A young man with a thin voice and a stammer went to Delphi to ask the god what to do about his voice.

The priestess did not answer about his voice. She said: Battus, you have come for a voice; but Lord Phoebus Apollo sends you to Libya, nurse of sheep, to found a city.

The young man said: Lord, I came to ask about my speech; and you tell me to do something else, something impossible, to plant a colony in Libya. With what power? With whose hands?

The priestess would give him no other answer and kept saying the same. He left before she had finished and went home to Thera.

That is the Cyrenaeans' story. Almost every step that city later took, in prosperity and in bloodshed, came with a word from Delphi.

I. What the Theraeans Say

How Battus came to be a founder, the Theraeans and the Cyrenaeans tell differently. First the Theraeans.

Grinnus, king of Thera, went to Delphi with a hecatomb, and among those who went with him was Battus son of Polymnestus. Grinnus asked about other matters, but the priestess told him to found a city in Libya. The king answered: Lord, I am old now, and too heavy to stir; command one of these younger men to go. As he said it, he pointed at Battus.

When they got home they let the oracle lie. No one knew where Libya was, and no one dared send settlers to a place they could not see.

For seven years after that no rain fell on Thera, and every tree on the island but one withered. They asked at Delphi again, and again the priestess spoke of a colony in Libya.

They went to Crete to ask, and in the town of Itanus they found a murex fisherman named Corobius, who had once been blown by the winds to an island off Libya called Platea. The Theraeans hired him as a guide, left him on the island, and the scouts came home with the news. Then the Theraeans decided: men would go from all seven districts of the island, and where there were brothers, the brothers would draw lots for which one went; Battus would be leader and king of them all. They manned two fifty-oared ships and sent them to Platea.

II. What the Cyrenaeans Say

That is the Theraeans' account. For what came after, the two sides tell much the same story; but on the origins of Battus himself, the Cyrenaeans do not agree with the Theraeans at all.

The Cyrenaeans say this. Etearchus, king of Oaxus in Crete, lost his wife and married again. His daughter by the first marriage, Phronime, was ill-used by her stepmother, who at last accused her of lewdness and made her father believe it. He had a Theraean merchant trading in the town, Themison, swear to do him a service first, then handed his daughter over and told him to throw her into the sea.

Themison, angry at being tricked by his oath, broke off his friendship with him. Out on the open sea he tied the girl with ropes, let her down into the water and drew her up again, and so his oath was kept. Then he took her to Thera.

There Polymnestus, a man of standing among the Theraeans, took her as his concubine. In time she bore him a son with a thin voice and a stammer. The Theraeans and the Cyrenaeans both say the boy was named Battus.

I do not think so. I think he had another name, and was called Battus only when he came to Libya, because of the oracle Delphi had given him and the honour he won there. The Libyans call a king "battus." I believe the priestess, knowing he would be king in Libya, addressed him in the Libyan tongue. "Battus, you have come for a voice" was, in her mouth: King, you have come for a voice.

As the Cyrenaeans tell it, after Battus came back from Delphi things went badly for the Theraeans. They asked the god again, and the priestess said they would fare better if they helped Battus found Cyrene in Libya. So the Theraeans sent him out with two fifty-oared ships. The ships reached Libya; not knowing what to do next, they sailed home again. The Theraeans shot at them from the shore and would not let them land. They had to turn back, and settled on the island of Platea.

III. Where the Sky Has a Hole

They lived on Platea for two years, and nothing went right. Leaving one man behind, they all went back to Delphi to complain: we are living in Libya now, and we are no better off.

The priestess answered: if you know Libya, nurse of sheep, better than I do, you who have never been there and I who have, then I am amazed at your wisdom.

The god would not let them off; they had to set foot on Libya itself. They went back to the island, picked up the man they had left, and settled on the mainland opposite at Aziris, a place shut in on both sides by the loveliest of wooded valleys, with a river running along one side.

In the seventh year the Libyans came and persuaded them to leave, saying they would take them somewhere better. The Greeks agreed. The Libyans led them west, timing the hours of daylight so that the Greeks passed the finest place in the country, called Irasa, by night, and would not see it.

They brought the Greeks to a spring said to be Apollo's and told them: Greeks, this is the place for you to live, for here the sky has a hole in it.

The later city of Cyrene stood near that spring.

