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The narrative of Herodotus vii and the decree of Themistocles at Troezen

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 October 2013

N. G. L. Hammond
N. G. L. Hammond
Affiliation:
The University of Auckland
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Extract

In this paper an attempt is made to establish the chronology which Herodotus intended to convey for events in Book vii on the basis of his arrangement of topics for a listening audience. The relationship of the Decree to those events is then discussed. The question of the authenticity of the Decree's contents is considered with special reference to the arrangements for manning the fleet. Thus the paper falls into three parts. An Appendix on the later tradition is added.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Hellenic Studies , Volume 102 , November 1982 , pp. 75 - 93
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1982

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References

1 Professor H. D. Westlake kindly read a first draft of the first part; Mr D. M. Lewis a version of the second part; and Professor W. K. Lacey the whole paper. I am most grateful for their helpful comments.

2 For public recitations at Athens see Diyllus F 3 (FGrH 73) and at Olympia Lucian, , Herod. 1Google Scholar. The value of such recitation in influencing opinion in the Greek world is apt to be overlooked by those who forget that all our methods of issuing information and propaganda were then lacking.

3 I drew attention to this method of arrangement, and also to the importance of hiatus and the juxtaposition of rough consonants for a listener, in my articles ‘The Composition of Thucydides' History’, CQ xxxiv (1940) 146 ff.Google Scholar and ii (1952) 127 ff.

4 In the specific analysis which follows I have avoided such technical terms as ring composition (anaphoric or other), circular composition, and refrain composition, which carry one into abstract theories. The clearest account of these terms is that of Immerwahr, H. R., Form and Thought in Herodotus (Ohio 1966)Google Scholar, who uses the term ‘framing sentences’ for my second method of arrangement, as at his p. 58 ‘the well-known sentences … the first part of this sentence (vii 179) closes the story of the oracle … in its second part the sentence initiates the account of the movement of Xerxes' fleet’. I have also avoided calling a topic a logos, which has for me the connotation of a theme, e.g. Immerwahr's, ‘Greek Preparations Logos’ (vii 131–78)Google Scholar.

5 The Peneus-mouth was in Thessaly between the Thessalian mountains Olympus and Ossa (vii 128.1), and the protection of Thessaly was to be attempted at ‘the Olympic pass’, i.e. at the frontier by Heracleum in Pieria (vii 172.2). See Hammond, N. G. L., A History of Macedonia i (Oxford 1972) 139Google Scholar for the geography. The three imperfect tenses are to be noted; for they show that Xerxes' stay in Pieria, while one third of the army was there, occurred during his voyage back to Therma. In an analogous case at vi 116 fin.—118.3 the dream of Datis at Myconos was placed within his voyage back to Asia; this was expressed by three imperfect tenses (ἀπέπλεον, ἔπλεε, ἀπέπλεε). Note too the pluperfect ὰπίκατο at 118.2, which has the same meaning and time-stress as the verb here. Hignett, C., Xerxes' Invasion of Greece (Oxford 1963) 109Google Scholar ‘if Xerxes was in Pieria, he could not be in Therma’, simply failed to understand Herodotus. Immerwahr (n. 4) 133, translating ‘(Xerxes had) spent a good many days in Pieria’, seems to have assumed a pluperfect tense. In putting the stay of Xerxes not during the return to Therma but during the advance from Therma to Malis, Immerwahr had to make the army march at an excessive speed, some 25 to 30 miles a day (134 n. 163). The meaning ‘coming back’ in ὰπίκατο is implied by the context, as in vi 118.2 (LSJ9 s.v.).

6 We may compare vi 119–20, where Datis' voyage to Asia and the settlement of Eretrian deportees are described before the arrival of the Spartans at Athens en route for Marathon. Here, at 120.1, we have the usual links μὲν δή and δέ.

7 Immerwahr 130 ff. puts the end of his logos ‘The march of Xerxes to the Confines of Greece (vii 26.1–130)’ at the end of 130 and the start of his next logos ‘Greek Preparations Logos (vii 131–78)’ at the beginning of 131. This cuts the concluding sentence διεξίῃ ἅπασα ἡ στρατίη ἐς Περραιβούς away from its antecedents in 128 (ἐλᾶν . . . ἐς Περραιβούς). In fact the new topic—his logos—begins with the δέ clause, οἱ δέ δὴ κήρυκες and the pluperfect tense ἀπίκατο.

