C.E. Graves, Commentary on Thucydides: Book 5

τὴν ἐνιαύσιον ἐκεχειρίαν—see iv. 117 seq. ε:´δει—i. e. as was then arranged; the imperfect refers to the time when the treaty was made. τοῦ πλείονος χρόνου—see note on iv. 30 (fin.), περὶ τοῦ πλέονος.

ἀμφοτέρωθεν—at Athens and Sparta.

ἠναντιοῦντο—so Plut. Nic. 9, οὶ μάλιστα προσπολεμοῦντες τῇ εἰρήνῃ τῆς Ἑλλάδος Κλέων καὶ Βρασίδας ἦσαν, ὧν ὁ πόλεμος τοῦ μὲν ὰπέκρυπτε τὴν κακίαν τοῦ δὲ τὴν ἀρετὴν ἐκόσμει.

ὁ δὲ ..διαβάλλων—‘and the other because he fancied that in quiet times his rogueries would be more transparent and his slanders less credible’ (Jowett). No doubt Cleon had been the main promoter of war since the affair of Sphacteria; but, according to the historian's own testimony, it is the grossest injustice to ascribe the policy which he advocated to personal motives only and those of the lowest kind.

τότε δέ—‘then, I say’; an instance of δἐ used resumptively after a parenthetical interruption: so i. 11, 1, ἐπειδἠ δὲ .. φαίνονται δ̓ οὐδ̓ ἐνταῦθα κ.τ.λ. There is a slight manuscript authority for τότε δή, which is adopted by Kr[udot ]ger.

οἱ ἐν—these two words are found in three manuscripts, and are read by most editors. Classen however omits them, and takes ἑκατἐρᾳ τῇ πόλει as governed by σπεύδοντες, comparing Eur. Iph. <*> 579, υ:μῖν τ᾽ ὄνησιν, ὦ ξένοι, σπεὑδους: ἄμα κἀυοί. σπεύδοντες means ‘anxiously promoting’, ‘eager for’; vi. 10, 2, ὅπερ νῦν σπευδομεν: vi. 40, 1, κακὰ σπεύδοντες. There seems however no other instance of a substantive thus governed without a dative. This is in favour of Classen's view. I should incline to retain οἱ and omit ἐν.

ἡγεμονίαν—this word is open to suspicion, as it is not elsewhere used of the civil ascendancy of a statesman in his own city, which would be the meaning here required. It denotes (1) the command in war, as in iv. 91, 2, ἡγεμονίας οὔσης αὐτοῦ: vii. 15, 2, πολλὰ ἐν ἡγεμονίαις ὐμᾶς εὖ ἐποίησα: (2) the sovereign leadership held by a state such as Sparta or Athens. Such leadership would be attained by war rather than by peace; nor were Pleistoanax and Nicias the men to promote the supremacy of their respective countries. It has been suggested that it means a joint leadership of Greece by Athens and Sparta; but to give this force, some qualifying word, such as κοινήν, would be required. Some editors therefore propose ὀμόνοιαν, ὀμολογίαν, or some similar word, which gives good sense and agrees with ch. 17, 8, προὐθυμήθη τὴν ξύμβασιν. Classen, following Stahl, takes a different view, and reads μάλιστ᾽ αὐτήν (sc. εἰρήνην). He supposes that this had been corrupted into μάλιστα τήν, and then a substantive conjecturally supplied. Jowett suggests omitting οἱ ἐν and referring τότε δὲ...ἡγεμονίαν to Cleon and Brasidas, not to Pleistoanax and Nicias, ‘these (Cleon and Brasidas) being at that time the two great champions for the supremacy of their respective states’. The apodosis then begins at Πλειστοάναξ τε. This gives an intelligible sense to ἡγεμονίαν, but the position of the clause is very awkward, and it seems clear that τότε δέ ought to begin the apodosis.

