The History of the Peloponnesian War, Volume I (62 page)

[“Having prepared themselves for action, sailed
to
Panormus”.]

“The Peloponnesians therefore, when they saw the Athenians
also
(go to Rhium), they too stationed themselves with seventy–seven ships at Rhium in Achaia, which is at no great distance from Panormus, where were their land forces. And for six or seven days they lay opposite each other, exercising and preparing for action, c”.]

[To fight “in a narrow space”.]

[By unskilfulness, “it being our first trial at a sea–fight”.]

[“Nor is it just, that that part of our mind (our fortitude) which was not overcome by force, but has within itself some ground of justification, should be dejected c.: but we ought to think that it is common for men to fail through fortune, but that in mind men of courage are by rights ever the same, and that whilst offering inexperience as an excuse, if their courage remain, they are not likely to have been cowards in aught”. Goeller. Commentators differ much about this passage.]

[“And whatever were our
errors
on the former occasion, these very same in addition, will now c.]

[“Each do your duty in your several stations”. Arnold.]

[“Not worse”: meaning,
better.
]

[This conceit (or confidence) of themselves, “as Athenians to decline no number” c.]

[“To make them call to mind their audacity”.]

[“And next, as to that they especially trust to in attacking us, that courage is natural to them, they are bold only through their skill in land–fighting: for being there mostly successful, they think too that it (their courage) will do the like for them in naval fighting too.” Goell.]

[This sense would be good, if ἔσμεν, “we
are
c.” would admit of it. “And from being each of us in one particular more skilled than the other, we are (on this occasion) the more confident of the two.”]

[“For the sake of their own (the Lacedæmonians’) glory”.]

[τι ἄξιον τοῦ παρὰ πολὺ: “something worthy of the former signal victory”. Goeller.]

[“For most men when fairly matched, go into battle, as these do, relying more upon their strength than upon their courage. But they that out of (with) much inferior numbers go to battle, and at the same time not upon compulsion, do not adventure without having in their designs some great security to rely on”. Goell. Arn.]

[“Which they considering.”]

[“
We
are free”: insinuating the contrary of the Lacedæmonians.”]

[διέκπλοι οὐδὲ ἀναϛροϕαὶ. See i. 49. Arnold considers the ἀναϛροϕή to embrace both the ἀνάκρουσις, the rowing astern to get clear of the enemy, for want of space; and also the περίπλους, gaining the requisite distance for a second onset by a circuit, where space admitted it.]

[“Especially as we are watching one another’s movements within so short a distance”: Göll. Arn.]

[“
For
the sea”: that is, “for their dominion over the sea”. Portus.]

[“Towards” their own land.]

[Should sail “towards it”.]

[“And with closed front sailed down” c. μετωπηδὸν means, they sailed down in
line,
and not as they were before sailing, in
column.
]

[“Into the wide part of the gulf”. They were sailing
from
the sea.]

[διέϕθειραν, which Hobbes mostly renders
sunk,
and a little below
overcame,
means
rendered useless
or
disabled.
]

[ἤδη, the common reading, is omitted by Bekker and Arnold: “and one they took with the men” c.]

[The Messenians settled in Naupactus by the Athenians in i. 103: frequently mentioned hereafter. See iv. 41.]

[See ch. 90, note 4.]

[τὴν: “
the
one”. See above.]

[“Strikes in midships” c.]

[“
The charge
of the enemy”.]

[“At one signal with a shout”]

[“
The
Lacedæmonian”. One of the commanders: see chap. 85.]

[Ibi erat Neptuni templum, ut docet Strabo. lib. 8. Hudson.]

[“To
hazard
an attempt”. The words “the haven” are added, to distinguish it from the city of the same name. Goeller.]

It may be hence gathered, that in the galleys of old there was but one man to one oar. [τροπωτήρ: a thong, not
for the oar to turn in:
but a thong of some sort, wound round the upper end of the oar, for the purpose, first, of increasing its weight, that it might balance that of the other longer end; and next, of acting as a nut, to prevent the oar from slipping through the hole in the vessel’s side, in which it acted. See appendix to Arnold’s Thucydides, vol. i.]

[Nor was there any imagination that the enemy c.; “since (they thought not) that they could dare to do it openly and deliberately, nor, if they did conceive such a thing, that they would not have had notice of it beforehand”.]

[“
The
promontory”: viz. Budorum. There was a fort of the same name: see ch. 94. There had been of old a long and severe struggle between Megara and Athens for the possession of Salamis: which, after being awarded by five Spartan arbitrators, in obedience to ancient traditions, to Athens, was, with Nisæaaga, lost in the troubles following the banishment of Megalces: but was soon regained, and ever after remained with Athens. Müll. Dor. i. 8.]

Fires lifted up, if they were still, signified friends coming; if waved, enemies. [“By this time”, is an addition. Fires were most likely raised on the fort being taken.]

[Which, “had they been minded not to waste their time”, nor c.]

[διὰ χρόνου: were “now first after a long time put into the sea”: that is, it was a long time since they had been in the water. Göll.]

[
The
Odrysian. See chap. 29.]

[“He had not performed”.]

[ἐντὸς: “within the mountains Hæmus and Rhodope”. These hills form a circle.]

[“Within the Danube, and rather towards the Euxine.” The numerous colonies founded by the Ionians along the shore of this sea, occasioned the change of its ancient name, ἄξενος,
the inhospitable,
to its present name,
the hospitable.
Herm. § 78. Perhaps, like ἐυμενἰδες, the
Furies,
a mere euphemism.]

[Many of the
Thracians
c.]

