This text is part of:
ἦγε—still along the Helorine road, hoping to find an unguarded way to the right.
Ἀσσίναρον—the name only occurs in the accounts of the retreat. It is identified as the Falconara. ἅμα μὲν βιαζόμενοι—because, being harassed by the cavalry and the light-armed, they thought that they would be somewhat better off if they crossed the river, and also owing to their suffering and thirst. One cause of ἠπείγοντο is οἰόμενοι, the other is ὑπὸ τῆς ταλαιπωρίας. The rest, βιαζόμενοι . . . ὄχλου, is subordinate to οἰόμενοι. So Bauer, Kruger, Classen, Fr. Muller. Poppo made βιαζόμενοι depend on ἠπείγοντο, and οἰόμενοι as well; but in all other cases in which two participles stand thus in the same relation to the verb, Thuc. either joins them by καὶ or places the verb between them. Stahl places οἰόμενοι . . . ποταμόν after ταλαιπωρίας, and this greatly improves the sense, since it is hard to see the bearing of βιαζόμενοι on οἰόμενοι. Why should the attacks diminish after they had crossed the river? Perhaps the A. thought they would then turn off to the right and shake off the enemy to some extent. (In any case the sentence is not a good one.)
περί τε . . . διεφθείροντο—cf. πίπτειν, πταίειν and σφάλλεσθαι περὶ with dat.; but the construction is poetical and Ionic. σκεύεσιν—accoutrements. ἐμπαλασσόμενοι = ἐμπλεκόμενοι. The word occurs nowhere else in Attic.
ἐς τὰ ἐπὶ θάτερα—regarded as one word. ἦν—the subject to be supplied from the context. κοίλῳ—with a deep bed; a meaning that occurs several times in Plutarch, e.g. Lucul. 24.
ἐπικαταβάντες—both banks of the Assinarus are steep, and the water, as usual in Sicily, does not fill the whole of its bed, which is wide. The Pel. went down the bank into the bed and cut down the A., while the Syr. stood on the opposite bank to prevent the A. from getting across. εὐθὺς διέφθαρτο—the plup. is occasionally thus used with εὐθὺς to express a result hastily arrived at, esp. in combination with the imperf., e.g. Dem. 19.154 τότ᾽ εὐθὺς ἐγνώκειν καὶ προεωρώμην. ὁμοῦ τῷ πηλῷ—with ἐπίνετο.
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.