πλεῖστα—cognate or determinant accusative with φερόμενος. εὖ φερόμενος—ch. 15, 9. Nicias was indeed the only Athenian general of the day who had not met with some great disaster. Demosthenes had been totally defeated in Aetolia in 426. The commanders of the Sicilian expedition had been compelled to withdraw ignominiously in 424. In the same year Hippocrates was defeated and slain at Delium, and Thucydides lost Amphipolis. Cleon had perished at Amphipolis in 422.

ἠξιο<*>το—either (1) absolutely ‘was held in honour’, or (2) ‘was so esteemed’, referring to ἀπαθὴς ἦν. In support of the former view editors cite Porson on Eur. Hec. 319, τύμβον δὲ βουλοίμην ἂν ἀξιούμενον τὸν ἐμὸν ὁρᾶσθαι. I incline however to (2), for the use of ἀξιῶ meaning simply ‘to honour’, though found in the tragedians, seems not to occur elsewhere in Attic prose; and by rendering the words ‘was so accounted’ we get an excellent sense. It was his reputation as a successful general as well as his actual success which Nicias was anxious to preserve; and ἠξιοῦτο with this meaning is answered by καταλιπεῖν ὄνομα below, just as πόνων πεπαῦσθαι corresponds to ἀπαθὴς ἦν. So Demosthenes (Lept. 482) says of Chabrias, δοκῶν καὶ ὢν α:σφαλἐστατος στρατηγὸς ἀπάντων. ib. διασώσασθαι—the aorist implies securing his good fortune by one definite act, such as the conclusion of peace.

πεπαῦσθαι καὶ αὐτός—i.e. καὶ αὐτὸς πεπαῦσθαι, or rather παῦσαι is added by a slight change of construction to govern πολίτας. See iii. 67, 6, ἀμύνατε καὶ τῷ νόμῳ καὶ ἡμῖν ἀνταπόδοτε χάριν, where other instances are cited by Poppo.

καταλιπεῖν ὅνομα—cf. vi. 33, 6, τοῖς ἐπιβουλευθεῖσιν <*>νομα καταλείπουσιν: vi. 16, 5, προσποίησιν ξυγγενείας καταλιπόντας. διεγένετο—a second compound with διά, emphasizing the fact that Nicias did not retain his good fortune ‘throughout his career’: cf. Ar. Av. 45, ὅπου καθιδρυθέντε διαγενοίμεθ̓ ἄν.

καὶ ὅστις—lit. ‘and (falls to a man) who’, etc. Far harsher constructions with ὄστις are not uncommon: see instances cited on iii. 45, 5, πολλῆς εὑηθείας, ὅστις οἴεται: iv. 18, 2, σωφρόνων δὲ ἁνδρῶν, οἴτινες.. ἔθεντο. Thucydides puts similar words in Nicias' mouth at the time of the Sicilian expedition, vi. 23, 3, ὅ τι ἐλάχιστα τῇ τύχῃ παραδοὺς ἐμαυτὸν βούλομαι ἐκπλεῖν. ‘We can hardly suppose’, says Professor Jowett, ‘that Thucydides wrote these words without intending silently to recall to the reader's mind the singular contrast between the hopes of mortals and their final destinies, or without a recollection of the old Greek saying, that no man could be called happy before he died. He who desires only peace may be the author of war; he who aims only at the safety of the state may, by the irony of fortune, be the prime mover in its destruction.’

ἐς ἐνθυμίαν...προβαλλόμενος—lit. ‘put forward as a matter of (religious) anxiety’, explained further by ὡς διὰ κ.τ.λ. The personal construction may be illustrated by such expressions as Ar. Nub. 1241, Ζεὺς γέλοιος ὀμνύμενος, ‘it is absurd to swear by Zeus’. The form ἐνθυμία seems not found elsewhere in classical Greek. The adjective ἐνθύμιος is however common, e.g. vii. 50, 4, ἐνθύμιον ποιούμενοι: Soph. Oed. Tyr. 739, τί δ̓ ἐστί σοι τοῦτ᾽ ἐνθύμιον; similarly ἐνθυμεῖσθαι is used of laying a thing to heart, as in ch. 32, 6.