8 Recorded lists of Theorodokoi show that they travelled between 35 and 40 km a day on a sacred mission. The King's heralds, travelling on a made-up road as far as Macedonia, should have made equally good speed.

9 The lack of a connecting particle at the start of 132.2 suggests an immediate sequence. In the next sentence the aorist ἔδοσαν looks back to the aorist participle δόντων, emphasising that they did submit, whereas in English we should say ‘had submitted’. The sentence is not phrased to include any who might submit in the future.

10 Everyman trans., 1858; and likewise Grundy, G. B., The Great Persian War (London 1901) 226, 228Google Scholar.

11 Hignett (n. 5) 109, 18.

12 ‘The Hellenic League against Persia’, Historia ii (1953) 136Google Scholar. Xerxes sent his heralds well before delivering his attack, as Darius had done in 491 (vi 48).

13 Persia and the Greeks (London 1962) 339Google Scholar.

14 Yet if compulsion means anything, it should refer not to the time before Xerxes invaded but to the time when Xerxes' army was already pouring into central Greece after the retreat of the Greeks from Thermopylae.

15 The sequence of Herodotus' words in vii 132 τῶν δὲ δόντων and ὅσοι τῷ Πέρσῃ ἔδοσαν σφέας αὐτούς is entirely clear; there is no need for the obfuscation of their meaning in How and Wells, , Comm. ii 177Google Scholar.

16 That is, before Xerxes' army was even in the country.

17 In fact after the retreat from Tempe there was ‘compulsion’ for those exposed to attack.

18 Westlake, H. D., ‘The Medism of Thessaly’, JHS lvi (1936) 16Google Scholar, dated the intrigue with Persia to 492. The Aleuadae were then ‘rulers of Thessaly’ (vii 6.2 οἱ δὲ Ἀλευάδαι οὗτοι ᾖσαν Θεσσαλίης Βασιλέες) and as such imposed their medising policy on the people; that at least was the ‘compulsion’ which the people claimed at 172.1. I do not go along with Robertson, N., ‘The Thessalian Expedition of 480 B.C.’, JHS xcvi (1976) 106Google Scholar, who translates ‘Thessalian Kings’ (or ‘Kings in Thessaly’).

19 The σϕι refers to the subject of δεκατεῦσαι, namely the loyalist Greeks, and not to the subject of ἔδοσαν, which would make no sense. Herodotus gave emphasis by delaying τούτους to its present position in his sentence. Note the hiatus in σϕι εὗ, which is for emphasis. Compare the use of the phrase at vi 105.3.

20 Immerwahr (n. 4) 134 n. 164 with references; ‘in modern times, the oath has been variously dated. … However, nothing in Herodotus' narrative prevents making the oath contemporary with the return of the heralds. …’ This is correct; but it is an understatement in that, as appears from the lack of connective at 132.2, Herodotus thought of the oath following closely on the medisations.

21 This passage, written probably towards the end of the First Peloponnesian War and not, as How and Wells suggest, in the opening years of the Second Peloponnesian War, is an excellent example of what brought Herodotus a gift of ten talents from the Athenian state in 446/5 (see n. 2). Some have thought the sum ‘extravagant’ (so How and Wells, i 7 n. 1); but Pindar was paid over one and a half talents by Athens for a mere dithyramb in which he called Athens ‘the bulwark of Greece’. The influence of Herodotus' history at the time and even on posterity's view of Athens was cheap at the price. The Anytus who proposed the decree to pay Herodotus was probably the grandfather of the Anytus who prosecuted Socrates in 399. Herodotus presumably earned a living and paid for his travels by reciting for a remuneration.

22 Herodotus allowed three months for a traveller from Susa to Sardis (v 50.2, 54).

23 Compare Immerwahr (n. 4) 135, n. 168. ‘Herodotus clearly puts the oracles, and with them the whole section from vii 138 (second sentence) to vii 145.1 (a section which he says deals with events that happened πρὸ πολλοῦ of Xerxes' invasion), in 481 B.C., while Xerxes was still in Susa'. Rather, perhaps, in the time before Xerxes reached Sardis. How and Wells ii 181 recognise that Herodotus put Athens' consultation of Delphi before the first gathering of loyalist Greeks was summoned to form the Greek League, which began to operate ‘in the autumn of 481’. Fornara, C. W., ‘The value of the Themistocles Decree’, AmHistR lxxiii(1967–1908) 427Google Scholar, ‘these oracles Herodotus dates unambiguously to the time before the Battles of Artemisium and Thermopylae’, implies a proximity to the battles which is far from the case in Herodotus; but Fornara was arguing against those who would date the oracles even later, to the eve of the Battle of Salamis.

