θέρους
—Thuc. divides the year into θέρος, consisting of about eight months
(Elaphebohon to Pyanepsion) and χειμών,
consisting of about four (Maimacterion to Anthesterion).
ἅμα τῷ σίτῳ ἀκμάζοντι
—‘just when the corn was
ripening’; about the middle of May, 428 B.C., before the harvest (καρποῦ ξυγκομιδή).
ἐγκαθεζόμενοι
—the form serves as an
aorist as well as a present.
ὥσπερ εἰώθεσαν
—sc. γίγνεσθαι, in the two previous
invasions. The plan had been started by Pericles.
ὅπῃ παρείκοι
—impers., though strictly ὁ θεός is the subject implied.
τὸν πλεῖστον ὅμιλον
—cf. II. 31
ὁ ἄλλος ὅμιλος ψιλῶν, ‘the main body.’
Outside Thuc. ὅμιλος is found only
in Herod., in tragedy, and in late authors.—The wasting of the
country was a tedious task that would devolve naturally on the
light-armed troops.
εἶργον τὸ μή
—for the constr., which is
common with verbs and phrases signifying
prevention ( Aesch.
PV. 252
ἐξελυσάμην βροτοὺς
| τὸ μὴ . . μολεῖν, and often in
Aesch.) cf. VI. 1
διείργεται τὸ μὴ ἤπειρος εἶναι (where
the MS. οὖσα is shown by many
imitations of the sentence by later authors to be a mistake).
τῶν ὅπλων
= τοῦ
στρατοπέδου, strictly the space in front of the quarters
where the arms were stacked; here the word marks the fact that the
light-armed could not with safety be withdrawn from the hoplites. 10. τὰ ἐγγὺς τῆς πόλεως
—i.e.
houses, trees, vineyards: we are not to suppose that
the Athenians cropped their lands annually for the benefit of the
Peloponnesian invaders.
οὗ
—the gen. as in μισθὸς τριῶν μηνῶν. The enemy remained
in Attica about thirty days: the longest invasion, that of 430 B.C.,
lasted forty days, the shortest, in 425 B.C., fifteen days.
Λέσβος ἀπέστη
—the gravity of this event
lay in the fact that Lesbos and Chios were the only two islands in
the Aegean that retained the position of independent allies of
Athens. These furnished manned ships, but not infantry or money. For
the narrative see Introd. p. xiii.
Μηθύμνης
—Methymna, the second town in
Lesbos, was under a democracy, Mytilene under an oligarchy.
βουληθέντες
agrees κατὰ σύνεσιν with Λέσβος: this change, in the case of
peoples, is especially common in Thuc.; and cf. c.
67,
3 ἠλικία . . ῶν. So with στρατιά, στράτευμα.
τῶν . . τήν
serve for all three pairs of
nouns.
χῶσιν
—the harbours were to be turned
into λιμένες κλῃστοί ( II. 94,
4): walls were carried across the mouth on artificial moles, and the
narrow opening left could be closed with a chain.
ἐπέμενον
—showing why they had put off
the revolt. The constr. with ἐπιμένειν
is here double: (1) τὴν . . ποίησιν
τελεσθῆναι, as in VII. 20
περιέμενε τὸν Χαρικλέα . . παραλαβεῖν:
(2) ὅσα . . ἔδει ἀφικέσθαι, an accusative clause. (It is objected that Thuc.
elsewhere uses ἐπιμένειν only as
intrans., but he uses e.g. μένω
and ὑπο‐ in both ways; and why not ἐπι‐?)
τοξότας
—as mercenaries.
μεταπεμπόμενοι ἦσαν
—cf. I. 99
ἦσαν . . ἄρχοντες,
II. 80
ἦσαν . . ξυμπροθυμούμενοι. Of course,
the periphrasis with pres partic. is much
less common than with perf., but it is not
different in principle. Passages like II. 67
οὗ ἦν στράτευμα πολιορκοῦν ‘where there
was a blockading army’ are quite different, the partic. not
belonging to the verb. In yet another case, like I. 38
τοῖς πλείοσιν άρέσκοντές ἐσμεν, the
partic. is a predicative adj.
ἰδίᾳ
—in contrast with what the
government was doing κοινῇ.
κατά
—often of the
motive or reason, e.g. II. 87
ξυμπαραγενομένων κατὰ φιλίαν.
πρόξενοι
—the fact that there were more
representatives of Athens than one at Mytilene might
show that the office was hereditary in a family, but more probably
the title of πρόξενος καὶ εὐεργέτης
had been granted by Athens to members of different Mytilenean
families. Aristotle in Pol. 1304 a says that
Dexander ἦρξε τῆς στάσεως καὶ τοὺς Ἀθηναίους
παρώξυνε πρόξενος ὤν: he had a private quarrel with a
member of the aristocratic party; from this small matter πολλῶν ἐγένετο ἀρχὴ κακῶν. In any case
it would have been the duty of the Proxenus to inform Athens of
movements in Mytilene unfavourable to her interests even before the war; but doubtless the quarrel was
now an exasperating motive to him, and led directly to the outbreak
of stasis, for it was a dispute about
property and intermarriage between families of the opposed parties.
ξυνοικίζουσι
—i.e. attempting to make the
island into a single πόλις under
one government, and in this case, an oligarchy.
ξυγγενῶν
— Lesbos being of Boeotian
(Aeolic) origin. To intervene on behalf of kinsmen was under all
circumstances deemed justifiable among Greek states.
εἰ μή τις
—‘unless they mean to,’ the fut.
indic. marking the urgency; cf. VIII. 91
εἰ μή τις ἤδη φυλάξεται.
νόσου
—during 430 and 429 B.C.
ἄρτι καθισταμένου
—‘just becoming
established’ (i.e. settled, chronic). Cf. I. 1
ἀρξάμενος (
ξυγγράψαι)εὐθὺς καθισταμένου.
If we render thus, it makes no difference whether Thuc. means the
ten years' or the twenty-seven years' war. In either case, ἀκμάζοντος shows that ‘in its infancy’
is wrong. But Classen's ‘in the middle period’ seems impossible: for
it is inconceivable that καθισταμένου τοῦ
πολέμοι should mean either ‘just beginning,’ as he
understands I 1,
or ‘in the middle’ at will. In V. 25
εὐθὺς ἄλλη ταραχὴ καθίστατο the verb
means not merely ‘arose,’ but ‘tended to become permanent,’ applying
to a period, not to a
moment.
ἀκμάζοντος—ἄρτι does not extend
to this. A period of
ἀκμή is of course meant. Athens was now beginning to feel
the strain on her finances (see c.
19
);
and her position in Chalcidice was very precarious. (Vollgraff
proposes to add ἤδη before ἀκμάζοντος, but this is not necessary.)
μεῖζον μέρος νέμοντες
—‘attaching greater
importance to their wish that it was not true’ (than to the
allegations). For ἀληθῆ cf. I. 8
πλωιμώτερα ἐγένετο νἐμειν μέρος or μοῖραν several times in tragedy: Aesch. PV. 294,Soph. Trachin. 1238
,Eur. Supp. 241;
cf. τὸ ἴσον νέμειν
I. 71,
ἔλασσον νἐμειν
VI. 88,
πλέον ν.
Eur. Hec. 868, c.
48,
1.
παρασκευήν
refers of course to the
preparations of c. 2, 2 (cf. c.
2,
3).
δείσαντες
—ingressive.
ἐξαπιναίως
—like
ἐξαπίνης, found only in Thuc. and Xen. among Attic prose
writers (for ἐξαίφνης or αἰφνιδίως).
περὶ Πελοπόννησον πλεῖν
—both in 431 and 430 B.C. when
the Pel. invaded Attica (II. 23, 56), a fleet
had been sent out to make descents on the coast of the Peloponnese,
as a counter-move. For the operations of this year see c.
16,
1; for those of 426 B.C. see cc. 91, 94.
Μαλόεις
was a local name of Apollo in
Lesbos; its origin is unknown.
πανδημεί
—the whole people together, not
by families or clans.
ἐλπίδα εἶναι
like εἰκός ἐστι, is commonly followed by
pres. or aor. infin.
ἐπειχθέντας
is conditional.
ἢν μὲν ξυμβῇ . . εἰ δὲ μή
—a common idiom, found already in
Homer; cf. e.g. Plato, Prot. 325B ἐὰν μὲν ἑκὼν πείθηται· εἰ δὲ μή.
εἰπεῖν
—this depends on the sense of
‘order’ implied in the passage; cf. Andoc. de
Myst. 20
ὁ γὰρ νόμος οὕτως εἷχεν· εἰ
μὲν τἀληθῆ μηνύσειέ τις, εἶναι τὴν ἄδειαν, εἰ δὲ τὰ ψευδῆ, τεθνάναι.
Of course εἰπεῖν =κελεῦσαι. (This passage is brief and
peremptory in tone: its dramatic manner is quite characteristic, and
there is no ground for suspecting the text.)
παρὰ σφᾶς
—put briefly for παρὰ σφᾶς παραγενόμεναι καὶ παροῦσαι:
similarly παρεῖναι is often found
with εἰς or ἐπί with accus.; but there is no
precise parallel to the present case.
ἐς φυλακὴν ἐποιήσαντο
—so
VIII. 1
ἐς άσφάλειαν ποιεῖσθαι. Cf. Andoc. de Myst. 117 θυγατέρες
αἳ ἐγίγνοντο ἔς τε ἐμέ καὶ Λέαγρον.
διαβάς
.—the sentence, containing five
participles, is an example of what Dionysius calls τὸ πυκνόν of Thucydides; Cicero speaks
of him as pressus, Quintilian as densus. The participles that denote closely
connected parts of the same action are joined by καί.
ἐπιτυχών
=ὡς
ἐπέτυχε.
πλῷ χρησάμενος
—‘after a good passage.’ πλῷ =εὐπλοίᾳ,
as in I. 137
.
(Some make πλῷ χρησάμενος merely = πλεύσας, but Antiphon V. 24
πλοῦς ἡμῖν ἐγίγνετο καὶ ἀνήγετο πλοῖα ἄπαντα
seems decisive.)
οὔτε . . τε
—a common idiom (cf. neque . . que or et),
by which emphasis is thrown on the second clause.
τά τε ἄλλα . . ἐφύλασσον
—‘and besides (τὰ ἄλλα,adverbial)
having protected with rapidly constructed defences all round the
half-finished (works) of the walls and docks they guarded them.’
This is the best way of taking this puzzling sentence. None of the
changes in the text that have been proposed is an improvement.
περί
is an adverb = πέριξ, as in Homer (Wilamowitz on Eur. HF. 1035).
l 1.
οἱ Ἀθηναῖοι
—the subject of the subord.
verb is put at the head of the sentence to contrast the action of
Athenians and Lesbians sharply; a good parallel occurs at VII. 32
οἱ δὲ . . πρέσβεις . . ἐπειδὴ . . ἔμελλον ἄξειν
τὸν στρατόν,ὁ Νικίας . . πέμπει. The
imperf.,
ἑώρων
(sc. τὰ
γιγνόμενα), is used because the action
overlaps that of ἀπήγγειλαν.
ἀπαράσκευοι
qualifies πολεμεῖν, and is therefore co-ordinate
with ἐξαίφνης: cf. e.g. I. 39
προύχοντα καὶ ἐκ
τοῦ ἀσφαλοῦς, and c.
13,
2 θᾶσσον γεγένηται καὶ ἀπαράσκευος
.
ἔκπλουν τινα
—for the use of τις cf. II. 22
ἱππομαχία τις βράχεια ἐγένετο.
ναυμαχίαν
—both dat. and accus. seem to
occur with ὡς ἐπί of intention;
but the MSS. often vary, as here.
πρὸ τοῦ λιμένος
—i.e. that harbour which was
used by the fleet (cc.
3
,
6; 6, 1), in which their ships had lam.
(Steup's suggestion that τοῦ ἑτέρου λ.
should be read is unnecessary.) Presently they were driven back into
this same harbour. The northern harbour is
meant. See Introd. P. xiv.
ὀλίγον
is accus. of space (cf. 104, 2); of time
II. 8
ὀλίγον πρὸ τούτων.
τὸ παραυτίκα . . ἀποπέμψασθαι
—‘get the ships withdrawn
for the time being,’ i.e. in order to gain time.
καί
‘accordingly.’
τῶν διαβαλλόντων
—see c.
2,
3. The partic. becomes a subst, as in οἱ
ἐπαγόμενοι
II. 2,
οἱ προδιδόντες
II. 5.
τὰς ναῦς
is not object of πείσειαν, but only subject of ἀπελθεῖν, τὰς ναῦς ἀπελθεῖν being an
exact citation of the proposal they would make in the Ecclesia,
which was to be for a permanent withdrawal.
The constr. is strange, however, and
ποιήσειαν has been proposed.
ἐν τῇ Μαλέᾳ πρὸς β. πῆς πόλεως
—the Malea that is known is the
SE. point of Lesbos, 70 stadia from the city. A solution of the
difficulty has been found, Introd. p. XV. (Those who suppose that
the SE. point of the island is meant, take πρὸς
β. τῆς πόλεως with ἀποστέλλουσι.
But from the narrative that follows, it is clear the A. were lying
to the north of the city (esp. c.
6,
1); and it is not likely they were so far distant as 70 stades. Some
are driven to suspect that ἐν τῇ Μαλέᾳ
may be corrupt or spurious.)
τοῖς
is neut., and
προχωρήσειν
is epexegetic.
διὰ τοῦ πελάγους
—crossing the Aegean
directly instead of sailing down the coast of Asia Minor, between
Chios and Erythrae, before crossing among the islands. The
alternative routes are clearly explained in
Odyssey III. 170 f. and the risks of that across the μέσον πέλαγος are indicated. (Cf.
Tozer, Islands of the Aegean, p. 170.)
αὐτοῖς
prob. = the Lesbians, and is dat. commodi with
ἔπρασσον, as in V.
76,
where those acting
for Sparta at Argos are called οἱ τοῖς
Λακεδαιμονίοις πράσσοντες. (Others take αὐτοῖς with
ἥξει, or refer it to the Lacedaemonians.)
καθεστός
—MS. evidence and analogy favour
the form in ‐ός for the neut.; but
etymology (‐άος) and the ancient
grammarians are for ‐ώς.
τοὺς γάρ
—cf. I. 40
τὸν νόμον μὴ καθιστάναι ὤστε τοὺς ἑτέρων
ἀφισταμένους δέχεσθαι.
ἐν ἡδονῇ ἔχουσι
—so ἐν
αἰτίᾳ, ἐν ὀργῇ, ἐν ὀρρωδίᾳ etc., cf. c.
34
,
3 and ἐν ἡδονῇ εἶναι
I. 99.
χείρους
—think worse of them for being
traitors.
οὐκ ἄδικος . . ἐστιν, εἰ τύχοιεν
—like
I. 120
ἀνδρῶν σωφρόνων ἐστίν, εἰ μὴ ἀδικοῖντο, ἡσυχάζειν.
Here οὐκ ἄ. . . .
ἐστιν=δίκαιόν
ἐστι χείρους ἡγεῖσθαι, and in such cases (see Goodwin, MT. § 555) the opt. is not seldom found. The
idiom should certainly not be regarded as abnormal. Cf. e.g. Plato, Gorg, 482 B ἔγωγε
οἶμαι κρεῖττον εἶναι . . διαφωνεῖν χορὸν ᾧ χορηγοίην.
Bayfield on Antig. 666 collects passages from
Soph. Presently
διακρίνοιντο
is by assimilation to τύχοιεν.
γνώμῃ
—‘feeling,’ ‘sentiment’;
εὐνοίᾳ
‘loyalty’ to each other. These
words, so frequent in Thuc. and orators, have various shades of
meaning; and of γνώμη it would be
rash to say that we can always be sure of its precise significance—
Classen has discussed γνώμη at
length in his Intr.—but here the parallel παρασκευὴ
καὶ δύναμις show that the two are closely similar in sense
(εὔνοια is the
intellectual aspect of γνώμη);
and c.
10
ἐν τῷ διαλάσσοντι τῆς γνώμης καὶ αἱ διαφοραὶ τῶν
ἔργων, where the meaning of γνώμη
is fixed by μετ’ἀρετῆς
δοκούσης and ὁμοιό
τροποι
, bears this
out. (εὔνοια of course implies
‘between equals’ here, not loyalty to a
superior.) Cf. also c.
12,
1.
μηδέ τῳ
—here and again at c.
67,
2 there should undoubtedly be only a comma before μηδέ. Thuc. never uses οὐδέ, μηδέ=‘and not,’ unless a neg.
clause precedes; and it is quite plain from what precedes—οὐκ ἄδικος αὔτη ἡ ἀξίωσις, viz. χείρους ἡγεῖσθαι, εἰ τύχοιεν—that ὃ . . οὐκ ἦν and μηδέ τῳ χείρους δόξωμεν εἶναι adhere
closely together.
ἐν τοῖς δεινοῖς
—for Athens; often used of the
troubles of war.
περὶ γὰρ τοῦ δικαίου καὶ ἀρετῆς
—to be asking for a ξυμμαχία when you have just abandoned
one is a position that needs some justification; so first they will
show that they were not guilty of ἀδικία
(cf. c.
12,
2) since they were in danger of being ‘enslaved,’ and that they were
actuated by the highest of motives, by ἀρετή,
unselfishness, regard for others, in that they wanted to ‘free
Greece.’ Hence their διπλῆ ἀπόστασις
(c.
13,
1) might well commend them to their hearers.—Only one article is
used because τὸ δίκαιον and ἀρετή are the two motives combined in
the διπλῆ ἀπόστασις.
πρῶτον
—this ‘first’ point—the question
of political morality—occupies in point of fact most of the speech.
βέβαιον
—always of two terminations in
Thuc. Stobaeus gives βεβαίαν here: βέβαιον ἂν has been suggested.
μετ’ ἀρετῆς δοκούσης ἐς
ἀλλήλους γίγνοιντο
—the subject, as Bloomfield
saw (and so Steup), is ἰδιῶται καὶ πόλεις:
many edd. from Poppo onwards understand φιλία
καὶ κοινωνία, but ἐς ἀλλήλους
is a serious objection to this. It does not seem, how
ever, that a case has been made out for explaining γίγνεσθαι μετά ‘to behave with’
(majority of edd.); in the parallels proposed, such as κατὰ ξυλλόγους γίγνεσθαι, the verb
means ‘to come into a certain condition or
situation’: and as γενέσθαι μετά τινος=‘to
be in the company of’ (e.g. Dem. LIV. 34
),
so μετ’ ἀρετῆς γίγνεσθαι should
mean ‘range themselves with,’ and so, ‘to adopt,’ ‘work with’ άρετή:ἀρετὴ
(as above) δοκοῦσα ἐς ἀλλήλους=‘the
supposition or assumption of mutual
unselfishness, that each in his dealings with the other is acting
unselfishly.’ So we may render ‘unless both begin with the
assumption that the other is behaving unselfishly.’
τἆλλα ὁμοιότροποι εἶεν
—‘and in all other respects
(besides that just mentioned) be like minded.’ Goller thought φίλοι was to be supplied out of φιλία as subj. to γίγνοιντο. Vollgraff thinks γίγνοιντο spurious and alters δοκούσης to
δοκήσεως with Herwerden, so that
μετ’=‘besides’ and καί
=‘also.’ γίγνοιντο and εἶεν are both needed, and are distinct
m meaning. So long as the union between Lesbos and Athens was to
further the resistance to Persia, both parties to the compact held
to the belief that the other was actuated by
άρετή: but when Athens began to pursue another purpose,
Mytilene gave up this belief, and the inherent difference of
intention became manifest.
ἐν γὰρ τῷ διαλλάσσοντι τῆς γνώμης
—‘in animorum
discrepantia’; the neut. partic. as abstract subst. (cf. the
corresponding διαφοραί) is a
favourite device of Thuc., though rare in other prose; Xen. Cyr.
IV.
5,
39 τὸ ἐλλεῖπον. Cf. e.g. II. 59
τὸ ὀργιζόμενον τῆς γνώμης,VII. 68
τῆς γνώμης τὸ θυμούμενον, for ὀργή and θυμός.
Thuc. likes to show the quality at work. The
constr., as Krüger says, is freely imitated by late authors.
καθίστανται
—‘become manifest’; cf. on c.
3
ξυμμαχία ἐγένετο
—referring to the
transference of the hegemony of the allies from Sparta to Athens in
476 B.C. (I. 95
).
In reality this transference was an
ἀπόστασις from the Spartan alliance (Ath.
Pol. c.
23
);
and the anxiety of Sparta to be quit of the war against Persia (ἀπαλλαξείοντες τοῦ Μηδικοῦ πολέμου
I. 95
)
was not shown until after the transference took place. Samos, Chios
and Lesbos were at the head of the movement in favour of Athens
(Plut. Arist. c.
23
).
(This passage well illustrates the freedom with which Greek orators
habitually manipulate history when they refer to the past.)
ἀπολιπόντων ἐκ
—this use of άπολείπειν seems to result
from such phrases as ἀπολείπειν τὴν
ξυμμαχίαν (c 9), so that the full
sense is ἀπολιπόντων (ἡμᾶς καὶ ἀπελθόντων).
Ἀθηναίοις
and
τοῖς Ἕλλησι
depend on ξύμμαχοι εγενόμεθα:τοῖς Ἕλλησι is the exaggeration of
rhetoric; for in reality they entered the Delian confederacy.
μέχρι
—‘so long as,’ a very rare use, not
noted in L. & S.; Xen. Hell.
I. 1,
6.
ἐπαγομένους
—this word, very common in
Thuc., regularly means ‘to invite,’ ‘call in.’ But here, in contrast
with ἀνιέντας, it is slightly
different, ‘procure for themselves,’ as in ἐπαγωγὴ
τῶν ἐπιτηδείων (Herbst).
ἀδεεῖς
—‘free from anxiety.’
διὰ πολυψηφίαν
—with ἀδύνατοι ὄντες. Each constituent state
had a vote in the synod of the League, but the allies were unable to
combine against Athens through their disagreements.
ἐδουλώθησαν
—i.e. became subject allies.
Cf. I. 98
πρώτη αὕτη πόλις ξυμμαχὶς (Naxos) παρὰ τὸ καθεστηκὸς ἐδουλώθη.
παραδείγμασι τοῖς
προγιγνομένοις χ.
—‘drawing our proofs (that
they were no longer πιστοί) from
what was previously happening,’ i.e. ‘taking warning from the line
of action that they had adopted.’ παράδειγμα
is an example by which a conclusion may be
supported.
τοῖς προγιγνομένοις=‘the
line of conduct that they were pursuing previously, and had not
ceased to pursue.’ (The aor. or perf. partic. is conjectured here as
in I. 23
τοὺς Ἀθηναίους ἡγοῦμαι μεγάγους γιγνομένους . .
ἀναγκάσαι ἐς τὸ πολεμεῖν, which alludes to the conduct of
Athens during the same period—between the formation of the
Confederacv to the beginning of the war—from a different point of
view. In both places the pres. partic., describing something still
in progress, seems better.)
οὐ γὰρ εἰκὸς ἦν . . . μὴ δρᾶσαι
τοῦτο
—to understand this sentence, it
is necessary to realize that δρᾶσαι
refers, not to the future, but to the past, as in c.
40,
5 ἐνθυμηθέντες ἂ είκὸς ἦν αὐτοὺς ποιῆσαι
κρατήσαντας ὑμῶν. The sense is ‘it was not likely that
they . . would not have treated those who were left in this way, if
only they had found any opportunity.’ We
should have been ‘enslaved’ had circumstances been favourable to
Athens: cf. I. 98
(ἐδουλώθησαν)καὶ τῶν ἄλλων ὡς ἑκάστῃ ξυνέβη.
(Dobree's δυνηθεῖεν makes the ref.
to the future.)
βεβαιότεροι
—the
personal constr. often found with ἄξιος,
δίκαιος, ἱκανός.
καὶ πρὸς τὸ πλέον . .
ἀντισουμένου
—(I should prefer to
insert ἂν before ἀντισουμένου, see Introd. p. xlii). The
text means ‘since in contrast, moreover, with the majority who were
already yielding, we alone still tried to keep on an equal footing
with them.’ These words do not add much to what has been already
said in ὑποχειρίους . . ὁμιλοῦντες,
but, as Classen put it, refer to the conduct of the Lesbians as
viewed by Athens.
τὸ ἡμέτερον
, not
ἡμεῖς, is used for the sake of the verbal contrast with τὸ πλέον. μόνου, if the text is sound,
is (as Steup points out), not a proper antithesis to τὸ πλέον, and it is an awkward
anticipation of the next clause, ἄλλως . .
ἐρημότεροι.
τὸ δὲ ἀντίπαλον δέος
—‘it is reciprocity of
apprehension alone,’ as distinct from one-sided
δέος. There is no objection to δέος, and no inconsistency with the
opening words of c.
12,
if the emphasis be put on ἀντίπαλον,
as on προύχων in the next
sentence, and if μόνον be taken as
qualifying ἀντίπαλον rather than πιστόν.
γάρ
—‘for in that case.’
ὅσον
—quatenus,
‘so far as.’
ἐς τὴν ἀρχήν
‘with a view to their empire.’
(I see no reason whatever for rejecting these words, as Kruger and
Steup do. They give the true object of the Athenian policy, and the
mention of ἀρχή is appropriate
enough in the presence of those who so strongly disliked it; cf. I. 75,
with II. 8.
)
γνώμης μᾶλλον ἐφόδῳ ἢ ἰσχύος
—‘by means of policy and
not of force.’
τὰ πράγματα . . καταληπτά
—‘they might make themselves
masters of the situation.’
ἅμα μέν
.—this is the λόγος εὐπρεπής that they used as
evidence that they were upright. The allies whom we attacked, they
eould say, must have been in the wrong; otherwise those who have a
vote in the confederacy equal to ours would never have been found at
our side. The
μή
is due to the protest implied in μ. ὲχρῶντο. If
ἄκοντας is right, it must be put briefly for ἄκοντας ἂν ὄντας, ‘but would have been
unwilling, unless’ etc. But this, even if possible, is extremely
awkward, whereas ἑκόντας, read in
a good scholium on this passage, gives the natural constr. and
sense.
ἐν τῷ αὐτῷ
=ἅμα:
so IV. 73.
τὰ κράτιστα
—for τοὺς
κρατίστους.
[τὰ] τελευταῖα
—it is clear that τὰ κράτιστα is object of
λιπόντες, and
τελευται—α is predicative; so that as there is no parallel
for the article, it should be omitted.
τοῦ ἄλλου
—neut. collective, and gen.
abs.
αὐτῶν
—in contrast with πρὸς ὅ τι χρὴ στῆναι (aid from others): πρὸς ὅ τι χρὴ στῆναι =ἡμᾶς τοὺς δυναμένους ἡγήσασθαι αὐτῶν
(schol.). For the simple ἵστασθαι
‘rally’ with πρός cf. IV. 56
πρὸς τὴν ἐκείνων γνώμην ἕστασαν.