ὁπότε τι πταίσειαν—for the construction cf. iv. 18, 3, ἐλάχιστα πταίοντες

παρανομηθεῖσαν—‘illegally effected’. This construction is best explained as the passive equivalent of a cognate accusative with the active. We say ἀδικῶ τοῦτο, ‘I commit a wrong in this’, and in the passive this becomes τοῦτο ἀδικεῖται, ‘this is a wrong act’. The participle here has its predicative force, as in iii. 20, 1, τῷ σίτῳ ἐπιλιπόντι ἐπιέζοντο, ‘they suffered from failure of the corn’. Classen takes it merely as part of the epithet, comparing for its position such passages as iii. 56, 1, κατὰ τὸν πᾶσι νόμον καθεστῶτα. This however weakens the sense: see note on iv. 87, 2, τοῖς ἀπὸ υ:μῶν χρήμασι φερομένοις παρ᾽ Ἀθηναίους.

τὴν πρόμαντιν—so Hdt. vi. 66, Περίαλλαν τὴν πρόμαντιν ἀναπείθει: id. vii. 111, πρόμαντις δὲ ἡ χρέουσα, κατά περ ἐν Δελφοῖσι.

πεῖσαι. <*>ὥστε—so iii. 70, 3, πείθει ὥστε τῷ νόμῳ χρήσασθαι: ii. 2, 4, οὐκ ἐπείθοντο ὤστε εὐθὺς ἔργου ἔχεσθαι: so ii. 101, 3, with ἀναπείθεται. This construction connects two ideas less immediately than if the simple infinitive were employed. The meaning here is that the result of their persuasion (or bribery) was that the priestess gave oracles in their interest. We have a double construction with ὥστε in viii. 45, 3, τοὺς τριηράρχους ἐδίδασκεν ὥστε δόντα χρήματα αὐτὸν πεῖσαι ὥστε ξυγχωρῆσαι ταῦτα ἑαυτῷ.

ἐπὶ πολύ—of extent of time, as in iv. 72, 2, where see note. θεωροῖς ἀφικνουμένοις—‘when they came on the public behalf to consult the oracle’. ‘On a former occasion, when the Pythoness was bribed by the Alcmaeonidae to inculcate on the Spartans the duty of delivering Athens from the Pisistratidae, Herodotus says, that she repeated this charge not only to the θεωροί, who came on the public behalf, but also to any Lacedaemonian who consulted the oracle on his own private affairs. The duties of θεωροί at Sparta were performed by the four Πύθιοι, two being nominated by each of the kings, who were maintained with the kings at the public expense, and who together with them read the answers which the oracle returned. See Hdt. vi. 57: Xen. Rep. Lac. 15’ (Arnold).

Διὸς υἱοῦ ἡμιθέου—‘the Heraclidae at Sparta were believed to hold the kingly power by an inalienable right, derived from the original compact made between their ancestors and the Dorians, when they jointly in vaded Peloponnesus’ (Arnold).

ἀναφέρειν—i.e. κατάγειν. χράω and similar words, like other words of commanding or warning, commonly take the present or aorist infinitive, in the sense of bidding or of oracular intimation. Sometimes, as in the next clause, when promise or prediction is especially implied, we have the future: ii. 102, 4, λέγεται Ἀλκμαίωνι τὸν Ἀπόλλω ταύτην τὴν γῆν χρῆσαι οἰκεῖν: i. 118, 3, ἀνεῖλεν αὐτοῖς νίκην ἔσεσθαι: see Goodwin's Moods and Tenses, § 98

ἀργυρέᾳ εὐλάκᾳ εὐλάξειν—meaning either that they should be obliged to purchase their corn at a great price, or that they should find agriculture costly and unprofitable. ευ:λάκα is said to be an old Laconian word for a ploughshare, and εὐλάξειν to be equivalent to ἀρόσειν. Neither noun nor verb are found elsewhere.

