The History of the Peloponnesian War, Volume I (58 page)

[“And these men here, that are now just come”.]

[Nor give place in your minds to any reproach, as if, c. Goeller.]

[“From these considerations”. Goeller.]

[αὐτουργοί: “men that cultivate their lands by their own hands”. See chap. 142, where they are called γεωργοὶ. The number of slaves in Laconia was a striking exception to the state of the rest of Peloponnesus; where, as in almost all the merely agricultural republics of Greece and Italy, there were in early times extremely few of them. And we find afterwards that the other states of Peloponnesus were extremely unwilling to undertake any military operation during harvest–time, because their citizens were themselves ordinarily employed at that season in getting in their crops; while to the Lacedæmonians, whose agricultural labours were performed by Helots, one season of the year was the same as another. See iii. 15. Arnold.]

[Peloponnesus had as yet no paid troops: nor Athens till the time of Pericles, though half its mariners were now foreigners. See iii. 17, n.]

[“They are not sure that it may not be spent: especially, c.
For
the Peloponnesians”, c.]

Of the Peloponnesians and their confederates, some were Dorians, some Æolians, some Bœotians.

[“And that it concerns any one but himself to take forethought about any thing”.]

[Goeller understands ἀντεπιτετειχισμένων in a figurative sense: that the Athenian fleet, by infesting the Peloponnesian coasts, would counterbalance the Lacedæmonian fortification in Attica. By ἐπιτείχισις, he understands the actual building of some city as a check on the state, in or near which it is built; as Megara by the Dorians, as a check on Athens, and Heracleia in Trachinia (iii. 92.), as a check on the Thessalians: by ϕρούρια, some already existing town converted into a stronghold in a hostile territory; as Deceleia, Pylos, Methone, Budorum, c. His sense of the passage is this: “And indeed neither is their fortifying nor their navy much to be dreaded. For the first, it were hard for a city equal to such an undertaking to effect, even in time of peace; to say nothing of a time of war, and of ourselves being already no less formidably fortified with our navy against them. And if they garrison here, they may indeed annoy c.: but that will not suffice, at any rate, to hinder us from fortifying after our fashion, by sailing to their territory, and taking revenge with our fleet, wherein we are the stronger”. This sense is supported by chap. 143.]

[μέτοικοι. For an account of the metœci, usually rendered by Hobbes,
strangers that dwelt amongst them,
see ii. 31.]

[“Would choose, by reason of the peril, to fly”, c.]

[We must “abandon our land and houses, and have a care of the sea and the city”.]

Thucydides hath his mind here upon the defeat in Sicily, which fell out many years after the death of Pericles. Whereby it seems, he frameth his speech more to what Pericles might have said, than to what he did say. Which also he professeth in general of his course in setting down speeches. Besides, he maketh Pericles here to answer point by point to the oration of the Corinthians at Lacedæmon, as if he had been by when it was delivered; and useth the same manner in all opposite orations.

[“For neither the one, (the use of our markets by the Megareans), nor the other, (the ceasing to banish foreigners from Sparta), does hurt in time of peace”. Goeller. The government of Sparta was accustomed at its pleasure, summarily to order all foreigners to quit the territory: both from a dread of the introduction of foreign manners, and to prevent the formation of any wealthy mercantile class, likely to give strength and consistence to the excluded commons. Arn. See ii. 39, n.]

[“According to the treaty”.]

[This interpolated
but
reverses the sense. Γὰρ refers, not to ἀκηρύκτως μὲν, but to ἀνυπόπτως δὲ οὔ: “without herald indeed, but without suspicion
not; for
what had passed was the dissolution of the treaty, and the pretext of the war to follow”. Intercourse without herald, was the test of peace.]

[“From this time begins the war of the Athenians and the Peloponnesians and the allies of both sides; during which they had no longer commerce, c.; and having once begun it they warred, c.”]

