The History of the Peloponnesian War, Volume I (66 page)

[See iv. 8, note.]

[See ch. 75.]

[“And
bringing out of
the thirty ships (ἐκβιβάζοντες) all they had persuaded to go aboard, (ἀπεχρῶντο or ἀνεχρήσαντο) they slew them”. Goeller, Arnold. Bekker and all the MSS. have ἀπεχώρησαν, “they went their way”. But then, what became of the men disembarked? Those slain as the ships “went about”, were part of those who had embarked to escape to the continent: of whom five hundred escaped thither (see ch. 85). Goeller.]

[“And of the sanctuary men, that were not persuaded to stand their theirtrial, the greater part, when they saw what was done, slew each other thereright in the temple: and some hanged themselves on the trees, and others made away with themselves each man as he could”.]

[“Affecting to accuse the enemies of the people: but under that pretext died some also from private enmity; and others that had money owing to them, by the procurement of their debtors”. Goeller.]

[“And there is nothing that usually falls out in such a case, which did not come to pass, and even more”.]

[“But when they were at war, to those of both sides desirous of innovating, the occasion of bringing in allies soon presented itself, both for weakening the alliance of their adversaries, and at the same time acquiring alliances for themselves”. Goeller.]

[“Yet are they aggravated or more mild, and varying in form, according” c. Goeller.]

[“
Fell
into sedition”.]

[“Arbitrarily”.]

[Manliness
devoted to one’s party—disguised
fear—
wisdom,
the cloak c.—furious
passion.
]

[“For violent measures”]

[“A still cleverer man”.]

[τῆς ἑταιρίας: of his
party.
]

[“For such associations are for no lawful purpose, but for the purposes of private ambition, contrary to the laws” c. Goeller, Arnold.]

[“The fair proposals of their adversary, they received, if they were the stronger, with measures of precaution, and not ingenuously”. Goeller.]

[Of force, “so long as they had no power from other sources”: and he that first took courage, “if he saw his enemy unarmed”, thought c.]

[“Men in general, when dishonest, more easily gain credit for cleverness, than when simple, for honesty”. Arnold.]

[The cause,
was
c.]

[“And revenged them, inflicting punishment still greater than the injury”, without c.]

[“So that neither side made any use of piety; but they were in highest esteem, that could perpetrate and hateful thing by fair words”.]

[“Simplicity, whereof, c. was laughed down and disappeared; and it became better to stand c.: for there was neither vehement promise nor terrible oath that could cure the distrust of enmity”. The next sentence is corrupt or untranslateable. Arnold.]

[“For through fear both of their own inferiority and their adversaries’ subtlety, lest they should be worsted by words and circumvented and outstripped by their crafty designs, they went c.: whereas the others, in their arrogance trusting to being aware in time and thinking they needed not c., were” c.]

[Corcyra departed early from the moderate constitution of Corinth: and the separation from the motherstate, relaxing the connexion with the Peloponnesian league and bringing her in closer contact with Athens, accelerated her democratic tendency, and the popular assembly soon absorbed the supreme power. The licentiousness that sprang from this sedition, is coarsely expressed by the proverb: ἐλεύθερα κέρκυρα· χέζ’ ὅπου θέλεις. The scenes here described, hitherto rare, yet being the result of causes that continued to operate throughout Greece with increasing malignity, soon became common and familiar. The old aristocracies had sunk, and made way either for tyrannies or more or less exclusive oligarchies, often ending in democracies. In every state existed, either a commonalty containing a germ of democracy, needing only favourable circumstances to unfold it: or a democracy tyrannising over the old aristocracy and the wealthy class, who on their side, united in
clubs
(ἐταίριαι, ξυνωμόσιαι), ostensibly for the object of mutual support in elections and law–suits, but in reality for the overthrow of the democracy, and secretly connected with similar societies in other states, awaited the time to strike the blow. So long as either party was decidedly predominant, the seeds of discord lay dominant but the rupture between Sparta and Athens, insuring foreign aid to both parties, rendered their inequality a matter of little moment, and conflicts became more frequent and men’s passions more inflamed. The butcheries described here, and in iv. 46, were surpassed in Argos, when the battle of Leuctra having broken the power of Sparta and prostrated the party of the aristocracy in Peloponnesus, the popular leaders, after dispatching above twelve hundred of the chief citizens, themselves fell a sacrifice to their dread of farther bloodshed. A state of things arose, called σκυταλισμὸς,
bludgeon–law:
and Athens, as if all Greece were polluted, purified her market–place. The height to which party animosity was carried, appears in the oath of the
clubs
(Aristot. v. 9): “I will be ever the enemy of the people, and contrive for them all the mischief I can.”]