προτρέψαι—the run of the sentence seems in favour of taking this as following ὥστε and, like χρῆσαι, referring to the πρόμαντις. Grammatically it might depend on ἐπῃτιῶντο, and correspond to πεῖσαι in coustruction. The following αὐτόν would then refer to Pleistoanax, the primary subject, according to the rule set forth by Poppo on i. 17, 1; see note on iv. 50 (fin.).

φεύγοντα...ἐς—φεὑγειν often means ‘to be in exile’, as in this passage, and in ch. 26, 28. It still however retains the construction of a verb of motion, and is followed by ἐς rather than by ἐν. Λύκαιον—ch. 54, 3, πρὸς τὸ Λύκαιον, the only other place in Thucydides where the word occurs. Lycaeus was a mountain in Arcadia, with a temple of Ζεὺς Λύκαιος.

διὰ τὴν...ἀναχώρησιν—this was in 445, (i. 114, 3: ii. 21, 1). μετὰ δώρων δοκοῦσαν—‘propter suspicionem acceptae ob discessum pecuniae’: so ii. 21, 1, διὸ δὴ καὶ ἡ φυγὴ αὐτῷ ἐγένετο ἐκ Σπάρτης δόξαντι χρήμασι πεισθῆναι τὴν ἀναχώρησιν. δοκεῖν in the sense of ‘to be reputed’ is often used like uideor, to imply a judicial decision: δοκῶ=‘I am held (guilty)’, ἔδοξα ‘I was found (guilty)’: cf. ch. 72, 5, δόξαντας μαλακισθῆναι. There is some curtness in the use of μετὰ δώρων to mean ‘effected by bribery’, and the reading is not free from doubt. Most manuscripts have δόκησιν followed by ἕως. Suidas interprets δώρων δόκησιν as equivalent to δωροδοκίαν, and some commentators propose δώρων δοκήσεως in the same sense. There is however no sign of the existence of δόκησις in the sense of ‘receiving’ connected with δέχομαι: while it occurs several times in Thucydides as derived from δοκῶ. δωροδόκησις would be a word legitimately formed from δωροδοκεῖν, though it is not found in the lexicons; and possibly μετὰ δωροδόκησιν or μετὰ δωροδοκήσεως is the true reading, or else, as Stahl reads, μετὰ δώρων δοκήσεως, ‘with the imputation of bribery’. Classen suggests, μετὰ δωρωδοκήσεως δοκοῦσαν ἀναχώρησιν.

ἥμισυ τῆς οἰκίας—these words are governed directly by οἰκοῦντα, and τοῦ ἱεροῦ is predicative: it is the partitive genitive, ‘belonging to the temple’. Half of the house in which he lived at this time was in the sacred precinct of Zeus. ‘The reason was, that he might be in sanctuary at an instant's notice, and yet might be able to perform some of the common offices of life without profanation, which could not have been the case had the whole dwelling been within the precinct’ (Arnold). In the same way Pausanias, wheu threatened with arrest, fled to the temple of Athene of the Brazen House, καὶ ἐς οἴκημα οὐ μέγα δ ἦν τοῦ ἱεροῦ ἐσελθὼν...ἡσύχαζεν (i. 134, 2).

ἥμισυ is found without the article i. 8, 1, υ:πὲρ ἥμισυ Κᾶρες ἐφάνησαν: viii. 68, 4, ὑπὲρ ἥμισυ τοῦ χρόνου. It is one of the terms which from frequent use acquire a definite force, just as we say ‘half the time’. There is too a general tendency to omit the article in such prepositional phrases.

φόβῳ τῶν—many manuscripts have φόβῳ τῷ, but τῶν is the usual form, as in ch. 11, 13.