IV. Latecomers Will Be Sorry

Battus the founder reigned forty years, and his son Arcesilaus sixteen, and in all that time Cyrene had no more people than had first gone out. In the third reign, that of the Battus called the Fortunate, the Cyrenaeans promised land to newcomers, and the priestess too sent out an oracle urging all Greeks to cross the sea to Libya. It said: whoever comes to lovely Libya after the land is divided, I say he will be sorry for it.

A great crowd gathered at Cyrene and cut large tracts of land out of the territory of the Libyans around them. The Libyans, robbed of their land and abused besides, followed their king Adicran in putting themselves under Apries, king of Egypt. Apries sent a great army against Cyrene, and the Cyrenaeans marched out to meet it at the spring of Thestes in Irasa. The Egyptians had never fought Greeks and despised them, and they were all but wiped out. The Egyptians blamed Apries for it and rose against him.

Irasa, the place the Libyans had led the Greeks past by night, became the place where Greeks destroyed an Egyptian army.

V. Brothers Part

The son of Battus the Fortunate was also named Arcesilaus. As soon as he became king he quarrelled with his brothers. They left and founded another city in Libya, called Barce then and Barce still, and as they built it they stirred up the Libyans to revolt from Cyrene.

Arcesilaus marched against them, and the Libyans fled east. He pursued them as far as Leucon, where the Libyans turned and fought and beat the Cyrenaeans so badly that seven thousand Cyrenaean hoplites fell there.

After this disaster Arcesilaus fell ill, and when he had taken a drug his brother Haliarchus strangled him. Haliarchus in turn was killed by a trick by Arcesilaus' wife, Eryxo.

VI. The Man from Mantinea

The kingship passed to Arcesilaus' son Battus. This Battus was lame, unsound in his feet.

After these calamities the Cyrenaeans asked at Delphi how they should order their city to live best. The priestess told them to bring a mediator from Mantinea in Arcadia. The Mantineans sent them their most respected citizen, Demonax.

Demonax learned how things stood and divided the people into three parts: the Theraeans and those living around them made one, the Peloponnesians and Cretans another, and all the islanders the third. Then he set aside certain sacred lands and priesthoods for King Battus, and everything else the kings had held before he gave to the people in common.

As long as the lame Battus lived, this arrangement held.

VII. A Golden Spindle

The trouble came with his son. Arcesilaus, son of the lame Battus and Pheretime, would not live by the rules Demonax of Mantinea had laid down and demanded back the privileges of the kings before him. He raised a faction, was beaten, and fled to Samos; his mother Pheretime fled to Salamis in Cyprus.

Salamis was ruled at the time by Euelthon, who dedicated the censer, well worth seeing, that stands at Delphi in the treasury of the Corinthians. Pheretime came to him and asked for an army to bring her and her son back to Cyrene.

Euelthon would give her anything but an army. Each time Pheretime took what he gave and said: this is fine too; but it would be finer to give me an army, as I ask.

Whatever he sent, she said the same. At last Euelthon sent her a golden spindle and a distaff, with wool on it. Pheretime said the same words again. Euelthon answered: these are the gifts we give women, not armies.

VIII. Jars in the Kiln

Meanwhile Arcesilaus was gathering men on Samos, taking anyone who would come and promising a new division of land. When he had a large force he went to Delphi to ask about his return.

The priestess told him: for four Battuses and four Arcesilauses, eight generations of men, Loxias grants your house the kingship of Cyrene; beyond that he advises you not even to try. As for you, go home and keep quiet. If you find the kiln full of jars, do not fire the jars; send them off with a fair wind. If you fire the kiln, do not go into the place with water all around it; otherwise you will die yourself, and so will the finest bull.

IX. The Place with Water All Around

Arcesilaus returned to Cyrene with his men from Samos, took power, forgot the oracle, and set about making his enemies pay for his exile.

Some of them fled the country. Some he seized and shipped off to Cyprus to be killed, but the ship was blown to Cnidus, and the Cnidians rescued them and sent them to Thera. Others took refuge in a great tower belonging to a private man, Aglomachus; Arcesilaus piled wood around it and burned them inside.

When it was done he understood: the jars he must not fire meant this. Afraid of the death foretold, and thinking that Cyrene was the place with water all around, he kept away from the city.