ἐχειρώσαντο
—sc. τοὺς
ξυμμάχους.
τό τε ναυτικόν
—“a third
reason is here given for the policy of the Athenians, of leaving the
M. still independent,— namely, the apprehension of danger from
driving them to unite their navy with that of the Peloponnesians”
(Bloomfield).
καθ’ ἓν γενόμενον
—standing alone this phrase
would certainly mean ‘concentrating,’ ‘becoming united,’ as is
proved by such passages as Xen. Hell.
V. 2,
16 πῶς είκὸς ὑμᾶς τῆς μὲν Βοιωτίας
ἐπιμεληθῆναι ὅπως μὴ καθ’ ἓν εἴη, πολὺ δὲ μείζονος ἁθροιζομένης
δυνάμεως ἁμελῆσαι; This would give no point here, since
the whole fleet is of course meant by τὸ ναυτικόν. The accepted meaning
‘uniting with others’ is only to be got
through the addition, ἢ . . προσθέμενον,
which must be regarded as an explanation.
(Steup suggests that προσθέμενον
should be removed, so that καθ’ ἓν γ.
can be taken with the datives. I do not think it a likely note—in
fact there is a scholium, ἐς ταὐτὸ ξυνελθόν,
here—but I do think there is a difficulty, and possibly the first ή should be removed.)
τὰ δὲ καί
—‘to some degree also’; a fourth
and minor reason why the M. retained their independence. The schol.
divides θεραπεία into flattery of the Athenian people and gifts to the leaders of the demos; no doubt
these are included.
οὐ . . ἂν ἐδοκοῦμεν δυνηθῆναι
=οὐκ
ἂν ἐδυνήθημεν, ὡς ἐδόκει. δοκοῦμεν, read by Kruger (ἔτι δοκοῦμεν Steup) is simpler, but the
imperf., referring to the time of the revolt, does not exclude the
pres., and cf. c.
13
ἐνομίζομεν ἀποστήσεσθαι.
τοῖς
—‘what had happened.’
τίς
—‘what form of trustworthy friendship
or freedom was this turning out to be?’ i.e. how could we put any
confidence in a friendship or a freedom like that? (Dion. Hal. Antiq.
VI. 78
τίς οὖν ἡ τοιαύτη φιλία καὶ πίστις, ἐν ᾗ παρὰ
γνώμην άλλήλους θεραπεύειν ἀναγκασθησόμεθα
; seems to have found
ἡ, not ἢ, after αὕτη in his MS., and our MSS. have ἡ.)
παρὰ γνώμην
—‘without sincerity,’ οὐκ ἀπὸ γνώμης ἀλλ’ ἀπὸ γλώσσης μόνον.
ὑπεδεχόμεθα
—this word can be used of
every kind of reception or welcome afforded to a ξένος, short of rejection: e.g. in
Lycurgus § 133 οὐδεμία πόλις αὐτὸν εἴασε
παρ’ αὑτῇ μετοικεῖν is repeated in the form τοῦτον δὲ τίς ἂν ύποδέξαιτο πόλις;
ὅ τε . . πίστιν βεβαιοῖ, ἡμῖν τοῦτο
. . ἐχυρὸν παρεῖχε
— passages sometimes cited as
parallel to this (as II. 40
δ τοῖς ἄλλοις άμαθία μὲν θράσος, λογισμὸς δὲ
ὄκνον φέρει and IV.
125
ὄπερ φιλεῖ μέγιστα στρατόπεδα ἀσαφῶς ἐκπλήγνυσθαι)
bear little resemblance to it. If πίστιν,
which Stahl bracketed, is sound, we should assume, with Kruger, a
conflation of relative with epexegetic clause—ὃ εὔνοια βεβαιοῖ with εὔ. πίστιν βεβαιοῖ. A schol. already
takes this view; and unless the text is corrupt, no other
explanation can be entertained. (The other scholium is a mere
paraphrase, but its conclusion—διὰ τοῦτο
ἄπιστος ἦν ἡ φιλία ἀμφοτέρων—shows that the writer
discerned that in the whole passage, from τίς
οὖν to παραβήσεσθαι ἔμελλον,
the underlying idea, not clearly expressed, is that of a πίστις ἄπιστος. Both πιστή above and
πίστιν here have been removed by critics more intent,
perhaps, on the language than on the thought. ξύμμαχοι ὑπὸ δέους πιστοί are ξύμμαχοι ἄπιστοι.)
παράσχοι
—representing ὁποτέρους ἂν παράσχῃ in past sequence.
10
ἀσφάλεια
—‘sense of security.’
καί
—‘as a consequence’ of the θάρσος.
διὰ . . μέλλησιν
refers to δοκοῦμεν ἀδικεῖν: this might be a
reason for objecting that they should have waited till some wrong
was inflicted on them.
τὰ δεινά
=‘methods of coercion’; for the
whole cf. I. 25
κατὰ τὴν Φαιάκων προενοίκησιν τῆς Κερκύρας
.
εἰ γὰρ δυνατοί
.—with the text before us,
which (except for ἀντιμελλῆσαι)
follows the MSS., we must render, ‘had we been in a position both to
intrigue like them and to delay like them (i.e. to put off our
attack, but at the same time to have our plan of attack ready), what
need was there for us to remain, nevertheless, at their mercy?’ The
M. might of course defer the attack, but if they waited for the
Athenians to attack they were lost. This is fairly satisfactory, the
only difficulty being that ἐκ τοῦ ἴσου
and ἐκ τοῦ ὁμοίου (‘just as we
were,’ aeque atque fuimus) have no
correspondence. It is in connexion with the next sentence that
doubts arise. (1) ἐπιχειρεῖν
clearly corresponds to ἀντεπιβουλεῦσαι,
and προαμύνασθαι to ἀντιμελλῆσαι (or ἀντεπιμελλῆσαι); (2) the statement ‘we
need not have remained in their power’ is hardly equivalent to ‘we need not have revolted because we should have
retained our independence’; (3) ἐπ’ ἐκείνοις
εἶναι looks suspicious before έπ’
ἐκείνοις ὄντας. A great many changes have been proposed,
and those of Heilmann and Kruger indicated in the crit. note and
adopted by Classen give a much better correspondence and an improved
sense. Yet I do not feel that the objections to the MS. reading are
decisive. The general sense is: we cannot be blamed for taking the
first move merely because they delayed to take action against us.
τοιαύτας
—the asyndeton when a
demonstrative pron. sums up what precedes is common.
αἰτίας
is ‘grievances’ (Cornford), not
synonymous with προφάσεις.
σαφεῖς τοῖς ἀκούουσι γνῶναι
as in κάλλιστον ίδεῖν τοῖς φίλοις Xen. Oec.
VIII.
6
; but an unusual kind
of example. The words are appropriate to a pleader.
εἰκότως
—‘reasonably.’
βουλομένους
—what is to be supplied?
ἀποστήσεσθαι δ.
ἀπόστασιν
—the figura etymologica, as in VI. 56
τοὺς τὴν πομπὴν πέμψοντας,VIII. 58
κοινῇ πὸν πόλεμον πολεμούντων. It is
usually said that Thuc. plays upon the double meaning of ἀφίστασθαι here. (1) ‘abstain from.’
(2) ‘revolt from.’ With Poppo and Classen I cannot think this is so.
The passage clearly corresponds to c.
10
,
3 ξύμμαχοι ἐγενόμεθα οὐκ . . Ἀθηναίοις, ἀλλὰ
. . τοῖς Ἔλλησι, and the M. had ‘revolted from’ the Greeks
who formed the Delian league just as much as they had ‘revolted
from’ the Athenians. Nor is the view of the majority borne out by ἡ μέντοι ἀπόστασις κτλ.
ξὺν κακῶς ποιεῖν
—referring to καταδούλωσις τῶν Ἑλλήνων c.
10.
Cf. Xen. An.
V. 5,
21 ἂν μέν τις εὖ ποιῇ, ἀντ’ εὖ ποιεῖν
(ἀντευποιεῖν MSS.), ἂν δὲ κακῶς, ἀλέξασθαι (Stallbaum on
Plato, Gorg. 520 E).
προποιῆσαι
=
προ‐διαφθεῖραι.
χρή
—sc. ὑμᾶς
.
ᾗ καὶ μᾶλλον
i.e. in addition to the δίκαιον and
ἀρετή (c.
10,
1) or doing so.
βοήθειαν ἀποστέλλειν
—the M. really
suggest two plans, both of which were adopted
(c.
15
,
1; 16, 3; cf. 25, 1), viz.
(1) that a fleet shall be sent to Lesbos, and (2) that there shall
be another invasion of Attica, though there had already been one
this year. But the second proposal is put
forward only as according with the interest of Sparta (either the
enemy will not resist you, or—if they do—they must withdraw from the
Peloponnese (cf. § 3) as well as from Lesbos, § 4). The second
proposal only was at
first carried out, but it did not have the desired effect (c.
16
,
2). In the following year, accordingly, both schemes were to be
carried out concurrently (c.
26
),
but even then the Pel. were slack about no. 1 (c.
27
,
1). (I see no ground for thinking the text deficient here, as Steup
supposes. The two courses are not proposed as alternatives, and, on
the other hand, they are with good reason not announced as two parts
of a scheme for helping Lesbos.)
καὶ ἐν τῷ αὐτῷ
—this point is explained in what
follows: so far it has not been touched upon. To this
καιρὸς . . πρότερον
refers.
ἐφθάραται
—the old plur. terminations in ‐αται, ‐ατο, are rarely found in Attic
prose, as Xen. An.
IV. 8
,
5: Thuc. varies.
αἱ μέν
—see c.
7
.
περιουσίαν νεῶν ἔχειν
—a number large enough
to protect the harbours and coast of Attica without recalling those
that were out. This forecast was entirely falsified by the event;
but it might very well be entertained because (1) in spite of the
fall of Potidaea (in 429 B.C.), no Athenian fleet had been sent out
to the Peloponnese in 429; (2) only thirty ships had been sent out
this year in answer to the Spartan invasion of Attica, whereas in
431 and 430 the number had been 100; (3) late in 429 a Peloponnesian
fleet had made an abortive attempt to seize the Piraeus: reflexion
on the result of this mismanaged affair may have led them, with good
reason, to underrate the naval resources of Athens.
ἐπεσβάλητε
—‘make an
additional invasion’: τὸ δεύτερον
emphasizes the ἐπ‐.
ᾧ γὰρ δοκεῖ . . παρέξει
—‘if anyone is thinking that L.
is far away, the advantage will be given to him close at hand’; that will come home to him.
ἐν τῇ Ἀττικῇ ἔσται
—‘will turn on Attica, but (on
the country) through which . . ,’ i.e. ἐν τῇ
ξυμμαχικῇ; the issue depends on the action of the ξύμμαχοι The need is to transfer the
resources (cf. ὠφελίαν . . ὠφελεῖται)
of the ξύμμαχοι from the Athenian
to the Spartan side. Cf. Tac. Hist.
II. 28
sin victoriae columen in Italia verteretur.
οἱ πρὶν δουλεύοντες
—i.e. those who were made ὐποτελεῖς before us.
βοηθησάντων
—a remarkable ex of the gen.
abs. where the subject of the verb is the same; cf. c.
112
,
6.
εἴχετε
—‘have up till now’ is the meaning
given by Poppo; but ‘had’ before the war is more natural, and more
in accordance with the action of Sparta.
ἐλευθεροῦντες
—a good point: at the
outbreak of the war the Lac. had claimed to be ‘the liberators of
Greece.’
διὰ κατάγνωσιν ἀσθενείας σφῶν
=διὰ τὸ
καταγνῶναι
σφῶν
ἀσθένειαν, i.e. σφῶν
depends on κατάγνωσιν. On what the
‘imputation’ was based can be seen from c.
13.
τὸ ἐπὶ Λέσβῳ ναυτικόν
—the suggestion of the
speaker in c.
13
was απ’ αμφοτέρων (Lesbos and
Peloponnese) ἀποχωρήσονται: but
what is mentioned in c.
7,
3 had meantime occurred.
αὐτοί
—these, as the restriction shows,
consisted of the ζευγῖται and θῆτες. The two higher classes served on
board only in times of great danger.
παρὰ τὸν Ἰσθμὸν ἐπίδειξιν
ἐποιοῦντο
‘made a demonstration
along the coast of.’ With ἀναγαγόντες
instead of the ordinary ἀναγαγόμενοι
cf. Herod. VI. 12
ἀνάγων τὰς νέας.
ἀποβάσεις
—the plan of making descents on
the enemy's coasts as a counter-move to the invasion of Attica had
been started by Pericles.
ἄπορα νομίζοντες
—‘thinking (the
situation) difficult,’ a characteristic use of the neut. plur.
without subst., as in I. 8
πλωιμώτερα ἐγένετο.
καὶ αἱ περὶ τὴν Π. τριάκοντα νῆες
‘the thirty ships that were
about (off the W. coast) the Pel. as well.’ If
the text is sound, the thirty ships of c.
7
must surely be meant: it is true that c.
7,
3 shows that the majority of these ships, at any rate, were no
longer ravaging the coasts; but the Lac. are misled by an inaccurate
report. Chambry, however, suggests that the eighteen ships referred
to in c.
7,
3 had subsequently rejoined the other twelve; if so, it is strange
that Thuc. has omitted to mention this.—The edd. who delete τριάκοντα point out that from c.
13,
3 it is clear the Lac. knew already about the doings of this earlier
fleet. But (1), the Lesbian speaker does not say that the fleet was
actually ravaging the coasts; and (2) in any case, if c.
13,
3 is in point here, so is c.
13,
4, and there the expectation is that the fleet will be withdrawn.
Why should not the Lac. have fresh information—inaccurate—that the
expectation had been falsified? The second
καί
=‘also,’ i.e. as well as the new
fleet which was making ἀποβάσεις
(§ 2). Those who omit τριάκοντα
understand the fleet of 100 ships mentioned just before. This is of
course possible, but the passage admits of a simple explanation as
it stands; and it is hardly likely that the 100 ships could so soon
be reported as ravaging the coasts.
τὴν περιοικίδα
—land belonging to the περίοικοι in Messenia seems to be
meant.
ὕστερον
—it was not sent at once, c.
25.
ὅ τι πέμψουσιν—ὅστις because of
the purpose.
ἐπήγγελλον
—a technical word for sending
out a formal notice, which may amount to a
command. Cf. περιαγγἐλλω.
ναύαρχον
—an office held for a year. The
admiral in war was almost as important as the kings, who eommanded
the land-forces. His power increased when the Spartan navy became
greater.
εἶδον
—sc.
ἀναχωρήσαντας: cf. e.g. II. 11
δῃοῦν μᾶλλον ἢ τὴν ἑαυτῶν δρᾶν, sc. δῃουμένην.
I reluctantly agree with Steup that this ch. is spurious. Apart from
peculiarities of language, it seems impossible to reconcile § 2 with the
facts given in Bk. II. about the Athenian fleet ἀρχομένου
τοῦ πολέμου. (1) The 100 ships here said to be guarding Attica,
Euboea and Salamis are not mentioned in Bk. II. They cannot be the 100 νῆες ἐξαίρετοι of which we read in II. 24.
Those ships were docked, and were certainly not
ἐνεργοί: (2) αἱ περὶ Ποτείδαιαν κτλ.
makes the total 250 wrong, for we know that the number of ships at Potidaea
alone was seventy, and, even if we conjecture that some of them had been
withdrawn, there is yet another fleet of thirty sent περὶ
τὴν Λοκρίδα καὶ Εὐβοίας ἅμα φυλακήν (II. 26
) to be counted
in; (3) it is diffieult to see why in § 4 the 1,600 men with whom Phormio ἀπετείχισε τὸ ἐκ τῆς Παλλήνης (I. 64
)
should be reckoned in counting the expenses of the siege of Potidaea, and
the 4,300 whom Hagnon took there after Phormio's departure (II. 58
)
omitted in the computation; (4) the digression on the numbers of the first
year of the war, when we look for a reasoned comparison between the numbers
of 431 and 428 is very odd; (5) if 100 ships were guarding Attica, Euboea
and Salamis, why should the fleet of thirty have been sent out to guard
Euboea? As Busolt says, the author of this chapter has overlooked the fleet
of thirty.
l 1.
κατὰ τὸν χρόνον τοῦτον ὅν
—i.e. καθ’
ὄν, according to a common idiom; cf. Soph. OC. 748
ἐς τοσοῦτον αίκίας πεσεῖν |ἔδοξ’,ὅσον πέπτωκεν ἥδε
.
ἐν τοῖς πλεῖσται δή
—for the fem. cf. c.
82,
1 (στάσις)ἐν
τοῖς πρώτη ἐγένετο. Pre-eminence is not necessarily
implied in any of the examples of this idiom, and Herbst is perhaps
right in saying that prominence only is meant. The latter must be
the point here, because of παραπλήσιαι δὲ
καὶ ἔτι πλείους.
δή
heightening the superlative is not
elsewhere added to this idiom.
αὐτοῖς
—with
ἐγένοντο.
ἐνεργοὶ †κάλλει
makes no sense. ἐνεργός, though not
elsewhere applied to ships, is well suited to them, ‘on active
service,’ ‘in commission’; and it may be that the note in Hesychius αἱ μὴ ἀργαί alludes to this passage.
But κάλλει must be corrupt, for
the rendering ‘effective by their fine condition’ is not possible.
Herbst's conjecture ς/ καὶ λ/,
i.e. 230, is plausible; but in order to make up so great a total, he
assumes a fleet of sixty ships for guarding the eoast of Attica.
Were this so, we should surely have heard of it at c.
16,
2 among the reasons that caused the Pel. to abandon the invasion;
and even though we are left to collect the number of ships at sea in
428 B.C., this large item in the total must have been mentioned somewhere. Still, the interpolator may have
reckoned the total at 230 by the same proeess, whatever it was, that
led him to 250 for 431 B.C. below. The number, however, does not
come in naturally after ἐν τοῖς πλεῖσται.
A very good sense would be got by μιᾷ πόλει
(Widmann).
τήν τε γὰρ Ἀττικήν
—referring to the first year
of the war; but there is no mention of such a fleet in the account
of that year.
περὶ Πελοπόννησον
—this fleet had been
sent out by Pericles as a counter-stroke to the invasion of Attica.
χωρὶς δέ
—‘besides,’ sc. ἦσαν, which is implied in the context.
τοῦτο
—i.e. the sending out of these
armaments. In a somewhat similarly vague way
μετὰ Ποτειδαίας
is used for μετὰ τῆς Ποτειδαίας πολιορκίας, with
which should be compared II. 13
ἐς Ποτείδαιαν ἀπανηλώθη, ‘money was
spent on the siege of P.’ It is strange that the expenses of the army at Potidaea, as distinct from the
expenses of the fleet there, should be
brought in so vaguely.
δίδραχμοι
—half a drachma a day was the
ordinary pay for a hoplite: here it is one drachma for the hoplite
and one for his servant.
ἐλάμβανε
—we should expect ἕκαστος ἐλάμβανον or ἐλάμβανεν. It is the omission of a
singular subject to which the verb is attracted that is remarkable:
edd. note that this omission is frequent in Herod.
ὧν οὐκ ἐλάσσους
—when Potidaea revolted in
432 B.C., 3000 Athenian hoplites had been sent to besiege it. It
seems that the permanent force was maintained at this number
throughout the siege.
οἳ προαπῆλθον
—these 1600 had been sent
to blockade Potidaea from the south (I. 64
)
soon after the revolt. They were withdrawn from Chalcidice before
the place fell.
τὸν αὐτὸν μισθόν
—viz. one drachma per man, or
double the ordinary wage (VI.
31
).
τοσαῦται δή
—referring still to the παραπλησίαι καὶ ἔτι πλείους (§ 1); so
that the digression extends to the end of the chapter.
ἔτι γάρ
—about the middle of September in
the previous year the Pel. had turned the siege of Plataea into a
blockade They had withdrawn the greater part of their army, leaving
a garrison to guard half their lines, while the other half was
guarded by the Boeotians.
τῷ τε σίτῳ ἐπιλείποντι
—equivalent to τῇ σιτοδείᾳ. ἐπιλιπόντι all MSS.: other
aecounts are not deeisive in favour of the present.
τιμωρίας
=
βοηθείας, as often in Thuc. The Athenians had promised to
help Plataea when the siege began, but their hands had since been
full owing to the plague, the siege of Potidaea and the revolt of
Lesbos. See further, Introd. p. xvi.
ἐσηγησαμένων
—cf.
VI. 99
οὐχ ἥκιστα Ἑρμοκράτους ἐσηγησαμένου.
ἀνδρὸς μάντεως
—together.
ἐστρατήγει
—the opinion of a general
supported by a μάντις would carry
great weight.
ἀπώκνησαν . . τὸν κίνδυνον
—cf. c.
30,
4.
ἐς δὲ . . . μάλιστα
—the phrase with prep. stands
as subject of the verb. In Andoc. I. 37
εἰς τριακοσίους is presently repeated
in the form μάλιστα τριακοσίους.
For ἐς and
μάλιστα often used together cf. e.g. c.
90,
3 περί and
μάλιστα, Dem. XXI.
154,
περί and ἴσως,
Herod. III. 159
μάλιστα ἐς.
ἐνέμειναν
—as in ἐμμένειν
τοῖς ὅρκοις etc.
τρόπῳ τοιῳδε
is added κατὰ σύνεσιν.
l 18.
ξυνεμετρήσαντο
—it is possible to supply τὸ τεῖχος or τὰς
κλίμακας, but § 4 strongly favours the latter.
ἐξαληλιμμένον
—‘whitewashed.’ The ἐξ‐ probably denotes
completion: the whitewashing had not been finished at one part
of the wall.
ἠριθμοῦντο . .
ἀριθμοῦντες
—for the rapid
passage from mid. to act. ef. II. 9
ναυτικὸν παρείχοντο . . πεζὸν παρεῖχον.
ἐς ὃ ἐβούλοντο τοῦ τείχους
—sc.
καθορᾶν, or perhaps rather ὁρᾶν
:τοῦ τείχους agrees with καθορωμένου, and ἐς ὃ έβουλοντο=‘as far as they wanted
to see it,’ i.e. a sufficiently wide piece
was visible. The objection to this is that ἐς
ὅ for ὁσον or ἐς ὅσον does not oecur elsewhere. In
Herod. ές ὅ means ‘until’ with
aorist or hist. pres. or iterative imperf.; but in Thuc. V. 66
ἐς ὃ ἐμέμνηντο=so far
as (of time), a use not found elsewhere;
and it is possible by Gk. usage of a prep. and neuter adj. or pron.,
that the phrase should denote time or place: e.g. ἐξ ὀλίγου
of time
II. 11,
of place
II. 91,
and so with ἐκ πολλοῦ. Two other
views of this passage, not involving change of the text, must be
noticed: (a) taking τοῦ
τείχους as agreeing with
καθορωμἐνου ‘as the wall was completely visible to the desired point’ i e. to the foot of the wall, viewed from above; but we
should expect this meaning to be expressed directly and clearly. (b) Taking τοῦ τείχους
as depending on ἐς ὅ, ‘as they
easily looked down upon the part of the wall
that they wished to see,’ i e. καθορωμένου
(τούτου)ἐς
ὃ τοῦ τείχους ἑβούλοντο (ὁρᾶν).
This is very awkward and we should expect
καθορῶντες. The alterations proposed are (a)ὅσον for ἐς ὅ, Stahl, or (b)
to insert an infin., as ἀναβῆναι
after ἐβούλοντο (Stein).
τὴν ξυμμέτρησιν . . ἔλαβον
—for the periphrasis with λαβεῖν cf. e.g. Soph. Phil. 1078
φρόνησιν λαβεῖν. Presumably the height
arrived at by the majority was accepted as correet.
τῆς πλίνθου
—collective; so in II. 9, 4
λίθοις καὶ κεράμῳ,
cf. e. 74, 1, II. 76
κάλαμος. The meaning is that, having
counted the layers, they found the height of the wall by
multiplication.
οἰκοδομήσει
—Thue. is partial to nouns in ‐σις· ὀλόφυρσις, ξυμμέτρησις, κατάφευξις
etc.
πρός
—‘on the side towards,’ an idiomatic
use common with localities, πρὸς τοῦ
λιμένος, τοῦ ποταμοῦ and so on.
τὸ οὖν μεταξὺ τοῦτο
—‘this intervening space was
oceupied with buildings assigned as quarters to the sentries.’ So
Stahl, who views τὸ μεταξύ as
subjeet, and οἰκήματα as internal
accus., as in τὸ ἐναντίον ὄνομα μετωνόμασται
I. 122.
Steup agrees with this rendering, but he is inelined to retain οἱ ἑκκαίδεκα πόδες and he regards οἰκήματα as pred. nom. Another view,
which is to be rejected, is that τὸ μεταξὺ
τοῦτο is adverbial accus., ‘in this space,’ and οἰκήματα subject of ᾠκοδόμητο: the constr. is then very
strained, and the perf. partic.
διανενεμημένα unnatural, implying that the quarters were
distributed before they were built.
ἦν ξυνεχῆ
—I agree with Steup in
rendering ‘it was (all) continuous,’ without any definite subject,
as in I. 8
πλωιμώτερα ἐγένετο, and cf. II. 3
ἁμάξας . . ἐς τοὺς ὁδοὺς καθίστασαν, ἵν’ ἀντὶ
τείχους ᾖ, for it was not only the guards' quarters, but
the two parallel walls as well that ‘looked like one thick wall.’
διὰ δέκα δὲ ἐπάλξεων
—‘at an interval of ten,’
i.e. with the plur., ‘at intervals of ten,’ as in Isoer. IV. 46
αἱ πανηγύρεις διὰ πολλοῦ χρόνου συλλεγεῖσαι
.
ἰσοπλατεῖς
—cf. ἰσομηκής,
ἰσοπαχής, ἰσοπληθής.
καὶ τὸ ἔξω
—for καὶ
ἐς τὸ ἔξω, cf. c.
44
περἱ τοῦ μέλλοντος μᾶλλον . . ἢ τοῦ παρόντος.
The first καί, ‘and,’ is deleted
by Herbst, but the predicative οἱ αὐτοί
can eome in the second clause.
παρὰ πύργον
—Thuc. might have written παρὰ τοὺς πύργους, but the art. is
omitted and the sing used collectively as in
II. 13
παρ’ ἔπαλξιν, for which we might have παρὰ τὰς ἐπάλξεις. (This is better than
‘past a tower,’ because of δῑ αὐτῶν
.)
παρεσκεύαστο
—impers., as often.
τηρήσαντες
—cf. τηρεῖν
ἄνεμον
I. 65,
τ. πορθμόν (‘passage’) VI. 2.
τάφρον
—between the town and the τεῖχος. See Introd. p.
xix.
προσέμειξαν
—‘reached.’