[This chapter, by Bekker included in brackets, is pronounced by the scholiasts, Goeller, and Arnold, to be spurious.]

[That is,
bringing back,
or
restoration.
]

[“Those in the city”.]

[“The Doric cities were all except c., confederates” c.]

[That is, the Rhegians, between whom and the Athenians existed an ancient alliance which was renewed (A. C. 433) by a decree preserved in the Elgin marbles. Goeller.—“For that
they
were deprived” c. Rhegium is said to have been founded, under the immediate direction of the Delphic oracle, by a band of Chalcidians, (that is, of
Ionians
), who had been consecrated, like an Italian
ver sacrum,
to Apollo to avert a famine, and were joined by Messenian exiles flying their country on the fall of Ithome (A.C.724) in the first Messenian war. Thirl. The
ver sacrum,
was the immolation of all animals born in that spring. Instances are not wanting of other colonies (Magnesia in Crete) founded in like manner. For an account of the Doric and Chalcidic states in Sicily, see vi. 3–5.]

[ἐκ τῶν τάξεων: see vi. 43, note. The equestrian order contained a thousand horsemen.]

[“At Orchomenus
in Bœotia
”. There was another in Arcadia.]

[“For
want
of water”. These islands have but few springs; and the nature of the soil appears to be such, as rapidly to absorb the moisture: so that the inhabitants have none but rain water, preserved in large tanks. Cnidus was a Lacedæmonian colony, founded by Hippotes, whose descendants (A.C.580) led a colony of Cnidians to Lipara, with whom and five hundred of the original Liparæans they founded a state: whence it is probable that Æolus, the god of the winds, who was supposed to live in these islands, came to be called the son of Hippotes. This, if true, shows the name ἱπποτάδης in Od. κ, 2,37, to be later than the Homeric age. Muell. i.2.]

[“Of fire in the night, and smoke in the day”.]

[“About the same time, earthquakes being then prevalent, the sea first retiring from what was then land (that is, from the coast) at Orobiæ in Eubœa, and then rising to a head, invaded a part of the city; and partly permanently inundated the land, but partly subsided: and what was formerly land is now sea.” Goeller, Arnold.]

[“A certain
retiring
”.]

[“By
an
earthquake”.]

[δύο ϕυλαὶ: “two Messanian tribes”. See vi. 98, note.]

[Goeller considers ἡ πέραν γῆ to have become the proper name of Oropus: as
Terra Firma,
that of the isthmus of Darien.]

[The Malians dwelt in the valley of the Spercheus, enclosed on all sides by mountains, except on the side by the sea, where lived, as their name implies, the
Paralians:
the
Hieres,
or sacerdotal class, dwelt probably near the Amphictyonic temple at Thermopylæ: the
Trachinians,
on the declivities of Mount Œta. These people were in such close alliance with the Dorians, that Diodorus speaks of Trachis as the mother–town of Lacedæmon. They were a warlike race, no person being admitted to a share in the government that had not served as a hoplites. Mueller i. 2. See viii. 3, note.]

[See vi. 3, note.]

[Both of their own people and “of the periœci”.]

[“They built
anew
”. The old city, called Trachis, is mentioned by Herodotus vii. 199. Haack.]

[“Naval arsenals”.]

[
Whilst
it was founding.]

[That the Thessalians, “who were masters of the country thereabouts, and upon whose territory it encroached, fearing lest they should come and settle amongst themselves in considerable numbers”, afflicted c.]

[“Not least
however
”.]

