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Translated by G. Macaulay.
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Herodotus in Print
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100 pages - You are on Page 57
"Pallas cannot prevail to appease great Zeus in Olympos, Though she with words very many and wiles close-woven entreat him. But I will tell thee this more, and will clench it with steel adamantine: Then when all else shall be taken, whatever the boundary[128] of Kecrops Holdeth within, and the dark ravines of divinest Kithairon, A bulwark of wood at the last Zeus grants to the Trito-born goddess Sole to remain unwasted, which thee and thy children shall profit. Stay thou not there for the horsemen to come and the footmen unnumbered; Stay thou not still for the host from the mainland to come, but retire thee, Turning thy back to the foe, for yet thou shalt face him hereafter. Salamis, thou the divine, thou shalt cause sons of women to perish, Or when the grain[129] is scattered or when it is gathered together."
142. This seemed to them to be (as in truth it was) a milder utterance than the former one; therefore they had it written down and departed with it to Athens: and when the messengers after their return made report to the people, many various opinions were expressed by persons inquiring into the meaning of the oracle, and among them these, standing most in opposition to one another:--some of the elder men said they thought that the god had prophesied to them that the Acropolis should survive; for the Acropolis of the Athenians was in old time fenced with a thorn hedge; and they conjectured accordingly that this saying about the "bulwark of wood" referred to the fence: others on the contrary said that the god meant by this their ships, and they advised to leave all else and get ready these. Now they who said that the ships were the bulwark of wood were shaken in their interpretation by the two last verses which the prophetess uttered:
"Salamis, thou the divine, thou shalt cause sons of women to perish, Or when the grain is scattered or when it is gathered together."
128. {ouros}: the word might of course be for {oros}, "mountain," and {Kekropos ouros} would then mean the Acropolis (so it is understood by Stein and others), but the combination with Kithairon makes it probable that the reference is to the boundaries of Attica, and this seems more in accordance with the reference to it in viii. 53.
129. {Demeteros}.
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