His wife was a kinswoman of his, the daughter of Alazir, king of Barce. He went to his father-in-law at Barce. There some men of Barce and some of the exiles from Cyrene recognized him as he went about the marketplace and killed him, and killed his father-in-law Alazir as well.

So Arcesilaus, willingly or unwillingly, missed the meaning of the oracle and fulfilled his fate. Who the finest bull was, I will not interpret for the god; I know only that the man who fell with him was his father-in-law.

X. Who Killed Arcesilaus?

While Arcesilaus was at Barce bringing ruin on himself, his mother Pheretime held her son's royal rights at Cyrene, managed affairs, and sat in the council. When she heard her son had died at Barce, she fled to Egypt.

She had a debt to call in. Arcesilaus had done Cambyses son of Cyrus good service: this was the Arcesilaus who handed Cyrene over to Cambyses and fixed a tribute on himself.

In Egypt Pheretime sat down as a suppliant before the governor Aryandes and asked him to avenge her. The reason she put forward was that her son had been killed for siding with the Medes.

Aryandes, whom Cambyses had made governor of Egypt, took pity on Pheretime and gave her the whole land and sea forces of Egypt, with Amasis commanding the army and Badres, of the Pasargadae, commanding the fleet. This Amasis came from the Persian tribe of the Maraphians; he was not the Egyptian pharaoh of the same name.

Before sending them, Aryandes sent a herald to Barce to ask who had killed Arcesilaus. The Barcaeans answered: all of us together, because he did us many great wrongs. When Aryandes heard that, he sent the army off with Pheretime.

That was the pretext. I think the army was really sent to conquer Libya. The Libyan tribes are many and of every kind; a few were subject to the king, but most cared nothing for Darius.

XI. The Ringing Shield

The Persians came to Barce, laid siege to it, and demanded the men guilty of the murder of Arcesilaus. But the whole people of Barce shared the guilt, and they refused.

The siege lasted nine months. The Persians dug tunnels toward the walls and made fierce assaults. The tunnels were found by a smith with a bronze-faced shield. He carried it along the inside of the wall, setting it against the ground. Everywhere else it made no sound; where tunnels were being dug below, the bronze of the shield rang. There the Barcaeans dug countermines and killed the Persian diggers. So the tunnels were found out, and the assaults were beaten back.

XII. As Long as This Ground Stands

The siege dragged on, and many fell on both sides, the Persians no fewer than their enemies. Amasis saw that Barce could not be taken by force, only by a trick.

At night he dug a wide trench, laid flimsy planks across it, and spread earth over the planks level with the ground around. At daybreak he invited the Barcaeans to talk. They gladly came, and terms were agreed. Standing on the hidden trench they swore: as long as this ground stays as it is, the oath stands; the Barcaeans would pay the king a fitting tribute, and the Persians would make no further move against them.

The Barcaeans trusted the oath, came out of the city, and opened all the gates to let in any of the enemy who wished. The Persians broke down the hidden bridge and ran into the city. They did it to "keep" their oath: once the bridge was broken, the ground had changed, and the treaty no longer held.

XIII. Vengeance on the Walls

The Persians handed the Barcaeans over to Pheretime. She impaled the most guilty on stakes all around the wall, and cut off their wives' breasts and set them around the wall as well.

The rest of the Barcaeans she told the Persians to take as booty, all but those who were of the house of Battus and had no part in the murder; to them she gave the city.

On the way back past Cyrene the Persians thought of taking that city too, but never managed it, and were soon recalled by Aryandes; on the march home the Libyans killed their stragglers one by one for their clothes and gear.

The captured Barcaeans were sent on from Egypt to the king. Darius gave them a village in Bactria, and they named it Barce too. In my own time people were still living there.

XIV. Where Vengeance Ends

Pheretime's end was not a good one either. As soon as she had taken her revenge on the Barcaeans and returned to Egypt, she died a terrible death: while she was still alive, she seethed with worms. When men take vengeance too harshly, the gods resent it. Pheretime's vengeance on the Barcaeans was vengeance of that kind, and that harsh.

A young man with a stammer went to Delphi asking for a better voice, and was given a city. Generations later a woman of the house of Battus went to Cyprus asking for an army, and was given a golden spindle. When at last she got her army from the Persians, what it left on the walls of Barce was a ring of stakes, and in Bactria a village that was also called Barce.

