- Source
- Herodotus. Godley, Alfred Denis, editor. Cambridge, MA; London: Harvard University Press; William Heinemann, Ltd., 1920-1925 (printing).
- Translation
- AI-generated (gemini-3.5-flash) — machine translation; may contain errors
- Languages
- 日本語 · English · 简体中文 · 한국어
- CTS URN
- urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0016.tlg001.humanitext-grc2:4.131.1-4.131.2
- Generated
- Humanitext Reader · reader.humanitext.ai · 2026-11-10
As Darius falls into perplexity, the Scythian kings send a herald with gifts of a bird, a mouse, a frog, and five arrows. When asked for their meaning, the herald tells the Persians to solve the riddle themselves.
πολλάκις δὲ τοιούτου γινομένου, τέλος Δαρεῖος τε ἐν ἀπορίῃσι εἴχετο, καὶ οἱ Σκυθέων βασιλέες μαθόντες τοῦτο ἔπεμπον κήρυκα δῶρα Δαρείῳ φέροντα ὄρνιθά τε καὶ μῦν καὶ βάτραχον καὶ ὀιστοὺς πέντε.
As this happened many times, at last Darius was in great perplexity, and the kings of the Scythians, having learned of this, sent a herald bringing gifts to Darius: a bird, a mouse, a frog, and five arrows.
Πέρσαι δὲ τὸν φέροντα τὰ δῶρα ἐπειρώτεον τὸν νόον τῶν διδομένων. ὃ δὲ οὐδὲν ἔφη οἱ1 ἐπεστάλθαι ἄλλο ἢ δόντα τὴν ταχίστην2 ἀπαλλάσσεσθαι· αὐτοὺς δὲ τοὺς Πέρσας ἐκέλευε, εἰ σοφοί εἰσι, γνῶναι τὸ θέλει τὰ δῶρα λέγειν.3
And the Persians questioned the one bringing the gifts about the meaning of the things being given. But he said that nothing else had been commanded to him except to deliver them and depart as quickly as possible; and he urged the Persians themselves, if they were wise, to discover what the gifts meant.
- 4.131.2οἱ
The dative singular personal pronoun in the Ionic dialect, equivalent to Attic αὐτῷ. It functions here as the indirect object of the passive infinitive ἐπεστάλθαι.
- 4.131.2τὴν ταχίστην
An adverbial accusative expression, originally with the ellipsis of the feminine noun ὁδόν (way, manner), meaning 'in the quickest way' or 'as quickly as possible'.
- 4.131.2τὸ θέλει τὰ δῶρα λέγειν
The verb θέλω with the infinitive λέγειν is an idiomatic construction meaning 'to mean' or 'to signify', with τὰ δῶρα as its subject. The entire clause is nominalized by the article τὸ and functions as the direct object of γνῶναι.