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

Ἕλληνες. No satisfactory explanation of this word is forthcoming. Though absent from several of the best MSS., it cannot be lightly omitted without some account of its appearance in all the rest. Jowett says ‘as distinguished from slaves or Scythian bowmen.’ Grote (pt ii. c. lxii.) calls them ‘a band of Grecian youths, got together from different cities,’ an account which is highly improbable. ‘They were probably young oligarchs, the jeunesse dorée of Athens’ (Jowett and Classen). Arnold, P-S, Cl. think they were members of the aristocratic clubs; and, indeed, no other conclusion can well be come to. In c. 92, § 6, τῶν ἱππέων νεανίσκοι assist the oligarchical party. Xen. Hell. ii. 3, 23, παραγγείλαντες τοῖς νεανίσκοις οἳ ἐδόκουν αὑτοῖς θρασύτατοι εἶναι ξιφίδια ὑπὸ μάλης ἔχοντας παραγενέσθαι refers to the same class of persons. In c. 65, § 2, it is ξυστάντες τινὲς τῶν νεωτέρων (a somewhat less definite word) who kill Androcles. [It would be easy to suggest εὐγενεῖς, but so simple a word was not likely to be corrupted into one so incomprehensible. The sense required is that of ‘patrician’ youths, the εὐπατρίδαι; and, unlikely as it may seem at first, it is quite possible that Thucydides wrote Γελέοντες, which word, being unknown to the copyist, took the corrupt shape Ἕλληνες The Γελέοντες were the most aristocratic of the four old Attic tribes. Hdt. (v. 66) tells how Cleisthenes abolished the old tribal division of Γελέοντες, Αἰγικορεῖς, Ἀργαδεῖς and Ὅπλητες, and substituted a local division into ten tribes. The object of this measure was to break up old ties of clanship in favour of democracy. The etymological value of the four titles is not very distinct, but is sufficiently so to enable us to infer the equivalence with another classification, viz. of Εὐπατρίδαι = Γελέοντες, Γεώμοροι = Αἰγικορεῖς + Ἀργαδεῖς, Δημιουργοί = Ὅπλητες. The Γελέοντες are regularly mentioned first, as in Eur. Ion 1580, Γελέων μὲν ἔσται πρῶτος κ.τ.λ. On the whole question of these tribes and of the Eupatrids see Grote, H. G. vol. iii. c. x. It may be urged that, these tribes having been politically and nominally abolished in B.C. 509, there would be no such thing as Γελέοντες νεανίσκοι at the date of the 400. But (1) the consciousness of clan connection did as a matter of fact survive very strongly at Athens, (2) this distinction of four tribes or castes occurred in other Ionian communities as a regular thing, (3) the passage in Euripides shows that the tradition was still kept alive in his day.]

τοῖς ἀπὸ τοῦ κυάμου cf. c. 66, § 1.

τὸν μισθὸν a drachma per day (Bockh, Publ. Ec. Ath. i. 327).

ἔφερον δὲ κ.τ.λ. ‘they themselves brought them their pay for all the remainder of their term of office, and gave it to them as they left the room,’ i.e. they paid it out of their own pockets (αὐτοὶ).