[The Hellenic or Æolian settlements in Ætolia, originally the land of the Curetes, seem never to have extended beyond the maritime parts; the interior apparently continuing to be occupied by tribes of a different origin, which by continual accessions from the north gained rather than lost ground. The character of the country, mountainous and woody and severed from the rest of Greece, whilst it kept it a stranger to Hellenic manners and civilization, was at the same time the cause of its retaining its independence, and finding itself in later times at the head of the Ætolian league. The Locrians, who are connected by their traditions both with Ætolia and Elis (there being in the latter an Opuntian colony), claimed a higher antiquity than any other branch of the Greek nation; those of Opus boasting that Cynus, their port–town, was the dwelling of Deucalion on descending with his new people from Parnassus, and showing there the tomb of Pyrrha. The Locrian mythology seems to lead to the conclusion that the earliest population of eastern Locris were Leleges: and to them perhaps the name of Locrians originally belonged, though chiefs of a Hellenic, and most probably Æolian race, settled among them. Thirl. Muell.]

[That is, the Acarnanians, the Amphilochians, the Locri Ozolæ, c. “With the Ætolians”: that is, “with the allies only,
if
the Ætolians would join them”. Goeller.]

[“Messenians”, omitted.]

[ἐπιβάταις: Anglice,
marines.
The trireme seems to have ordinarily carried ten
epibatæ
or marines. “The number of forty epibatæ to a ship, mentioned by Herodotus vi. 15, belongs to the earliest stage of Greek naval tactics, when victory depended more on the soldiers than on the manœuvres of the seamen. It was in this very point that the Athenians improved the system, by decreasing the number of epibatæ, and relying on the skilful management of their vessels”. Arn. See i. 49. But Arnold seems to err in supposing that they were chosen from the
Thetes:
the character given in ch. 98 of these epibatæ, “the very best of the Athenians that fell in this war”, hardly belonging to men from the Thetes. Neither however were they chosen from the
army,
though sometimes
reinforced
thence. Goeller, Boeckh.]

“They were
all
united”. It is not to be understood that any Ætolian tribe extended to the Malian gulf; but probably, that the Bomienses and Callienses occupied the heads of the valleys on the Ætolian side of Œta, and extended over the ridge and some way down the valleys of the streams running into the Ægean. Arnold.]

[“Which attacking”.]

[ψιλοὶ: without armour.]

[“But when c.,
and
the hoplitæ were also wearied c.,
and
the Ætolians still afflicted them c., they were at last forced” c.]

[ἡλικία: “and the very flower of the Athenians”. The word is used in the same sense in ch. 67.]

[“And took in a station or fort of the περίπολοι”: in ch. 115, called ϕρούριον.]

[“Having
heretofore
sent”: that is, before the Ætolian expedition.]

[“To hold out”.]

“To Æolis, now called Calydon and Pleuron, and
to
the places there”. Goeller, Arnold. The country about Calydon, and perhaps all the south of Ætolia, once bore the name of Æolis. The earlier inhabitants were Æolians. Thirlwall.]

[“And being their (the Athenians’) allies (having revolted to them from the Syracusians), had joined their standard, went and attacked Inessa,
the
town of the Sikeli c.: and when they could not” c. ἐπ’ Ἴνησσαν. Bekker.]

[“Made several descents from their ships upon Locris at the river Cæcinus”.]

[The distance was four stadia, about 760 yards. Goeller.]

[That is, the inhabitants of the Cyclades.]

Homer, Hym. ad Apoll. vers. 146.

Hym. ad Apoll. vers. 165.