ἀνά
occurs only twice in Thuc., here and IV. 72
:
with the temporal use here cf. Herod. VIII. 123
ἀνὰ τὸν πόλεμον τοῦτον. “In the local
sense espeeially, but also in the temporal,
ἀνά frequently occurs in Homer and Herod. The constr. is
eommon in Xenophon, but seems to oceur in no other Attic prose
writer” (C. F. Smith).
ψόφῳ
depends on
ἀντιπαταγοῦντος only,
κατακουσάντων being absolute, like
προϊδόντων. The gen. abs., in spite of the aceus. (φύλακας), is eommon in Gk.
μή
belongs to both partic. and verb.
αἴσθησιν παρέχοι
—cf.
II. 4
αἴσθησις ταχεῖα ἐπεγένετο.
τὸν ἀριστερὸν μόνον πόδα
—instead of both feet, as would
normally have been the case. The plain statement of Thuc. therefore
is that by leaving off the right sandal the men expected to get a
firmer footing in the mud. (The schol. says ὑπεδέδεντο
τὸν μὲν ἕνα τῶν ποδῶν δῑ ἀσφάλειαν, τὸν δὲ ἕτερον γυμνὸν εἶχον διὰ
κουφότητα, and many edd. follow this view; but this is
eertainly not what Thuc. says, and it is not a question of what we
might think to be the effeet of sandals or no sandals. Thuc. took it
that the right foot was meant to get the
firmer hold.)
προσέμισγον πρὸς τὰς
ἐπάλξεις
—I should prefer a
comma at προσέμισγον, because πρὸς τὰς ἐπάλξεις does not go closely
with the verb, but is added to make κατὰ
μεταπύργιον clear. (As Steup says, the
towers had no battlements, so that πρὸς
τὰς ἐπάλξεις does not refer to the wall as a whole. But
there is no need to alter the text with him.)
μετὰ δὲ αὐτὸν . . ἀνέβαινον
—this still refers to the ψιλοὶ δώδεκα, and merely repeats the
previous ἀνέβαινον with the
addition of the intention of this party: on
reaching the top they were to turn to left and right. The awkward
repetition is due to the breaking of the thread of the previous
sentence by the words καὶ πρῶτος ἀνέβη
.
l 29.
ἀντιλαμβανόμενος
is absolute.
δοῦπον
—as the rarer word this may be
right, but ψόφον is an early
variant.
βοή
—‘an alarm.’
ἐπὶ τὸ τεῖχος
—the garrison troops came out
and made for their posts at the wall. See Introd. p. xviii.
ὅ τι ἦν
—contrast v. 54
ῃδει δὲ οὐδεὶς ὅποιστρατεύουσιν.
Goodwin, MT. § 674 3
καὶ ἅμα . . προσέβαλον
—this gives another reason why they did not know ὄ τι ἦν τὸ δεινόν: hence strictly we
should have καὶὅτι οἱ
κτλ.: cf I. 110
τοῦτον δὲ διὰ μέγεθός τε τοῦ ἕλους οὐκ ἐδύναντο
ἑλεῖν,καὶ ἅμα μαχιμώτατοί εἰσι τῶν Αἰγυπτίων οἱ
ἕλειοι.
τῶν Πλαταιῶν
—partitive gen., which
Thuc., differing from other authors, often puts between an art. and
partic., as I. 9
οἱ τὰ σαφέστατα Πελοποννησίων δεδεγμένοι,
ib. 48
ταῖς ἄριστα τῶν
νεῶν πλεούσαις, and below, c.
36,
5.
ἐκ τοὔμπαλιν ἤ
—cf. τοὐναντίον
ἤ, which generally shows a variant reading ᾖ. In Xen. Anab.
III. 5,
13 εἰς τοὔμπαλιν ἢ πρὸς Βαβυλῶνα
is probably incorrect, but the text shows the idiom.
ἐθορυβοῦντο μὲν οὖν
—‘thus, remaining at
their post (on the wall), they were in a state of excitement. yet
not one dared to move from his own station, but they were at a loss
to make out what was happening.’ ἑαυτῶν
goes back to the subject of ἐθορυβοῦντο.
ἑαυτῶν here is to be preferred to
αὐτῶν: but in c.
91,
2 τοὺς Μηλίους οὐκ ἐθέλοντας ἐς τὸ αὐτῶν
ξυμμαχικὸν ἰέναι ἐβούλοντο προσαγαγέσθαι, the pers. pron.
may be right, since ipsorum, not suum may be meant.
l. 43
ἐχώρουν ἔξω τοῦ τείχους
—i.e. they descended from
the wall on the outer side, supposing that the alarm meant that some
force was approaching from Athens. In the darkness and excitement
these 300 had not communicated with the men in the towers who had
raised the alarm. 44
φρυκτοὶ πολέμιοι—λαμπάδες πολεμίους
δηλοῦσαι schol.
ὅπως ἀσαφῆ . . ᾖ καὶ μὴ
βοηθοῖεν
—the timehonoured example
of interchange of subj and opt after a past tense. Cf. VI. 96
ἐξέκριναν ὅπως εἴησαν φύλακες καὶ . . .
παραγίγνωνται, where no difference of meaning can be
detected. See M.T. § 321. Analogous is the
interchange of moods in c.
113,
2.
οἱ δ’ ὑπερβαίνοντες
—all who were attempting
to escape, whatever they were doing, are regarded as one body; but
presently they are divided into οἱ μέν,
those already on the wall, and οἱ δέ,
those who were still below. The result is a very ugly sentence. 4. ἑκατέρου
—see
c.
22,
3.
τάς τε διόδους
—Steup, following Poppo,
renders ‘and,’ making the parenthesis extend from ὠς to
ἐπιβοηθεῖν, because, if τε is regarded as correlative to καί, the sense of τάς τε διόδους . . ἐπιβοηθεῖν is
absurdly repeated in κάτωθεν (i.e. ἀπὸ τῶν διόδων)
εἶργον. It will be noticed that, if ἐφύλασσον μηδένα δῑ αὐτῶν ἐπιβοηθεῖν
were absent, the sentence would be perfectly iegular in outline: οἱ δ’ ὑπερβαίνοντες τάς τε διόδους ἐνστάντες καὶ
κλίμακας προσθέντες, οἱ μὲν καὶ κάτωθεν (i.e. ἀπὸ τῶν διόδων)καὶ
ἄνωθεν (i.e. ἀπ’ ἄκρων τῶν πύργων
)εἶργον κτλ. I think that this is
a sign, not that the interrupting words are spurious— they are quite
in Thuc.'s manner—but that Thuc. wrote them without working out the
sentence to its end, as if after πλείους
he had intended to continue, not with οἱ μέν,
but in the form ἀπὸ τῶν πύργων τοὺς
ἐπιβοηθοῦντας ἄνωθεν εἶργον βάλλοντες: on reaching πλείους, he shifted his plan and as the
general subject was to be kept up, bifurcated the sentenee with οἱ μὲν . . οἱ δέ, instead of making a
separate sentence of the οἰ δέ
clause. This view of the matter is confirmed by the ugly repetition
of κλίμακας προσθέντες and πλείους in different senses.
δῑ αὐτῶν
—coming from the other πύργοι through the passages to the μεταπύργιον over which the P. were
escaping.
πλείους
—as in c.
22,
4 init.
οἱ μέν
includes those in the δίοδοι and those on the top of the πύργοι.
κάτωθεν καὶ ἄνωθεν
—with εἶργον.
οἱ δ’
—those who were at the foot of the
wall.
αἰεί
—as Kruger says, this belongs to the
partic, and the verb alike.
τῆς τάφρου
—for this outer trench see c.
24,
2.
παρὰ τὸ τεῖχος
—‘by the wall,’ on the
outside.
κωλυτὴς γίγνοιτο
—a favourite periphrasis
with Thuc., especially with nouns in ‐της;
examples occur in ec. 2, 40, 58, 59; with διδάσκαλος c.
42
;
with ἡγεμών c.
105.
πάντες
—meaning οἱ
πλείους of § 1.
οἱ τελευταῖοι
—best taken by itself,
between commas, i.e. ‘as they were the last,’ like οἱ δ’ . . οἱ πλείους above. But Steup
makes οἱ τελευταῖοι partitive
apposition to οἱ . . πύργων and
joins χαλεπῶς οἱ τελευταῖοι κ. The
men on the towers waited till the rest were safely across.
τὰ γυμνά
—the unprotected side.
βιαίως
—like βιαιότερον
ἀναγαγόμενοι
II. 33,
‘hard pressed.’
οἷος ἀπηλιώτου
—sc. ὄντος, as in
Soph. OC. 83
ὡς
ἐμοῦ μόνης πέλας,
se. οὔσης. It is very rarely that
the partic. is omitted in gen. abs where the noun does not itself
suggest a partie. as in Soph. OT. 966
ὧν
ὑφηγητῶν, sc. ὄντων: but
the omission is softened in this case by the analogy of the gen. of time, as in νυκτός
.
ἢ βορέου
—perhaps a marginal note,
intended to fill up the sense of μᾶλλον.
(It has been suggested (1) that βορέου
should be ehanged to εὔρου, or (2)
that μᾶλλον should be transposed
before ἤ.) But possibly two
propositions are eompressed into one; and the full sense is ‘as it
is when the wind is east: it is, in fact, more watery then than when
the wind is north.’ (So Chambry, Rév. de phil.
'97.)
ὑπονειφομένη
—ef. Herod II. 13
ὕεται ἡ χώρη, Xen.
Hell.
II. 4,
13 νειφόμενοι ἀπῆλθον: for ὑ. is properly ‘being thinly besnowed.’
ἐγένετο . . ἡ διάφευξις
—cf. VII. 41
τὴν κατάφευξιν ἐποιοῦντο ‘were seeking
refuge.’ The idea of success is contained in δια‐. (I eannot agree with Classen that ἐγένετο here means ‘proved suceessful’:
that sense is confined in Attic to old phrases like ἐγένετο τὰ ἱερά, cf. ἐ. τὰ διαβατήρια
V. 55.
In VI. 74
and VIII. 57
γίγνεσθαι=merely ‘take place.’ καὶ ἡ διάφευξις=‘the means of
suecessful escape too (as well as the difficult crossing)’ was
mainly owed to (i.e. more than to any other cause: meaning that it
was a narrow thing).
διὰ τοῦ χειμῶνος τὸ μ.
—the order as in Herod.; cf. e.g. I. 32
μετὰ τῆς ξυμμαχίας τῆς αἰτήσεως.
δύο καί
can hardly be right, as the
number is repeatedly given as 40, e.g. cc.
25
and 29, and the suggestion that the two Lesbian
triremes (cc.
4
and 5) are here ineluded is not probable.
Rather than suppose that a eommentator wrongly added in the two
Peloponnesian ships mentioned in cc.
5,
4 and 25, 1, I prefer to think we have a
confusion as the outcome of mistaking μ’
(40) for β’ (2).
ἄρχοντα . . προστάξαντες
is a phrase in
Thuc. for appointment to a special command, and even the order is
exactly as in VII. 19
:
so ἄρχοντα for ἔχοντα is a certain correction.
ναύαρχος
means that he held the annual
office of high admiral.
ἀμφοτέρωθεν
—through the dispatch of the
ships and the invasion.
ταῖς ναυσὶν . .
καταπλεούσαις
—the transl. ‘send out
a fleet against the ships sailing to M.’ is impossible, because (1)
the partic. cannot be attributive unless
ναυσίν is placed after Μυτιλήνην,
and (2) ἐπιβοηθεῖν+dat.=‘hasten to
help.’ Hence either we must alter the
text—Steup brackets καταπλεούσαις
—or, better, render ‘when they were sailing.’ So Stahl refers ταῖς ν. καταπλεούσαις to the Athenians
and renders ‘sail with their ships to M. and come to help,’ as if we
had καταπλέοντες.
Cleomenes and Pleistoanax were sons of the famous Pausanias. In 445
B.C., when Euboea and Megara revolted from Athens, Pleistoanax had
invaded Attica, but had retreated when Pericles returned from Euboea: he
was exiled for this, and his young son Pausanias reigned in his stead.
νεωτέρου
‘too young.’ The
δέ
after πατρός
is not justified by the constr., since no description of Cleomenes
has preceded; hence Krüger suggests that
ἐπίτροπος has fallen out after ἔτι.
There may, however, be a slight anacoluthon.
[καὶ]—εἴ τι ἐ.
is clearly added as an
explanation to τὰ . . τετμημένα.
μετὰ τὴν δευτέραν
—i.e. that of 430 B.C., see
last n. on c.
1.
The present invasion is the fourth.
ἐπιμένοντες
—equivalent to προσδοκῶντες, hence
fut. infin.: the aor. inf. in c.
2
expresses result, not expectation; cf. Soph. Trach. 1176
μὴ ἐπιμεῖναι τοὐμὸν ὀξῦναι στόμα.
ἐπεξῆλθον
with
τέμνοντες, ‘pressed forward with,’ not ‘over-ran.’
ὥσπερ ἔχομεν
—‘as we are,’ without change
of plan, here implying ‘at once,’ but not always so: the meaning
implied depends on the context.
ἀνδρῶν
depends on τὸ ἀφύλακτον, equivalent to τῶν; the gen. with neut. adj. or
partic. as noun is a common constr. with Thuc.
καὶ πάνυ
—‘most certainly,’
‘undoubtedly,’ as in II. 11
καὶ πἀνυ ἐλπίζειν: here in contrast
with είκὸς δέ . .
καὶ ἡμῶν ἡ ἀλκὴ τ. μάλιστα οὖσα
—the version ‘where our strength
chiefly lies’ is open to the objections (1) that the fleet was not
stronger thau the Athenian fleet at Lesbos; that could not for a
moment be maintained after Phormio's exploits; and (2) that the
strength of the Pel. fleet, being unknown to A., could be no reason
why there should be πολὺ τὸ ἀφύλακτον
on the part of the enemy. Another rendering is ‘where defence happens to be in the main our rôle,’
but I cannot find that ἀλκή is
ever used for ‘the defensive’ in opposition to ‘attack’; it means,
on the contrary, ‘defence or resistance’ in opposition to ‘flight or
submission’—something positive, not negative. In spite of the
objections, the first rendering is prob. right; the reasoning that
Thuc. puts into the mouth of speakers is not always exact: the
strength of the Pel. is not intended to be
compared with that of the A., and should have been referred to
iu an independent sentence, but the love of antithesis has led to
the connexion of ἐκεῖνοί τε . . καὶ ἡμῶν.
τυγχἀνει οὖσα marks the circumstance as unusual, and the real comparison is between the military aud
naval strength of Alcidas.
ὡς
—‘conscious that.’
Reading
τὸ καινὸν τοῦ πολέμου
lit. ‘the strangeness of war
is just this sort of thing’; i.e. the carelessness of the victor
with the corollary of a sudden and wholly unexpected attack. In φυλάσσοιτο and
ἐνορῶν only the carelessness of the victor is kept in
view, but that the corollary is included in τὸ
τοιοῦτον is proved (1) by the vague inclusive pron. in
place of τοῦτο, (2) by τὸ καινόν, which could not mean τὸ ἀφύλακτον merely, but must include τὸ ἀπροσδόκητον. (Steup conjectures τὸ κοινόν, ‘where war shows itself
notoriously impartial’: this makes the
sentence easier to understand, but I do not think καινόν impossible Many edd. see in τὸ καινόν a reference only to sudden
attack—τὸ προσπεσεῖν ἄφνω. I do
not understand how καὶ τοῖς πολεμίοις ἐνορῶν
can be explained on this view. τὸ κενόν,
‘the vanity,’ is as tolerable as τὸ καινόν
in itself, but is more likely to be a mistake for τὸ καινόν than vice versa.)
ὅ
—governed by
φυλάσσοιτο and ἐνορῶν,
or perhaps—in strictness—αὐτό is
supplied from it to ἐνορῶν, for
the position of τε does not make
this impossible.
οἱ Λέσβιοι
—for these see cc.
4,
4, 5, 4.
ἐλπίδα δ’ εῖναι
—sc.
ἀποστῆσαι.
ἀκουσίως
—i.e. ‘no one was unwilling to
see them come,’ the adverb applying to
οὐδενί, not to the subject of
ἀφῖχθαι: cf. Soph. Antig. 70
ἐμοῦ
γ’ ἂνἡδέως
(sc. ἐμοὶ)δρῴης
μέτα.
καὶ τὴν πρόσοδον . . ὑφέλωσι
—parallel to ἀποστήσωσιν, ‘(that) they might
gradually draw away this which was the main source of A. revenue.’
Not ‘one of the chief sources’; and the
position of ταύτην renders a
second τήν unnecessary. The φόρος from the Carian and Ionian cities
is meant; they had been grouped together and treated as one since
436 B.C., and the lists in CIA. vol. i. show
that this combined φόρος was the
largest item in the Athenian πρόσοδοι.
(ἢν before
ὑφέλωσι can scarcely be right: the loss of the φόρος would be the necessary outcome of
the revolt of Ionia, and could hardly be stated as an independent
condition of what follows, however that be understood.)
καὶ ἄμα . . . δαπάνη γίγνηται
—‘and at the same time, in
case the Athenians should blockade them (in the Ionian port), the
Athenians might be put to expense.’ (A majority of MSS. gives ἢν ἐφορμῶσιν αὐτοῖς—or αὐτοὺς—δαπάνη σφίσι γίγνηται, i.e. ‘if
the Peloponnesians should blockade the Athenians, they (the Pel.)
might have a fund to draw on, viz. the φόρος.’
The objections to this are, as I think, (a)ἢν ἐφορμῶσιν αὐτοῖς is too vague:
surely the Lesbians and Ionians cannot be thinking here of a
blockade of the Attic coast—c.
15,
1 —and an undertaking of such magnitude—see c.
16,
1— could not possibly be suggested in this casual way—and the
alternative explanation, that the proposal is that Alcidas shall
‘maintain a squadron of observation in Ionian waters,’ with a
victorious Athenian fleet of equal numbers at Mytilene—cf.
especially c.
33,
1—is out of the question. (b) It is true that δαπάνη can mean ‘money for spending,’
where the context makes the drift clear, but it is hardly possible
that δαπάνη τινὶ γίγνεται can mean
anything but δαπανᾶται ὑπό τινος,
according to the idiom; and there is force in Kruger's remark that
the previous sentence here decidedly suggests the idea of ‘loss.’)
Πισσούθνην
—Ionia and Caria were included
in his satrapy. As Persia claimed and did not receive tribute from the Greek cities, it was by no means unlikely that
the satrap might be induced to aid the enemies of Athens.
τὸ πλεῖστον τῆς γνώμης εἶχε
—‘strongly inclined to,’
‘regarded it as decidedly best,’ like the Herodotean πλεῖστος γνώμην εἰμί.
Μυτιλήνης ὑστερήκει
—‘too late for’ means
here ‘too late to help,’ as in Xen. Ages
2, 1 ὡς ὑστερήσειε τῆς
πατρίδος.
πάλιν
—‘back,’ see ἐπανεχώρει, ‘turned back,’ above.
κατῴκηντο
—cf. I. 120
ἐν πόρῳ κατῳκημένους. Thuc. uses the
mid. forms only in the perf. and pluperf.; so Herod. Notium was the
port of Colophon. Aristotle tells us that Colophon and Notium were
not well suited to form a single state: hence στάσις. It was an exaggerated case, he
says, of Athens and the Piraeus; and the Piraeus is more democratic
than the city. Now Colophon had been under an oligarchy of the rich;
and at the beginning of the Peloponnesian war, this oligarchy, it
appears, wanted to get the city out of the hands of Athens, and
invited in the ‘barbarians,’ favouring, apparently, reunion with
Persia. The majority migrated to Notium, but a fresh στάσις broke out, and one party got
help from the satrap Pissuthnes and was joined by the oligarchs from
Colophon. The expelled democrats now sought aid from Paches. (We do
not know who Itamanes was.)
κατὰ στάσιν ἰδίαν—ἰδίαν cannot
mean ‘intestine,’ and ἰδίᾳ, ‘by
one of the parties,’ is very probable; cf. c.
2
It is possible, however, that ἰδίαν
means ‘confined to Colophon,’ not extending to Notium
μάλιστα
—‘about.’ The date is 430 B.C.
οἱ μὲν . . οἱ δέ
—partitive apposition.
ἐπικούρους Ἀρκάδων
—i.e. Arcadian μισθοφόροι. They served as mercenaries
already in the Persian wars, and are familiar as such in the
expedition of the Ten Thousand. The mercenaries must have been in
the service of Pissuthnes.
ἐν διατειχίσματι
—a place divided by a
wall from the rest of the town. διατειχίζειν
is ‘to separate by a wall.’ With the force from Pissuthnes came also
the pro-Persian party from Colophon, which was now part of the
citizen body cf Notium.
ὑπεξελθόντες τούτους
—for the accus.
Kiuger quotes Eurip. frag. Alcmene
ὅμως ἀγῶνα τόνδε δεῖ μ’ ὑπεκδραμεῖν.
τῶν: the MS. τὸν is a form of mistake that is frequent
in similar passages in MSS. of Xenophon.
ὁ μέν
after
προκαλεσάμενος involves an anacoluthon, like that of Il. VI. 509 ὁ δ’
ἀγλαίηφι πεποιθὼς |ῥίμφα ἐ γοῦνα
φέρει; but it is not usual in Homer. Here we have a sing.
nom. followed by two contrasted subjects. For the opposite form, a
plur. nom. followed by only one subject, cf. Il.
III. 211 ἄμφω δ’ ἑζομένω γεραρώτερος ἦεν
Ὀδυσσεύς.
προσδεχομένων
—the subst. to be supplied,
as in I. 3
ἐπαγομένων αὐτούς,
II. 52
ἐναποθνῃσκόντων (sc. ἀνθρώπων). Cf. c.
55,
1.
οἰκιστάς
—the ‘oecists’ or ‘founders’
settled the government and started the new colony, as was usual. Cf. VI. 5
οἰκιστὴς γενόμενος κατῴκισε Καμάριναν.
παρεχόμενον
—‘propose,’ ‘put forward.’
γνώμας ἐποιοῦντο
—‘offered various
opinions’ or ‘made proposals,’ in the Assembly, of course.
ἐπικαλοῦντες
—anacoluthon, as though a
personal constr. had preceded. Cf. II. 53
θεῶν φόβος οὐδεὶς ἀπεῖργε, τὸ μὲν κρίνοντες
,VI. 24
ἔρως ένέπεσε . . εὐελπίδες ὄντες,Eur. Hec. 971
αἰδώς μ’ ἔχει . . τυγχάνουσα.
τήν τε ἄλλην . . καὶ
προσξυνελάβοντο
—(1) they reproached
them with revolting under specially grave circumstances, οὐκ ἀρχόμενοι; (2) their rage was
largely due to the appearance of a Pel. fleet on the Ionian coast.
As the sentence stands it is illogical, since τήν τε ἄλλην should be followed by
something like καὶ ὅτι τὰς ναῦς ἐπηγἀγοντο.
(As to Classen's insertion of καί
after ἀπόστασιν—on whieh there has
been some subtle argument—we may regard it as possible, but scarcely
necessary.) For the change from partic. to finite verb cf. V. 61
βουλόμενοι ἄλλως τε . . καὶ ὅμηροι ἦσαν.
It is frequent in Herod.
προσξυνελάβοντο
—for this reading ef. IV. 47
ξυνελάβοντο τοῦ τοιούτου οὐχ ἥκιστα οἱ στρατηγοὶ
κατἀδηλοι ὄντες. The emphasis is, of course, on the
partic. (τολμήσασαι), as often.
οὐκ ἐλάχιστον
is adverbial. The other
reading, προσξυνεβάλετο, ‘contributed,’ τὸ ἐ.
(sc. μέρος)τῆς
ὁρμῆς being object,—cf. Ath. Pol.
19
συνεβάλλετο οὐκ
έλάττω μοῖραν τῆς ὁρμῆς—is defended by IV. 25
αἴτιον δὲ ἦν οἱ Λακεδαιμόνιοι προειπόντες
and VIII. 9
αἴτιον δὲ ἐγἐνετο . . οὶ πολλοὶ οὐκ εἰδότες,
but the present instance goes further.
οὐ γὰρ ἀπὸ βραχείας διανοίας
—‘it was no small design,
they thought, that had led them to revolt,’ viz. the design of
bringing about a revolt of Ionia with the aid of the Pel. fleet.
ἄγγελον
—pred. to
τριήρη.
μετάνοιά τις—τις is often added thus
to words expressing feelings that rise half involuntarily, as with ῥώμη, ὄκνος, κατήφεια (‘dejection’), φειδώ (‘reluctance’).
ὠμὸν . . αἰτίους
—in the tragic style, and
unusually rhythmical for Thuc. (πέφευγε τὸ
εἶδος, says Hermogenes): the sentence breaks into two
corresponding halves after πόλιν, μέγα
being elided and ἢ οὐ, of course,
counting as one long.
μᾶλλον ἢ οὐ—ἤ implies a negative,
and any sentence implying a neg. is apt to be strengthened by an
expressed neg. (M.T. § 815): cf. II. 62
οὐδ’ εἰκὸς χαλεπῶς φέρειν μᾶλλον ἢ οὐ . .
ὀλιγωρῆσαι.
πρέσβεις
—c.
28.
τῶν Ἀθηναίων
—the order as in c.
22,
5.
παρεσκεύασαν
— ‘got them to.’
οἱ ἐν τέλει
are the ‘government,’ i.e.,
presumably, the Strategi, who, in time of war, could have a special
meeting of the Ecclesia summoned.
αὖθις γνώμας προθεῖναι
—‘allow a fresh debate’:
to re-open a matter that had been settled in a recent meeting of the
Ecclesia seems to have rendered the person responsible to
impeachment; but the Ecclesia, as the sovereign power, could by a
majority of course do anything, provided that the Prytanies and the
president of the meeting consented to submit a proposal for
discussion. (The evidence on the point is doubtful; but the account
here given reconciles the various passages that bear on it.)
ἔνδηλον ἦν
—the
personal constr., esp. common with
δῆλος.
τινας
—‘persons’: after τοὺς ἐν τέλει we should expect αὐτούς; but the speakers, rather than
the officials, are referred to A special Assembly (σύγκλητος ἐκκλησία) was summoned for
the purpose. (G. Gilbert, B. zur innern Geschichte
Athens, 142, assigns the debates on Mytilene to the end of the
official year 428-7. It is probable that Cleon was in
that year Strategus, having replaced Lysicles the προβατοπώλης, who had been killed in
Caria in the winter. Busolt, however, places the debates in the
first prytany of the following year, 427-6,
wheu Cleon and those like him were replaced in the
strategia by Nicias and Laches, men strongly opposed to Cleon.
In either case, it is obvious that party-feeling must have run very
high just at this time.
τὴν προτέραν
—sc.
γνώμην, ‘proposal,’ from γνῶμαι
above:
νικᾶν
is ‘to carry,’ as in νικᾷ ἕτερον ψήφισμα Φιλοκρἀτης,
Aeschin, III. 63.
(I do not think that the sense of γνώμη
shifts here from ‘views’ to ‘decree,’ and that consequently τῇ προτέρᾳ ‘on the previous day’ should
be read.)