Sources, versions, and editorial boundaries

1. Core narrative: Herodotus, Histories 4.145 (the expedition against Libya at "the same time" as Darius' Scythian campaign), 4.150-167 and 4.200-205. 4.150 (so far Lacedaemonians and Theraeans agree, from here on it is the Theraean account; Grinnus king of Thera at Delphi with a hecatomb, Battus son of Polymnestus among his company; the order to found a city in Libya; Grinnus pleads age and points to Battus; the oracle is neglected because no one knows where Libya is); 4.151 (seven years without rain, every tree but one withered; envoys to Crete find the murex fisher Corobius of Itanus, once blown to the island of Platea; he is hired, left on the island with some months' food, and the scouts report home); 4.152 (the Samian shipmaster Colaeus leaves him a year's food and is later driven to Tartessus; the friendship of Samos with Cyrene and Thera begins); 4.153 (the Theraean decision: brother to go from brother by lot, men from all seven districts, Battus leader and king; two fifty-oared ships); 4.154 (so say the Theraeans; the rest of the account is common to both, but the Cyrenaeans disagree entirely about Battus; Etearchus king of Oaxus, the stepmother's slander of Phronime, Themison's oath, the girl lowered into the sea and drawn up); 4.155 (Polymnestus takes her as concubine; a son "thin-voiced and stammering"; Herodotus thinks his name was something else and changed in Libya, "battus" being the Libyan word for king; the Delphic answer and Battus' reply; he leaves mid-answer); 4.156 (misfortunes; the god orders the Theraeans to help Battus found Cyrene; the two ships return and are shot at from the shore; settlement on Platea, said to be as large as the present city of Cyrene); 4.157 (two years; the priestess' retort; Aziris on the mainland); 4.158 (six years; in the seventh the Libyans lead them west past Irasa by night to a spring said to be Apollo's, "here the sky has a hole"); 4.159 (Battus forty years, Arcesilaus sixteen, no growth; under Battus the Fortunate the oracle invites settlers to a division of land; Libyan land seized; Adicran turns to Apries; the Egyptian defeat at Irasa and the spring of Thestes; the Egyptian revolt); 4.160 (Arcesilaus quarrels with his brothers, who found Barce; the defeat at Leucon, seven thousand hoplites killed; Arcesilaus, ill and having taken a drug, strangled by his brother, who is killed by guile by Eryxo); 4.161 (the lame Battus; the Delphic order to bring a mediator from Mantinea; Demonax' three divisions and the king's reserved domains and priesthoods); 4.162 (Arcesilaus son of the lame Battus and Pheretime demands the old privileges, is beaten and flees to Samos, Pheretime to Salamis in Cyprus; Euelthon and his censer; the spindle, distaff and wool); 4.163 (recruits on Samos for a redivision of land; the oracle of eight generations, the jars in the kiln and the place with water all around); 4.164 (revenge on his enemies, the burning of the tower, his flight from Cyrene, his death at Barce with Alazir; "willingly or unwillingly he missed the oracle"); 4.165 (Pheretime's regency and council seat; flight to Egypt; Arcesilaus had given Cyrene to Cambyses and paid tribute; her plea to Aryandes); 4.166 (Aryandes' silver coinage and execution); 4.167 (the forces, Amasis and Badres; the herald's question and the Barcaean answer; Herodotus' view of the real purpose); 4.200 (nine months' siege, the shield and the countermines); 4.201 (Amasis' trench and oath); 4.202 (Pheretime's vengeance); 4.203 (the return past Cyrene, the recall, the Libyan attacks); 4.204 (Euesperides; the Barcaeans settled in Bactria, still inhabited "to my time"); 4.205 (Pheretime's death and Herodotus' comment). Also used: 2.161 (Apries' defeat and the Egyptian revolt), 3.13 (Cyrene and Barce submit to Cambyses; Cambyses scatters Cyrene's five hundred minae among his soldiers), 1.125 (the Maraphians and Pasargadae among the leading Persian tribes). Read in A. D. Godley's public-domain Loeb translation (1920-1925) in the PerseusDL canonical-greekLit TEI file tlg0016.tlg001.perseus-eng2, and checked section by section for 4.150-167 and 4.200-205 against the Greek of Godley's Loeb text in the same repository (tlg0016.tlg001.perseus-grc2).