[“Witnessed, that there was of old
too
a great meeting and solemnity in Delos. And the islanders and the Athenians used afterwards to send the chorus with sacrifices: but the games and most of the solemnities fell into disuse” c.—The irruptions of the Æolians into Bœotia, and the Dorians into Peloponnesus, caused great stir amongst the population of those countries: resulting in three great movements, called the
Æolian, Dorian,
and
Ionian
migrations. Of the Achæans, expelled from Argolis and Laconia, some migrated: others in turn expelled the Ionians from
Ionia,
the district since called
Achaia.
The migrating Achæans, passing through Bœotia to embark in search of new seats in the east, were joined, as is believed, by part of the antient Cadmean population and of their Æolian conquerors: and this, the
Æolian
migration, may perhaps be regarded, in its origin, as a continuation of the former Achæan enterprise against the territory of Priam. Headed by descendants of Agamemnon, and embarking from the same port, Aulis, whence he had led the Greeks to Troy, they took the same direction: and some settling in Lesbos, and there founding six cities, others occupied the coast of Asia from the foot of Ida to the mouth of the Hermus. Here they found their old enemies, the allies of Troy, the Pelasgians, still in possession of the coast, but reduced to great weakness by the Trojan war. Taking their chief town, Larissa, the invaders founded Cume Phriconis; the chief of the eleven cities of
Æolis.
About the same time, another body of Achæans and Dorians were led by Dorian chiefs to the south–west corner of the Asiatic peninsula. In Rhodes were founded Lindus, Ialysas, and Camirus: forming with Halicarnassus, Cnidus, and Cos, an exclusive association, which, after Halicarnassus was excluded for the reason given by Herodotus (i. 144), was called the
Doric Pentapolis,
and jointly worshipped the Dorian god, Apollo, at Triopium. The Ionian fugitives from Achaia sought refuge with their kindred in Attica: whence, with swarms of Phocean and other adventurers, they followed the sons of Codrus to the part of Asia lying between the Hermus and the Mæander: blessed with a climate extolled by Herodotus as the most delicious in the known world. In their passage across the Ægean, many formed settlements in the Cyclades, and in time
Delos
became a common sanctuary of the Ionians. Samos, Chios, and the Asiatic coast were at this time inhabited by various tribes, as Carians and Leleges, and by others recently driven from Greece by the same causes as these Ionian settlers. With all these they readily united, except the Carians and Leleges, whom they expelled or exterminated. Gradually arose twelve independent states: Samos, Chios, Miletus, Myus, Priene, Ephesus, Colophon, Lebedos, Teos, Erythræ, Clazomenæ, and Phocæa. Though formed of such widely differing elements, they all assumed the Ionian name, and were regarded as parts of one nation: and all, except Ephesus and Colophon, kept the feast of the Apaturia (see chap. 55, note). Their meetings were held at a spot at the foot of mount Mycale, called Panionium, and consecrated to the Ionian god, Poseidon. The periodical meetings, however, for the sole object of honouring the tutelary god, but affording also an opportunity for political deliberation when called for, formed the nearest approach of these colonies to a political union of the cities even of the same race. As to the Æolians, it is not certain they possessed even such a centre of union: though they may, by analogy, be supposed to have held similar assemblies near the temple of Apollo at Gryneia. The difference of race, which kept asunder the Greeks in Europe, was not forgotten by passing across the Ægean: and there existed, at the time of migrating, no power in Asia formidable enough to terrify the three races into a union, which might have changed the history of the European Greeks as well as their own. The increase of wealth and refinement was far more rapid in the colonies than in the mother–country: and in the seventh and sixth centuries A.C. the progress of mercantile industry and maritime discovery was coupled by the Asiatic Greeks, especially the Ionians, with intellectual pursuits and the cultivation of the nobler arts, in a degree unequalled in history before the opening of the latest period of European civilization. Miletus, regarded as the common protectress of the Greek settlers, by her eighty colonies in the Propontis and the Euxine caused the latter sea to change its name (ii. 96, note): whilst Phocæa was exploring, in the west, the shores of Spain, Italy, and the Adriatic. But luxurious and disunited, they successively became the prey of the Lydians and Persians. With the aid of Athens (the proximate cause of the war that ensued between Asia and Greece) they revolted from Darius, and were subdued: and in retaliation for the burning of Sardis and the temple of Cybebe, every revolted city (Samos only excepted) was with its temples committed to the flames. The fate of Miletus was so taken to heart by the Athenians, that Phrynichus by his tragedy, the Fall of Miletus, moved the whole audience to tears, and was fined a thousand drachmæ for reminding them of national calamities. These events may perhaps be “the adversity” which caused the disuse of the games. It is remarkable that in this general conflagration of cities and temples, Delos, as “the birth–place of the twin–gods”, or the temple at any rate, was held inviolate by the generals of Darius (Herod. vi. 97): perhaps from some conceived analogy between Apollo and Artemis, and the Persian deities, the sun and moon.]