βιαιότατος
—this is the first time that
Thuc. mentions Cleon, though he had been rising for some time. The
views of him expressed by ancient authors, whether as politician or
as orator, are almost uniformly unfavourable. As regards Thuc.'s
opinion of him, and the following speech, see Introd. p. xxxvii.
δημοκρατίαν
—object of ἔγνων, but in sense subj. of ἄρχειν.ἀδύνατον
,
‘incapable of,’ the neut. as in Homer's οὐκ
ἀγαθὸν πολυκοιρανίη.
ἐν
—of the cause.
ἀδεὲς καὶ ἀνεπιβούλευτον
give the same thing
from two sides: you neither fear your
neighbour nor cause him to fear you.
ὅ τι ἂν . . ἁμάρτητε ἢ . . ἐνδῶτε
—we know too little of the
working of the Athenian empire to specify acts of clemency on the
part of Athens. From what we do know we should say that Athens was
severe enough; but we must remember that the standard of the times
was very different from ours: any right that Athens did not take
from her allies she regarded as a privilege granted to them.
οἴκτῳ
is parallel to λόγῳ πεισθέντες; supply αὐτοῖς to
ἐνδῶτε.
ἐπικινδύνως . . ἐς ὑμᾶς
—the emphasis is on
this: hence the disloeation of the order. Tr. ‘you think that such
weakness does not . . bring danger to you.’
οὐκ ἐς τὴν . . χάριν
—‘without gaining the
gratitude’; they take a concession as a sign of weakness.
τυραννίδα ἔχετε τὴν ἀρχήν
—repeating words
attributed to Pericles at II.
63.
καὶ πρὸς . . ἀρχομένους
—paralleI to τυραννίδα, the constr. with πρός (after
ἀρχή) like φιλία or πόλεμος πρός.
οἵ
—very weakly supported by MS.
evidence. There is a similar case at IV. 10,
where the MSS. give τὸ δυσέμβατον ἡμέτερον
νομίζω· μενόντων μὲν ἡμῶν ξύμμαχον γίγνεται, but Dionysius
quotes the passage with ὃ μενόντων
etc. Without the rel., we must assume an epexegesis of ἄκοντας ἀρχομένους with asyndeton.
ἐξ ὧν . . περιγένησθε
—for ἐξ ἐκείνων ἄ, internal accus. to π., ‘as a consequence of the
superiority you have established over them by strength (hinting at
the successive reductions to the status of tributary subjects) and
not by their willing obedience.’
εὔνοια
as Arist. Eth.
IX. 5, 3 says, δῑ
ἀρετὴν καὶ ἐπιείκειάν τινα γίνεται, ὅταν τῳ φανῇ καλός τις ἢ
ἀνδρεῖος.
ὧν ἂν δόξῃ πέρι
—for περὶ
ἐκείνων ἃ ἃν δόξῃ, ‘as regards measures that we have
passed.’ Thus the neut. nom. ἅ is
here attracted as in VII. 67
βλάπτεσθαι ἀφ’ ὧν ἡμῖν παρεσκεύασται.
In (ἃ)ἂν
δόξῃ the allusion is to ψηφίσματα
passed in the Ecclesia.
χείροσι νόμοις . . ἀκύροις
—it has been thought that
there is an allusion here to definite νόμοι
that forbade a psephism to be reconsidered, perhaps within some
fixed period (cf. n. on c.
36,
5); but the reference seems more general. (The objection that Cleon
would, if there were such an allnsion, definitely threaten a γραφὴ παρανόμων has not much force, for
(1) Thuc. does not deal in the technicalities of Attic legal
procedure, which were not of sufficiently ‘universal’ interest for
him, with his view of history; and (2) in VI. 14
sqq., where Nicias alludes to some rules about the re-discussion of
a psephism, Alcibiades, in his rejoinder, makes no capital out of
the rules at all—does not even allude to the point.) Arnold thought
that the psephism under revision is itself meant under νόμοι, and that the confusion is meant
to be intentional on Cleon's part. It is best, I think, to consider
the passage intentionally vague and rhetorical: revision of
psephisms leads easily to revision of laws in a democracy. This
general application is borne out by ἀμαθία
τε κτλ., which would be an odd addition to a clause
containing a precise reference.
κρείσσων ἐστίν
—the
personal constr.: ‘it is better for a state to have.’ (This
explanation is strongly supported by
ὠφελιμώτερον (sc. πόλει)
and ἄμεινον οἰκοῦσι τὰς πόλεις.
Classen says ‘is stronger’; but the point is what is good for a
state, not what a state can do.)
ἀμαθία μετὰ σωφροσύνης
—‘ignorance when
combined with self-restraint,’ no doubt a hit at the πεπαιδευμένοι, and the sentiment so
outrageous to an educated Athenian, that we must
assume that it was really uttered by Cleon in substance. For the
evil results of ἀμαθία note the
following passage (Euripides, frag.): γνώμαις γὰρ ἀνδρὸς εὖ μὲν οἰκοῦνται πόλεις εὖ δ’
οἶκος, εἴς τ’ αὖ πόλεμον ἰσχύει μέγα· σοφὸν γὰρ ἓν βούλευμα τὰς
πολλὰς χέρας νικᾷ σὺν ὄχλῳ δ’ ἀμαθία πλεῖστον κακόν. σωφροσύνη and
ἀκολασία are often contrasted in the language of popular
philosophy: εὑρήσετε τὴν μὲν ἀκολασίαν . .
τῶν κακῶν αἰτίαν γιγνομένην, τὴν δὲ σωφροσύνην τῶν ἀγαθῶν,
Isocr. de pace § 119. In οἵ τε φαυλότεροι κτλ. we meet a
sentiment that is frequent in Euripides.
πρός
—‘as compared with.’
τῶν τε νόμων σοφώτεροι
—hence they despise the
laws: a reference back to μηδὲ γνωσόμεθα
etc.
τῶν τε αἰεὶ . .
περιγίγνεσθαι
—the τε . . τε puts the contempt for laws
and the opposition to all counsel on the same footing as joint parts
of their conduct. περιγίγνεσθαι,
‘to get the better’ of it, by opposing it.
ὡς ἐν ἄλλοις μείζοσιν . . γνώμην
—‘as though they could not find
any greater subject on which to display their talent’; the subject
in debate is just the one, they think, on which they are qualified
to give an opinion. (Cf. VII.
64
οὐκ ἂν ἐν ἄλλῳ μᾶλλον καιρῷ ἀποδειξἀμενος
.)
ἀδυνατώτεροι δὲ . . λόγον
—in
form exactly parallel to the preceding clause; but τοῦ καλῶς εἰπόντος is certainly possessive gen. to
λόγον, together with which it refers to τῶν αἰεὶ λεγομένων ἐς τὸ κοινόν above.
To ἀδυνατώτεροι supply ἢ οἱ ξυνετώτεροι.
ἀπὸ τοῦ ἴσου
—‘fair,’ free from personal
bias, cf. c. 42; more often ‘on equal terms.’
For ἀγωνιστής as a ‘rhetorical
prize-fighter,’ Bloomfield cites several exx. 34
ὀρθοῦνται
—‘have a prosperous course’;
cf. particularly II. 60
πόλιν ὀρθουμένην )(σφαλλομένην. Here ὀρθοῦνται τὰ πλείω corresponds to πολλὰ σφάλλουσι τὰς πόλεις above. There
is an exactly similar passage in Soph. Antig. 673-6. (The rendering
‘judge rightly’ is certainly wrong.)
ὥς
—for οὕτως,
usually only with καί, οὐδέ, μηδέ,
in prose.
παρὰ δόξαν
—‘contrary to our opinion,’
not, as in the other cases in Thuc., ‘unexpectedly.’ (The conjecture παρὰ τὸ
δόξαν, ‘contrary to what has been
decided,’ is plausible; but I agree with Bloomfield that this is not
really in point here: it is not borne out by τῶν
αἰεὶ λεγομένων . . περιγίγνεσθαι and τοῦ καλῶς εὶπόντος μέμψασθαι λόγον.)
l. 1. ἐγὼ μὲν ὁ αὐτός εἰμι τῇ
γνώμῃ
—similar words are
attributed to Pericles, II. 61.
ἀμβλυτέρᾳ
—‘with anger more dulled,’ when
there is delay.
ἀμύνεσθαι
—for (
τὸ)ἀμύνεσθαι as in Aesch. Ag. 191
παρ’ ἄκοντας ἦλθε σωφρονεῖν, and
elsewhere in Thuc. The addition of κείμενον
(and perhaps ὄν) makes the
omission ugly and unusual. Cf. the schol. εί
τὸ ἀμύνεσθαι τῷ παθεῖν ἐγγὺς τεθείη.
ἀντίπαλον ὂν . .
ἀναλαμβάνει
—‘is most adequate
when it recovers satisfaction’: the main emphasis on the partic., as
often. If ὄν is omitted, ἀντίπαλον agrees with τιμωρίαν—cf. ἀμβλυτέρᾳ
τῇ ὀργῇ above—and both form and sense are improved. (Hude
reads τοῦ παθεῖν, takes κείμενον as accus. abs., ‘when it is
proposed to take vengeance,’ and makes ὁ
παθών subj. of ἀναλαμβάνει,
omitting ὄν with Haase. But what
is the point of saying κείμενον ἀμύνεσθαι
where the sense calls for ἀμυνόμενος?)
Some think ὰναλαμβάνει should be λαμβάνει or ἂν
λαμβάνοι, as in δίκην, τιμωρίαν,
λαμβάνειν.
θαυμάζω δέ
.—there might be reason in
opposing the vote, if it were shown that either (1) the revolt is
advantageous to Athens; or (2) though troublesome to us, it is
indirectly a gain because it does harm to the allies and renders
them less an object of fear to us.
τὸ πάνυ δοκοῦν
—‘the universal opinion of
men’: he must try to prove a paradox. (According to another view,
the allusion is to the psephism. But (1) τὸ
πάνυ δοκοῦν, ‘what is generally agreed upon,’ would hardly
be a true description of the vote; and (2) τὸ
δόξαν would certainly be natural.)
κέρδει
—a suggestion of bribery: the
charge was a common one against public men, and was often true. The
contrast in
ἢ . . ἤ
is between an opponent who wants to
show his skill in oratory and one who is bribed to mislead.
ἐκπονή· σας
is co-ordinate with πιστεύσας, and
ἐπαιρόμενος gives the motive that
prompts him ἐκπονεῖν.
τὸ εὐπρεπὲς τοῦ λόγου
—‘what is plausible in the
words.’ The whole of this section is a hit at
the bad side of the new rhetoric: it is piquant, because Cleon
himself indulges in rhetoric freely; this elaborate
comparison to an ἀγών of rival
rhetoricians is itself full of it.
θεαταὶ μὲν . . ἔργων
—‘spectators of words and
hearers of deeds’ is an artificial way of saying: you are content to
take the facts from what the orators say, and look on at the
debates, thus inverting the natural order of things at an ἀγών, in which one would watch the
athletes' deeds and listen to the literary men's words: so badly do
you, who are at once the directors and the people attending, manage
the ἀγῶνες. (The explanations
usually given of this passage do not seem to me to give an
intelligible meaning to the whole: (a)κακῶς ἀγωνοθετεῖν does not mean ‘to be
wrong in instituting a contest,’ but ‘to do so in
the wrong way’; cf. the second and third failings—ἀπατᾶσθαι
ἄριστοι and ζητοῦντες ἄλλο τε κτλ.:
all indicative of a topsy-turvy mind and (b)
only with the latter meaning—which is a natural one—does οἵτινες κτλ. given an intelligible
reason.)
ὡς δυνατὰ γίγνεσθαι
—‘as practicable’: sc. ὄντα, cf. VI. 40
τοὺς λόγους ὡς ἔργα δυναμένους κρινεῖ.
τὰ δὲ π. ἤδη
—sc.
σκοποῦντες.
οὐ τὸ . . ἀκουσθέν
‘not taking what has been
done as more trustworthy through having seen it, than what you have
heard (about it).’ (It has been objected to
ὄψει that we need ἀκροάσει
or ἀκοῇ to contrast with it; but
the whole clause corresponds to ὡς δυνατὰ
γίγνεσθαι, and = ὡς τὸ ἀκουσθὲν
πιστότερον ὂν ἢ τὸ ὀφθέν; τὸ ἀκουσθέν
itself contains the contrast to ὄψει:
instead of saying τὸ ὀφθέν, Thuc.
says τὸ δρασθέν in order to
introduce again the contrast between ἔργα
and λόγοι —δρασθέν and ἀκουσθέν.)
ἐπιτιμησάντων
—the readiness of speakers
to criticize adversely the action of public men, if opponents, is
often insisted on; but it is odd that Cleon, who was ever ready to
censure, should talk so.
μετὰ καινότητος
—equivalent to a dat, of
cause, as I. 32
μὴ μετὰ κακίας, δόξης δὲ μᾶλλον ἁμαρτίᾳ:
cf. c.
42,
1.
ἀπατᾶσθαι ἄριστοι
— sc. ὄντες, co-ordinate with κακῶς ἀγωνοθετοῦντες, the second way in which you are αἴτιοι· εὐπαρἀγωγος εἶ, θωπευόμενός τε χαίρεις
κἀξαπατώμενος,Aristoph. Eq. 1115.
μετὰ δεδοκιμασμένου
—sc. λόγου, ‘when an approved argument is
stated’; ξυνέπεσθαι means ‘go with
the speaker.’ (Another way is to take ξυνέπεσθαι
μετά closely together, ‘to follow the lead of’: I prefer
the former.)
δοῦλοι ὄντες
—the whole down to ἀποβησόμενα is epexegetic of ἄριστοι (ὄντες
).
καὶ μάλιστα μέν
—co-ordinate with δοῦλοι ὄντες. βουλόμενοι would have
made the sentence more symmetrical, but cf. already Iliad IX. 656 οἱ δὲ
ἕκαστος ἑλὼν . . ἴσαν.
ἀνταγωνιζόμενοι τοῖς
τοιαῦτα λέγουσι
—i.e. τοῖς τοιούτοις ῥήτορσι, who applaud
that one of their number who happens to be speaking; ‘vying with
speakers who use such arguments,’ viz. ἄτοπα.
(It is objected to τοιαῦτα that it
cannot be referred to τὰ ἄτοπα
only, after what has preceded. But it is to be noted that ὑπερόπται δὲ τῶν εἰωθότων is merely
parenthetical: had there been a μέν
after δοῦλοι, the objection would
have been serious.)
τῇ γνώμῃ
—not to lag behind the rest ‘in
insight.’ To understand ‘plan’ or ‘purpose’ of the speaker (γνώμῃ governed by ἀκολουθῆσαι) is not so good, because it
is the external form, not the meaning, that rivets their attention.
ὀξέως
with
λέγοντος, because λέγοντός τι
cannot here mean ‘says something important or
sensible.’ On the other hand, ὀξέως,
when taken with λέγοντος, is
rendered ‘shrewdly,’ ‘cleverly’; but (1) ὀξύ,
adj., would be natural, and (2) it seems that λέγειν ὀξέως means not ‘speak shrewdly’
but ‘speak rapidly’; it is only with words denoting mind that βραδύς, ὀξύς mean ‘slow,’ ‘quick’ of
wit. I should prefer to render ‘when any one is speaking rapidly.’
προεπαιvέσαι
— sc. δοκεῖν, generally understood ‘to
approve’ it before it is uttered, but perhaps ‘to be first with
their approval.’
πρόθυμοι εἶναι
—this may depend on ἀνταψωνιζόμενοι or, more probably, on δοκεῖν, but, in either ease, (εἶναι)βραδεῖς
does not give very good sense, and can hardly be excused on the
ground that the main emphasis falls on πρόθυμοι
εἶναι; for—to mention only one objection—προαισθέσθαι and προνοῆσαι are plainly meant to be equal
in importance. We require εἰωθότες
to make sound sense. The best solution proposed is to consider καί before
προαισθέσθαι and εἶναι
as spurious: the whole would then be closely connected with προεπαινέσαι.
ζητοῦντές τε
—again going back to αἴτιοι δ’ ὑμεῖς, ‘seeking something
different—one might almost say— from the world in which we live;’
dreamers.
ἁπλῶς τε
—a resumption of the substance
of the whole sentence.
σοφιστῶν θεαταῖς
καθημένοις
—‘men sitting as
spectators at a display of sophists,’ as shown in the Protagoras, for example.
ὧν
—neut. (
θεαταῖς
is pred.; but as the comparison
is between θεαταί and βουλευόμενοι, καθημένοις is possibly,
as Lincke says, interpolated.)
μίαν πόλιν
—cf. c.
113,
6.
οἵτινες
—the dat. antecedent omitted.
Distinguish between οἵτινες μή and οἵτινες οὐ below.
νῆσον . . μετὰ τειχῶν
—thus secure against
enemies. The contrast to the previous sentence is stated in inverse
order: subjection—compulsion; security—freedom.
This is a common arrangement of clauses in Thuc.
ἐν ῳ
—of their condition.
καὶ αὐτοί
—independently of our help.
ἐπανέστησαν μᾶλλον ἢ
ἀπέστησαν
—an armed rising
contrasted with a secession; but the application of the contrast to
the circumstances of Lesbos is not exact, since ἐπανάστασις implies a dominant power,
which Athens ex hypothesi was not.
μέν γε
—‘secession anyhow,’ whatever be
the truth about ἐπανάστασις. For
the suppression of the δέ-clause
after this combination cf. Aristoph. Ach. 154
τοῦτο
μέν γ’ ἤδη σαφές. (Append. i., Neil, Aristoph. Equites).
βίαιόν τι πασχόντων
—this is far-fetched;
and the implied contrast about ἐπανάστασις
would too obviously not hold: hence the statement of it is
suppressed.
καίτοι
—‘surely.’
καθ’ αὑτούς
—‘by themselves,’ not μετὰ τῶν πολεμιωτάτων στάντες.
κτώμενοι
—probably conative.
παράδειγμα δὲ αὐτοῖς
—as παράδειγμα means example, both as a
warning and as an encouragement, it might have been applied to both
clauses with οὔτε; but the second
has taken an independent form, cf. c.
96,
3.
τῶν πέλας
—‘of others.’
τὰ δεινά
—often of the dangers of war.
τὸ μέλλον
—‘the future’ )( παροῦσα.
μακρότερα . . βουλήσεως
—‘having come to hope
for what was beyond their strength, but less than
their ambition.’ Clearly what they hoped for was the destruction of
Athenian power—ἐζήτησαν ἡμᾶς διαφθεῖραι.
But how was this ‘less than they wanted’? what more could they want?
Probably we have here a sample of Cleon's exaggeration and abuse,
and no definite meaning is to be looked for. It is enough for his
purpose that the Lesbians had wanted to revolt sooner than they did
(c.
2
).
(Herbst's explanation, Zu Thuk. p. 82, that μακρότερα means the power of Mytilene,
and ἐλάσσω that of Athens, seems
far-fetched, and his rendering of τῆς
βουλήσεως is scarcely intelligible.)
ἐν ᾦ
—‘the moment that.’
γάρ
—justifying the charge that they put
might before right. They had suffered no wrong, and they chose a
time when Athens was in difficulties.
αἷς ἂν . . ἔλθῃ
—the clause forms the object to τρέπειν.μάλιστα καὶ δῑ ἐλαχίστου
,
‘most fully and most suddenly,’ refers to the moment just alluded to
in ἐν ᾧ ᾠήθησαν; it was καιρὸς ὡς οὔπω πρότερον, c.
13,
3. The revolt was not really the unpremeditated thing that Cleon
represents it to have been. The
ἀπροσδόκητος εὐπραξία
refers to the
difficulties in which Athens was. (The objection to δῑ ἐλαχίστου that the change of fortune
on the part of the Mytilenaeans was not
sudden, but was gradually brought about by the events of the war,
rests on a confusion of facts and the rhetorical presentment of
them.)
τὰ δὲ πολλὰ . . εὐτυχοῦντα
ἀσφαλέστερα
—‘in most things
prosperity according to calculation is safer than prosperity that is
a surprise.’ It is an extraordinary explanation that makes τὰ πολλά, after the schol., adverbial
accus., and κατὰ λ. εὐτυχοῦντα
equivalent to τὰ . . εὐτυχοῦντα.
The constr. intended is clearly ἀσφαλέστερά
(ἐστι)τὰ
πολλὰ εὐτυχοῦντα=εἰ εὐτυχεῖ:
cf. II. 13
(ἔφη)τὰ
πολλὰ κρατεῖσθαι. And there is no doubt about the reading
being right: εὐτυχία, a stable
condition, is in contrast with εὐπραξία.
a single event (cf. I. 33
);
a calm life unmarred by misfortune constituted εὐτυχία (cf. II. 44
).
Of course παρὰ δόξαν (εὐτυχοῦντα) gives a different and paradoxical meaning to εὐτυχία. This doctrine of Cleon seems
to be based upon the philosophy of life professed by his opponent
Nicias. Cf. V. 16,
of Nicias, διασώσασθαι τὴν εὐτυχίαν
.
ὡς εἰπεῖν ῥᾷον
—‘almost more easily.’
χρῆν δέ
—they would never have gone so far in their indulgence in ὕβρις had we long ago kept a tighter
hand on them.
μηδὲν διαφερόντως τῶν ἄλλων
—the adverb (EM) is better
than διαφέροντας, and has, at any
rate, as much MS. support as χρῆν
just before, and it has, in addition, the support of the text of the
schol. and of Dio Cassins.
καὶ ἄλλως
— ‘in other cases as well,’
making the application general.
τοῖς μὲν ὀλίγοις . . τὸν δὲ δῆμον
—the oligarchical government
had caused the revolt.
οἷς γ’ ἐξῆν
—as this sentence refers
especially to the δῆμος, it would
be better, perhaps, to put πάντες . .
ἐπέθεντο in a parenthesis—unless, with Stahl, we
understand πάντες (οί τοῦ δήμου) and ὁμοίως (τοῖς
ὀλίγοις).
πάλιν ἐν τῇ πόλει εἶναι
—‘reinstated in their
rights.’ For the sense of πόλις
cf. IV. 106
πόλεώς τε. στερισκόμενοι.
βεβαιότερον
—sc. τοῦ
μεθ’ ἡμῶν κινδύνου.
τῶν τε ξυμμάχων σκέψασθε . . τίνα
οἴεσθε ὅντινα οὐ
—(1) the old explanation of this
passage (given by Goller, for instance) was that τίνα οἴεσθε ὅντινα ού was equivalent to ἕκαστον. c.
46,
2, where τίνα οἴεσθε ἥντινα οὐ is
independent, is strongly against this. Classen said that οἴεσθε merely repeats σκέψασθε owing to the length of the
sentence; and this is accepted by subsequent edd. Classen's view
involves also an anacoluthon, since σκέψασθε
would be followed by τίς ὄστις οὐ
with ind., not by τίνα ὅντινα οὐ.
Against this view is to he urged (a) the
complication of the constr. introduced by
σκέψασθε, (b) the gen. τῶν τε ξυμμάχων, which, as Classen
says, depends not only on τοῖς . . ἀποστᾶσι,
but also on τίνα οἴεσθε ὅντινα οὐ,
so that Thuc. had a clear view of the constr. from the start. It is
not unlikely that σκέψασθε is
meant to be parenthetical. (2) τίς ὄστις οὐ
is treated as a single word.
παθείν
—a second subject to ᾖ.
ἀποκεκινδυνεύσεται
—‘we shall find
exposed to utmost peril.’
τῆς ἔπειτα προσόδου, δῑ ἣν
ἰσχύομεν
—the relative clause applies
to τῆς προσόδου only, the revenue
generally, not to τῆς
ἔπειτα π., the future revenue;
hence ἐκεῖθεν or ἐπετείου has been conjectured for ἔπειτα, which the schol. already had in
the text. Neither conjecture wholly removes the difficulty; and so δῑ ἣν ισχύομεν
is thought by some to have been brought in here from the very
similar passage in c.
46,
3. It would be better to read ἰσχύσομεν,
‘through which we may support our power.’
τὸ λοιπόν
is pleonastic after ἔπειτα, and perhaps belongs to δῑ ἣν ἰσχύσομεν.
στερήσεσθε
—‘will have to go without.’
προθεῖναι
—of the orators.
πιστήν
—‘hope relying on (the speaker's)
eloquence,’ is contrasted with ‘hope gained by bribery (of the
speaker),’ cf. c.
38,
2; one speaker's eloquence, another's venality, may prompt him to
take up the cause of Lesbos.
ξυγγνώμην ἁμαρτεῖν
ἀνθρωπίνως λήψονται
—‘that they will be
excused for having erred humanly,’ i.e. through human frailty not
deliberately: πῶς ἂν τό γ’ ἄκον πρᾶγμ’ ἂν
εἰκότως ψέγοις;Soph. OC. 977. 4
ἄκοντες
—the οὐ
applies to this also, but is attracted to the verb.
ξύγγνωμον
=ξυγγνώμης
ἄξιον, as also, perhaps, in IV. 98,
but not elsewhere.
τότε
—supply
διεμαχεσάμην (the same idiom in I. 86
and VI. 60
).
But μὴ λύειν τὰ π., which came
into question only in the second meeting,
causes some difficulty. We must assume either (1) that the sentence
is developed as it proceeds, μὴ λύειν τὰ π.
not being supplied with τότε, or
else, (2) that πρῶτον (διεμαχεσάμην) means that Cleon had
already in the previous meeting seen that there would be an
agitation for revision. (I prefer the second solution. Brevity would
excuse προδεδογμένα as applied to
a vote to be passed. The voting at the first
meeting must have been close; and c.
36,
3 suggests anxiety about getting it carried out. Krüger had noticed
that τότε πρῶτον is unsatisfactory
according to the usual explanation: I think there must be a point in πρῶτον, as in Aristoph. Eq. 339
πρῶτα διαμαχοῦμαι.)
ἐπιεικείᾳ
—‘generosity,’ ‘consideration
for others.’
τοὺς ὁμοίους
—variously rendered as ‘like
minded,’ or ‘situated as we are,’ i.e. equals, not subjects. For the
latter, it is claimed that ἐξ ἀνάγκης
points to unwilling subjects; and sentiment so arrogant might well
be attributed to Cleon.
ἕξουσι . . ἀγῶνα
—sarcastic, implying ‘if
they must have their
ἀγών’; cf. c.
38,
4.
καὶ μή
— there is implied prohibition,
hence μή The choice
of the constr. is no doubt influenced by the previous καὶ μή.
τὸ παθεῖν εὖ
—the excellent return they will get
is a bribe from the Mytilenaeans. It appears that a few years later
Cleon himself was said to have made something out of the troubles of
Mytilene.
καὶ τὸ λοιπόν
—‘in the future as in the
past.’
ὁμοίως . .
