This text is part of:
ἄλλων—see c. 4.3. ὁ μὲν ἀγὼν—in the coming struggle every one of us will be fighting for country and for life just as much as the enemy. If we win this battle at sea, every individual may see again his own home, wherever it may be. There is a different nuance in πατρίδος as applied to the A. and the Syr. For the use of τῳ cf. Eur. Heraclid. 826 καὶ τῇ τεκούσῃ νῦν τιν᾽ ἀρκέσαι χρεών.
ἀθυμεῖν δὲ κ.τ.λ.—but we must not despair, nor must we allow ourselves to feel like raw recruits, for whom a defeat in their first battle fills all the future with foreboding of similar misfortunes. τὴν ἐλπίδα is defined by τοῦ φόβου as ‘an expectation that falls in the sphere of fear.’ Cf. Plat. Laws 644C κοινὸν μὲν ὄνομα ἐλπίς, ἴδιον δὲ φόβος μὲν ἡ πρὸ λύπης ἐλπίς. θάρρος δὲ ἡ πρὸ τοῦ ἐναντίου. ταῖς ξυμφοραῖς means the reverses they have met with.
ἀλλ᾽ ὅσοι τε—no; all of you who are A., with the experience of many wars, all of you who are allies, our constant companions in arms, remember how calculation is baffied in war, and, in hopes that fortune may yet be with us, and resolved, as you see your army before you, to renew the struggle in a manner worthy of your numbers, prepare. πάρεστε—occasionally the 3rd person is found in such rel. clauses; e.g. Andoc. 1, 46 ὁπόσοι ὑμῶν παρῆσαν, ἀναμιμνήσκεσθε; Lys. 12.97. So in Latin poets, as Ovid Trist. 3.4.75 “et qua quisque potest aliqua mala nostra levate.” See also on c. 64.2. τῶν ἐν τοῖς πολέμοις παραλόγων—Thuc. insists on the uncertainty, the inconsequence, of war so often because he regards history, under normal conditions, as effect following ascertainable causes. He introduced into history the notion of law. τὸ τῆς τύχης — denoting a power acting by some inscrutable method. Cf. Eur. Alc. 785 τὸ τῆς τύχης ἀφανὲς οἷ προβήσεται, τὰ τῆς τύχης are the manifestations of this power. κἂν μεθ᾽ ἡμῶν . . . στῆναι—cf. c. 77.3 ἱκανὰ γὰρ τοῖς πολεμίοις ηὐτύχηται. Other statements by Nicias of a like nature, showing how firmly he believed in the distribution during life of rewards and punishments, are found in v. 16.1; VI. 11.6; 23.3. It is the idea that meets us in Aeschylus and Herodotus. ἀναμαχούμενοι—generally with an accus., as Plato Hip. Maj. 286D ἰέναι πάλιν ἐπὶ τὸν ἐρωτήσαντα, ἀναμαχούμενος τὸν λόγον. ὑμῶν αὐτῶν—attracted into the rel. clause, like ἕκαστος.
Professional Data Entry.
The National Endowment for the Humanities provided support for entering this text.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.