24 Those who informed Herodotus of this crucial debate and many of his listeners when he recited at Athens had been in the Assembly at the time and knew the famous responses. To suppose that the debate was in fact about totally different oracles which mentioned neither the wooden wall nor Salamis is surely to suppose that Herodotus' informants and his listeners were dupes or idiots; and the view of a past generation of scholars, e.g. as stated by Macan, or Grundy ‘the second oracle was obviously obtained with especial reference to the battle of Salamis’, is unrealistic. It required little ingenuity for the priests at Delphi in September 481 to foretell Persia's capture of Attica and a killing of persons on Salamis, the nearest haven for troops and refugees, and to wrap it up in ambiguous words. Similarly the priests could foretell for the Spartans the sack of a great town or, failing that, the death of a Heraclid king; for Persia would not stop at less (vii 220.4).

25 This phrase shows that ‘The Greeks’ had not yet come into being; for once the Greek League was formed, Herodotus called its members ‘The Greeks’ (e.g. 132.2 twice; 145.1; 149.1; 150.3; 157.1; 158.5; 163.1 twice; 163.2; 165 twice; 166; 168 five times).

26 The Greek of Herodotus is crystal clear; his 200 ships ready and more to be built cannot be changed into one hundred now and another hundred later even by ingenious arguments (see Lenardon, R. J., The Saga of Themistocles [London 1978] 54Google Scholar).

27 Immerwahr loc cit. (n. 23) ‘It seems that this paragraph vii 144.3 must also be dated to 481 B.C.’, indeed Herodotus' participle βουλευομένοισι here ties the decision back to the assembly to which the report of the response was made (142.1 ἀπήγγελλον ἐς τὸν δῆμον). How and Wells ii 181 and many since them (see Hignett [n. 5] 441) try to date the response of the Oracle later but without justification. Once the Greek League was formed, the Oracle wisely changed its tune. Burn (n. 13) 355 f. chose to move the consultation by Athens down to just before the occupation of Thermopylae by the Greeks in summer 480 and with it the decision at 144.3 of ‘these courageous, anxious men of 480’ as he writes (359), ‘after the collapse of northern Greece’ (361). It has the dramatic quality of the last-minute decision; but it rests on no evidence at all. Hignett 464 sees that the decision by ‘the Ekklesia’ has to be early and talks of it marking the first of ‘two stages’. He disregards Herodotus' dating of it.

28 The chronology proposed by Sacks, K. J., ‘Herodotus and the dating of Thermopylae’, CQ xxvi (1976) 232 ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar, is adopted here as correct.

29 E.g. the Thessalians; see n. 17.

30 Sacks (n. 28) dated this to September 19th.

31 Until then the Athenian fleet had ranked below those of Aegina, Corinth, Corcyra and some East Greek islands; it was the army's victory at Marathon which had been her claim to strength.

32 This is not a decisive point. Those who feel no need of a date will point to the lack of a date in the earliest extant Attic decree (ML no. 14). However, our decree is different in having ‘next day’ attached to the order in line 20; thus anyone accusing the generals of failure to appoint a trierarch to each ship (beginning) ‘next day’ would need to know the date on which the decree was passed. It seems, then, likely that the date of the decree was recorded.

33 While such literary versions were not verbatim but paraphrasing, they kept the sense of the original, as we know from many later instances, where we have both the version and the original; see e.g. Podlecki, A. J., The Life of Themistocles (Montreal 1975) 162 ff.Google Scholar The original decrees of Miltiades and Themistocles were treasured as the most decisive decrees in the life of Athens, and literary versions are just what we should expect; Podlecki's arguments (160 f.) against the existence and transmission of the decree of Miltiades proceed not from the merit of the case but from the quality of the authors in which mentions of it have survived.

34 Hignett (n. 5) 462 and Burn (n. 13) 366 f.; arguing mainly from a historical viewpoint, they have put the best case against the authenticity of the contents of the decree. Others who put the decision at that time are, e.g., Labarbe, J., La loi navale de Thémistocle (Paris 1957) 112 ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar and esp. 120; Jameson, M. H., ‘A decree of Themistocles from Troezen’, Hesp. xix (1960) 222Google Scholar; ML p. 52; Chambers, M., AmHistR lxvii (1962) 306 ff.Google Scholar; Robert, J. and Robert, L., REG lxxv (1962) 155Google Scholar, with a useful summary of many articles; Treu, M., Historia xii (1963) 56Google Scholar.