ὑπολειπομένους
—the conjecture ὁμοίως seems to be clearly right. Even
when ὁμοίους is rendered
‘consistent’ and taken as pred, with
ὑπολειπομένους, it remains very awkward that ἐπιτηδείους and
πολεμίους imply ἡμῖν,
whereas ὁμοίους must imply ἑαυτούς. The previous ὁμοίους used in a quite different sense
in this series of closely connected sentences is against the adj. ὁμοίως τε καὶ οὐδὲν ἧσσον is a
Thucydidean way of saying ‘just as must as before.’
πειθόμενοι μέν
—the steps of the
argument, which is difficult to follow to
ἀνδραγαθίζεσθαι and has given rise to much discussion, are
as follows: (1) if you punish M., you will act as
Justice and Interest alike demand; (2)
it may be said that Justice is on their side
and against you (εἰ γάρ); (3) even
if it is, you must follow the dictates of Interest
(εἰ δὲ δή).
οὐ χαριεῖσθε
—because they will still
hate you.
δικαιώσεσθε
—‘you will punish yourselves’
(instead of them) by proclaiming to all that you have no right to
exert authority.
εἰ γάρ—γάρ does not introduce the
reason for the preceding statement, but = ‘it is true that,’ as in
c.
43,
5 (Stahl in Rhein. Mus. 1901). οὐ χρεών is acc. abs. On the form of
condition (cf. I. 38,
VI. 92
)
Goodwin points out that it is “a perfectly natural combination, each
part having its proper force.” If they were justified, you must have
no right to your empire: εἰ δὲ δὴ . .
κολάζεσθαι (mid ) proceeds on this assumption. If you
persist in ruling (τοῦτο δρᾶν),
even though you have no right to do so, then your interests require
that you punish them, as you have others. The only alternative (ἤ=‘otherwise’) is, you must give up
empire; you must run no risks (ἐκ τοῦ
ἀκινδύνου=ἀκινδύνως) and
play an honourable part.
παύεσθαι . .
ἀνδραγαθίξεσθαι
— Cleon echoes
words attributed to Pericles at II. 63.
ἀνδραγαθίζομαι was, it would seem, in
use among the aristocrats who favoured a peace policy; cf. for the
noun with ‘a political or social reference’ c.
57,
1, 64, 4 (Neil, Append. to Aristoph. Eq.).
τῇ τε αὐτῇ ζημίᾳ
—viz. as that by which τά τε δίκαια . . καὶ τὰ ξύμφορα ποιήσετε—the
one I recommend. (a) This is usually
explained, after the schol., ‘the same that they would have
inflicted on you had they succeeded.’ But (1) it is unlikely that ζημία would be used without
explanation, of the destruetion Mytilene had sought to bring on
Athens: and (2) τῇ αύτῇ can only
be so explained by the assumption that the sentence, simple in form,
is strangely confused in thought. We need such an addition as in II. 67
τοῖς αὐτοῖς ἀμύνεσθαι οἶσπερ καὶ . . ὑπῆρξαν.
(b) Steup explains ‘the same as you agreed to
yesterday,’ but this seems a strange way of saying ‘uphold your
decision.’ Also the reference in τῇ αὐτῇ
should be found in the context immediately preceding; c.
62
τῇ μέντοι αὐτῇ ἰδέᾳ.VII 39,
1. The reference in the version given above is. it is true. a little
remote. but εἰ δὲ δὴ . . ἀνδραγαθίζεσθαι
is practically parenthetical.
οἱ διαφεύγοντες
—cf. οἱ διαβάλλοντες c.
4,
οἱ ἐπαγόμενοι
II. 2,
οἱ προδιδόντες
II. 5.
The temporal force is lost, and the partic. becomes a substantive.
But the plot is referred to in aorist, as having preceded the
escape.
μὴ ξὺν προφάσει=ἄνευ προφάσεως ἱκανῆς
Antiphon V. 22.
37
ἐπεξέρχονται καὶ
διολλύναι
—‘follow up (the
wrong they inflict) even to the length of destroying their enemy
utterly.’ The MSS. have διόλλυνται,
which can only yield a very artificial sense. Their
own utter destruction is not what they seek. The inf. is of
purpose.
ὑφορώμενοι
‘eyeing with misgiving.’ All
edd. refer to the famous ‘odisse quem laeseris’ of Tac. for the
sentiment.
ὁ γὰρ . . παθών
—this applies to Athens, which
has been attacked ἄνευ προφάσεως.
‘He who has been injured needlessly is more dangerous when he has
escaped (the plot to destroy him), than an enemy on equal terms,’
i.e. where equal offence has been given on both sides. Mytilene knew
Athens would be implacable if she escaped.
γενόμενοι . . τῇ γνώμῃ
—‘place yourselves in
thought as near (the moment of) the injury as possible, and (think)
how.’ γ. τῇ γνώμῃ=διανοηθέντες (I. 143
).
(Possibly τότ’ is lost after παντός.) 44
ἀνταπόδοτε
‘repay.’ Cf. “Vengeance is
mine, saith the Lord: I will repay.”
πρὸς τὸ παρὸν αὐτίκα
with
μαλακισθέντες, ‘at their present plight,’ for τὸ αὐτίκα παρόν: the position of the
adv. is not very rare in tragedy, e.g. Aesch. PV. 1013
τῷ φρονοῦντι μὴ καλῶς (Jebb on Soph. OT. 1294).
Here αὐτίκα gains emphasis in
contrast with ποτέ by its
position. For the pleonasm edd. compare I. 95
ἐν τῷ τύτε παρόντι,I. 123
τῶν ἔπειτα μελλόντων. (παραυτίκα has been conjectured for παρὸν αὐτίκα, and τότε for ποτέ.)
48
παράδειγμα σαφὲς
καταστήσατε . . ζημιωσόμενον
—for the partic.,
as with δηλοῦν, δῆλον or φανερὸν ποιεῖν, cf. Soph. El. 24
σαφῆ σημεῖα φαίνεις ἐσθλὸς εἰς ἡμᾶς γεγώς
.
τόδε—ὅδε referring to what
precedes, as often in speeches.
μεμφομένους
—equivalent to μεμφομένους καὶ ἀξιοῦν‐
τας, the brachylogy being made easier
by the preceding τοὺς προθέντας τὴν δ.,
the persons censured.
δύο . . ὀργήν
—some make τάχος τε καὶ ὀργήν subj. of εἶναι, removing the comma, comparing
cc.
40,
2, 57, 3, 75, 1. The
parallels do not seem to prove the point.
τὸ μέν
=τάχος.
This passage is directly aimed at Cleon, who had deprecated χρόνου διατριβήν, thus showing his own
follv, and had displayed the vehemence to which the ignorant and
shallow-minded are pione.
γίγνεσθαι
‘to be found.’
μὴ διδασκάλους τῶν πραγμάτων γ.
—‘are not to explain affairs,’ i.e.
how they are to be conducted.
λόγοι
personified, like πειθώ.διαμάχομαι
as in c.
40.
ἰδίᾳ τι αὐτῷ διαφέρει
—‘he has some private
interest.’
φράσαι
—‘give guidance.’
τι αἰσχρὸν πεῖσαι
—‘to carry a disgraceful
proposal.’ Cf. c.
59,
2.
οὐκ . . ἡγεῖται—οὐ can appear
after εἰ . . μέν, provided the
indic. is used, as in I. 121
εἰ οἱ μὲν . . οὐκ ἀπεροῦσιν, Xen. Anab.
VII.
1,
29 εἰ βάρβαρον μὲν πόλιν οὐδεμίαν ἠθελήσαμεν
κατασχεῖν.
εὖ δὲ διαβαλών
—Cleon got a name for skill
in διαβολή, as several passages in
Aristoph. Equites show.
χαλεπώτατοι δὲ . . ἐπίδειξίν
τινα
—‘most difficult to meet
are those in particular (καί) who
by anticipation impute (to an opponent) a sort of rhetorical display
to get money.’ χαλεπώτατοι does
not mean to exclude the εὖ διαβαλών,
who also—as the καί shows—is χαλεπώτατος as imputing to his opponent
a desire to display his rhetorical skill; cf. c.
38,
2. But those who say that bribery is the motive are singled out. The emphasis is on ἐπὶ
χρήμασι, which accordingly is in an unusual order: it
belongs to ἐπίδειξιν. The point of τινα is that an
ἐπίδειξις proper was not delivered in the Ecclesia.
ἀξυνετώτερος . .
ἀδικώτερος
—‘judged more of
a fool than a knave.’ The double compar. as regularly where two
qualities in the same ohject are contrasted: ἰὼ
στρατηγοὶ πλέονες ἢ βελτίονες.
μετὰ ἀξυνεσίας
—‘besides his (seeming)
folly,’ a characteristic substitute for μετὰ
τοῦ ἀξύνετος γίγνεσθαι.
ἂν πεισθεῖεν
—viz. the state. The change
to plur. is made easy by the intervention of τῶν
πολιτῶν.
ἀπὸ τοῦ ἴσου
‘on equal terms,’ is parallel
to ἐκφοβοῦντα.
σώφρονα
—a very moderate criticism of the
dangerous tendency now manifesting itself in Athenian public life,
since the death of Pericles, to give too much weight to the πιθανώτατοι (c.
36,
6). σώφρων was esp. associated
with those opposed to extreme democracy; cf. c.
62,
4. For τῷ πλεῖστα εὖ βουλεύοντι,
‘he whose connsel is generally good,’ we should expect, at first
sight, something like τῷ πιστὰ ξυμβουλεύοντι
(conjectnred by Weil), ‘he whose counsel is followed,’ in contrast
with τὸν μὴ τυχόντα γνώμης, in the
sense, ‘he whose advice is rejected’; cf
πείσας and μὴ τυχών in §
3, κατορθῶν and ἐπιτυχών below. But in stating the principle that ought to be followed, the
moderate Diodotus criticizes what the people professed to wish, viz.
to reward good (not merely persuasive)
counsellors. But in rewards the persuasive was mistaken for the
good. And τὸν μὴ τυχόντα γνώμης is
no doubt intentionally ambiguous, for, in contrast with πείσας, it does mean ‘he who fails to
carry his opinion’; but, in contrast with τῷ
εὖ βουλεύοντι, ‘not fortunate in his advice’ means ‘wrong’ ‘Who fails in counsel’ will keep up
the two meanings. Cf. Aesch. PV. 204
τὰ
λῷστα βουλεύων πιθεῖν . . οὐκ ἠδυνήθην. (The intentional
ambiguity of this passage has escaped notice.)
ἀλλὰ μηδ’ ἐλασσοῦν
—‘but not to curtail . . either,’ as might happen in the case of his
being charged with corruption.
οὐχ ὅπως . . ἀλλὰ μηδέ
—non modo
(non) . .sed ne . . quidem.
For the sentiment cf. Demosth. III. 18
οὐ λέγει τις τὰ βέλτιστα; άναστὰς ἄλλος ειπάτω,
μὴ τοῦτον αἰτιάσθω.
πρὸς χάριν
—‘to please’ the people.
ὀρέγοιτο
—sc. ἥκιστα
ἄν.τῷ αὐτῷ
is explained by χαριζόμενος κτλ.
καὶ ὑποπτεύηται
—‘if a mere suspicion
that a man is speaking for gain, and is offering the best advice in
spite of it.’ We cannot render ‘though he
offers the best advice, he does so for gain,’ as is commonly done,
for the μέν-clause must be our though (cf. Jebb on
Soph. OC. 1536). But there is no need
to supply δοκῇ from ὑποπτεύηται to suit the δέ-clause if we notice that μὲν . . δέ is inserted merely for the
sake of a verbal antithesis, and that the sense is simply κέρδους ἕνεκα τὰ βέλτιστα λέγειν.
φθονήσαντες . . κερδῶν
—‘feeling jealous of
the uncertain impression of his gains,’ i.e. jealous of his supposed
gains. That his advice is helpful is ex hypothesi
certain.
τῆς πόλεως ἀφαιρούμεθα
—the same constr. c.
58,
1.
καθέστηκε δέ
—‘it has come to this,
that.’
ἀπὸ τοῦ εὐθέος
is opposed to ἀπάτῃ below.
τὰ δεινότατα . . πεῖσαι
—‘to get the most atrocious
proposals adopted.’
μόνην τε πόλιν
—‘so we are the only state
which it is impossible to benefit openly, without recourse to
deception.’ It is disputed whether μόνην
πόλιν means (1) ‘a state alone,’ as distinct from the individual citizens, or (2) ‘(ours) is the
only state which,’ as pred. to ἡμᾶς
supplied. The latter is surely right, for (1) Athens is contrasted
with ἡ σώφρων πόλις in c.
42,
5, and this contrast is kept up through c.
43,
1, and (2) there is no suggestion in the context that the state is
more suspicious than the individual.
διὰ τὰς περινοίας
—‘excessive shrewdness,’ by
which it thinks it detects self-interest in the honest speaker. The
word only here.
ἀνθ‐υποπτεύεται
—‘is in
return suspected.’
χρὴ δὲ . . σκοπούντων
—‘but in dealing with the
most important interests and in such a case as this it ought to be
assumed that we speakers take a somewhat wider forecast than you
whose view is circumscribed,’ i.e. whose judgment is formed in a
short debate
τι
with
περαιτέρω, as in μᾶλλόν τι.ἐν τῷ τοιῷδε
: its possible meanings are ‘at such a time,’
and ‘in such a case.’
ὑπεύθυνον
—a speaker was liable to the γραφὴ παρανόμων.
πρὸς ἀνεύθυνον . . ἀκρόασιν
—‘as opposed to your
attention to it, which is irresponsible.’
σωφρονέστερον ἂν
ἐκρίνετε
—‘you would be
more circumspect (cf. c.
42,
5) in your decisions’ (II. 40,
2).
πρὸς ὀργὴν ἥντιν’ ἂν τύχητε
—‘in the anger of the
moment.’ Grammatieally ζημιοῦντες
is supplied to τύχητε, and πρός, according to a common idiom, is
repeated to ἥντινα; but no doubt
the speaker would not be conscious of such ellipse. ἥντινα without
ἄν is according to epic idiom; but it is very probable
that ἥντιν’ ἂν is the true
reading. (No other emendation is to be thought of: ἤν τι ἀτυχῆτε is impossible, if only
because ἀτυχεῖν in this context
means ‘to fail in a request’ Nor must σφαλέντες be supplied to τύχητε: for this would mean that
punishment is inflieted in the same mood as that in which the error
was committed. But that is not the point.)
εἰ
=ὅτι
.
θανάτου . . πρόκεινται—θανάτου gen.
of definition. ζημία πρόκειται (see
crit. note) is more likely in view of πασῶν τῶν
ζημιῶν below. To πολλῶν . .
ἁμαρτημάτων supply ‘as the penalty.’
τῷ ἐπιβουλεύματι
—instrumental.
πόλις τε ἀφισταμένη
—‘so in the case of a
state.’
τῇ δοκήσει
—‘in its own opinion.’ An
effective reply to Cleon's argument from the fact that M. had taken
Athens at a disadvantage.
τούτῳ
—revolt.
ἐπεὶ . . γε
—not a common combination; Iliad IX. 425 ἐπεὶ οὔ
σφισιν ἥδε γ’ ἑτοίμη, Pind. Ol. IX.
40 ἐπεὶ τό γε λοιδορῆσαι θεοὺς ἐχθρὰ σοφία.
The γε merely emphasizes διεξεληλύθασι.
προστιθέντες
—‘continually adding to
them.’ For
εἴ πως
with a perf.
preceding see M.T. § 489, esp. Aristoph. Av. 120
.
παραβαινομένων
—there are two tenable
explanations of this: (1) impersonal gen. abs. as in I. 116
ἐσαγγελθέντων
M. T.
§ 848, ‘transgressions being committed’; (2) sc. τῶν μεγίστων ἀδικημάτων, which would be
internal accus. to παραβαίνω in
the act. form, as in ἀδικῶ ἀδίκημα.
The matter is rendered impossible of certain solution by the
perplexing καὶ τοῦτο παρα· βαίνεται.
We expect, of course, the sense ‘mild penalties being disregarded,’
and presently, ‘the death penalty is disregarded,’ but how this can
be got out of the Gk. as it stands is not apparent, unless we take
an etymological sense of παραβαίνω, ‘pass by,’ which is found
occasionally in the orators, and interpret
τοῦτο below as put loosely for ἡ
ζημία τοῦ θανάτου. Against this is not so much the fact
that Thuc. does not elsewhere use παραβαίνω
thus, but much more that παραβαίνω ζημίαν
is stranger than any instance in the orators and that the proximity
of ἀδικημάτων makes it unnatural.
καὶ τοῦτο ὅμως παραβαίνεται
—the conjectures are (1) κἀν τούτῳ (Kruger) ‘and under these
circumstances,’ with παραβαίνεται
impers. But it should be ἐν τούτοις
(cf. Jebb on Soph. Ant.
39);ἐν τούτῳ=‘meanwhile,’
or ‘in this point.’ (2) καὶ ταῦτα,
sc. τὰ ἀδικήματα (Hude; cf. 2
above). I should prefer καὶ ταὐτά
‘and the same offences are committed.’
δεινότερον . . δέος
—‘a terror more
terrible’; cf. VII 68
ἐχθροὶ καὶ ἔχθιστοι.
ἢ τόδε γε
—‘else this,’ with emphasis on the
second alternative (Neil on Aristoph. Eq. 413). Notice τόδε after
τούτου, not very rare; e.g. Soph. Ant. 296.
ἡ μὲν πενία
—to πενία
is opposed the power—
ἐξουσία —that results from wealth. A poor man is
emboldened by necessity, as a rich man is made covetous by insolence
and pride.
αἱ δ’ ἄλλαι ξυντυχίαι . .
κινδύνους
—‘the other condi
tions of life,’ as they arise—temporary rather than permanent: these
fill men with a sudden passion (ὀργῇ),
‘as each (ξυντυχία) is overpowered
by some irrepressible power’—such e.g. as an overwhelming desire for
independence. ὀργῇ τῶν ἀνθρώπων
coriesponds to τὴν τόλμαν παρέχουσα
and τὴν πλεονεξίαν π. of the other
clauses, while ἀνήκεστόν τι
corresponds to ἀνάγκη and ὕβρις καὶ φρόνημα. Of the many
alterations proposed, only τὸν ἄνθρωπον
for τῶν ἀνθρώπων needs notice. It
is not an improvement; for there is a point in τῶν ἀ., ‘passion in those men’ whom
they befall, always there, like πλεονεξία and
τόλμα, and ready to be called out by a favourable ξυντυχία. (Not
‘mankind,’ which would here be άνθρώπων,
as ὀργῇ is without article. It has
been proposed to refer έκάστη τις
to ὀργῆ?, but this would leave ξυντυχίαι too vague, and there would be
little point in ἑκάστη τις.)
ἐπὶ παντί
—‘in every case’ of those just
alluded to; cf. ἐπ’ οὐδενὶ τῶν τοιούτωι
Demosth. XXI. 65.
ὁ μέν
—first comes Desire, next Hope—and
then the attempt. Note the personification here.
τὴν . . ἐπιβουλὴν ἐκφροντίζων
—‘thinking out the plot.’
The schol. has ἐγχείρησιν on this
word, so that the writer of it must have found ἐπιβολήν, ‘attempt,’ which most MSS.
give, the only objection to which is that the subst. is not found
elsewhere in this sense before Polybius.
τὴν εὐπορίαν τῆς τύχης
—‘suggesting the ready help of
Chanee.’ Hope deludes them into a fancy that at the critical moment
Chance will favour them. Though a subjective gen. does not occur
with εὐπορία elsewhere, τῆς τύχης is plainly subjective here;
cf. VII. 61
τὸ τῆς τύχης κἂν μεθ’ ἡμῶν ἐλπίσαντες στῆναι
,V. 113.
(τύχη cannot=‘success’ here, cf. §
7, nor ‘their fortunes.’)
ὄντα ἀφανῆ
—i.e.
ἔρως and ἐλπίς, ‘because
(not though) unseen.’ Were they φανεραί, men would see that they could
not be counted upon. As it is, πλεῖστα
βλάπτουσι by luring them on. Cf. v. 103
ἐπὶ τὰς ἀφανεῖς (ἐλπίδας)
καθίστανται, and the next sentence.
ἐπ’ αὐτοῖς
—besides ἔρως and ἐλπίς
.
καὶ ἐκ τῶν ὑποδεεστέρων
—‘even with insufficient
means.’
οὐχ ἧσσον
—i.e. even
more than men.
περὶ τῶν μεγίστων τε
—sc.
κινδυνεύουσι. For the τε,
which, though found only in C, is probably right, cf. IV. 80
ἑτοίμων ὄντων τρέφειν τε καὶ ἐπὶ ἀποστάσει σφᾶς
ἐπικαλουμένων.
μετὰ πάντων . . ἐδόξασεν
—‘each individual acting
with the whole community . . rates himself considerably above the
reality,’ i.e. exaggerates his own strength. The reading of the best
MSS. is αὐτῶν for αὑτόν. For
δοξάζω with personal obj. cf. Xen. Cyr.
V. 5,
46 ἀλκιμώτατος δοξάζεται εἶναι.ἐπὶ πλέον τι
together.
ἁπλῶς
—c.
38,
7.
πολλῆς εὐηθείας, ὅστις
—‘(it is a mark) of much
simplicity, if anyone supposes.’ Cf. Xen. Hell.
II. 3,
51 νομίζω προστάτου ἔργον εἶναι οἵου δεῖ, ὃς
ἂν . . μὴ ἐπιτρέπῃ. It would be more usual to have πολλὴ εὐήθειά (
ἐστιν)ὅστις, or εὐηθέστατον ὅστις.
ἐχεγγύῳ
—affording a good ἐγγύη, security that other states will
not follow the example of Mytilene.
βουλεύσασθαι
—‘come to a decision.’
οὐκ
—redundant.
ὅτι ἐν βραχυτάτῳ
—notice the regular order
with ὅτι and ὡς+superl.
καὶ ἀποστᾶσα
—‘when revolt has actually
taken place.’
τὴν δαπάνην ἀποδοῦναι καὶ τὸ
λοιπὸν ὑποτελεῖν
—here, naturally, the least
is made of the terms dealt out by Athens to revolted allies who
submitted. Independent allies, when reduced after revolting, had
also to pull down their walls and to hand over their ships to
Athens. In I. 98
Thuc. gives a summary of the treatment dealt out to them much less
favourable to Athens. By ὑποτελεῖν
is meant φόρου ὑποτελεῖς εἶναι.
τίνα οἴεσθε ἥντινα
—see on c.
39,
7.
παρατενεῖσθαι
—‘be strained to the utmost
extremity.’
τὸ αὐτὸ δύναται
—cf. I. 141
τὴν αὐτὴν δούλωσιν δύναται.
τῆς προσόδου . . ἀπ’ αὐτῆς
—the art. not repeated with a
verbal substantive (πρόσοδος—προσιέναι).
The words necessary to complete the sense of the subst. generally
follow it, as in I. 18
τὴν κατάλυσιν ἐκ τῆς Ἑλλάδος, but
occasionally precede, as in II.
18
κατὰ τὴν ἄλλην πορείαν ἡ σχολαιότης.
τῷδε
—viz. τῇ
προσόδῳ.
ἀκριβεῖς
—‘exacting’; so in I. 99
Thuc. says ἀκριβῶς ἔπρασσον of
Athens in relation to her allies.
ἐς χρημάτων λόγον—ἐς λ. is ‘on
the score of.’ The phrase occurs also in Lysias (XIX. 61), and εἰς χρήματα
is found.
ἀπὸ τῶν ἔργων τῆς ἐπιμελείας
—‘by practical
precautions.’ Some render ‘by taking care of our actions’; but the
former seems more natural, and cf. VI. 40
ἔργῳ φυλασσομένη.
ἐλεύθερον
by right;
βίᾳ ἀρχόμενον
in fact. βίᾳ= ‘in its despite’; cf. I. 43
μὴ ξυμμάχους δέχεσθε βίᾳ ἡμῶν,68. Diodotus alludes to the true position of
Lesbos; cf. c.
10.
πρός
—‘to the side of.’
τούτου
—i.e. τοῦ
ἀφίστασθαι.
ὅτι ἐπ’ ἐλάχιστον
—viz. of the inhabitants.
τοῦτο
—internal aecus., ‘in this.’
ἀποστήσασι
—sc. τὴν
πόλιν.
τῆς ἀντικαθισταμένης
—‘which is ranging
itself against us.’
ἐς πόλεμον ἐπέρχεσθε
—either ἔρχεσθε ἐς πόλεμον or ἐπέρχεσθε alone would be usual. Here we
must supply αὐτῇ, and take ἐς of the end in view.
εἰ
with fut. indic., ‘if you are going
to.’
ἀδικήσετε . . κτείνοντες
—‘you will be guilty
of the crime of’; a legal use.
καταστήσετε
—‘bring about,’ unusual
without a predicative adj.; cf. (Classen) IV. 92
πολλὴν ἄδειαν κατεστήσαμεν.
προδειξάντων
—‘as you will have published
abroad.’
καὶ εἰ ἠδίκησαν, μὴ
προσποιεῖσθαι
—‘even if they did
wrong, to pass it over.’ μὴ προσποιεῖσθαι
,dissimulare, which occurs in several
authors, is on the principle of οὔ φημι
.
ὅ
—‘the element.’ Thuc. is partial to
the neut. sing. collective for a masc. plur.
καὶ τοῦτο—τοῦτο antieipates ἑκόντας ἡμᾶς ἀδικηθῆναι: cf. VI. 85
καὶ ἡμῖν τοῦτο ὠφελεῖ, οὐκ ἢν . . . ἀλλ’ ἤν
. .
δικαίως
—i.e. as strict justiee allows.
δεῖ
refers to
interest, as in § 4.
τὸ Κλέωνος
.—made in c.
40,
4: ‘Cleon's claim, namely the identity of justice and expediency in
the punishment, is found to be impossible of being realized at once
in such a punishment,’ viz. ἐν τῷ διαφθεῖραι.
The sentence is illogical, for either τὸ
αὐτό or ἅμα should
have been omitted.
ἀντιπάλων
—‘equally matched’ (here, in
argument), a common meaning of ἀντίπαλος
in Thuc.
ἦλθον μὲν ἐς ἀγῶνα ὅμως τῆς δόξης
—‘engaged in a conflict of
opinion after all,’ i.e. in spite of the revulsion of feeling (c.
36
).ὅμως, as Poppo pointed out (Proleg. i. p. 290) implies a clause which is
omitted; and, in spite of the remoteness of reference, the
interpretation seems warranted by such passages as c.
28,
and VII. 1.
Some render τῆς δόξης ‘about the
decree,’ but the gen. should express the feeling, as in νῦν ἀγὼν εὐψυχίας
Eur. Med. 403,
and βούλευμα or ψήφισμα would be expected for ‘decree’
here.
προτέρας
—the best MSS. have δευτέρας, as the result, no doubt, of
an unfortunate conjecture, based on εἰ
φθάσειαν below.
οἴνῳ . . πεφυραμένα
—‘barley-meal kneaded
with wine . .,’ into cakes, μᾶζαι,
of the kind called οἰνοῦτται. φυρᾶν,
not φύρειν, is the form of the
word in this sense.