2. Levels of evidence: Herodotus says (4.150, 4.154) that the Grinnus episode, the drought, Corobius and the lot are the Theraean account; Phronime and the birth of Battus are the Cyrenaean account; the two disagree entirely about Battus' origins, and agree about what followed. Sections I and II follow that division. Herodotus does not say he went to Cyrene or Barce, and the story claims no eyewitness. His own judgments are marked "I think" or "I believe" in four places: that Battus had another name and "battus" is Libyan for king (4.155); the pretext and the real purpose of the expedition (4.167); the Bactrian Barce still inhabited in his time (4.204; How and Wells note that no one now believes Herodotus was in Bactria); and the gods' resentment of excessive vengeance (4.205). Oracles, speeches and Euelthon's reply are Herodotus' reports, retold from the translation and the Greek without additions. Numbers (forty and sixteen years, seven thousand men, nine months) are his and are reported without judgment.

3. Key Greek: the stammer, "παῖς ἰσχόφωνος καὶ τραυλός"; Herodotus' view, "ὡς μέντοι ἐγὼ δοκέω, ἄλλο τι," "Λίβυες γὰρ βασιλέα βάττον καλέουσι"; the oracle, "Βάττʼ, ἐπὶ φωνὴν ἦλθες· ἄναξ δέ σε Φοῖβος Ἀπόλλων ἐς Λιβύην πέμπει μηλοτρόφον οἰκιστῆρα"; Battus' reply, "κελεύων Λιβύην ἀποικίζειν, τέῳ δυνάμι, κοίῃ χειρί;" (4.155); Grinnus, "ἐγὼ μὲν ὦναξ πρεσβύτερός τε ἤδη εἰμὶ καὶ βαρὺς ἀείρεσθαι" (4.150); the lot, "ἀδελφεόν τε ἀπʼ ἀδελφεοῦ πέμπειν πάλῳ λαγχάνοντα καὶ ἀπὸ τῶν χώρων ἁπάντων ἑπτὰ ἐόντων ἄνδρας" (4.153); the shooting, "καταγομένους ἔβαλλον καὶ οὐκ ἔων τῇ γῇ προσίσχειν" (4.156); the retort, "αἰ τὺ ἐμεῦ Λιβύην μηλοτρόφον οἶδας ἄμεινον, μὴ ἐλθὼν ἐλθόντος, ἄγαν ἄγαμαι σοφίην σεῦ" (4.157); Irasa by night and the sky, "συμμετρησάμενοι τὴν ὥρην τῆς ἡμέρης νυκτὸς παρῆγον," "ἐνθαῦτα γὰρ ὁ οὐρανὸς τέτρηται" (4.158); the land oracle, "ὃς δέ κεν ἐς Λιβύην πολυήρατον ὕστερον ἔλθῃ γᾶς ἀναδαιομένας, μετά οἵ ποκα φαμὶ μελήσειν" (4.159); Demonax, "τῷ βασιλέι Βάττῳ τεμένεα ἐξελὼν καὶ ἱρωσύνας, τὰ ἄλλα πάντα ... ἐς μέσον τῷ δήμῳ ἔθηκε" (4.161); the spindle, "ἄτρακτον χρύσεον καὶ ἠλακάτην, προσῆν δὲ καὶ εἴριον," "τοιούτοισι γυναῖκας δωρέεσθαι ἀλλʼ οὐ στρατιῇ" (4.162); the eight generations, "ἐπὶ μὲν τέσσερας Βάττους καὶ Ἀρκεσίλεως τέσσερας, ὀκτὼ ἀνδρῶν γενεάς, διδοῖ ὑμῖν Λοξίης βασιλεύειν Κυρήνης," "μὴ ἐξοπτήσῃς τοὺς ἀμφορέας ἀλλʼ ἀπόπεμπε κατʼ οὖρον," "μὴ ἐσέλθῃς ἐς τὴν ἀμφίρρυτον," "ἀποθανέαι καὶ αὐτὸς καὶ ταῦρος ὁ καλλιστεύων" (4.163); his end, "εἴτε ἑκὼν εἴτε ἀέκων ἁμαρτὼν τοῦ χρησμοῦ ἐξέπλησε μοῖραν τὴν ἑωυτοῦ" (4.164); the plea, "προϊσχομένη πρόφασιν ὡς διὰ τὸν μηδισμὸν ὁ παῖς οἱ τέθνηκε" (4.165); pretext and purpose, "αὕτη μέν νυν αἰτίη πρόσχημα τοῦ στόλου ἐγίνετο, ἀπεπέμπετο δὲ ἡ στρατιή, ὡς ἐμοὶ δοκέειν, ἐπὶ Λιβύης καταστροφῇ" (4.167); the shield, "κατὰ δὲ τὰ ὀρυσσόμενα ἠχέεσκε ὁ χαλκὸς τῆς ἀσπίδος" (4.200); the oath, "ἔστʼ ἂν ἡ γῆ αὕτη οὕτω ἔχῃ, μένειν τὸ ὅρκιον κατὰ χώρην" (4.201); the vengeance, "ἀνεσκολόπισε κύκλῳ τοῦ τείχεος" (4.202); Bactrian Barce, "ἥ περ ἔτι καὶ ἐς ἐμὲ ἦν οἰκεομένη ἐν γῇ τῇ Βακτρίῃ" (4.204); Pheretime's death, "ζῶσα γὰρ εὐλέων ἐξέζεσε, ὡς ἄρα ἀνθρώποισι αἱ λίην ἰσχυραὶ τιμωρίαι πρὸς θεῶν ἐπίφθονοι γίνονται" (4.205).

