does Thucydides exactly mean? Not that the Spartan army was not organized κατὰ λόχους, for that would contradict his own text elsewhere, but either that the λόχοι had not territorial designations, or that no λόχος derived its designation from Πιτάνη (cp. 3. 55). The recorded names of Lochoi are territorial, at least in part, e.g. Μεσοάτης (cp. Gilbert, op. c. p. 76 n. 3); so that we may conclude in favour of the latter alternative. If Amompharetos was a δημότης of Pitana, a Πιτανάτης, and commanded one of the Lochoi in the Spartan army, an Athenian source might very probably speak of the division under his command as the Πιτανάτης λόχος, especially if, as above argued, the family of this Pitanate was likely to be known and popular in Athens.
Hdt. himself calls Πιτάνη a δῆμος, rather an Atticism than a Laconism, 3. 55. Pausanias (3. 16. 9) seems to put Pitane and Mesoa in juxtaposition (οἱ） ἐκ Μεσόας τε καὶ Πιτάνης θύοντες τῇ Ἀρτεμίδι: and the mistake censured by Thucydides may lie in calling the Μεσοάτης λόχος the Πιτανάτης. Pitana itself was evidently a considerable place: Pausanias (3. 14. 2) mentions a λέσχη Κροτανῶν in the vicinity of the Royal Tombs of the Agiadai, adding εἰσὶ δὲ οἱ Κροτανοὶ Πιτανατῶν μοῖρα. This makes Pitane in the west end of Sparta: the Artemis above named is Artemis Issoria, Pausan. l.c. (cp. Wide, Lakonische Kulte, 1893, p. 109). Close by were the tombs of Leonidas and Pausanias the Regent, and the monument to the 300 who fell at Thermopylai (cp. 7. 224).
The story of Amompharetos may well belong to the first draft of Hdt.'s work. It is a superficial inference that Hdt. got this story of Amompharetos in Pitane, during his visit to Sparta: the story is plainly not a Spartan story, it is almost as plainly an Athenian. There is nothing in the story to show that Hdt. had been in Sparta before writing it down, rather the reverse. If Hdt. afterwards made friends in Pitane it was perhaps because he took introductions from Athens; but he either did not discover his mistake about the Πιτανάτης λόχος, or he failed to correct it. If the emperor Caracalla (211-217 A.D.) before starting for the east sent for a bodyguard from Sparta and called it the Πιτανάτης λόχος (Herodian 4. 8. 3), that only shows how hard an error dies which has once attained classic expression in literature. If Photius, Lex. sub v. Πιτάνη, has φυλὴ καὶ τόπος τῆς Λακωνικῆς, that is because in the Roman period the name had been adopted for a local tribe; cp. C.I.G. 1425-6.
τοὺς ξείνους: cc. 11 supra, 55 infra.
ἑκὼν εἶναι: cp. 7. 164.
ὁρῶν τὸ ποιεύμενον: cp. 1. 2 supra. Amompharetos could hardly ‘see’ in the dark; he no doubt received certain orders (probably to stay where he was, or to cover the retreat).
ἅτε οὐ παραγενόμενος τῷ προτέρῳ λόγῳ: the πρότερος λόγος in this case is the Council of War in cc. 50 f. supra. The phrase does not necessarily imply that there was any fresh council or discussion now taking place. If Amompharetos was really absent from the previous Council it was not because he was not a sufficiently high officer to be present, but for some other reason. Stein suggests that he was in command of an important outpost; but which? And had he retired from it? The army had been ex hypothesi all together, and in battlearray. How also does Amompharetos now come to be back in the Laager? A statement of this sort, explanatory or rather assertorial of his absence from the Council, is very suspicions; it is argumentative, and apologetic, to meet the obvious objection to the story, that Amompharetos must have known all about the intended movement from having been present at the Council earlier in the day. (It is just conceivable that a Spartan Lochos, under Amompharetos, or some other, might have been posted in or about the church of St. Demetrion; but the position would have been a dangerously isolated one, as the detachment could not have kept touch of the forces on the Asopos Ridge, with the Persian cavalry riding up and down the valleys or combes between the ridges; or he might have been holding or trying to hold Gargaphia: in which case he had retired before the strangers already.)
ὁ δὲ Παυσανίης τε καὶ ὁ Ευρυάναξ: why Euryanax (c. 10 supra) here suddenly comes by his apparent rights it is not easy to say; down below, c. 55, he even takes precedence. Does this ‘Attic’ story tend to discredit both Spartan commanders at the expense of Amompharetos? The Spartan commanders were shocked at his insubordination, but still more horrified at the idea of abandoning him to his fate.
δεινὸν ποιέεσθαι, a mental process, or condition; cp. 7. 1.
κείνου ταῦτ᾽ ἀναινομένου: i.e. so long as Amompharetos refused to retire: ἀναλαβόντας τὰ ὅπλα ἰέναι ... ἐς τὴν νῆσον. The verb ἀναίνομαι is common in Homer, and not unknown even in Attic prose. (Cp. App. Crit.)
τὸν λόχον τὸν Πιτανήτην: see above.
ποιεῦντες τὰ συνεθήκαντο τ. ἄλ. Ἕλλησι, ‘in carrying out their agreement with all the other Greeks.’ But the centre, if the Spartans had only known it, had, as already recorded, been guilty of a gross and dastardly breach of faith; the only other Greeks, therefore, now worth considering are—as the reader knows—the Athenians.
ἀτρέμας εἶχον τὸ στρατόπεδον τὸ Λ. As the order to march had already been issued, the modus operandi here is not quite clear. Either the order to march had not yet taken effect, and was countermanded; or the van, or a portion of the line, had indeed started, and was arrested by a message from headquarters. It is, of course, not impossible that the army was falling back en échelon, Lochos by Lochos; and that the ‘Mesoate’ Lochos, or the Lochos under the command of the Pitanate Amompharetos, being at the extremity of the Spartan wing, was the last to retire. The process would be a pretty slow one, carried out, as it was being carried out, in the dark; and daylight might overtake them (c. 56 infra） before the whole manœuvre had been fully executed.
ἐπειρῶντο πείθοντες: c. 26 supra.