Priestess of Juno: by whose priesthood they reckoned their years. The Athenians began their years about the summer solstice. [This is the first year of the introduction of Meton’s cycle. The religious ceremonies of the Greeks, as of other nations, being regulated by the course of the moon, whose revolutions are not commensurable with that of the earth round the sun, it was essential to ascertain a number of solar years exactly equal to a number of lunar revolutions. Throughout the number of years so ascertained, called a
cycle,
might be noted the future phases of the moon, which done for one cycle is done for all; all future cycles (whence the name) being only the same series repeated. Assuming 8 solar years to be equal to 99 lunar revolutions, the Greeks from about the year 560, regulated the Olympic year by that cycle. The 12 months were made to consist of 30 and 29 days alternately, called respectively πληρὴς and κοιλὸς: and for equalizing the lunar year, so consisting of 354 days, with the solar year, a
full
month, called ἐμβολιμᾶιος, was intercalated in the 3rd, 5th, and 8th years. To remedy the defects of this system, Meton adopted a cycle of 19 years: retaining the old number and form of the months, he intercalated a month in 7 out of the 19 years. His cycle, imperfect as it is, has, owing perhaps to some superstitious reverence for the number 19, retained its place in the regulation of the lunar calendar to the present day. From this time the Olympic year, commencing hitherto in the moon sometimes next before, sometimes next after the summer solstice, commenced regularly on the 11th day of the latter moon. The prizes were distributed at the full moon.]

[Herodotus, briefly alluding to this attempt upon Platæa by the Thebans, (vii. 233), says four hundred. He mentions the death of Eurymachus (chap. 5 infra): whom he calls the son of Leontiades a Theban, and the leader on this occasion of four hundred Thebans.]

[βοιωταρχοῦντες: see v. 38. note.]

[θέμενοι τὰ ὅπλα: “piling their arms”: as our own soldiers pile their muskets together, when not in the ranks and yet not off duty. Hobbes’ phrase for it, generally is,
sitting down
or
standing in their arms.
The summons of the herald was meant to disarm the Platæans.]

[“For that they threatened to make no change with any man”.]

[“And strove to beat them back wheresoever the assault was made”.]

[The common reading was οἱ πολλοί, “the greater part”. But as out of about 300 that entered the city, no less than 180 were taken prisoners (see chap. 5), it could not be correct to say that the greatest part perished in the first instance. The article οἱ has therefore been discarded by Bekker and the rest.]

[στυράκιον is not the head, but the spike at the other end of the javelin, by which it was fixed in the ground. And μοχλός is not the staple, but the bar which went across the gates, and into a hole in which and in the gate, went the βάλανος or bolt. The bolt was thrust in, so that no part of it remained out of the hole; and could then of course be drawn out only by something that could lay hold of its head, and therefore exactly fit it.]

[Cut through
the bar.
]

[Built against, or forming
part of
the wall.]

[“Thus
had
feared the Thebans in Platæa”: that is, before the arrival of the other Thebans next described.]

[“But the other Thebans, who c., receiving by the way news about what had passed, went to try to aid”. What they heard, could only be of the attack, and not of the capture of their men: because on their arrival they first learn that they were all taken or slain. It should be, “the rain which
fell
in the night”. “So that what by marching in the rain, and what by the difficulty of passing the river”, c.]

[“Having done no injury”.]

[See chap. 2. note.]

[“Just after they were overcome, c.:
and
of what followed after, they knew nothing”.]

The Lacedæmonian league, or Lacedæmonian party, not particularly that state. [“The confederate cities were ordered by the Lacedæmonians to make ready, each according to its size, other ships besides those already on the spot in Italy and Sicily, which had been got ready by those who in those parts sided with the Lacedæmonians, to the number of five hundred”. Göll. Arn. The Dorian states in Italy and Sicily would naturally be the allies of the Lacedæmonians.]

[“Especially.”]

“Knowing that
if
these were
securely
their friends, they would be able to infest Peloponnesus round about”. Arnold. Goeller. The latter observes that the Corcyræans, Acarnanians, and Zacynthians were already the friends of the Athenians; and all that remained, was to confirm that friendship.]

[“As might be expected”.]

[“And besides there were many young men, c.; and the rest of Greece stood at gaze, c. Many prophecies also were told, c.: and moreover a little before this Delos was shaken, c.” Herodotus, speaking of the impending invasion of Darius, says: “And Delos, as say the Delians, was shaken; for the first and
last
time even until my time: a portent from the god to men of the coming evils. For what with the Persians, and with the chief states striving for the mastery, there befell Greece in the time of Darius, Xerxes, and Artaxerxes, three generations, more evils than during twenty generations before Darius”. vi. 98. These passages of Herodotus and Thucydides are remarkable. If with Pliny, Mueller, and others, we adopt the opinion of two earthquakes, it follows that neither historian had heard of the earthquake related by the other. But for such authority, the remarkable fact, that the earthquake related by each was considered portentous of this war, would incline us either to accept the explanation of Arnold: that Thucydides here uses ὀλίγον πρὸ τούτων to express an interval of sixty years, as in chap. 16, infra, he applies ἄρτι to one of fifty: or else to hold both earthquakes for fabulous.]

