[26] Plutarch (De Tranquillitate Animi, p. 470), speaks of them as having had their noses and ears cut off.
[27] Herodot. vii, 34, 35. ἐνετέλλετο δὴ ὦν ῥαπίζοντας, λέγειν βάρβαρά τε καὶ ἀτάσθαλα, Ὦ πικρὸν ὕδωρ, δεσπότης τοι δίκην ἐπιτιθεῖ τήνδε, ὅτι μιν ἠδίκησας, οὐδὲν πρὸς ἐκείνου ἄδικον παθόν. Καὶ βασιλεὺς μὲν Ξέρξης διαβήσεταί σε, ἤν τε σύ γε βούλῃ, ἤν τε καὶ μή· σοὶ δὲ κατὰ δίκην ἄρα οὐδεὶς ἀνθρώπων θύει, ὡς ἐόντι καὶ δολερῷ καὶ ἁλμυρῷ ποταμῷ.
The assertion—that no one was in the habit of sacrificing to the Hellespont—appears strange, when we look to the subsequent conduct of Xerxes himself (vii, 53): compare vii, 113, and vi, 76. The epithet salt employed as a reproach, seems to allude to the undrinkable character of the water.
[28] See Stanley and Blomfield ad Æschyl. Pers. 731, and K. O. Müller (in his Review of Benjamin Constant’s work Sur la Religion), Kleine Schriften, vol. ii, p. 59.
[29] See Auguste Comte, Traité de Philosophie Positive, vol. v, leçon 52, pp. 40, 46.
[30] See vol. ii, part 2, c. i, p. 297 of the present work; and compare Wachsmuth, Hellenisch. Alterthümer, 2, i, p. 320, and K. F. Hermann, Griech. Staatsalterthümer, sect. 104.
For the manner in which Cyrus dealt with the river Gyndês, see Herodot. i, 202. The Persian satrap Pharnuchês was thrown from his horse at Sardis, and received an injury of which he afterwards died: he directed his attendants to lead the horse to the place where the accident had happened, to cut off all his legs, and leave him to perish there (Herodot. vii, 88). The kings of Macedonia offered sacrifice even during the time of Herodotus, to the river which had been the means of preserving the life of their ancestor Perdikkas; after he had crossed it, the stream swelled and arrested his pursuers (Herodot. viii, 138): see an analogous story about the inhabitants of Apollonia and the river Aöus, Valerius Maxim. i, 5, 2.
After the death of the great boxer, wrestler, etc., Theagenês of Thasus, a statue was erected to his honor. A personal enemy, perhaps one of the fourteen hundred defeated competitors, came every night to gratify his wrath and revenge by flogging the statue. One night the statue fell down upon this scourger and killed him; upon which his relatives indicted the statue for murder: it was found guilty by the Thasians, and thrown into the sea. The gods, however, were much displeased with the proceeding, and visited the Thasians with continued famine, until at length a fisherman by accident fished up the statue, and it was restored to its place (Pausan. vi, 11. 2). Compare the story of the statue of Hermês in Babrius, Fabul. 119, edition of Mr. Lewis.
[31] Herodot. vii, 35-54: compare viii, 109. Arrian, Exp. Alex. vii, 14. 9.
[32] Herodot. vii, 36. The language in which Herodotus describes the position of these ships which formed the two bridges, seems to me to have been erroneously or imperfectly apprehended by most of the commentators: see the notes of Bähr, Kruse, Wesseling, Rennell, and especially Larcher: Schweighäuser is the most satisfactory—τοῦ μὲν Πόντου ἐπικαρσίας, τοῦ δὲ Ἑλλησπόντου κατὰ ῥόον. The explanation given by Tzetzes of ἐπικαρσίας by the word πλαγίας seems to me hardly exact: it means, not oblique, but at right angles with. The course of the Bosphorus and Hellespont, flowing out of the Euxine sea, is conceived by the historian as meeting that sea at right angles; and the ships, which were moored near together along the current of the strait, taking the line of each from head to stern, were therefore also at right angles with the Euxine sea. Moreover, Herodotus does not mean to distinguish the two bridges hereby, and to say that the ships of the one bridge were τοῦ Πόντου ἐπικαρσίας, and those of the other bridge τοῦ Ἑλλησπόντου κατὰ ῥόον, as Bähr and other commentators suppose: both the predicates apply alike to both the bridges,—as indeed it stands to reason that the arrangement of ships best for one bridge must also have been best for the other. Respecting the meaning of ἐπικάρσιος in Herodotus, see iv, 101; i, 180. In the Odyssey (ix, 70: compare Eustath. ad loc.) ἐπικάρσιαι does not mean oblique, but headlong before the wind: compare ἐπίκαρ, Iliad, xviii, 392. The circumstance stated by Herodotus—that in the bridge higher up the stream, or nearest to the Euxine, there were in all three hundred and sixty vessels, while in the other bridge there were no more than three hundred and fourteen—has perplexed the commentators, and induced them to resort to inconvenient explanations,—as that of saying, that in the higher bridge the vessels were moored not in a direct line across, but in a line slanting, so that the extreme vessel on the European side was lower down the stream than the extreme vessel on the Asiatic side. This is one of the false explanations given of ἐπικαρσίας (slanting, schräg): while the idea of Gronovius and Larcher, that the vessels in the higher bridge presented their broadside to the current, is still more inadmissible. But the difference in the number of ships employed in the one bridge compared with the other seems to admit of an easier explanation. We need not suppose, nor does Herodotus say, that the two bridges were quite close together: considering the multitude which had to cross them, it would be convenient that they should be placed at a certain distance from each other. If they were a mile or two apart, we may well suppose that the breadth of the strait was not exactly the same in the two places chosen, and that it may have been broader at the point of the upper bridge,—which, moreover, might require to be made more secure, as having to meet the first force of the current. The greater number of vessels in the upper bridge will thus be accounted for in a simple and satisfactory manner.