Herodotus, Histories 1.11.5 · 1.11.5
"From the very place where he displayed me"
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Herodotus — ἣ δὲ ὑπολαβοῦσα ἔφη
The Queen — ἐκ τοῦ αὐτοῦ μὲν χωρίου ἡ ὁρμὴ ἔσται ὅθεν περ καὶ ἐκεῖνος ἐμὲ ἐπεδέξατο γυμνήν, ὑπνωμένῳ δὲ ἡ ἐπιχείρησις ἔσται.
She answered him: "The onset will come from the very place where he displayed me naked; and the attack will be made while he sleeps."
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The setting
The queen answers. Her plan is the king's plan turned inside out.
A note on this passage
The queen's plan mirrors the king's point for point. The same room, the same hiding place behind the door; only now the one who is naked and defenceless in bed is Candaules, asleep. Justice in this story is a matter of symmetry: the harm returns by the road it came.
Her verb for what her husband did is epedexato, "he displayed me," the Ionic form of epideiknymi, "show off, put on show." It is from the same family as the apodexis, the "showing forth," with which Herodotus opened his book (1.0), and apodechthenta, the deeds "displayed" by Greeks and barbarians. The queen accuses Candaules of making her into an exhibit. The historian's whole project is exhibition. Herodotus lets the word sit there without comment, and the reader is left to feel the double edge.
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