ὅσον . . ἀνεγνωκέναι
—‘as for him to have
read,’ like ὅσον ἀποζῆν in I. 2.
ὅσον practically=ὤστε.
ὑστέρα αὐτῆς
—as this is predicative, the ἐπι‐ in the verb is pleonastic, if, as
elsewhere, the verb=‘is brought into port after.’
It is possible that ἐπι‐ implies haste, as in
ἐπιβοηθεῖν: we expect such an allusion here, and Steup
suggests αὐτίκ’ for αὐτῆς.
παρὰ τοσοῦτον . . ἦλθε
—this and similar phrases—παρὰ μικρὸν ἐλθεῖν, παρ’ οὐδὲν ἐ.—are
followed either by gen. or, more often, infin.; e g. Herod. IX. 33
παρ’ ἕν πάλαισμα
ἔδραμε νικᾶν. παρὰ τοσοῦτον=‘within, up to, so short a
distance.’ κίνδυνος
means the danger of destruction, and the gen. is the same as with ἐγγύς.
Νικίου
—first mention of him in Thuc.
ἣ κεῖται . . ἐχρῶντο δὲ αὐτῇ
—it is not usual to have the rel.
repeated in the second clause (VI. 4
τὸ χωρίον οὗ νῦν ἡ πόλις ἐστὶ καὶ ὃ πρῶτον
ἐτειχίσθη), unless the one is pos., the other neg., as in II. 43
οὐκ ἐν ᾧ κεῖνται μᾶλλον, ἀλλ’ ἐν ᾧ ἡ δόξα
καταλείπεται. In the second clause the rel. is often
replaced by the required case of αὐτός.
A similar omission or substitution is frequent in Lat., esp. in
Livy, as XXIII. 8
cum quo steterat nec
eum patria maiestas sententia dcpulerat. So,
too, in Engl., as Hooker ‘Whom though to know
be life, and joy to make mention of His
name,’ Macanly ‘To whom she seemed to listen,
but did not hear them.’
τὴν φυλακὴν . . εἶναι
—Athens had at least one φρούριον at Salamis, and a few ships
there maintained a not very efficient blockade of the port of
Megara.
τούς τε Πελοποννησίους
—parallel to τοῖς τε Μεγαρεῦσιν
. . ἐσπλεῖν, and probably, like that
clause, depending on τοῖς Ἀθηναίοις φυλακὴν
εἶναι=τοὺς Ἀθηναίους φυλάσσεσθαι.
This κατὰ σύνεσιν constr. cannot
be paralleled in prose, but it would be ordinary in tragedy: see
Jebb on Soph. Antig.
216. Thus τοὺς Π. is the
anticipatory accus., for ὅπως οἰ
Πελοποννήσιοι κτλ.: the differing constr., first ὅπως, then infin., after a single verb,
is not unusual. (Several emendations have been proposed, of which πρός τε Πελ., depending on φυλακὴν εἶναι and τούς τε Πελ. σκοπῶν are worth notice.)
μὴ ποιῶνται . . αὐτόθεν
—viz. from Nisaea, the harbour
of Megara. The allusion in αὐτόθεν
is not quite the same as in the previous case.
τὸ πρὶν γενόμενον
—‘the previous incident’
occurred in the autumn of 429 B.C. The Pel. intended to surprise the
Piraeus, but contented themselves with a descent on Salamis, which
caused great alarm at Athens, and led at once to measures for the
protection of the Athenian harbours (II. 93
).
l. 13
ἑλὼν οὖν . . προύχοντε
—when, as in the case of
Megara (I. 103
),
a city had long walls running down to its harbour, it was usual to
prolong the walls aeross the mouth, and to leave only a small
passage between two towers, forming what was called a κλῃστὸς λιμήν. ἀπὸ τῆς Νισαίας προύχοντε
are to be taken together. The order is unusual, but (1) ἀπὸ τῆς N. gains prominence by its
position (cf. Jebb on Soph. Antig. 325), (2) it is certainly
not stranger than II. 7
πρὸς ταῖς αὐτοῦ ὑπαρχούσαις ἐξ Ἰταλίας καὶ
Σικελίας τοῖς τἀκείνων ἑλομένοις, where ἐξ . . Σικελίας goes with ἑλομένοις. (If taken with ἑλών, ἀπὸ τῆς N. is rendered either (a) ‘on the side toward N.,’ or (b) ‘on the side away from N.’ But (1) in either case δύο πύργω
then raises a difficulty, because they are then both on the island,
and above, it was one tower: (2) neither meaning has really been proved
possible: in the passages quoted for (b)ἀπό=‘at a distance from’ with a verb of rest. If not taken with προύχοντε, ἀπὸ τῆς N. would
naturally=‘starting from N.,’ with N. for a base; (3) with (a) it is impossible to explain
καὶ τὸ ἐκ τῆς ἠπείρου, which must
denote a different place from ἀπὸ τῆς
N.)
ἐς τὸ μεταξὺ τῆς νήσου
—supply καὶ
τῆς ἠπείρου, as in Dem. de Cor.
26
τὸν μεταξὺ χρόνεν τῶν
ὅρκων, ‘the interval between (that time, and) the oaths,’ Aristoph. Av. 187
ἐν μέσῳ δήπουθεν ἀήρ ἐστι γῆς, and
often. Sometimes the other limit is expressed. (It might mean ‘to
the part of the island lving between,’ as Isocr. IV. 70
ἐν τῷ μεταξὺ τῆς χώρας, but on the
whole this seems less likely.)
ἀπετείχιζε καὶ τὸ ἐκ τῆς ἠ.
—‘he proceeded to build a
wall on the side facing the mainland as well,’ apparently at the
island end of the bridge. The καί
refers to πρῶτον.
καὶ ἐν τῇ νήσῳ τεῖχος
—the
καί refers to ἀπετείχιζε τὸ ἐκ τῆς
ἠπείρου. (We cannot be confident about the interpretation
of these operations at Mmoa, because (1) the account— as is often
the case with Thuc. when he writes of topographical details—is not
clear, and (2) the coastline has changed, and there is no longer an
island at all.)
πολιορκεῖσθαι
—‘endure the siege,’ a use
of the inf. frequent with ἀδικεῖσθαι,
and found occasionally both in Greek and Latin.
εὶρημένον γὰρ ἦν
—sc. βίᾳ
μὴ ἑλεῖν. But this is just what the Pel.
had tried to do in 429 B.C.: their views had changed.
ὅσα πολέμῳ χωρία ἔχουσιν
—the original intention of
Sparta had been to destroy the Athenian empire: since the failure at
Lesbos they expect much less. That failure had evidently
strengthened the peace party at Sparta.
λέγοντα
—as in VII. 3;
contrast II. 85
πέμπουσι ξυμβούλους κελεύοντες.
εἰ βούλονται . . οὐδένα
—in this perplexing sentence,
it is best (1) to make παραδοῦναι
and χρήσασθαι depend on βούλονται: (2) to make τους τε . . οὐδένα the apodosis to this
protasis. Then (1) τε . . δέ
eorrespond (I. 11,
1, 25, 3, VI. 83,
1, VII. 81,
3, and in other authors not very seldom); (2) κολάζειν=‘they are ready to punish,’
unless we accept the conjeeture κολάσειν.
For the outline of the syntax cf. VII. 3
προπέμπει . . λέγοντα, εἰ βούλονται ἐξιέναι . .
ἑτοῖμος εἶναι σπένδεσθαι. (It is impossible to render εἰ ‘whether,’ as though λέγοντα were
ἐρωτῶντα.)
ἀγαθόν τι
—the second τι is not impossible, but, in view of 53, 2, 68, 1, it is
improbable.
προτάξαντες σφῶν αὐτῶν
is generally rendered
‘having appointed as their advocates,’ but, in view of VI. 100
τριακοσίους σφῶν αύτῶν . . προύταξαν
(cf. c.
112
below), Hude is probably right in taking the gen. as partitive.
Αἰειμνήστου
—a eelebrated man, who had
commanded the Plataeans at Marathon and Plataea.
πιστεύσαντες . . οἰόμενοι . .
καὶ . . δεξάμενοι . .
ἡγούμενοι
—this series of partieiples is
perplexing, and their relation depends on whether (1)
the sentence is meant to be antithetic, so that πιστεύσαντες καὶ δεξάμενοι form a pair,
and οἰόμενοι and ἡγούμενοι stand in causal relation to
these respectively; or (2) οἰόμενοι καὶ
ἡγούμενοι give the two grounds of
πιστεύσαντες, and ἐν
(with the MSS.) ἄλλοις δεξάμενοι
is subord. —either conditional or causal—to ἡγούμενοι:
or (3) the sentence is developed as it proceeds, so that (a)οἰόμενοι καὶ
δεξάμενοι—with either ἐν
or ἂν ἄλλοις—give the cause of ἐποιησάμεθα, and ἡγούμενοι gives the cause of δεξάμενοι: or (4) with δεξάμενοι subord. to ἡγούμενοι, πιστεύσαντες is similarly
subord. of condition to οἰόμενοι. I decidedly prefer (3),
because it gives a form of sentence to which Thuc. is certainly
partial (Hache, de Partic. Thucyd. ii.); the
main verb is followed by a partic.—here οἰόμενοι
καὶ δεξάμενοι—that gives the cause;
then this partic. itself develops another causal to itself; cf., for
instance, c.
110
ἀγγέλλεται τοὺς Ἀμπρακιώτας ἐπιβοηθεῖν,
βουλομένους . . ξυμμεῖξαι, εἰδότας οὐδέν. The order of πιστεύσαντες tells against (1) and (4),
and (2) is very artificial. The incoherence of § 1 is doubtless
intentional, as in the case of the opening of Soph. Antig.
ἐν δικασταῖς οὐκ ἂν ἄλλοις
δεξάμενοι
—the MSS. have ἐν άλλοις, and for the repetition of
the prep. in apposition VI. 68
ἦλθον ἐπὶ τὴν μητρόπολιν ἐφ’ ἡμᾶς is
quoted. But (1) in that passage and others like it, such as Lysias VI. 14
ἐν Ἀρείῳ πάγῳ, ἐν τῷ σεμνοτάτῳ δικαστηρίῳ,
we have a second noun added to explain the first (cf. Jebb on Soph. Trach. 695):
this is not so with ἐν ἄλλοις here
(so Kruger). (2) Taking constr. (3) as explained in the last note, ἂν δεξάμενοι, ‘would have consented to
appear before no other judges,’ gives a better sense than δεξάμενοι.
ὥσπερ καὶ ἐσμέν
—‘as we are actually doing.’
ἀμφοτέρων—τὸ νόμιμον and τὸ ἴσον.
ἡμαρτήκαμεν
—the subj. perf., of what may
turn out afterwards to have been the case, might have been used.
λόγον
—i.e. μακρότερα
εἰπεῖν, c.
52,
5.
τό τε ἐπερώτημα βραχὺ ὄν
—accus. abs. co-ordinated with the
preceding gen. abs, both expressing cause.
τὰ μὲν ἀληθῆ
is obj. of ἀποκρίνασθαι; the infin. clause is
subj. to γίγνεται. Hence
ἐναντία
sc. ήμῖν,
is for ἐναντίον, which is awkward
after τὰ άληθῆ: some think ἐναντίον should be read. (The other
view, that ἀποκρίνασθαι is
epexegetic, ἀληθὴς ἀποκρίνασθαι,
is most improbable, and ᾧ is then
grammatically impossible.)
τὰ δὲ ψευδῆ
—sc.
ἀποκρίνασθαι.
ἔλεγχον ἔχει
—‘can be confuted.’
l 18.
εἰπόντας τι κινδυνεύειν
—‘to say something
and take our chance’=here ‘to say something if we must risk our
lives’; the emphasis, as often in Gk. and Lat., on the partic., as
in I. 20
βουλόμενοι δράσαντές τι καὶ (‘then’) κινδυνεῦσαι,
Soph. OC. 1038
χωρῶν
ἀπείλει ‘threaten, but go,’ Trach.
592 εἰδέναι χρὴ δρῶσαν ‘you must
act, if you would know.’
ὁ μὴ ῥηθεὶς λόγος
=τὸ τὸν
λόγον μὴ ῥηθῆναι, a frequent constr. in Greek and Silver
Latin; cf. c.
66,
3, Demosth. Olynth.
III. 34
οἴκοι μἐνων βελτίων=τὸ μἐνειν αὐτὸν βέλτιόν ἐστι. See also
c.
66,
3. The neg. in the phrase is regularly μή,
whether the partic. is in attributive, or—as much oftener —in
predicative position.
αἰτίαν
—‘grievance,’ meaning probably
‘self-reproach,’ as in I. 140.
ἀγνῶτες . .
ἐπεσενεγκάμενοι
—the subject
contracts, being first both parties, but then
the Plataeans only: this freedom is characteristic of Thuc.
πρὸς εἰδότας πάντα λελέξεται
—‘you know all that can be
said.’
ἡμῶν
with
προκαταγνόντες as well as ἀρετάς,
‘having formed the prejudice against us, that our merits’; cf. c.
45,
1.
αὐτό
—viz. τὸ
ἥσσους εἶναι κτλ.
ἄλλοις χάριν φέροντες
—‘gratifying others,’
viz. the Thebans. The subject of φέροντες
would more naturally be the Lacedaemonians: if the text is sound—φερόντων has been conjectured—we recall
the principle qui facit per alium facit per se.
πολλὰ μὲν . . ἠδίκησαν, τὸ δὲ
τελευταῖον . .
ξύνιστε
—the form of the sentence shows
that Θηβαῖοι is purposely placed
in a prominent place; cf. what the Plataeans say at II. 71
μετὰ Θηβαίων τῶν ἡμῖν ἐχθίστων ἐπὶ δουλείᾳ τῇ
ἡμετέρᾳ ἥκετε.
καταλαμβάνοντας
—conative.
ἱερομηνίᾳ
—the attack occurred τελευτῶντος τοῦ μηνός (II.
2), but whether the holiday was connected with the new moon is
unknown. The attempt was made at about ten o'clock (περὶ πρῶτον ὕπνον) on the night,
probably, of April 4, 431.
εἰ γάρ
—‘if you are going to base your
estimate of Justice on your present interest (which is, to favour
Thebes) and their hostility.’ The repetition of the art. before ἐκείνων would be more usual; but it is
not necessary. The position of τε
is defended by the contrast between ὑμῶν
and ἐκείνων. λαμβάνειν is here ‘to
feel about’ a thing. (Stahl and Classen agree in this explanation,
which is no doubt correct) For λαμβάνειν,
‘to feel about’ in a certain manner, cf. δῑ
οἴκτου λ. (Eur.
Suppl. 194), and c.
59,
1.
ἠμεῖς
—sc. ἦμεν,
as the sense shows.
μείζονι
—viz. than you now are, from the
Athenians.
ἐν καιροῖς οἷς
—i.e. ἐν
οἷς, according to a common idiom, e.g. Dem. XIX. 342
ἐπὶ τῆς αὐτῆς
(ἐφ’)ἦσπερ
νῦν ἐξουσίας . . μενεῖ. To ἐν
καιροῖς, as to μείζω,
the partic. must be supplied; cf. c.
30,
1: contrast c.
47,
5.
μᾶλλον
—i.e. than now when their services
are forgotten.
τὰ ξύμφορα . . αὑτοῖς
—(‘arrange terms) which were to
their own advantage in view of the invasion.’ πρὸς τὴν ἔ. belongs to ξύμφορα rather than to πράσσοντες: cf. II. 3
ῃ ἕκαστον ἐφαίνετο πρὸς τὰ παρόντα ξύμφορον
ἔσεσθαι.
ἀσφαλείᾳ
—‘securely,’ as in c.
82
ἀσφαλείᾳ δὲ τὸ ἐπιβουλεύεσθαι, ‘to make
plans in security,’ Soph.
OT. 51
ἀλλ’ ἀσφαλείᾳ τήνδ’
ἀνόρθωσον πόλιν.
ὧν
—partitive.
ἐπὶ τοῖς αὐτοῖς
—i.e. because we have again
chosen τὸ ἀγαθόν (cf. δικαίως presently) rather than τὸ ἀσφαλές (cf.
κερδαλἐως).
τῶν ξυμμάχων τοῖς ἀγαθοῖς
—lit. ‘when, while feeling (ἔχουσι with
ὑμῖν) lasting gratitude towards brave allies,
what is perhaps (που) your
interest at the moment is also secured.’ The chief emphasis is, of
course, on the participial phrase, which states the permanent
condition or test of the righteousness of pursuing one's own
interest. (The conjecture ἔχουσι
for MSS. ἔχωσι, which cannot be
satisfactorily explained, seems certain. For the dat. τοῖς ἀγαθοῖς depending on a dat. ἔχουσι cf. [Xen.] de
Rep. Ath.
1 6 τοῖς
ὁμοίοις σφίσιν αὐτοῖς ἦν ἀγαθά ‘for those like
theniselves.’ It is impossible to find a subject for ἔχωσι, and Mr. Spratt's rendering of τὴν χάριν ἔχωσι ‘command a recognition’
is incorrect. That this passage, however, is completely restored by
reading ἔχουσι, it would be rash
to assume.)
προσκέψασθε
—as
προ‐σκοπεῖν always implies a look into the future, there is much to be said for the
conjecture προς‐σκέψασθε ‘consider besides’ here, for advice to consider the
future has already been given in the preceding chapter. But as the
Spartan reputation for ἀνδραγαθία
was based on the venerated institutions of Lycurgus, they might be
supposed to be specially sensitive about the
future of that. 2
ἀνδραγαθίας
—a merit for which Dorians
especially valued themselves: here and at c.
64,
1 “the point is the special Dorian claim to an aristocratic strain
of feeling and conduct” (Neil: see above on c.
40,
4). Perhaps ‘good breeding.’
μὴ τὰ εἰκότα
—a neg. is not seldom placed
before the article or preposition (οὐκ ἐν
ὀλίγῳ).
ἐπαινούμενοι
—viz. as models of ἀνδραγαθία.
οὐδ’
—‘no more than you.’
ἐπιγνῶναι
—after
γνώσεσθε above, the ἐπι‐
can scarcely have its usual force, ‘to decide
further’: the sense is probably merely ‘to arrive at a
decision.’
τοὺς μὲν πατέρας . . ὑμᾶς δέ
—‘if you, whose fathers . . ,’
the first clause being subord. to the second. Generally δεινόν is followed by εἰ in such cases.
τὸν τρίποδα
—i.e. on the bronze pedestal
of three intertwined serpents that supported the gold tripod set up
at Delphi from the tithe of the Persian spoils dedicated to the
Pythian god. It stood close to the altar before the temple. The
pedestal was taken by Constantine to Byzantium, and still exists,
with the names of the states inscribed on the lower part of the
spiral. The tripod was appropriated by the Phocians. (Herod. IX. 81, with Stein's notes.)
πανοικεσίᾳ
—after
πόλιν and Πλάταιαν this
means (as Steup points out) ‘with all its houses,’ not ‘household
and all’ as in II. 16.
τοῦτο
—referring to what precedes.
ἀπωλλύμεθα
—Plataea was burnt by Xerxes.
The rendering ‘we were all but destroyed’ is borne out by other
passages; e.g. Andoc. de Myst. § 41.
ἐν
—as in κρίνεσθαι
έν
ἀγῶνας
—‘hazards.’
τότε
—referring to the siege of Plataea, τότε being frequently used of a
well-known occasion.
περιεώσμεθα
‘we are outcasts.’
ράντων
is probably masc.; cf. ἐκ παντὸς τοῦ ’Ελληνικοῦ above.
ἀτιμώρητοι
—‘unsuccoured.’
βέβαιοι
—‘faithful.’
ξυμμαχικῶν
—i.e. the gods by whom the
oath to be true to the alliance was taken.
τήν τε δωρεὰν . . πρέπει
—‘and (we call on you) to ask
in your turn the favour of them—that you do not kill men whom it
disgraces you to kill.’ ἀντ‐απαιτῆ?σαι
means, in answer to the favour they have
asked of you—viz. κτείνειν ἡμᾶς.
To this explanation rather than ‘in return for our services,’ εἴ τι ἐπείσθητε and ἀντὶ αἰσχρᾶς (
χάριτος) point, and this is the natural force of ἀντι‐, as in δρῶν
ἀντιπάσχω χρηστά, and so on; cf.
ἀντιλαβεῖν presently. The subj. of
ἀνταπαιτῆσαι is ὑμᾶς,
and αὐτούς means the Thebans. The μή after οὕς
is because the rel. clause is subord. to an infin. In this series of
four co-ordinate infin. clauses, the second
and third have τε,
the fourth has καί
.
σὠφρονα
—from us, in contrast with
αἰσχρᾶς
from them.
κακίαν
—‘ill-fame,’ character of κακοί, as e.g. in Soph. Ant. 924
quoted on c.
82,
8
κατ’ ἀνάγκην
—as explained in c.
55,
1.
ὥστε καὶ . . ποιοῦντες . .
καὶ προνοοῦντες
—this is not clearly
expressed, for the first participial clause
states what follows from the previous sentence; but καὶ προνοοῦντες κτλ. contains a new
point (ἑκόντας . . προισχομένους),
and should scarcely have been co-ordinated with ἄδειαν ποιοῦντες.
ποιοῦντες
—supply
ἡμῖν: it is not clear whether ἡμῶν
is similarly to be supplied to προνοοῦντες
.
νόμος
the unwritten law; cf. cc. 66, 67. Prisoners who had not surrendered
voluntarily were often killed. Appeals to the νόμος ἄγραφος, πάτριος νόμος, νόμιμα πάσης
Ἐλλάδος are very frequent; and of course the Antigone is full of the άγραπτα κἀσφαλῆ θεῶν νόμιμα. In Xen. Mem.
IV.
4,
19 Hippias defines
the ἄγραφοι νόμοι as οἱ ἐν πάσῃ χώρᾳ κατὰ ταὐτὰ νομιζόμενοι.
ἐσθήμασι
—robes burned
as offerings, probably, and not worn by the
officials. The plur., joined with νομίμοις
and ἀπαρχάς in this connexion, is
surely mentioned as part of the ἐναγίσματα.
Plutarch in Aristides
21,
giving an account of the ceremony as performed in his day, makes no
mention of robes among the offerings; but the details may well have
been modified by his time. On the contrary, he does say that the
Provost wore a purple coat and carried a sword; but the present
passage does not lead like a ref. to that. That clothes were burnt
as offerings to the dead is well known, e.g.
Eur. Hec. 573.
ἐπιφέροντες
—specially used of offerings
to the dead; II. 34.
ξύμμαχοι . . γενομένοις
—the object of the
speaker is to emphasize the lasting effect of
the old alliance and to say nothing of the alliance with Athens.
ὁμαίχμοις
is an oldfashioned word,
perhaps intended to recall the old times.
αὐθένταις
—as having sided with the
Persians. Another old-fashioned word.
ἱερά τε . . ἀφαιρήσεσθε
—there are three
difficulties here:—(1) ἐρημοῦτε,
present, among a series of futures. This can hardly be defended by
passages in which a single pres, and fut. are combined, such as II. 44
οὐκ ὀλοφύρομαι μᾶλλον ἢ παραμυθήσομαι.
StahI reads ἐρημοῦντες after
Goller; Steup proposes to leave the word out If sound we must render
‘you are making desolate.’ (2) What is the constr. of τῶν . . κτισάντων? The natural answer
is that it depends on ἀφαιρήσεσθε
(‘you will take from’), not on θυσίας.
The objection, that the Plataeans will ex
hypothesi be dead, is hardly serious, for τῶν . . κτισάντων includes the whole
Plataean people of whom no small part was safe at Athens. Neither is
there any need to render ἀφαιρήσεσθε
‘you will deprive,’ a sense that ἀφαιροῦμαι no where has when the object
is inanimate. (3) Is ἱερά or θυσίας the object of τῶν . . κτισάντων? My reason for
preferring θυσίας is that θυσίας τὰς πατρίους must refer to
commemorative sacrifices to the gods founded after the victory of Plataea:
otherwise the Lac. could have no interest in them, and the speaker
could not seek to influence them by such an argument. These
sacrifices are to the gods, and they were
offered on behalf of Greece—ὑπὲρ τῆς Ἑλλάδος (Plut. Arist.
20, 21): hence the
last sentence duly accords with ἠλευθερώθησαν
οἱ Ἕλληνες and ἐκράτησαν
(οὶ *))ελληνες). (The νόμιμα τῶν Ἑλλήνων are not in question
here.)
ἑσσαμένων
—this archaic form in place of ἑσαμένων has by far the best MS.
authority, and perhaps is meant to accord with ὁμαίχμοις and
αὐθένταις.
τάδε
—the conduct deprecated in the
last c., which conduct is now summarized in οὔτε
. . οὔτε.
οἴκτῳ σώφρονι λαβόντας
—‘regarding (the case)
with prudent compassion.’ The point of
σώφρονι is given in ἀλλ’ . .
ξυμπέσοι. The obj. of λαμβάνειν
in this sense is omitted also in VI. 61.
ὡς . . ξυμπέσοι
—the subj. of ξυμπέσοι—τὸ τῆς ξ.—is anticipated.
πρέπον
—sc. ἐστί
.
ὁμοβωμίους
; not found elsewhere; ‘having
the same altars’ may mean either ‘worshipped at the same altar,’ of
several gods worshipped together, or ‘having like altars’ throughout
Greece; hardly ‘whose altars are common to all worshippers.’ The
second suits the context best.
θ’
—this is a necessary addition, as the
passage cannot make a fresh start at
προφερόμενοι.
μὴ ἀμνημονεῖν
—Cobet pronounced these
words spurious: the only constr. they can fairly bear is with προφερόμενοι ὅρκους, but, as ἡμεῖς is the subj. of the other
infins., this is awkward. (ὤμοσαν
would require fut. or aor. infin.: order and the addition of τῶν π. τάφων are against ἱκέται γιγνόμεθα.)τῶν π. τάφων is rendcred ‘by . .
tombs,’ but the gen. can hardly be so understood with ἱκέται, on which it directly depends.
ὑμῶν
—emphatic.
τοῖς ἐχθίστοις
—sc. to your dead (not to us). “The dead are implored to prevent the
Pl., their best friends, being surrendered to the Theb., their worst
enemies” (Widmann).
ᾗ . . ἐν τῇδε—ἐν should not be
made to apply to ᾗ, as this kind
of idiom (Aesch.
Sept. 1032
μητρὸς ταλαίνης κἀπὸ
δυστήνου πατρός) is
confined to poetry (Wilamowitz on Eur. HF. 237).
πράξαντες . .
κινδυνεύομεν
—a compressed form
of ἐπράξαμεν, νῦν δέ κτλ. For νῦν we might have expected the εἶτα of inconsistency.
ὅπερ δέ
—the rel. clause qualifies παυόμενοι, for which we might have had ποιοῦντες.
