Wording of Herodotus 7.61

[Sean Manning]

I need the help of someone who knows Ionic Greek and has a Greek copy of Herodotus cum apparatu critico to hand. I don’t know any Ancient Greek myself, and won’t be learning it until after I have a chance to learn French or German.

Specifically, I would like an analysis of the passage about Persian dress in Herodotus 7.61. Apparently the text may be corrupt, but I have seen several versions of the sentence about armour, in which Persians wore:

- Tunics, and sleeves and body-armour of scales
- Tunics, and sleeves of scales.
- Tunics with sleeves, and body-armour of scales.

Is one of these versions best supported by the best manuscripts, is one of these debatably best, or is it just a muddled mess? I’ve been doing some research into Achaemenid arms, and this is one of the very few passages describing infantry armour among our written sources. So far I haven’t seen any evidence for sleeved infantry armour (unless you count the shoulder flaps on armour with a linothorax cut) in artwork. On the other hand, by 400 BC cataphracts were wearing full sleeves and leggings of banded or scale armour.

Edit: Wrong Greek dialect, and apparatus is 4th declension, blast it.

[Dan Diffendale]

I need the help of someone who knows Attic Greek

If it's Herodotos, technically you'll be wanting someone who knows Ionic Greek. Unfortunately I don't have Herodotos to hand.

[hoplite14gr]

You may want to try Pereus Project texts in Greek.
Kind regards

[Sean Manning]

Perseus doesn't have the notes on the various MSS, unfortunately, and I think they would be important here. If I have to I could always see what the university library has to hand and try puzzling through it with a dictionary, but that would likely be time consuming and wouldn't put a record online. Still, I'll do it if I have to.

here is A.D. Goodley's version of the Greek text.

here is the relevant bit in How and Wells.

[hoplite14gr]

(Goodley)
He calls the persian cups TIARA (plural TIARAS) that he describes them as PILOS (= cap). We can safely asume they were made of wool probably felt.
He says they had sleeved tunics (Cheiridotous chitonas) actually he wrote KITHONAS (Aeolian dialect which is unusual for an Ionian like Herodostos)
He calls their trousers ANAXYRIDAES (plural)
Instead of shields they carried GERRA (plural). Most people say this is the description for the pavish-like shield of the Sparabara. Arrows with small iron points and cane shafts and daggers.
Sorry no description of body armor.

(How & Wells)
Here they make reference to (9.22.2) where the armor of Masistios is described
Still puzzles me why the tunic is reffered in Aeolian dialect.


Hope I helped.


Kind regards

[Anonymous]

I need the help of someone who knows Attic Greek

If it's Herodotos, technically you'll be wanting someone who knows Ionic Greek. Unfortunately I don't have Herodotos to hand.

That's what he's written - or is that a later emendation?

[hoplite14gr]

Probably is whar Herodotus wrote.
The Aeolian dialect word in an Ionic dialect passage seems unlikely to have been coined later in my opinion
Kind regards

[Sean Manning]

That's what he's written - or is that a later emendation?

The word "Ionic" Greek in my first post is an emendation- see the note near the bottom. I made another slight error, as well.

I've looked at a Greek text with ap. crit. in the Greek and Roman Studies Reading Room, and other than the lacuna where "thorax" or something similar dropped out the text seems reliable. The only variant recorded nearby is a matter of one letter in one word! That's as far as I can go until I have a few hours to sit down with the text and a Greek-English dictionary, though.

He calls the persian cups TIARA (plural TIARAS) that he describes them as PILOS (= cap). We can safely asume they were made of wool probably felt.

That seems consistent with the other passages in Hdt. and Strabo I have looked at. Thanks for your help, Stefanos.

[Giannis K. Hoplite]

Stefane,Herodotos wrote his "Histories" in Thourioi.There must have spoken attic dialect,but in a colony we don't know how their speaking could be transformed...Also,we're speaking about only one word,even today in Greece in some village in Thrace they probably use some words from the "cretan" dialect(just an example,I don't have any particular words in mind right now)

[hoplite14gr]

Herodotus was born in Halicarnassos an Ionic city with probably an Ionic dialect. But the colonies were cosmopolitan.
It is a good chance that at home in early age, an Aeolian dialekt speaker influnced him.
Thourioi was a Spartan colony which means that a Doric idiom was spoken.
But since a large number of Acheans from Amuklae or Geronthrae settled there too a chance of a mixed dialect was very probable.
Put also a later copyist of the scriptorium who put various words in a way he liked them and you will see that nothing can be certain.

Kind regards

[Giannis K. Hoplite]

Just a quastion.Thourioi was a Spartan colony or a mixture of Spartans,Athenians and other cities?Didn't Herodotos go there with Protagoras influenced by Pericles?That's why I thought they'd use attic dialect.
I agree,we'll never know why ONE word in the whole text is Aeolian...

[hoplite14gr]

Colonies as I posted before were cosmopolitan.

Kind regards