- 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-grc2:7.125.1
- Generated
- Humanitext Reader · reader.humanitext.ai · 2026-11-05
While Xerxes is marching toward Therme, a strange incident occurs where lions attack only the grain-carrying camels, and the author wonders about the cause.
πορευομένῳ1 δὲ ταύτῃ λέοντές οἱ ἐπεθήκαντο τῇσι σιτοφόροισι καμήλοισι. καταφοιτέοντες γὰρ οἱ λέοντες τὰς νύκτας καὶ λείποντες τὰ σφέτερα ἤθεα ἄλλου μὲν οὐδενὸς ἅπτοντο οὔτε ὑποζυγίου οὔτε ἀνθρώπου, οἳ δὲ2 τὰς καμήλους ἐκεράιζον μούνας. θωμάζω δὲ τὸ αἴτιον, ὅ τι κοτὲ ἦν τῶν ἄλλων τὸ ἀναγκάζον ἀπεχομένους τοὺς λέοντας τῇσι καμήλοισι ἐπιτίθεσθαι, τὸ μήτε πρότερον ὀπώπεσαν θηρίον μήτʼ ἐπεπειρέατο3 αὐτοῦ.4
As he was marching along this route, lions attacked his grain-carrying camels. For the lions, coming down by night and leaving their own haunts, would touch nothing else, neither baggage animal nor human, but would attack only the camels. And I wonder what the cause could have been that forced the lions to keep off from other things and set upon the camels, a beast which they had never seen before nor had any experience of.
- 7.125.1πορευομένῳ
Dative present participle referring to Xerxes, the subject of the previous section. It functions as a dative of reference or time/circumstance ("as he was marching").
- 7.125.1οἳ δὲ
Correlative to the preceding negative statement; the demonstrative pronoun with the particle contrastively emphasizes the lions ("but they...").
- 7.125.1ὀπώπεσαν ... ἐπεπειρέατο
Both are third-person plural pluperfect verbs with Ionic dialect features. The former is a pluperfect of the strong perfect, and the latter displays the middle-passive third-person plural ending -ato instead of -nto.
- 7.125.1τὸ μήτε πρότερον ὀπώπεσαν θηρίον μήτʼ ἐπεπειρέατο αὐτοῦ
A noun phrase in apposition to the preceding "camels," characterizing them as a beast they had neither seen before nor had experience of.