Note 32 — Chapter XXXVIII · FROM THE BATTLE OF MARATHON TO THE MARCH OF XERXES AGAINST GREECE.

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.

In some of the words used by Herodotus there appears an obscurity: they run thus,—ἐζεύγνυσαν δὲ ὧδε· Πεντηκοντέρους καὶ τριήρεας συνθέντες, ὑπὸ μὲν τὴν (these words are misprinted in Bähr’s edition) πρὸς τοῦ Εὐξείνου Πόντου ἐξήκοντά τε καὶ τριηκοσίας, ὑπὸ δὲ τὴν ἑτέρην τέσσερες καὶ δέκα καὶ τριηκοσὶας (τοῦ μὲν Πόντου, ἐπικαρσίας, τοῦ δὲ Ἑλλησπόντου κατὰ ῥόον), ἵνα ἀνακωχεύῃ τὸν τόνον τῶν ὅπλων· συνθέντες δὲ, ἀγκύρας κατῆκαν περιμήκεας, etc.

There is a difficulty respecting the words ἵνα ἀνακωχεύῃ τὸν τόνον τῶν ὅπλων,—what is the nominative case to this verb? Bähr says in his note, sc. ὁ ῥόος, and he construes τῶν ὅπλων to mean the cables whereby the anchors were held fast. But if we read farther on, we shall see that τὰ ὅπλα mean, not the anchor-cables, but the cables which were stretched across from shore to shore to form the bridge; the very same words τῶν ὅπλων τοῦ τόνου, applied to these latter cables, occur a few lines afterwards. I think that the nominative case belonging to ἀνακωχεύῃ is ἡ γεφύρα (not ὁ ῥόος), and that the words from τοῦ μὲν Πόντου down to ῥόον are to be read parenthetically, as I have printed them above: the express object for which the ships were moored was, “that the bridge might hold up, or sustain, the tension of its cables stretched across from shore to shore.” I admit that we should naturally expect ἀνακωχεύωσι and not ἀνακωχεύῃ, since the proposition would be true of both bridges; but though this makes an awkward construction, it is not inadmissible, since each bridge had been previously described in the singular number.

Bredow and others accuse Herodotus of ignorance and incorrectness in this description of the bridges, but there seems nothing to bear out this charge.

Herodotus (iv, 85), Strabo (xiii, p. 591), and Pliny (H. N. iv, 12; vi, 1) give seven stadia as the breadth of the Hellespont in its narrowest part. Dr. Pococke also assigns the same breadth: Tournefort allows but a mile (vol. ii, lett. 4). Some modern French measurements give the distance as something considerably greater,—eleven hundred and thirty or eleven hundred and fifty toises (see Miot’s note on his translation of Herodotus). The Duke of Ragusa states it at seven hundred toises (Voyage en Turquie, vol. ii, p. 164). If we suppose the breadth to be one mile, or five thousand two hundred and eighty feet, three hundred and sixty vessels at an average breadth of fourteen and two thirds feet would exactly fill the space. Rennell says, “Eleven feet is the breadth of a barge: vessels of the size of the smallest coasting-craft were adequate to the purpose of the bridge.” (On the Geography of Herodotus, p. 127.)

The recent measurements or estimates stated by Miot go much beyond Herodotus: that of the Duke of Ragusa nearly coincides with him. But we need not suppose that the vessels filled up entirely the whole breadth, without leaving any gaps between: we only know, that there were no gaps left large enough for a vessel in voyage to sail through, except in three specified places.