[Towards “the Pæonians, who from this point are independent”. Arnold has amended this passage, by inserting γὰρ̧ after μέχρι, and striking out οὗ before ὡρίζετο; and renders the passage thus: “and these (the Agrianes and Lææans) were the last to whom his dominion extended;
for
at the Graæans and Lææans c., the empire of Sitalkes terminated towards Pæonia, the Pæonians from this point
being
independent”. The following are his observations upon the origin of the name
Graii
and
Græci
amongst the Romans”: “The Pæonians, according to Herodotus, were of the same race as the Teucrians of Troy; both belonging to that stock which overspread western Asia, Greece, and Italy in the earliest times, commonly called the Pelasgians. Now it is curious to find amongst the Pæonians the name of the
Graæans,
evidently the same word as the Latin
Graii,
the name by which the Romans designated the Hellenians. They applied it to the Hellenians, because they had been used to apply it to the Pelasgian inhabitants of Greece before the Hellenians rose to eminence, and because, according to Aristotle, the Hellenians, when living in Epirus, were called
Græci.
Niebühr supposes that the same name may also have been borne by the Pelasgi of Italy.”]

στρογγύλη, a ship that useth only sails, of the round form of building, and serving for burthen, in distinction to galleys, and all other vessels of the long form of building, serving for the wars. [Non credo scriptores Latinos eas naves, quas Græci στρογγύλας vocant,
rotundas
dicere. Est autem in ea re sequendus usus veterum, qui has
onerarias
appellare maluerunt. Duker.]

[With a continual wind
aft.
]

[“The tribute in gold and silver from all the barbarous nations and the Grecian cities, which they paid under Seuthes, (who reigned after Sitalkes, and made the most of it), was of the value of about four hundred talents of silver.”]

[παραδυναϛεύουσι: small lords, or quasi reguli, next to the king: as Seuthes to Sitalkes, ch. 101. Göll.]

[“Nevertheless according to their power, so they used it the more”.]

[That is, they are
inferior
in all that concerns the
enjoyment
of life. Goeller.]

[He had made “by cutting down the woods” when c.]

[“
The
free nation”. See ch. 96.]

[“For
to the Macedonians belong
the Lyncestæ c.: who though confederates of and subject to
these
Macedonians, have still” c. The original Macedonians, a nation referred by Mueller to the Illyrian race, are supposed to have been confined, in their earliest settlements, to Maketa, a district of Orestis. That which is generally called Macedonia proper, is divided into upper and lower Macedonia. The former comprises the mountainous districts of Elimcia, Lyncestis, and Orestis: which last took its name from the mountains (ὄρη) wherein they dwelt, and not, as supposed, from the son of Agamemnon. Lower Macedonia, which appears to have been a later acquisition of the Maketai, and to have been originally called Emathia, comprised the districts of Edessa and Berœa. This part, inhabited originally by Pelasgians, fell into the power of the Temenidæ, an Argive family; whose conquests are here related by Thucydides: and it is of this part he speaks, when he says the upper Macedonians were “subject to
these
Macedonians”, though still independent in their government. See Müll., Maked. Herm. Antiq. § 15.]

[“The
hollow
of Pieria”.]

[“These Macedonians”.]

[“But those now in the country” were built c.]

[
Besieged
Europus.]

[Pella, supposed to have superseded Edessa as the seat of the Macedonian government, was at this time the residence and treasury of the Macedonian kings. It lay about 120 stadia from the sea, close to the lake of the river Lydias, on a small eminence in the midst of the swamps, at all times quite impassable, formed by the waters of that river and of the Axius. On an artificial mole, connected with the city only by a bridge, stood the treasury: serving the purpose also either of a prison, or of a retrcat: see Livy, xliv. 46.]

[In Thessaly, as in Macedonia, is seen at work the cause which in time effected an entire change in the condition of Greece: namely, the constant pressure of the nations of the north towards the south: the Dorian invasion of Peloponnesus being only the last of these migrations. Emathia, Thessaly, and a great part of Epirus, inhabited once by the Pelasgi, a Grecian race spread over those countries, and Greece itself wherever early civilization existed, were again reduced to barbarism by the irruption of the Illyrian population. Shortly after the Trojan war the Thessalians, a race from Thesprotia, of Illyrian origin, seized on the plains between the Perrhæbians and the Phthiotan Achæans, comprehending the valley of the Peneus (the ancient Ἄργος Πελασγικὸν) and the district called Αἰολίς (Herod. vii. 176). The ancient Pelasgo–Æolian inhabitants became, under the name Penestæ (from πένης,
poor
), a race of bondsmen similar to the Laconian Helots, and to their masters equally troublesome. The invaders also made tributaries of the Perrhæbians, Magnesians, and Achæans: but these nations retained a certain degree of independence, and even remained members of the Amphictyonic council. The Thessalians can scarcely be said to have had any general government: the cities, constantly at war amongst themselves, were each under the control of some great family, as Larissa of the Aleuadæ, Cranon of the Scopadæ, c. Thucydides (iv. 78) tells us, the
people
were ever friendly to the Athenians: but had so little influence on the government, that they could not prevent Brasidas from marching through Thessaly. They were brave, and had greater advantages than perhaps any other state in Greece: and yet their history is a blank in that of Greece. See Müll. Dor. iii. 14. Herm. Gr. Antiq. § 15. 178.]

[“Are ever at all times” c.]

[Æniadæ.]

[Many of them are in fact united to the mainland. Arnold.]

[The islands stand thick, “and are one with another the means of holding together the alluvial soil, so that it spreads not”; lying, c.]

[“To support life”.]