35 The removal of their property (ἀνασκευασάμενοι, i 18.2) to safety in the evacuation of 481 is to be contrasted with the loss of property (τὰ οἰκεῖα διαϕθείραντες i 74.2) in September 480 when the fleet returned from Artemisium. Thucydides marked the different occasions: at i 18.2 ἐπιόντων τῶν Μήδων, as in Hdt. vii 144.3 ἐπιόντα . . . τὸν βάρβαρον, and at i 74 τῶν ἄλλων ἤδη μεχρὶ ἡμῶν δουλευόντων.

36 Many have held that the evacuation began only at the time of the proclamation in viii 41.1 and was carried out in panic in a few days (e.g. Pritchett, W. K., AJA lxvi [1962] 44Google Scholar with reference to the Themistocles decree); a week at most was available then before the Persian fleet reached Phalerum. Herodotus added at viii 41.1 that the Athenians wished to comply with ‘the oracular response’, i.e. of vii 141.4 (this had enjoined evacuation in September 481); those who were still in Attica were presumably a minority of the non-combatant population. Polybius xxxviii 2.3 stressed the Athenians' ability to foresee the future which led them to evacuate Attica with their children and wives; he referred to the evacuation of 481 and not to the last-minute flight in September 480. So too Thuc. i 91.5, ‘when it seemed to be better both to abandon the city and embark on the ships, the Athenians having made the decision without them (viz. the Spartans) dared to do so; and when they did plan together with them (e.g. in creating the Greek League), then again they proved second to none in policy’.

37 Using the text of Meiggs–Lewis no. 23 but without all their restorations. Their commentary on earlier work is a model of sound judgement. This article does not include discussion of some details which have been used both to support and to refute the authenticity of the decree's contents, such as the named deities, the mention of polis and acropolis, the periphrases for metics and ostracised persons, and the phrases which are echoed in later writers. See the comments of Meiggs–Lewis and of Podlecki (n. 33) 147 ff. on their being inconclusive.

38 The order is immediate and unconditional; so Sealey, R., ‘Again the siege of the Acropolis, 480 B.C.’, Cal. Stud. Class. Ant. v (1972) 85Google Scholar: ‘the language of the decree in providing for evacuation is an unqualified order, without any hint of allowing delay’. But the implementation was bound to take some months, when all able-bodied men were at sea on the triremes and the war with Aegina continued.

39 If the crops had been sown and had then ripened in May 480, when the invading forces were known to be at Abydus, the armed forces waiting at the Isthmus or in or off Salamis would surely have harvested the crops, as the future might well hold a blockade of the troops and the refugees on Salamis. The troops did not move up to Artemisium until August. Burn (n. 13) 431 argues otherwise. In autumn 480 Themistocles advised the Athenians to sow their land (viii 109.4).

40 Sicyonians was suggested by Prestianni, A. M. in her article in Umanità e Storia: Scritti in onore di A. Attisani (Messina 1971)Google Scholar.

41 The preparedness would include all equipment, including oars.

42 Their attitude since 492 was no doubt known at Athens (see n. 18).

43 See my Studies in Greek History (Oxford 1972) 261 n. 3.Google Scholar

44 As Meiggs–Lewis suggest in saying that those ostracised were ‘perhaps already back in Athens’. The order was to leave wherever they happened to be and go to Salamis, where the People (restored in the lacuna) or their representatives were to decide about them; Salamis was thus to be the seat of government of the evacuated state, as in 479 (ix 5.1). The ostracised persons, being still citizens, were under the orders of the People (cf. Arist., Ath. Pol. 22.8Google Scholar). Considerable confusion has been introduced into this part of the decree by two propositions, that τοὺς μὲν μεθεστηκότας τὰ [δέκκα] ἔτη means ‘those who have been exiled for ten years’, and that ἀπιέναι ἐς Σαλαμῖνα means ‘to leave Athens and go to Salamis’ (for example, in Burstein, S. M., ‘The Recall of the Ostracised and the Themistocles Decree’, Cal. Stud. Class. Ant. iv [1971] 94, 103Google Scholar). In fact none of the ostracised persons from Hipparchus onwards had been in exile ‘the ten years’. The idea that these persons were sitting in Athens is most improbable; indeed even advocates of this interpretation balk at having Hipparchus there (Burstein 109). There is nothing unusual about ἀπιέναι which means to go away from where you are to another place, as often, e.g. in Hdt. i 63.2 fin., vi 97.2. It may be translated ‘to return’ when you go back to where you had been at an earlier stage (as in the passages from Herodotus which I have cited and as in Tod, GHI ii no. 142.50), but not in our decree because Hipparchus and the others had departed from Attica, we may be sure, and not from Salamis. There is no mention of ‘amnesty’ in the sources, for there was nothing to forgive an ostracised person. If Hipparchus had intrigued with Persia during his period of ostracism, his best course was to disobey the order and stay away.