4. Names and wording: Thera is modern Santorini; Platea appears as Βλατέα in the Greek of 4.156; Etearchus of Oaxus is not the Ammonian king of the same name in 2.32; Loxias is a name of Apollo; the general Amasis shares his name with the Egyptian pharaoh. "ἰσχόφωνος καὶ τραυλός" is rendered "a thin voice and a stammer" (How and Wells, whose text reads ἰσχνόφωνος, note that the word first meant "thin-voiced" and came to mean "stammering"). "μηλοτρόφος" is "nurse of sheep." "ὁ οὐρανὸς τέτρηται," which Godley gives as "the sky is torn," is rendered literally "the sky has a hole in it"; How and Wells take it as a sign of fertility and abundant rain. "κάμινος" is a kiln or oven; "ἀμφορεύς" a two-handled jar; "ἀπόπεμπε κατʼ οὖρον" is "send them off with a fair wind" (Godley: "let them go unscathed"); "ἀμφίρρυτος" is "flowed around by water" (Godley: "the tidal place"). The brother who kills Arcesilaus in 4.160 is Ἁλίαρχος (Haliarchus) in the Greek of Godley's text as checked on Perseus, while the English of the same electronic edition has Learchus; Plutarch has Λάαρχος, and How and Wells write Learchus. The story follows the Greek checked. "τῶν περιοίκων" in 4.161 is "those living around them"; the Perseus English has "dispossessed Libyans," and How and Wells give two readings (dependants of the first settlers, or Libyans admitted to citizenship); no choice is made here. "ἀξιοθέητον" (4.162) is "well worth seeing"; "ἀγοράζοντα" (4.164) "as he went about the marketplace"; "ἀνεσκολόπισε" (4.202) "impaled on stakes." "Φερετίμης τῆς Βάττου" in 4.205 is translated by Godley "daughter of Battus"; by 4.162 Pheretime was the wife of the lame Battus and mother of Arcesilaus. How and Wells note that the words most naturally mean "daughter of Battus," in which case she was a daughter of Battus the Fortunate married to her nephew. The story calls her only "a woman of the house of Battus."