[“And every private man and every city”. Bekker and the rest, πόλις: some MSS. πολίτης.

[Amongst
so many
nations.]

[“Thraceward”. See i. 57.]

[Melos and Thera were Spartan colonies.]

[“And all of them being ready at the time appointed, they assembled at the isthmus, the two–thirds from every state”. That is, two–thirds, not of those within the military age, but only of the
contingent
of each state. Mueller, Goeller. The following is Mueller’s account of the
contingent.
“When an expedition was contemplated, the Spartans sent round (περιήγγελλον) to the confederate states, to desire them to have ready men and stores. The highest contribution of each state having been already fixed once for all, on each particular occasion it was only to be determined what part thereof should be required. In like manner the supplies of money were determined: so that the army with all its equipments, could be collected by a simple summons.” Dor. i. 9. 2. Arnold observes that the time for which the allies were required to serve on a foreign expedition, and to maintain themselves at their own expense, appears to have been at this time forty days.]

[
Most
puissant]

[Begins
suddenly.
Goeller.]

[“Against being attacked”.]

[“And receive commands with readiness”.]

[“Then at length (οὕτω δὴ) he dislodged”, c.]

[“Suspecting, as Archidamus happened to be his guest, that he might, as often happens, either of private courtesy”, c. Goeller.]

[Consisted
much.
]

[That is, besides the rent of the public lands, mines, customs, judicial fines, and taxes paid by the metœci. Goeller. For the value of the talent, see i. 96, note.]

[τὰ προπύλαια. In the Acropolis were the Parthenon, the
Propylæa,
the temple of Minerva Polias adjoining the fane of Erectheus, and Phidias’ statue of Minerva. The ascent of the hill, which was formerly fortified, was adorned by Pericles with a splendid flight of steps and with the Propylæa: a work begun A. C. 437: and finished in five years, at a cost of 2012 talents. On one side of the Propylæa was the temple of Victory, called ἄπτερος,
wingless;
on the other, the picture gallery. The Parthenon fronted the east. From the eastern portico there was a way into the Opisthodomus, where was the public treasury and wherein were preserved the most precious and sacred things. The Parthenon was built by Callicrates, Ictinus, and Carpion, in the ten years from A.C. 448 to 438. In this last year Phidias erected in it his gigantic statue of Minerva; from which was to be seen the statue of Pallas Promachos, also of vast size, which he is said to have cast from the Persian spoils, and which stood between the Propylæa and the temple of Minerva Polias. Od. Mueller.]

[ἐκ τῶν ἄλλων ἱερῶν. From
the
other temples: besides that particular temple of Minerva in the Acropolis, the Parthenon, which was the treasury. Arnold. The Persian spoils: that is, amongst others, the silver–footed chair, in which Xerxes beheld the battle of Salamis, and the golden sabre of Mardonius. Boeckh.
Without the city,
is Hobbes’ addition.]

[Of all “tribute and revenue”. Goeller.]

[“For at the first so many kept watch against the invasion of the enemy, young and old, and of the metœci as many as were heavy–armed soldiers.” For the
metœci,
see ch. 31.]

[The reasons stated by Arnold in his note on this passage, establish pretty clearly the existence of three walls from the city to Piræus; the outer or northern wall, the Phalerian, and τὸ διὰ μέσου τξιχος, the wall between the ther two. The same conclusion is adopted by Goeller.]

[“Was attended with great difficulty”: Goeller: that is, owing to the great number that had to remove.]

πρυτανεῖα. Guild halls, places where those that administered the state did meet: where also some, for honour’s cause and service, were allowed diet, and wherein Vesta was worshipped, and a light continually burned; so that some thence derive the name, making πρυτανεῖον quasi πυρος ταμεῖον. [The Prytaneium (the mark of an independent society) has been termed by Pollux (ix. 40) ἑστία τῆς πόλεως,
the hearth
of the community; by Livy (xli. 20) “penetrale urbis”. “Herein,” says Pollux, “were entertained those who came on any public embassy, those who were honoured for service done to the state, and those who by virtue of their office were ἀείσιτοι.” Of these last the principal were the hierophantes or teachers of the sacred rites, the κήρυξ or cryer of the sacrifices, the cryer of the council, certain of the secretaries, c. This at Athens took place at what was called the θόλος: which is not to be confounded with the ancient Prytaneium at the foot of the Acropolis. According to Strabo, the inhabitants of Attica were assembled by Cecrops into twelve cities, the names of which he gives.]