45 So J. E. Sandys in his edition of Arist., Ath. Pol. 22.8Google Scholar and Cadoux, T. J., JHS lxviii (1948) 118 f.Google Scholar At Hdt. viii 79. 1 the word ἐξωστρακισμένος means for me that Aristides had been banished by ostracism and not that he was so banished at that moment.

45 The difficulties are well brought out by Jameson, M. H., Historia xii (1963) 385 ffGoogle Scholar; they are only in part due to the lacunae in the text. The arrangements cannot have interested the Troezenians.

47 They had earlier manned seventy ships, in 490 (vi 89).

48 Both as hoplites and as light-armed troops, including archers.

49 Later too in 479 the phrase ‘those of the households useless for war’ (viii 142.4) implies that fit household-slaves were on war service. See Studies (n. 43) 197 n. 2 for ‘the grave of Plataeans and slaves’.

50 This probably shows that the original of our copy—at whatever remove—gave the date; see n. 32.

51 Also in Plut., Them. 15.2.Google Scholar

52 Themistocles had arranged the design of the 200 ships as was best for ‘speed off the mark and for bringing them round’ (πρὸς μὲν τάχος ἀπ᾿ ἀρχῆς καὶ περιαγωγήν) under oar, both being desirable in the manoeuvre known as the diekplous. The source may be Damastes, for whom see n. 69 below. Burn (n. 13) 367, distrusts this evidence because Herodotus viii 60α described the ships as ‘heavier’; it was this weight which made them lower in the water (Plut., Them. 14.2Google Scholar) and easier to control under oar in a swell or choppy sea than the high Phoenician ships, but slower under sail (viii 10.1).

53 Their service against the Persians was commemorated by Simonides, (Anth. Pal. vi 2)Google Scholar; in the heyday of the Athenian empire they numbered 1,600 (Arist., Ath. Pol. 24.3Google Scholar; see J. E. Sandys ad loc. for citizen as opposed to Scythian archers).

54 Whatever else a ship needs, an oarsmen-group is essential. Since trierarchs, marines, archers and—if the restoration is accepted—‘seamen’ are mentioned, the only term available for the oarsmen-group is ὑπηρεσία. The word meant ‘an organised team of oarsmen’, as surely as ὑπηρέτης ‘originally meant a member of it’ according to Richardson, L. D. J., CQ xxxvii (1943) 61Google Scholar. His view that the term ‘has the essential note of subservience’ is improbable, since the ὑπασπισταί were the corps d'élite of the Macedonian infantry. When the large navy had become fully established the word was sometimes used in a narrow, specialised sense; see Jordan, B., Cal. Stud. Class. Ant. ii (1969) 183 ff.Google Scholar and esp. 201. Proposals to interpret τὰς ὑπερησίας in line 26 as a resumption of ‘marines and archers’ instead of using αὐτούς, and to suppose that each group of them on each ship had its own collective name at line 34 are unconvincing (see Jordan, B., The Athenian Navy in the Classical Period, Calif. Class. Stud. xiii [1975] 247Google Scholar). The proposal to make them ‘petty officers’ instead of ‘marines and archers’ runs into the second objection.

55 As restored in the lacuna by Woodhead, Stroud and Jordan.

56 Restoring πτύχι in the lacuna with Jordan (n. 54) 239. If one restores τάξει with ML, the expression is pleonastic as it recurs two lines lower and there is no object for ἐπιγράψαι. However, the choice is not material to the sense, which is that it was necessary to record the trireme to which each division had to go to embark.

57 These tribal divisions had existed at least since 501/500, when Cleisthenes made his army reforms; they are discussed in Studies (n. 43) 346 ff.

58 Meiggs–Lewis 51 do not follow Burn (n. 13) 367 f.; he found it ‘redolent of the fourth century’ but partly by assuming Themistocles to have put large numbers of marines on ‘the young, mass-produced navy’, despite the ancient evidence.