5. Other versions and tests of authenticity, set side by side without judgment: (a) Pindar, Pythian 4 (dated 462 BCE in the heading of Svarlien's translation on Perseus, for King Arcesilaus of Cyrene), lines 4-8: the priestess named Battus founder of fruitful Libya; lines 59-63: when Battus came to ask what release the gods would grant from his "hard-sounding voice," the "Delphic bee" hailed him three times as the destined king of Cyrene; line 65: the Arcesilaus of Pindar's day is the eighth of Battus' line. The ode says nothing of how the stammer was cured and has no limit of eight generations. Pythian 5 (same year), lines 57-62: loud-roaring lions fled in fear of Battus when he loosed on them his voice from across the sea, Apollo filling the beasts with dread so that his oracles would not go unfulfilled; line 87 calls the founder Aristoteles (Ἀριστοτέλης), and line 93 places his tomb at the edge of the marketplace. From this How and Wells conclude (note on 4.155) that Battus' real name was Aristoteles and "Battus" a title that became a name; they think the stammer legend was probably invented from the likeness of "Battus" to βατταρίζω, "to stammer," and that the oracle is after the event. (b) Pausanias 10.15.6-7 (translation of W. H. S. Jones and H. A. Ormerod, Loeb, on Perseus): the Cyrenaeans dedicated at Delphi a group of Battus in a chariot, with Cyrene holding the reins and Libya crowning him; and it is said that after founding Cyrene, Battus, touring the remote and still empty edges of the territory, saw a lion, and fright forced from him a loud clear cry, which cured his voice. (c) The Founders' Oath (IGCyr2 011000 = SEG 9.3 = Meiggs-Lewis 5; English translation in C. Dobias-Lalou, ed., Inscriptions of Greek Cyrenaica, 2nd digital edition, Bologna 2024): a stele found at Cyrene in 1922, dated by the editors to about 375-360 BCE. It carries a Cyrenaean decree restoring citizen rights to Theraeans, followed by the "oath of the founders": Apollo spontaneously ordered Battus and the Theraeans to settle Cyrene; Battus is sent as leader and king; one son is to sail from each family on equal terms; if the settlers cannot hold on within five years they may return to Thera as citizens; anyone chosen who refuses to sail is to die and lose his property, and anyone who shelters him likewise; wax figures were burned with curses that oath-breakers should melt away like them. This broadly matches the "brother from brother by lot" of 4.153 and adds clauses Herodotus does not have. The editors judge that a decree like the one in the second part could not have been passed in archaic Thera, and that the third part is not the oath formula itself but a narrative containing an oath; the debate on authenticity is listed in their bibliography (Graham 1960, JHS 80, 94-111; Jeffery 1961, Historia 10; Dobias-Lalou 1994; and others), which was not read for this story and is not summarized. A fourth-century stone claiming to copy an oath more than two centuries old was set up to restore citizenship to the Theraeans then living at Cyrene; the oath it records served as evidence for that claim, and should be read with that in mind, just as Herodotus reminds his readers that Theraeans and Cyrenaeans each had their own story. (d) The oracle of eight generations: How and Wells (note on 4.163) regard it as obviously made after the event, after the eighth and last Battiad king was deposed (about 460 BCE by their estimate); Pindar, praising the Battiads for Arcesilaus in the 460s, plainly knew nothing of it. If so, the oracle's effect on Herodotus' readers was to make the end of the dynasty look foreordained and to lay the blame on an Arcesilaus who would not heed it. The story follows Herodotus and only notes the question here. How and Wells also take "the place with water all around" to be Barce and "the finest bull" to be Alazir; Herodotus does not explain either. (e) Eryxo and the king's killer: Plutarch, Bravery of Women 25 "Eryxo" (Moralia 260D-261D; Babbitt's Loeb translation and the Greek on Perseus) tells it differently. Arcesilaus' killer is his friend Laarchus (Λάαρχος), not his brother; Laarchus gives him "sea-hare" in a drink so that he wastes away, rules in the name of the young lame Battus, and courts the widow Eryxo; Eryxo and her eldest brother Polyarchus lure him to her room at night and kill him, and Battus is proclaimed king; soldiers of the Egyptian king Amasis in Laarchus' service denounce them in Egypt, and Eryxo and her mother Critola go with Polyarchus to Egypt to answer, where Amasis praises her. How and Wells (note on 4.160) report that Polyaenus, Stratagems 8.41, also makes it a political murder, and that Nicolaus of Damascus follows Herodotus (these two were not read for this story; reported from How and Wells). (f) Cyrene's submission to Persia: in 3.13 Herodotus says Cyrene and Barce surrendered in fear after Cambyses took Egypt, and Cambyses, finding Cyrene's five hundred minae too little, scattered it among his troops with his own hands; 4.165 instead speaks of Arcesilaus' "good service" to Cambyses. How and Wells (note on 4.165) see two sources Herodotus did not reconcile, the Cyrenaean tradition having glossed over the submission. (g) The return past Cyrene (4.203): How and Wells find it full of suspicious elements (the oracle, the admiral's presence, the panic) and suggest a version made up from Cyrenaean vanity after the fall of the Battiads; they also cite Menecles of Barce (no earlier than the second century BCE), who has Pheretime at once set her grandson Battus on the throne and then put down a Cyrenaean revolt with a Persian army (FHG iv 449, fr. 2, cited at second hand from How and Wells). (h) The silver of Aryandes: Encyclopaedia Iranica, "Aryandes" (A. Sh. Shahbazi, vol. II, fasc. 7, 1987, pp. 683-684), notes that no "Aryandic" silver is known, calls Herodotus' account probably a distorted tradition, and cites Milne's alternative explanation. The story leaves the coinage out.

