With the dawn of the day of the Battle of Salamis in ch. 83 of Book 8, Herodotus heightens the tone of his language. An unfortunate result of his more elaborately worked writing has been failure to understand his words, and hence much misplaced editorial intervention. In particular, the words at 8.83.1, προηγρενε εῢ Χοντα μν κ πντων Θεμιστοκλης, have regularly been mistranslated. Powell even wanted to rewrite the Greek here to read: γρευε μν πρó πντων Θεμιστοκλης . Few would (...) wish to follow such a drastic and arbitrary alteration of the transmitted text, but the conjectural emendation highlights the difficulty of understanding Herodotus' words at this point. (shrink)

With the dawn of the day of the Battle of Salamis in ch. 83 of Book 8, Herodotus heightens the tone of his language. An unfortunate result of his more elaborately worked writing has been failure to understand his words, and hence much misplaced editorial intervention. In particular, the words at 8.83.1, προηγρενε εῢ Χοντα μν κ πντων Θεμιστοκλης, have regularly been mistranslated. Powell even wanted to rewrite the Greek here to read: γρευε μν πρó πντων Θεμιστοκλης. Few would wish (...) to follow such a drastic and arbitrary alteration of the transmitted text, but the conjectural emendation highlights the difficulty of understanding Herodotus' words at this point. (shrink)