T. G. Tucker, Commentary on Thucydides: Book 8

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ἐλύπει τε the so-called trajective τε, the subject of ἐλύπει not being the same as that of περιειστήκει. ‘The writer did not wish to say πάντα δέ τε’ (P-S). The writer scarcely possessed such consciousness: rather he was thinking of ‘both grieved and alarmed them,’ but substitutes a differently turned phrase for κατέπλησσε.

στεπόμενοι Several MSS. have στερούμενοι, a form also given in Xen. Anab. i. 9, 13, while στεροῖτο appears ibid. vii. 6, 16. The rule seems to be that στέρομαι, στερίσκομαι form the pres. and imperf., and στερέομαι the rest. Yet ἐστερούμην, Antiph. ii. 2, 9. The signification of στέρομαι is frequently that of a perfect.

ἰδίᾳ ἕκαστος τῶν οἰκείων is to be supplied from ὁπλιτῶν by a zeugma.

ἐν τῷ κοινῷ So vi. 6. In i. 80 and 141 without the article. The cases are different. Thus i. 80, οὔτε ἐν κοινῷ ἔχομεν (χρήματα) οὔτε ἑτοίμως ἐκ τῶν ἰδίων φέρομεν, and 141, οὔτε ἰδίᾳ οὔτε ἐν κοινῷ χρήματά ἐστιν αὐτοῖς, the meaning is ‘in (any) public stock,’ not ‘in the public treasury.’ Contrast vi. 6, σκεψομένους εἰ ὑπάρχει (χρήματα) ἐν τῷ κοινῷ καὶ ἐν τοῖς ἱεροῖς.

ὑπηρεσίας Cf. the concrete use of Lat. servitium, remigium, etc. Lucian and late writers have ἡ οἰκετεία = οἱ οἰκέται. Some understand the term as = ‘crew’ (rowers and sailors) as opposed to the ἐπιβάται, or ‘marines’; but Dobree, Arnold (vi. 31), and Shilleto (i. 143) are much more probably right in rendering ‘petty officers.’ In i. 143 a point is made of the possession of κυβερνήτας πολίτας καὶ τὴν ἄλλην ὑπηρεσίαν πλείους καὶ ἀμείνους ἢ πᾶσα ἡ ἄλλη Ἑλλάς. See also Lys. 162, 10; Isoc. Paneg. § 142, and context. The skill of the officers is of special importance. In vi. 31 the ὑπηρεσίαι are opposed to the θρανῖται. A petty officer might well be called a ὑπηρετής (cf. ‘mate’) of the captain.

πλεύσεσθαι MSS. give πλευσεῖσθαι. The ‘Doric’ futures πλευσοῦμαι, πνευσοῦμαι, κλαυσοῦμαι, ῥευσεῖται, etc., are scarcely to be retained in Attic writers of the best period. φευξοῦμαι, however, is warranted by the metre in Euripides, and even in Aristophanes, along with φεύξομαι: v. Rutherford, N. P. Art. xxiii.; G. Meyer, Gk. Gr. p. 473 (ed. 2). It is scarcely an accident that υ appears in the diphthong of the root-syllable of each of the above verbs.

καὶ διπλασίως i.e. by the accession of the Siceliot contingents.