6. Date: Herodotus gives no year, only that the expedition was at the "same time" as Darius' Scythian campaign (4.145). The map time is "c. 513 BCE," following Encyclopaedia Iranica, "Aryandes" (Shahbazi 1987): "When Darius was campaigning in Europe (ca. 515/13 B.C.), Aryandes sent an army under two Persians to support Pheretime." How and Wells (note on 4.145) say there is no good reason to doubt the synchronism though most modern critics think it artificial, that the exact date cannot be fixed, and that it must be earlier than the suppression of Aryandes' "revolt"; the confidence is lowered accordingly. The traditional founding date of Cyrene, 631 BCE, rests on Eusebius, and Apries' attack fell about 570 BCE (How and Wells, note on 4.158); neither is put on the map.

7. Geography: Cyrene uses Pleiades place 373778, "Cyrene" (32.8200 N, 21.8565 E, near modern Shahhat, Libya). Barce uses Pleiades 373750, "Barke" (32.4997 N, 20.8717 E, near modern Al Marj, Libya), as an approximate marker. Thera, Delphi, Itanus and Oaxus in Crete, Platea (in the Gulf of Bomba according to How and Wells), Aziris, Irasa, the spring of Thestes, Leucon, Mantinea, Samos, Salamis in Cyprus, Cnidus, Euesperides (near Benghazi) and the Bactrian Barce are undated or appear only in the narrative, and are not mapped.

8. History and literary boundaries: the opening four paragraphs retell 4.155; the closing sentence of the opening ("Almost every step ... came with a word from Delphi") is the narrator's, resting on Delphi's repeated part in this story (4.150-151, 4.155-157, 4.159, 4.161, 4.163). "First the Theraeans" (Section I) and the opening of Section II follow 4.150 and 4.154. The scouting in Section I summarizes 4.151-153; the Samian ship (4.152) is left out. In Section III, "The god would not let them off" follows 4.157; "The later city of Cyrene stood near that spring" is the narrator's link, drawn from 4.156 (the oracle names "Cyrene in Libya") and How and Wells' note on 4.158 (the spring of Apollo is at Cyrene); the text does not say so here. The last sentence of Section IV, setting Irasa by night (4.158) beside the Egyptian defeat at Irasa (4.159), is the narrator's. In Section VII, "The trouble came with his son" is the narrator's transition. At the end of Section IX, "the man who fell with him was his father-in-law" follows 4.164; "I will not interpret for the god" is the narrator's stance, since Herodotus does not explain the bull. In Section X, "She had a debt to call in" is the narrator's phrasing of 4.165, and "This Amasis came from the Persian tribe of the Maraphians" draws on 4.167 and 1.125. The return in Section XIII summarizes 4.203. The second paragraph of Section XIV is a literary close summarizing 4.155, 4.162, 4.202 and 4.204; "a woman of the house of Battus" avoids the wife-or-daughter question in note 4.

9. Not covered here: the prologue of the Minyae from Lemnos to Sparta and with Theras to Thera (4.145-149); the Samian Colaeus' voyage to Tartessus (4.152); the customs and geography of the Libyan peoples (4.168-199); Aryandes' silver and execution (4.166; see note 5(h)); Amasis' marriage to Ladice of Cyrene (2.181).

10. Rights: the ancient text and Godley's translation (1920-1925) are public domain; the Greek was checked in short passages against PerseusDL's open TEI. How and Wells' Commentary on Herodotus (1912) is public domain in the United States. Plutarch (Greek and Babbitt's translation), Pausanias (Greek and the Jones-Ormerod translation) and Pindar (Greek and Svarlien's 1990 translation) were read on Perseus in short passages and are only paraphrased; the Founders' Oath was read in the IGCyr2 digital edition in short passages and is only paraphrased; the Encyclopaedia Iranica entry is cited for a date and one judgment. The Chinese and English stories are original contemporary retellings by Clio Walker. Coordinates come from the Pleiades gazetteer; Wikipedia and Wikidata were not used as historical evidence.