λόγου τελευτᾶν
—epexegetic of ὅπερ. The gen. with τελευτᾶν again in c.
104.
If you ‘begin’ with a gen., you may naturally
‘end’ with one.
μετ’ αὐτοῦ
—viz. τοῦ
τελευτᾶν.
ἐς τὰ αὐτὰ καταστήσαντας
—i.e. as we were before
we capitulated.
τὸν ξυντυχόντα
—‘any that comes’; cf. ό τυχών.
ἱκέται ὄντες
—‘as suppliants.’ The
likeness of this peroration to the poignant appeals in Euripides
should be noticed.
οὐ
belongs to
μηδίσαι.
Ἀθηναίους
—attraction to case of αὐτούς.
ἰδέᾳ
—‘method.’
καίτοι . . εἴδει
—‘you must surely consider
the conditions under which.’
ἐτύγχανεν . .
πολιτεύουσα
—‘was in point of
fact’: τυγχάνω, as often, not of a
mere accident, but of the true
state of things, as distinct from what might appear to be.
ἰσόνομον
—where all the nobles are equal,
and their rights are fixed by laws. But in a
δυναστεία the few rulers are a law to themselves.
τῷ σωφρονεστάτῳ
—‘the best order,’ i.e.
an aristocracy or moderate democracy. No doubt this is said with
reference to the constitution of Thebes, as existing in 427 B.C.,
with its two Boeotarchs and four assemblies confined to τοῖς κεκτημένοις πλῆθός τι χρημἀτων, as
Theopompus or Cratippus says. (Several conjj. have been made on this
unusual expression, e.g. τῷ σώφρονι πἀντων
Herw.: τῷ σωφρονεστέρῳ Hude.)
τυράννου
—for
τυραννίδος: so δῆμος for δημοκρατία.
οὗτοι . . σχήσειν
—‘these in the hope of
winning power for themselves in yet greater degree.’
καὶ . . ἔπραξεν
—‘so the city as a whole
could not control her actions when she acted so, and it is not fair
to blame her, for any crrors she fell into when she had no
constitution.’
γοῦν
—‘thus for example’; illustrative of
the previous statement.
ἐπιόντων τήν τε ἄλλην
Ἑλλάδα καὶ . . πειρωμένων
—as τε cannot mean ‘and’ here, but must be
correlative to καί, it is clear
that ἐπιόντων governs τὴν . . Ἑλλάδα, and that the
introduction of πειρωμένων changes
the constr.; cf. cc.
67,
6, 94, 3 (so Steup).
ἐχόντων
—after the battle of Oenophyta,
458 B.C. The battle of Coronea in 446 forced the A. to abandon
Boeotia.
ἀδικοῦμεν
—‘are guilty,’ as often.
κοινά
—‘common to.’ Plataea had remained
outside the Boeotian league as reconstituted in 446 B.C., and of
course had no representatives in the General Assembly of the league
which met at Thebes.
καταστῆσαι
—‘bring you into line with.’
πλείω παραβαλλόμενοι
—they were οὐ τῶν ἀδυνατωτάτων (II. 3
);
cf. § 2. For the verb cf. c.
14,
1.
φιλίως, οὐ πολεμίως
κομίσαντες
—cf. the αὐτοί and
πολέμιοι of § 2, and c.
66
οὐ πολεμίως ἐπράσσομεν which show that
the adverbs cannot apply merely to the Plat. and mean ‘with
friendly, and not hostile intent to their
fellow-citizens’; but must refer to the Theb. For this reason,
and because κομίσαντες lacks an
obj., Steup reads φιλίους and πολεμίους. But ‘in a friendly manner’
implies here ‘us as friends of Plataea,’ and
κομίζειν is used like δέχεσθαι.
It is not necessary to have an obj. expressed; cf. ἐπεκαλέσαντο above. The rest of the
sentence shows that there is an intentional vagueness in the terms
chosen: it was ‘a friendly transaction.’
ὑμῶν
—partitive, in unusual position; cf.
c.
22,
5.
μηκέτι μᾶλλον γενέσθαι—χείρους
and ἀμείνους have a political
meaning here, and are scarcely felt as comparatives: hence μᾶλλον is natural; ‘should henceforth
not get more so.’
σωφρονισταὶ . .
οἰκειοῦντες
—adopting Weil's
view that γνώμης and σωμἀτων must be under the same
governance, and that there must he a real antithesis between ἁλλοτριοῦντες and οἰκειοῦντες, tr. ‘seeking to regulate
opinion and persons, not alienating their city (handing it over to
strangers), but bringing it home to the union of their kinsmen’ (the
Boeotian confederacy). It is usual to take τῶν
σωμἀτων with τὴν πόλιν,
‘not depriving the city of your persons’: this is very strange for τὰ σώματα τῆς πόλεως ἀλλοτριοῦντες. σωφρονισταί
of the party opposed to extreme democracy; cf. c.
82,
8. (For the antithesis of σῶμα and γνώμη, Andoc. de Red.
24.)
ἐχθροὺς . . ἐνσπόνδους
—“sc. ὑμᾶς; not breaking your peaceful
relations with any state, e.g. Athens, but putting you in them on a
footing with every other state, i.e. Thebes. Plataea was still, as
they sophistically say, to enjoy the σπονδαί,
but not on conditions peculiar to herself.
ἅπασι depends on ὁμοίως”
(Prof. Lamberton).
ἡμεῖς δέ
—to supply εἰδῶμεν is grammatically necessary;
‘that we may know after your condemnation that we have yet more
rightly taken vengeance on them.’ To ἔτι
ὁσιώτερον we must surely supply
ὐμῶν: you will act justly: we shall
have acted yet more equitably We are the
parties chiefly aggrieved. But it is said (already by Bloomfield)
that for εἰδῶμεν we need ‘feel’ or
‘appear,’ since the Theb. do not discover
anything from their own speech: hence 1. φανῆτε for
εἰδῆτε Rauchenstein; or 2. take
εἰδῆτε as a zeugma; or 3. read ἠμᾶς
. . τετιμωρημένους Kr. But notice (1) the speech would
lead to condemnation by the judges; (2) the condemnation would show
the Theb. that their action had been justified. The only
alternative, I think, is to supply ὦμεν,
and to assume an assimilation of finite verb to the previous partic.
clause, as Hude, who compares Xen. Mem.
II. 3,
17.
ἀκούοντες
—‘by the account of.’ ἀκούων, like
κλύων, is often used where we expect an aor. partic.
διπλασίας ζημίας
—the influence of the
rel. does not extend to this clause.
οὐκ ἐκ προσηκόντων
—i.e. contrary to what
was to be expected of them.
ὧν
—see on c.
2,
1 l. 3.
οἱ δὲ . . λελειμμένοι
—‘others left behind in
old age and their homes desolate.’ The emendation κατ· οἰκίας or καὶ
αἱ οἰκίαι, is necessary. The latter is better, because οἰκίαι ἐρῆμοι should certainly be
co-ordinate with οὶ δέ, so as to
correspond with τὴν σφετἐραν
ἐρημίαν.
τὰ ἐναντία
—adverbial.
ἐπίχαρτοι
—sc. ἄξιοί
είσι.
δίκη κρίναντες
together correspond to υίσει.
οὐκ ἀνταποδόντες
—i.e. they will not have done so, because the penalty
will be ἔννομα: whereas our
suffering was ἄνομα (§ 6; cf. παρενόμησαν); the aor. partic. alluding
to fut. perf. time as if the main verb were fut., cf. ἐκστρατευσἀμενοι c.
102.
(Various changes have been proposed: (1) to alter ἀνταποδόντες to fut., pres., or ἂν άνταποδόντες, or to read ἀνταποδόντες ἐς νῦν: (2) or, keeping ἀνταποδόντες, to start a new sentence
at καὶ οὐκ, placing ἔννομα γἀρ in parenthesis. It does not
seem possible to separate the latter from
πείσονται. It is best to suppose a slight break after κρίναντες, as though the rest were an
afterthought.)
καὶ ἡμῖν
—instead of a second obj.
corresponding to καὶ τῷ νόμῳ, a
new verb follows: cf. c.
71,
1.
ὧν πρόθυμοι γ.
—see § 3.
τοῖς λόγοις
—dat. of
cause.
ὧν . . ὄντων
depends on ἀπαγγελία.
ἔπεσι
—‘fine phrases,’ =ῥήμασι.
κεφαλαιώσαντες
—for the point see c.
52,
4.
πρὸς τοὺς ξύμπαντας
—‘with referenee to all,’
i.e. (as Classen) ‘as a warning to all.’ A summary question followed
by a decision will serve to check rhetorical defences. (Weil
conjectures πρὸς τὸ ξύμπαν.)
ποιήσησθε
—attraction to ὺμεῖς, as in I. 82
ὅσοι ὥσπερ καὶ ἡμεῖς ἐπιβουλευόμεθα.
εἰ . . πεπόνθασι
is the ἐπερώτημα.
τὸν ἄλλον χρόνον
—‘all along.’
δῆθεν
—always ironical, signifying that
this is not the true reason.
μετὰ τὸν Μῆδον
—usually μετὰ τὰ Μηδικά.
καὶ
(
ἠξίουν
)
ὅτε . . οὐκ ἐδέξαντο
—it is impossible to make
grammar of the sentence with ὅτε . . ἃ . .
ὡς in. Each word has been altered: the removal of ἃ seems most likely; ‘and particularly,
when afterwards the offer that they made of remaining neutral
according to that convention was refused.’
ἡγούμενοι
—this gives the reason for νομιζοντες
. . ἐδέξαντο.
τῇ . . βουλήσει
—‘by their own just
intention,’ i.e. they had tried their best to
conform to the σπονδαί: it was the
fault of the Plat. that the Lac. have fair grounds for regarding the σπονδαί at an end.
τὸ αὐτό
—obj. of
ἐρωτῶντες, so that παραγαγόντες
καί breaks the constr.; cf. Soph
Antig. 1279 τὰ δ’ ἐν δόμοις |ἔοικας ἤκειν καὶ τάχ’ ὄψεσθαι κακά,
where τὰ δ’ ἐν δ. is governed by ὅψεσθαι.
l 20.
ἠνδραπόδισαν
—‘sold as slaves.’ From II. 78
we know that 110 women were among the besieged Plat. (all the others
had found refuge at Athens) and that these were all slaves already.
Θηβαῖοι
—removed by Classen, who
maintained that the true subj. of ἔδοσαν
is the Lac.; but cf. c.
58,
5 εί . . χώραν τὴν Πλαταιίδα Θηβαΐδα
ποιήσετε. τὰ σφέτερα certainly seems to refer to the
Thebans (cf. II. 2
).
(Herbst and Busolt defend the MS. reading.)
κατὰ στάσιν
—the circumstances are
unknown.
ἐκ τῶν θεμελίων
—take with ᾠκοδόμησαν.
πρὸς τῷ Ἡραίῳ
—the site of the Heraeum and
remains of the νεὼς λίθινος have
in all probability been discovered (Am. J. of
Archacol. 1891). It is likely that the temple previously
existing was pulled down and replaced by the new one mentioned here.
καταγώγιον
—for those who came to worship
at the temple: otherwise they would have had no shelter after the
destruction of the city.
πανταχῇ
is put with διακοσίων ποδῶν (200 ft. square) by
some edd., but more prob. belongs to κύκλῳ=‘all
round,’ as in VII. 79.
οἰκήματα
—for sleeping: they were in two
stories.
τοῖς ἄλλοις
—instrumental, with κατασκευάσαντες.
τείχει
—i.e. inside the city. The sacred
precinct lay ‘before the city’ (Herod. IX. 61).
καί
—intensive.
ἄρτι τότε καθιστάμενον
refers to the fall of
Plat., not to the beginning of the siege. Cf. c.
3,
1.
τρίτῳ καὶ ἐνενηκοστῷ
—519-427 B.C. But Grote
showed that 509 B C. was the probable year of the alliance; hence it
has been suggested that ἐνενηκοστῷ
is due to an early error in an uncial MS., and that Thuc. wrote the
uncial signs for ὀγδοηκοστῷ.
ἐπειδή
—cf. I. 6
οὐ πολλα ἔτη ἐπειδὴ πέπαυται.
ἦλθον αὐτοῖς
—see on c.
5.
ἐκ τῶν . . ναυμαχιῶν
—there were two battles
fought near the islands called Sybota. 250 of the principal
Corcyreans were taken prisoners in the second battle, and were
conveyed to Corinth, where they remained about five years.
ὀκτακοσίων
—the ransom for not more than
250 men is very high, but the prisoners were very important. The
price paid for a man varied very much, of course, as it does still.
The lowest heard of is two minas (Herod. v. 77
),
the highest— in the case of an ambassador of Philip—nine talents.
The sum here mentioned need not be thought so great as to rouse
suspicion.
τοῖς προξένοις
—i.e. the Corinthian
representatives of Corcyra had gone bail for them.
ἀφικομένης . . ἀγουσῶν
—edd. say ἀγουσῶν must be plur. because both
ships had πρέσβεις on board. Yet
we find pred. in sing. applying to several subjects; I. 42,
1, IV. 31,
2, VI. 31,
1, VII. 44,
6, 58, 4. For the attraction cf. e. 72, 2.
καταστάντων
—sc. τῶν
πρέσβεων.
ξυγκείμενα
—it was a defensive alliance
only.
πρότερον
means before the convention
with Athens, when Corcyra had been on good terms with the Pel.,
though not in alliance with any one.
ἦν γὰρ . . ὑπάγουσιν
—the reason stated in
advance in parenthesis; cf. c.
107,
3.
ἐθελοπρόξενος
—only mentioned here; it
prob. means that P. had not been appointed by Athens; and hence he
could be prosecuted for his Athenian sympathies.
προειστήκει
—unofficial leader.
χάρακας
—‘vine-poles,’ Corcyra having
many vineyards. The sites of the τεμένη
are unknown. Alcinous is the Homeric king.
στατήρ
—of silver, worth 2 1/2 Attic
drachmas, the only form of stater coined in Corcyra.
ταξάμενοι ἀποδῶσιν
—‘pay by a mutual
arrangement,’ prob. on the instalment system.
τῷ τε νόμῳ ἐξείργοντο
—nothing is to be supplied;
‘the law forced them, allowed them no escape.’ Cf. Herod. IX. 111
ὑπὸ τοῦ νόμου
ἐξεργόμενος.
τοὺς αὐτοὺς . . νομίζειν
—i.e. to substitute a ξυμμαχία, offensive and defensive
alliance, for the existing ἐπιμαχία
.
τῆς αὐτῆς γνώμης
—sc.
ὄντες.
τῆς νυκτός
—‘that night.’
τὸν Λευκαδίων ἰσθμόν
—the isthmus connected Leucas
with the mainland: there is now an artificial channel.
λαβόντες
—if genuine, best considered
pleonastic (with Stahl), as we say ‘took and brought.’ Some think it
a gloss on εἴ τινα λάβοιεν below.
To supply τὴν πόλιν (with L.
Herbst) is forced, and involves an artificial, and highly
improbable, explanation of the meaning. See crit. note.
τοὺς Μεσσηνίους
—see c.
75,
1.
περιπλεῦσαι
—from the harbour of
Alcinous. The oligarchs who had been induced to embark would now be
separated from their comrades in the Heraeum and the agora.
ἐπλήρωσαν
—c.
80,
1.
ἀπεχρῶντο
—very rare in this sense; cf. διαχρῆσθαι in c.
36.
τὰ γιγνόμενα
—i.e. from the Heraeum on
high ground they saw their comrades being led off to execution.
ὡς ἕκαστοι ἐδύναντο
—the sing. might be expected,
as in πάντες ἔφυγον ὅπη? ἐδύνατο ἕκαστος
(Xen.), but the distinction is not always kept up.
παρέμεινε
—it seems from this that
Nicostratus had left by now. Thuc. has neglected to give his
movements after his Messenians had been taken into the city.
σφῶν αὐτῶν
—partitive.
ἐφόνευον
—rare word outside Herod.,
tragedy, and late writers.
τὴν μὲν αἰτίαν . .
καταλύουσιν
—‘bringing the charge on
the subverters of the democracy,’ i e. openly it was the oligarchs
who were the object of their attack (τήν
does not need explanation in the context after δίκην ὑποσχεῖν above. Only
oligarchs—and they not in all cases—were put on their trial.)
ἀπέθανον δέ
—transition from partic. to
finite constr., as often; II.
47
λεγόμενον μὲν . . ἐμνημονεύετο δέ,VII. 13
τῶν ναυτῶν μὲν ἀπολλυμένων, οἱ δὲ θεράποντες . .
αὐτομολοῦσι, sc. τὰ χρήματα.
Frequent throughout Gk.
ὑπὸ τῶν λαβόντων
—‘by their debtors,’ with ἀπέθανον. The Gk.
justifies another way (Bohme), viz with
ὀφειλομένων, ‘by those who caught them,’ but the point is
not so good.
πᾶσἀ τε ἰδἐα κατέστη θανάτου
—Virgil's et
plurima mortis imago (Aen. II. 369); cf.
Tac. H.
III. 28
varia pereuntium forma et omni imagine mortium.
καὶ ἔτι περαιτέρω
—sc. οὐδενὸς ὅτου οὐ, i.e. παντός, but the gen. is habitually
omitted. Demosth. XLV. 73
has δεινόν, ὦ γῆ καὶ θεοί, καὶ πέρα δεινοῦ
.
ἡ στάσις (Kruger) is very probable,
as the ref. is to a στάσις just
described, but it is not absolutely necessary. 2
μᾶλλον
—sc. ὠμὴ
προχωρῆσαι.
ἐν τοῖς πρώτην
—see on c.
17,
1.
ὡς εἰπεῖν
—qualifying a sweeping
statement (never apologizing for a metaphor): ‘I might almost say,’
‘almost.’
τὸ Ἑλληνικόν
—c.
57,
2.
ἐπάγεσθαι
—“sense” constr., διαφορῶν οὐσῶν implying ‘attempting.’
καὶ ἐν μὲν εἰρήνῃ . .
ἐπορίζοντο
—the transition from μέν+partic. to
δέ+finite verb here is considered perhaps the most
extraordinary anacoluthon in Thuc. It is quite different from cases
like c.
81,
4, since there is here no finite verb for the μέν-clause. To put a comma only at Λακεδαιμονίους instead of the usual
full stop helps to some degree. ἐτόλμων
for ἑτοἱμων (Vollgraff and
Classen) is a conjecture worth notice.
οὐκ ἂν ἐχόντων
—sc.
αὐτῶν, the leaders of both parties in any given state.
ἑτοίμων
—sc.
ὄντων, an unusual ellipse except when the adj.+omitted
partic. is supplementary to a verb, as in τετύχηκε
τὸ ἐπιτήδευμα ἄλογον, sc. ὄν
,I. 23.
αὐτούς
—Athenians or Lac., as the ease
might be.
πολεμουμένων
—mase. from πολεμόω, of the Ath. and Lac. (to refer
this to the two political parties is very strained).
καὶ ξυμμαχίας ἅμα . . αἱ
ἐπαγωγαί
—i.e. καὶ αἱ ἐπαγωγαὶ ἅμα ξυμμαχίας. The
point of καὶ άμα is that parties
no longer carried on their rivalry amongst themselves at home, but
readily called in the help of allies too.
ἐπαγωγαί is ‘opportunities for calling in.’ ἑκατέροις is ambiguous: it may be (1) by the Ath. and Lac., agent to ἐπορίζοντο, or (2) to
either party in a state <*> then τοῖς
. . βουλομένοις will be in limiting apposition to it.
In either case τοῖς . . βουλομένοις
is probably not dat. of agent.
τῇ . . προσποιήσει
—the two ideas are parts
of one whole, so that one art. suffices. The dat is that of motive, esp. common in Thuc., mostly with
single words such as φιλίᾳ, ἔχθει, εὐνοίᾳ
Thompson, At Syn. p. 150. σφίσιν αὐτοῖς is governed by προσποιήσει, ib. p. 155. The whole
sentence has the appearance of a series of notes that have not been
put into their final form.
γιγνόμενα
refers to time absolutely present, not contemporary with the
main verb. MT'. § 141.
μᾶλλον . . διηλλαγμένα
—i.e. varying in
intensity and in form: μᾶλλον δὲ καὶ
ἡσυχαίτερα form the first idea, adv. and adj. being
combined, as either is possible separately with γίγνεται. μᾶλλον καὶ ἡσυχαίτερα γίγνεται
might also mean ‘it rises and falls in intensity’ on any given
occasion, but the emphatic position of
γιγνόμενα shows that it corresponds in sense to the
emphatic ἔστι, not to the mere
copula ἐστί.
ὡς ἄν
—‘according as.’
ἐφιστῶνται
—‘impose themselves,’ like a
doom: κῆρες ἐφεστᾶσιν
Il. XII. 326, Soph. OT. 776,
Eur. Hipp. 819.
τοῦ καθ’ ἡμέραν
—some think that βίου has fallen out before βιαίου, and certainly τὸ καθ’ ἡμέραν is odd; but cf. τὸ παρόν and τὰ
παρόντα.
ὀργάς
—‘dispositions.’
ἐστασίαζέ τε
—this passage down to the
end of c.
83
is severely criticized by Dionysius Hal. de Thuc.
iud. cc
29
f. for its artificial and far-fetched expressions
τὰ ἐφυστερίζοντά που
—‘the later cases,’ the cities
that followed the example of discord set by others; a strange
expression, as Dionysius says, but occasioned by τὰ τῶν πόλεων. Notice that ποῦἔν τινι πόλει.
πολὺ ἐπέφερε
—‘brought on much,’ i.e.
carried much further.
διανοίας
—‘plans.’
τῶν . . ἀτοπίᾳ
—lit. ‘through extreme
ingenuity in their enterprises and strangeness in their revenges.’
ἀξίωσιν
belongs to ἐς τὰ ἔργα, ‘in relation to facts,’ as
well as to ὀνομάτων. It is not
necessary to repeat the art. before ἐς
because ἀξίωσις has another
qualifying word.
τῇ δικαιώσει
—by the arbitrary
construction they put on them.
τὸ δ’ ἐμπλήκτως ὀξύ
—‘impulsive rashness’: cf.
Plutarch, Eum.
3
ἔμπληκτον καὶ φορᾶς μεστὸν ὀξείας.
ἀνδρὸς μοίρᾳ προσετέθη
—‘was ascribed, or set
down, to the part of a man.’
ἀσφαλείᾳ δὲ . . εὔλογος
—this appears to have
been obscure already to Dionysius, who, while commenting on what
precedes and what follows, discreetly leaves this alone. The usual
explanation is as follows: (1) ἀσφαλείᾳ
is dat. of manner, in contrast with
ἐμπλήκτως; (2) τὸ ἐπιβουλεύσασθαι=
‘reconsideration,’ or ‘further reflexion’; (3) the verb to be
supplied is ἐνομίσθη. Each of
these suppositions is surprising ἀποτροπή=‘evasion.’
It has been proposed to supply προσετέθη
(with Herbst and Fr. Müller) and to take ἀποτροπῆς
π. εὔλογος as apposition to τὸ
ἐπιβουλεύσασθαι. We should then transl. ‘to form a hostile
design was regarded as a measure of selfdefence, (being) the
specious pretence of fending off enmity.’
l. 37
ὁ μὲν χαλεπαίνων
—viz. about the political
situation.
ἐπιβουλεύσας . . τυχών
—‘if one had succeeded
in a plot.’
δεινότερος
—of ability.
αὐτῶν
—viz. τοῦ
ἐπιβουλεύειν καὶ ὑπονοεῖν.
ἐπικελεύσας
—sc. κακόν
τι δρᾶν. ἐπικελεύω ‘to encourage,’ of an authority, has dat; here κελεύω
sets the constr. and ἐπί is
intensive.
καὶ μήν
introduces a new and important
point (it never means ‘and yet’).
τοῦ ἑταιρικοῦ
—‘the tie of party.’ To
this ἑτοιμότερον refers.
ὠφελίᾳ
—‘to render help’ cf. the
principle συγγνώμη ἀδελφῷ βοηθεῖν.
This seems more likely than the usual explanation ‘for the public advantage.’
ξύνοδοι
—of political meetings, a word of
sinister meaning in the political life of Gk. states, suggesting
intrigue and treason. The verb is ἐγένοντο
and had Thuc. written ὠφελίας ἕνεκα
and πλεονεξίας above, all would
have been clear.
ἐς σφᾶς αὐτούς
=ἐς
ἀλλήλους, a common use.
τῷ θείῳ νόμῳ
—i.e. it was not the oaths
witnessed by the gods—θεῶν ὅρκοι—that
bound them when they exchanged pledges. Cf., for example, Eur. Med. 21
βοᾷ μὲν ὅρκους, ἀνακαλεῖ δὲ δεξιάς, |πίστιν μεγίστην, καὶ θεοὺς μαρτύρεται,
and the celebrated passage in the same play, 439 βέβακε δ’ ὅρκων
χάρις, οὐδ’ ἔτ’ αἰδὼς Ἑλλάδι τᾷ μεγάλᾳ μένει,
with Verrall's notes.
τά τε ἀπὸ τῶν ἐναντίων
—the sense (says Prof.
Lamberton) is, ‘when fair proposals were made by the adversary, the
other party, when they had the advantage of superiority, would
receive them not in a spirit of generosity, but only with practical
precautions’ Thus οἱ ἐνδεχόμενοι,not
οἱ ἐναντίοι,
is the subject of προύχοιεν. This
is surely correct, though the passage is usually taken as if οἱ ἐναντίοι denoted the stronger party,
and the subject of ἐνεδέχοντο were
‘the weaker.’ The right version is given by Herbst, who says “How
can it be supposed that from the party that had the upper hand at
the moment proposals should emanate that were generous to the weaker
side, and how can any one conceive that generosity
(γενναιότης) should lead the
weaker side to accept them?” For ἔργων
φυλακῇ cf c.
46,
4.
ὅρκοι . . ξυναλλαγῆς
—‘oaths to confirm a
reconciliation’; cf. Andocides, de Myst.
103
διηλλάγητε καὶ
ὅρκους ὠμόσατε.
πρὸς τὸ ἄπορον ἑ. διδόμενοι
—‘as they were
administered to either side only to meet an emergency.’ It is surely
unnecessary to regard ἑκατέρῳ as
dat of agent, as is usually done.
οὐκ ἐχόντων
applies to those who took
the oaths tendered—i.e. it applies by sense to ἑκατέρῳ—and explains πρὸς τὸ ἄπορον. ὅρκον δίδωμι generally
means ‘I administer an oath,’ but in Eur. Hipp. 735 ‘I take an oath.’ The
ordinary meaning gives an equallv good sense here.
ἐν δὲ τῷ παρατυχόντι
—‘when a chance occurred.’
ὁ φθάσας θαρσῆσαι
—see MT.