[“They did not meet to consult under the king.”]

[“He made them all to
belong
to the city that now is: and obliged them, administering the affairs each of their own city as before, to use this as their metropolis: which, now that they all
reckoned as members of it,
grew great”. Goll. Arn. This may perhaps be called the birth of the Athenian democracy.]

[Between these two temples, the Pythaistæ took their station to watch nine nights, during three months in the spring, for the favourable flashing of the lightning over mount Parnes, announcing that the sacred embassy might venture to proceed in its destined route to Pytho. Müll.]

[Quod ἐν Λίμναις dicitur, suburbium erat ubi solium paulatim inclinatur Ilissum versus. Ibi duo templa Bacchi erant. Göll. There were
four
Dionysia or feasts of Bacchus: the Anthesterian, the Lenæan, the rural, and the great or city Dionysia. Hermann, Gr. Antiq. § 161.]

[
Are
celebrated.]

[The Pisistridæ. Except this, there was no good spring–water in the city: that of all the other springs being too salt to drink.]

[Till the
present
war.]

[ἄρτι: they had
only just
arranged, c.]

Pelasgicum, a place by the citadel, where the Pelasgians once fortified themselves against the Athenians, and for that cause there was laid a curse upon the habitation of it. Paus. in Atticis. [Sixty years after the fall of Troy, and about the time of the Dorian conquest of Peloponnesus, the Bœotians, a race from Arne in Thessaly, drove the Pelasgians out of Bœotia into Attica. See Hermann, Gr. Antiq. § 15. 21, § 102. 5, 6. There they built the wall about the Acropolis of Athens mentioned by Herodotus, vi. 137. This wall, and the ground under the Acropolis to the north–west, went by the name of the Pelasgicum. The
empty places
of the city lay to the north.]

[ἀργὸν:
waste.
ἐξῳκἡθη: was “filled
out
” with inhabitants. Göll.]

[“They divided the long walls amongst themselves”.]

[And “after that the army was assembled”, his stay c.]

[Indicatur mensis Julii: Göll. But Arnold seems to show clearly, that this period cannot be much later than the beginning of June.]

[Two springs of salt water, forming two lakes near the southeastern coast, at the extremity of the Thriasian plain. Muell. They were anciently supposed to derive their water from the Euripus, by an underground communication: but salt springs occur elsewhere in Attica; and there was one in the Acropolis, said to have been produced by Neptune when contending with Minerva for the honour of naming the city. Arnold.]

[Vulgo, κεκροπίας. Bekker and the rest, κρωπειᾶς. As little seems to be known of one as of the other. If Cecropia, the former name of Athens, became, as Mueller supposes, the name of the plain between Hymettus and Corydalus; still Archidamus did not march through that district.]

Burroughs. [δῆμος has different meanings. Homer uses it in the sense of
pagus, land
or
district.
Thus Il. iii. 201, ἐν δήμῳ Ἰθάκης: Od. iii. 215, σέ γε λαοὶ ἐχθαίρουσ’ ἀνὰ δῆμον. Cicero renders it by oppidum: “quod si δήμους oppida esse volumus, tam est oppidum Sunium quam Piræeus”: ad Att. vii. 3. Thucydides uses it sometimes in the sense of
plebs,
as opposed to the δυνατοὶ or ὀλίγοι: as in chap. 65 and 74. Here it seems to be used in the sense of
pagus:
“Acharnæ, the most extensive
district
(ager) of Attica, of those called pagi”.]

[“At Eleusis and the Thriasian plain”.]

[He thought good to try, if c. “
For
whilst the place seemed c., he thought also c”.]

[So long as the enemy lay c. the Athenians “also had some hope” c. Arnold, Goeller.
They stirred not,
is an addition.]

[And when their fields were wasted in their sight: which c.: it was,
as it was likely,
taken for a horrible matter.]

[Conceiving “the greater part of the Athenians to be with them”, were they c.]

[τέλος: a body of cavalry, the number of which is unknown.]

[The next,
not
the same day.]