59 The insistence on possessing a (family) estate of land (in Attica) and a house at Athens and on having legitimate sons to continue the family went along with the retention of the gene by Cleisthenes (Arist., Ath. Pol. 21.6Google Scholar). Such persons were regarded as particularly trustworthy; but if one should desert or fail (and at Lade forty-nine out of sixty trierarchs in the Samian squadron had failed to engage and sailed away), the state could fine his family.

60 An occasion of greater significance than the sailing of the Athenian fleet to Sicily, which Thucydides described so brilliantly (vi 32).

61 Plut., Per. 3.1.Google Scholar

62 See Hignett (n. 5) 4 ff. and esp. 39, and my Studies (n. 43) 227 ff.

63 The advance to the ‘Olympic pass’ (see n. 5) was probably historical. The name Aleuas occurred in Hdt. vii 130.3 and ix 58.1–2 as father of the medists who accompanied Xerxes (the words ‘the sons of Aleuas’ there should not be confused with the word ‘Aleuadai’ at vii 6.2 and 172.1; so too ‘the sons of Heracles’ were not the same as the Heracleidai); Paus. vii 10.2 probably got from Damastes the name Aleuas, which should be read there for the corrupt Ἀλευάδου. Damastes may well be the source of valuable naval information in Plut., Them. 14.1–2Google Scholar and Cim. 12.2; see N. Robertson (n. 18) 101 f. This Aleuas was the Aleuas, son of Simus, in Euphorion ap. schol. Theoc. xvi 34, and he was active longer than Beloch supposed (GG i 2.206Google Scholar; his son Thorax could commission Pind., Pyth. 10Google Scholar without being himself the leading Aleuad).

64 Fama esset perlata; compare Justin ii 10.14 perferendas, used of Demaratus' message.

65 Presumably old ships which were in the sheds.

66 Perhaps Nepos was translating tamiai, treasurers.

67 Plutarch is confused and confusing about this command, which he mentioned first in his story of Themistocles bribing Epicydes (6.1) and then at 7.3 as if it bore some relation to Eurybiades. Perhaps Themistocles was elected to a special overall command of Athenian forces for 482/1 or for 481 before the formation of the Greek League. Once that League had arranged for its own forces, Themistocles was elected to take command of Athenians serving in the Greek League's forces: see Studies (n. 43) 380 f. It is this command which Plutarch failed to understand at 7.3.

68 Not ‘as far away from Greece as possible’, because a fleet of triremes had to operate from a friendly coast.

69 Herodotus' account is entirely different in that he gives other reasons for the return of the Greek forces (vii 173.3–4) and mentions an earlier medisation of Thessaly (vii 132.1, 172.1). Damastes F 4 is compatible with Plutarch's story, because Damastes had Alexander ‘informing’ the Greeks of the treachery of Aleuas and Thessalians, i.e. of something they did not already know.

70 Justin goes one better in attributing the consultation of the Oracle, the decision and the evacuation all to the last days before the battle (ii 12.13–16); so too Ael. Arist. i 154.

71 Plutarch 10.2–3 combines an echo of the Decree of Themistocles with the proclamation ‘each to save his household as best he can’ in Hdt. viii 41.1.

72 Aelian's chronology is in vague terms which could fit any time in 481–0, but the story evidently belonged with that told by Plutarch which many have attributed to Cleidemus.

73 Although Plutarch gave the correct year of the recall in saying ‘in the third year’ after the ostracism of 483/2 (the three years being inclusively 483/2, 482/1 and 481/0), his context for the recall ‘when Xerxes was marching through Thessaly and Boeotia against Attica’ belongs to 480/79, being in late September 480; it is a good example of sensational dating rather than vague dating (Podlecki [n. 33/ 15).

74 The only mention of the battle of Artemisium in relation to the decree in an ancient source is a worthless one in one of the scholia to Dem. xix 303 which tries to get the best of both late occasions by remarking ὅτε τὰ ἐν Σαλαμῖνι καὶ ἐπ᾿ Ἀρτεμισίῳ.

75 As Lewis, D. M. remarked, CQ xi (1961) 66Google Scholar, ‘I see no reason to suspect forgery. There are too many traces of official and archaic language.’ See also Meritt, B. D. in Lectures in Memory of L. T. Semple, 1961–65, ed. Bradeen, D. W., 121 ff.Google Scholar, esp. 128.