903. 8, where grave doubts are raised as to the possibility of the
infin. with φθάνω in place of the
ordinary partic. As φθάσας θαρσήσας
is intolerable, it is best to give the text as it stands, leaving
the point undecided. The paraphrase of Dionysius is worth notice: εἰ δέ που παρατύχοι τινὶ καιρὸς καὶ μάθοι τὸν
ἐχθρὸν ἀφύλακτον, ἥδιον ἐτιμωρεῖτο ὅτι πιστεύσαντι μᾶλλον ἐπέθετο ἢ
φυλαττομένῳ.διὰ τὴν πίστιν
applies to the enemy, as having confidence in the oath.
ἢ ἀπὸ τοῦ προφανοῦς
=‘than when he attacked
openly,’ giving the other side a fair chance.
ῥᾷον δ’ οἱ πολλοὶ . . ἀγαθοί
—‘most men are more readily
called elever if they are knaves than good if they are ignorant’
Another way of taking this is: ‘most men prefer to be called clever
knaves rather than honest fools.’ The Gk favours the first. the
connexion with the previous sentence the second. To make the latter
way easier Steup brackets ὄντες.
πάντων δ’ αὐτῶν αἴτιον
—‘the cause of all that was
office (i.e. the desire of office), resting
on covetousness and ambition.’
ἐκ δ’ αὐτῶν
—viz. πλεονεξίας
καὶ φιλοτιμίας.
καθισταμένων
—masc., ‘when men were
settling down to.’ The καί
belongs, not merely to ἐς τὸ φιλονικεῖν,
but to the whole phrase to πρόθυμον
.
πλήθους . . σώφρονος
—these
are the fine names that were used for
δημοκρατία and ὀλιγαρχία. ἰσονομία
was a catchword with democrats, σωφροσύνη
with aristocrats.
ἆθλα
—this suggests several of the words
that follow— ἀγωνιζόμενοι, περιγενέσθαι,
ἐπεξῇσαν (the last unusual with object)—the general idea
being that of a desperate struggle between enemies. (Very like is
Xen Cyr.
II. 2,
18-19.)
ἔτι μείζους
—as compared with the τολμήματα.
προστιθέντες
—from Dionysins, in place of προτιθέντες of the MSS., for ‘to
threaten’ hardly suits with what precedes.
ψήφου ἀδίκου
—best taken as subjective gen. depending on καταγνώσεως.
χειρί
—the contrast is between force and
the forms of law.
ἐνόμιζον
—with dat., as χρῆσθαι.
εὐπρεπείᾳ δὲ λόγου
—since εὐσέβεια and λόγου
εὐπρέπεια are not a proper contrast, many suppose that the
contrast to the former is to be found in ἐπιφθόνως
τι, and consequently attach εὐπρεπείᾳ
δὲ λόγου to the rel. sentence, ‘those who managed to hide
some malicious act under fair words.’ But the μὲν . . δέ contrast is not between
single words, but between the two sentences as a
whole:εὐσέβεια is ‘a name for piety,’ as e.g. in Soph. Ant. 924
τὴν δυσσέβειαν (‘reputation of being δυσσεβής’)εὐσεβοῦσ’
ἐκτησάμην, ‘on this pretence, covering an odious act,
earned a better reputation.’ Thuc not seldom puts two similar words
(εὐσέβεια—εὐπρέπεια) in contrast
that do not really form an antithesis.
τὰ δὲ μέσα τῶν πολιτῶν
—for the moderate element and
the preference given to it by so many thinking men cf. Eur. Suppl. 244
τριῶν δὲ μοιρῶν ἡ ’ν μέσῳ σῴζει πόλεις.
[The external grounds for regarding this chap. as
spurious are these. (1) In cod. F it is obelized; (2) a scholium says that
none of the commentators thought it genuine: all found it obscure in style
and strange in thought; (3) Dionysius (time of Augustus), who says a great
deal about cc. 81-82, and transcribes to the end of c.
83,
does not
mention this c.: the inference may be that he did not find it in his MS.;
(4) there are very few scholia on the chapter. On the other hand it is certain that Dio Cassius, who wrote late in the 2nd
cent. A.D., knew it. The citations from Josephus (fl. 70 A.D.) are not
sufficient to prove that he knew the passage. If, then, this is an
imitation, it must have been written before the end of the 2nd cent., and perhaps not before the reign of Augustus. The internal evidence is hardly decisive. If this is the work of an imitator, it is a
remarkably skilful production; but I think that any attentive
reader of Dionysius, Josephus and Dio Cassius—not to mention Procopius—would
hesitate to say that a scholar of the 1st or 2nd cent. A.D. could not have
produced it. The most suspicious part is, I think, from οὐ γὰρ ἄν (§ 2) onwards. In the earlier part ὑπὸ τῶν τὴν τιμωρίαν παρασχόντων, διὰ πάθους . . ἔχειν,
and καὶ παρὰ τοὺς νόμους ἀδικεῖν are
strange. The first sentence as regards constr. is, perhaps, merely a little
corrupt. The weight of opinion among modern critics is against the c.; but
the question cannot be decided.]
αὐτῶν
—vaguely referring to the ill deeds
previously described.
προυτολμήθη—προ‐ denotes before
the rest of Greece.
καὶ ὁπόσα
—the
καί is probably answered by οἴτε μή κτλ. below. The first
clause requires ἄν, which has
perhaps fallen out either after ὁπόσα
or δράσειαν.
ὑπὸ τῶν . . παρασχόντων
with ἀρχόμενοι. Hitherto they have been
ruled oppressively by those who now give
opportunity for revenge. Instead of
παρασχόντων something like ἤδη
παρεχόντων seems required. The oligarchs are meant.
διὰ πάθους . . ἔχειν
—there has been much discussion
of these words. τινες and μάλιστα δ’ seem to show that διὰ πάθους must be intended as a
contrast to πενίας . . ἀπαλλαξείοντες,
passion versus sheer poverty. But πάθος=‘emotion’ or ‘passion’ occurs
nowhere else before Aristotle: in Thuc. it=‘a disaster.’ (To take τὰ τῶν πέλας as equivalent to τοὺς πέλας, and διὰ
πάθους ἔχειν like δῑ ὀργῆς ἔχειν
does not get over the difficulty, and does not yield a proper
contrast.)
ἐπὶ πλεονεξίᾳ
—i.e prompted by
oppression, poverty or downright passion
ἀπὸ ἴσου
—‘on equal terms’ with their
adversaries already. Only here in Thuc. in place of ἀπὸ τοῦ ἴσου.
ἐπέλθοιεν
—sc. ἄν
from the previous sentences. The omission is rather awkward and
unusual in so long a sentence.
ὠμῶς
and
ἀπαραιτήτως
only here in Thuc.
ἐς τὸν καιρὸν τοῦτον
—‘at this crisis,’ like ἐς μίαν ἡμέραν in
VI. 16,
Aristoph. Pax 366 εἰς
τίν’ ἡμέραν;
καὶ παρὰ τοὺς νόμους ἀδικεῖν
—cf. c.
82,
6 παρὰ τοὺς καθεστῶτας (νόμους). As Stahl says, we expect κρατήσασα after τοὺς
νόμους, ‘even when the laws are generally respected.’
Steup suggests the loss of πρίν
after καί but Dio Cass. knew the
passage as it stands.
ἐδήλωσεν . . οὖσα
—obj. of δηλῶ replaced by the partic., as often;
cf. I 21
ὁ πόλεμος δηλώσει μείζων γεγενημένος.
τοῦ προύχοντος
—neut.
ἐν ᾧ
—lit. ‘in a case in which,’
amounting to εἰ. Cf. II. 35
χαλεπὸν τὸ μετρίως εἰπεῖνἐν ᾧ
μόλις καὶ ἡ δόκησις τῆς ἀληθείας βεβαιοῦται.
ἀξιοῦσί τε
—the sense is clearly given by
Arnold thus: Men in their violence set the example of doing away
with those common laws of humanity which all parties alike might
have appealed to in their adversity, and by their own previous
conduct put themselves out of the pale of those laws, when they
themselves might have occasion to solicit their protection. By the κοινοὶ νόμοι the κοινὸς νόμος ὁ κατὰ φύσιν, as Aristotle
(Rhet.
I.
13
) calls it, is of
course meant. See n. on c.
58,
3. Plato in the Laws (p. 793) says these
observances are the δεσμοὶ πάσης πολιτείας
.
ὑπολείπεσθαι
—middle.
ἐς Σικελίαν
—this is the first
intervention of Athens in Sicily. Under Pericles (who had died in
the autumn of 429 B.C.), Athens had concluded alliances with
Leontini and Rhegium in 433 B.C, perhaps also—though we have no
direct evidence—with Naxos and Catana. But the idea
of conquest in Sicily (§ 4) was entirely
outside the policy of Pericles. See Introd. p. xxiii.
Λάχητα
—the first mention of this
well-known man. See c.
115.
He was a supporter of Nicias in arranging the peace of 421. Plato's Laches is named after him. He is the dog
Labes in Aristoph. Wasps. He was attacked by
Cleon. He was killed at the battle of Mantinea, 418 B.C.
καθέστασαν
—when the war had broken out
is not known.
πλὴν Καμαριναίων
—Camarina, founded circa 600 B.C. from Syracuse, was dependent
on the mother-city, revolted in 553 B.C. and was destroyed. In 492
B.C. it was restored by Hippocrates, tyrant of Gela, but shortly
afterwards was again involved in war with Syracuse, and was again
destroyed. Its third building occurred circa
460 B.C.
τὸ πρῶτον
emphasizes ἀρχομένου.
Χαλκιδικαί
—Naxos, Catana, Himera. They
are so called because their origin was Chalcis in Euboea.
Ἰταλίας
in the confined sense that it
bears in Greek authors, the modern Calabria,
the peninsula reaching to the Laus on W. and to Metapontum on E.: ἀπὸ ἄκρας Ἰαπυγίας μέχμ πορθμοῦ Σικελικοῦ
is the definition of Dionysius.
κατὰ τὸ ξυγγενές
—Rhegium, too, was
Chalcidian.
πέμψαντες
—this is the famous embassy
that was headed by Gorgias of Leontini. The reticence of Thuc. on
the matter is characteristic.
παλαιὰν ξυμμαχίαν
—the only alliance we
know of is that of 433 B.C., but six years seems too short a time to
be denoted by παλαιός. Hence it is
assumed that an earlier alliance existed. But some have thought that
Thuc. wished to obscure the fact that Pericles was responsible for
the alliance with Leontini, in order to make it appear that Pericles
was in no sense responsible for the intervention in Sicily.
βουλόμενοι δὲ μήτε . .
πρόπειράν τε ποιούμενοι
— to make the
sentence quite symmetrical, ποιεῖσθαι
should have been written in place of
ποιούμενοι.
δυνατὰ εἴη
—personal constr.
καταστάντες
—i.e. they chose Rhegium as
their base.
περὶ Πελοπόννησον
—see on c.
3,
3.
Δημοσθένης
—the first mention of this
celebrated general, conspicuous for boldness and enterprise. There
is no doubt that Thuc. obtained from him much information about the
expeditions in which he was a leading figure.
Νικίας
—c.
51.
Μηλίους
—Melos, like Thera, had, as a
Lacedaemouian colony, held aloof from the Athenian alliance. But
they had taken no part in the war. It is known that Thera now
submitted.
αὐτῶν
—it is hardly necessary to read αὑτῶν here. Cf. Xen.
Cyr.
I. 1,
5 ἐδυνάσθη ἐπιθυμίαν ἐμβαλεῖν τοῦ αὐτῷ
χαρίζεσθαι.
ἐς Ὠρωπὸν τῆς Γραϊκῆς
—on the horders of Attica and
Boeotia. It belonged to Athens. For τῆς
Γραικῆς cf. II. 23
τὴν γῆν τὴν Γραικὴν καλουμένην. The
name belonged to the coast opposite Eretria. In
II. 23
it is corrupted into Πειραϊκήν.
οἱ ὁπλῖται ἀπὸ τῶν νεῶν
—prob. to be taken together in
spite of the absence of art. before ἀπό.
In II. 80
we have τὸ ναυτικὸν ἐκ . . , and
in II. 18
κατὰ τὴν ἄλλην πορείαν ἡ σχολαιότης.
πανδημεί
—i.e. with the whole available
army. 16
Ἱππονίκου τοῦ Καλλίου
—son of that Callias
who negotiated peace with Persia in 470 B.C. The family was reputed
the richest in Greece. The younger Callias, son of Hipponicus, was a
very well-known man. Hipponicus was proxenus
of Sparta. He fell at the battle of Delium, 424 B.C.
ἐν τῇ Τανάγρᾳ
—i.e. in the neighbourhood of
Tanagra.
τῇ ὑστεραίᾳ μάχῃ
—to be taken
separately,
τῇ ὑστεραίᾳ having ἡμέρᾳ supplied. Herbst, who
investigated the use of the phrase, came finally to the conclusion
that alone it means ‘on the next day,’ but that sometimes a subst.
is supplied from what precedes, in I. 44
ἐκκλησίᾳ, in VII. 11
μάχῃ.
Ἡράκλειαν
—the importance of this
undertaking (sec § 4 and c.
93,
1) seems to lie in the faet that it marks an extension of the area
of the war by Sparta, a counter-move prompted no doubt by the
operations of Nicias on the Locrian coast. Sparta could not match
Athens at sea and little more was to be gained by invasions of
Attica (cc. 1, 26) even if they were not
prevented by exceptional events (c.
89
).
προσθεῖναι
—the verb is used of bringing
into permanent relationship, whether as
friend or foe or dependent: so πρόσκειμαι
.
μητρόπολις
—from this region the Dorians
were sprung. A fragment of Tyrtaeus says of them: προλιπόντες Ερινεὸν ἠνεμόεντα |εὐρεῖαν Πέλοπος νῆσον ἀφικόμεθα.
καθίστασθαι
—notice the
pres. and contrast I. 36
καλῶς κεῖται (of Corcyra) τοῦ παράπλου (the voyage to Sicily). quod fit non est, sed erit, says Stahl. The
gen. τοῦ πολέμου depends on the
phrase, on the analogy of χρησίμως, καλῶς
ἔχει, ὡς ἔχει etc. ἡ πόλις
is, of course, the colony to be.
τῆς ἐπὶ Θρᾴκης παρόδου
—it was from Heraclea that
Brasidas started on his dash through Thessaly, to the great injury
of Athens in Chalcidice (τὰ ἐπὶ Θρᾀκης
).
τό τε ξύμπαν
—summing up.
τὸν θεὸν ἐπήροντο
—the usual custom before
sending out a colony.
περιοίκων
—the descendants of the old
Achaean stock, without political rights, living mainly by trade.
They were largely drawn upon for military service outside
Peloponnese.
Ἀχαιῶν
—some Achaeans afterwards settled
there notwithstanding.
Ἀλκίδας
—c.
16,
etc.
ἐκ καινῆς
—adverbial, like ἀπὸ τῆς ἴσης
I. 15,
ἀπὸ (τῆς
)πρώτης etc.; δῑ ὀρθῆς, ‘aright,’ Soph. Ant. 994.
εἶρξαν τὸ κατὰ Θ
—‘barred the (approach) on the
side towards Th.,’ i.e. built a barrier across the pass (στενόν), to protect harbour and arsenal
from the Thessalians.
Ἐλλομενῷ
—“probably on the bay of Vlicho
(Klimino), on the E. coast of the island” (Oberhummer).
τῆς Λευκαδίας
—sc. γῆς. Corcyra, Cephallenia and Zacynthus
were already allies of Athens. For a previous attempt on Leucas see
c.
7,
5. Sparta had, besides Leucas, Oeniadae, and Ambracia.
ἔξω
—sc. τοῦ
ἰσθμοῦ, the land they had in Λcarnania.
For the isthmus see c.
81,
1.
τὸ ἱερόν
—at the southernmost corner of
the island.
οἱ δὲ Ἀκαρνᾶνες
—Leucas and Anactorium (c.
114,
3) Corinthian colonies, controlled the entrance to
the Ambracian gulf.
ἀποτειχίζειν
—‘to cut them off from the
mainland.’ In c.
95,
2 this projected wall is referred to as
περιτείχισις, i.e. wall from sea to sea.
ὑπὸ Μεσσηνίων
—the Messenians of
Naupactus (see c.
75
)
probably had Aetolians for immediate neighbours (Woodhouse, Aetolia p. 336).
ὡς καλόν
—se.
ἐστί.
Ναυπάκτῳ τε . . καὶ ἤν
—the second cause is expressed
in an independent form—infin. with verb of saying supplied. A good
parallel is IV. 3
λιμένος τε προσόντος, καὶ τοὑς Μεσσηνίους . .
πλεῖστ’ ἂν βλάπτειν.
Ἀποδωτοῖς
—this tribe is to the NE. of
Naupactus.
Ὀφιονεῦσι
—N. of the Apodoti.
Εὐρυτᾶσιν
—N. and E. of the Ophioneis.
All three tribes belong to New Aetolia, Αἰτωλία
ἐπίκτητος, as distinct from Old Aetolia, ἡ ἀρχαία, of the
Iliad. (All that can be known about the tribes will be found in
Woodhouse, Aetolia.)
καὶ τἆλλα προσχωρήσειν
“refers back to the
expression τὸ ἄλλο ἠπειρωτικὸν τὸ ταύτῃ—by
which we must understand the Messenians (or Thucydides) to mean that
the Athenian ‘sphere of influence’ in Western Hellas would be
enormously extended if the three Aetolian tribes were subjugated. It
would be diffienlt, however, to state precisely what tribes were in
the historian's mind” (Woodhouse).
Κυτίνιον τὸ Δωρικόν
—c.
95,
1.
Οἰνεῶνα αἱρεῖ . . καὶ
Εὐπάλιον
—the Athenian influence
in the W. of Locri was stronger. For the towns see c.
95.
(It used to be thought that there is a reversion of the geographical
order in the mention of the places; but this has been shown by
Woodhouse to be an error.)
γενόμενοι
—viz. the force under
Eurylochus.
τὰ ἐκ τῆς Αἰτωλίας—ἐκ of the source
of the ξυμφορά.
ἐπὶ τῶν νεῶν
—for ‘on board
their (Acarnanian) ships’ we should expect ἐπὶ τῶν σφετέρων νεῶν. If the text is
right, it is probable (as Widmann says) that some of the thirty
Athenian ships had not returned home and that
c.
98,
5 is therefore inaccurate.
ἐς τὴν . . Καλυδῶνα . . Πλευρῶνα
—‘to the Aeolis that is now
(so) called, Calydon and Pleuron,’ i.e. to New Aeolis. We know that
the name Aeolis was once confined to the territory of Calydon; but
Pleuron had been added to it. Calydon and Pleuron are two of the
five cities of Old Aetolia mentioned in the Iliad
(The usual rendering ‘to Aeolis which is now called Calydon and
Pleuron’ really makes no sense, for Thuc. could not refer so to two
cities far more famous in the heroic days than in his own.)
ἐς τὰ ταύτῃ χωρία
—other parts of Old Aetolia.
Αἰτωλῶν δ’ ἡγεῖτο Θόας
οἳ Πλευρῶν’ ένέμοντο καὶ Ὤλενον ἠδὲ Πυλήνην
Χαλκίδα τ’ ἀγχίαλον Καλυδῶνά τε πετρήεσσαν
(Il. II. 638-640).
Proschium is Pylene.
Ἀμπρακιῶται
—Amphilochian Argos now
belonged to Amphilochians and Acarnanians. But the Ambraciots, who
had once possessed it, and had been turned out by the help of
Athens, in 437 B.C., wanted to recover it. They had made a vain
attempt to do so in 430 B.C. The Ambraciots were in alliance with
Sparta.
πᾶν τὸ ἠπειρωτικόν
—cf. c.
94,
3. In 429 B.C. the Ambraciots had held out hopes to Sparta of
acquiring (1) Acarnania (2) Zacynthus and Cephallenia, (3)
Naupactus. It is noteworthy that nothing is said this time about the
islands, doubtless because the crushing naval defeats the
Peloponnesians had sustained from Phormio in 429 and their rough
experiences again during the troubles in Corcyra made any project
for the acquisition of these islands hopeless. Since the latter
events, it is hardly surprising that Athens did not trouble to
acquire Leucas (see c.
94,
2).
ἐκστρατευσαμένοις
—‘when they (should)
have taken the field.’
περὶ τὸ Ἄργος
—with
βοηθεῖν.
ἐκάθηραν
—doubtless in gratitude for the
cessation of the plague. The oracle perhaps gave directions how the
plague might be kept away. It has been pointed out that Nicias had
much to do with this ceremony of purification. His great interest in
the event and his benefactions to Delos are known from Plutarch.
δή
—explanatory. The “purification” by
Pisistratus is noticed by Herodotus (I. 64
).
θῆκαι
—‘coffins.’ Notice the not very
common attraction of the antecedent into the case of the rel.,
though the antecedent is not placed in the rel. clause. Thompson2 § 50 D. In Latin this eonstr.,
familiar from urbem quam statuo vestra est,
is an old colloquialism.
Πολυκράτης
—he ruled 532-521 B.C.
According to Herod. III. 164
Samos was πολίων πασέων πρώτη in
his time.
Νήσων
—the Cyclades.
ἄρξας
is ‘making himself master of,’
ingressive.
τῷ Ἀπόλλωνι
—Apollo was worshipped much
earlier than the time of Polycrates in the rocky island of Rhenea; Hymn to Apollo 44—see on § 4—written not
later than 600 B.C. Cf. Theocritus XVII. 70 ἶσον
καὶ Ῥήναιαν ἄναξ ἐφίλησεν Ἀπόλλων.
τὴν πεντετηρίδα
—the first celebration
probably took place in March (Anthesterion) 425 B.C.
τὰ Δήλια
—‘(namely) the Delia.’ The words
are bracketed by some edd., but Diodorus, whose account is derived
from Thuc. (through Ephorus), says ἑποίησαν
πανήγυριν τὴν τῶν Δηλίων.
ξύνοδος
—in celebration of the god's
birth.
ἐθεώρουν
—‘attended the festival.’
ἐς τὰ Ἐφέσια
—in honour of Artemis (ἡ Ἐφεσία θεός).
χορούς τε ἀνῆγον
—from the meaning ‘lift up’
a cry, etc, ἀνάγω comes to mean
‘set going,’ ‘start’; Eur.
Tro. 325
ἄναγ’ ἄναγε χορόν.
Notice the metrical χορούς τ’ ἀνῆγον αἱ
πόλεις.
Ὅμηρος
—the blind bard “of Chios,” who
wrote this prize poem, was, according to a scholiast on Pindar,
Cynaethus of Chios.
ἐκ προοιμίου
—the quotations are from the
famous “Homeric hymn” to Apollo; it was actually sung at the
festival, where it received a prize.
ἀλλ’ ὅτε
. =Hymn to
Apollo 146-150, with important variations from the version of
the hymn as found in the extant MSS. ‘But when your heart rejoices
most in Delos.’
ἑλκεχίτωνες
—alluding to the long robes
of the Ionians in early times, almost obsolete in the days of Thuc.
σὴν ἐς ἀγυιάν
—meaning uncertain; the square
before the temple of Apollo, where the ἀγών
was held, is the suggestion of Sikes ad loc.
The I. in the MSS. of the hymn stands αὐτοῖς
σὺν παίδεσσι καὶ αἰδοίῃς ἀλόχοισιν.
καθέσωσιν ἀγῶνα
—‘have made the assembly
sit down,’ to start the contests. ἀγών
is ‘an assembly at games’. see Leaf on Iliad XV. 428. The MSS. of the hymn have στήσωνται ἀγῶνα.
τὸν γὰρ Δηλιακὸν χορὸν τῶν
γυναικῶν
—the enlogy of the κοῦραι Δηλιάδες, Delian women who sang
the chorus, immediately precedes the passage about to be quoted.
τοῦ ἐπαίνου
—viz. of the Delian women.
For the gen. cf. c.
59,
4.
ἀλλ’ ἄγεθ’
.=H. to Apollo
165-172.
ὑποκρίνασθαι ἀφήμως
—‘answer with one
accord,’ i.e. ὁμοφήμως. The
scholiast gives ἁθρόως. The
reading ἀφήμως is supported by
that of the MSS. of the hymn, ἀφ’ ἡμέων
(or similar). Inferior MSS. of Thuc. give
εὐφήμως.
τυφλὸς ἀνήρ
—“this line,” says Sikes,
“was at least partly the origin of the tradition that Homer was
blind, and lived in Chios.”
καὶ τὰ πλεῖστα
—‘and most parts’ of the ξύνοδος.
ὑπὸ ξυμφορῶν
—when Persia set her heel on
the necks of the Ionians.
πρὶν δή
—see on c.
29,
1.
καὶ αὐτοῖς
.—the incident as related
inevitably reminds us of a Greek tragedy—e.g. the
Persae.
τῶν νεκρῶν οὓς ἀπέκτειναν
—cf.
II. 52
νεκροὶ ἑπ’ ἀλλήλοις ἀποθνῄσκοντες.
ξυνεξῇσαν
—‘tried to depart with them.’
τὸ πάθος
—‘the catastrophe’ of Idomene.
τῶν μετὰ σφῶν
—i.e. that they had belonged to
those who had fought with his own comrades—i.e. with the body that
escaped over the border.
θαυμάζοι . . τεθνᾶσιν
—the change of mood
from opt. to indic. has nothing to do with the sense: it is purely
styhstic Cf. c.
22,
8.
αὖ
—‘for his part.’
τῶν ἐν Ἰδομεναῖς
—edd. compare II. 34
τοὺς ἐν Μαραθῶνι where, however, ἐν should prob. be omitted (see Neil on Aristoph. Eq. 785).
In most cases a partic. is expressed; but ‘those of Idomenae’ is, of
course, sufficient.
τὰ ὅπλα ταυτί
—the omission of the nnmber—διακοσίων—here appears to be
impossible: ‘these are not the arms, then,’ would be natural, were
it not for the contrast following. The schol. already did not find διακοσίων in the text.
μαχομένων
—imperf.; cf. c.
62,
5.
εἴπερ γε
—‘yes if,’ taking up τῶν . . ἐστίν, exactly as in dramatic
dialogue the retort is apt to catch up the question. (I have put a note of interrogation at ἐστίν in place of the usual full stop,
because the remark seems to be a query as well as a denial: ‘then
they are not . . ?’)
ἀλλ’ ἡμεῖς γε
—‘nay, but we.’
καὶ μὲν δὴ . . γε
—‘why I assure you it was with these’; for the particles cf. Plato, Symp. 197 Α καὶ μὲν
δὴ τήν γε τῶν ζῳων ποίησιν.
πάθος
—‘this disaster was the worst that
. . ’ The number of days is three. The qualifications are very
precise, and suggest that Thuc. is conscious that other events might
be suggested.
κατὰ τὸν τόλεμον τόνδε
—many think that only the Ten
Years' (Archidamian) war is meant. It is impossible to attain
certainty on the question. If Thuc. wrote this soon after the event,
the expression is quite natural.
ἄπιστον
—pred. not to γενέσθαι, but to λέγεται γενέσθαι
together, i.e. ‘the total that it is said to have amounted to
is incredible.’