E.C. Marchant, Commentary on Thucydides: Book 6

ὕστερον ἢ . . οἰκίσαι—M.T. § 655. This is the only passage in Attic in which ὕστερον ἤ is constructed like πρότερον ἤ (=πρίν). Poppo compares Plut. Luc. 5. It is well known that πρότερον ἤ is very rare outside Herod., Thuc., and Antiphon, but reappears in late authors such as Plut., Pausan., Arrian. 15

αὐπούς—the accus., in spite of the faet that the subject of κτίζουσι is the same. This is apt to happen when a contrast is implied, as here between the building of Megara and the building of Selinus. Cp. Isoer. Ep. 9, 16 οἶμαι καὶ λέγειν ἐμοὶ προσήκειν . . καὶ καλῶς βεβουλεῦσθαι πρός σε ποιούμενον τοὺς λόγους. When a plur and subject of infin. includes the subject of the main verb, the nom. and aeens. are used indifferently with the infin.

οἰκίσαι—sc. Μεγαρέας. Classen reads οἰκῆσαι, but most recent edd. follow Ullrich in reading οἰκίσαι after CG. κτίζουσι favours οἰκίσαι, for which, by a common device of composition, it is a substitute; and, though οἰκῆσαι gives good sense as ingressive aor., it is awkward after οἰκήσαντες in another sense.

Σελινοῦντα—captured by Carthaginians in 409, when the diums of columns that still lie in the quarry of S. were abandoned. At least two of the seven temples of which there are splendid remains were built soon after 628. Hermocrates of Syracuse, when exiled, refounded a city here in 407; but it was destroyed in the first Punic War, and the site has since remained deserted. 16

καὶ . . ξυγκατῴκισε—this is added by way of explanation, so that καὶ . . αὐτοῖς might have been οἷς. For the abrupt change of subject, ef. II. 2, 4 γνώμην ἐποιοῦντο . . (καὶ ἀνεῖπεν ὁ κῆρυξ . .), νομίζοντες . . For the explanatory καί Stahl compares IV. 52, 3 ἐπὶ Ἄντανδρον, στρατεύσαντες . . λαμβάνουσι τὴν πόλιν. καὶ ἦν αὐτῶν ἡ διάνοια . . ἐλευθεροῦν . . τὴν Ἄντανδρον, where καὶ αὐτῶν might be ὧν. [The sequenee would be considerably improved by μεταπέμψαντες for πέμψαντες, i.e. ‘sending home for P.’ We should have expected καὶ ἐκ Μεγάρων . . to be a parenthesis, as commonly with the explanatory καί. So with et; as Livy, 23, 1 ubi fines intravit, Numidas partim in insidiis—et pleraeque cavae sunt viae sinusque occulti—quacumque apte poterat, disposuit]

αὐτοῖς—with οὔσης and ἐπελθών (Sta.). Cf. VII. 64 οἷς αὐτοὶ ἴστε οἵᾳ γνώμῃ ἐπήλθετε. ἐπελθεῖν is ‘to come to with a purpose’ either friendly or hostile.