Harold North Fowler, Commentary on Thucydides Book 5

Πιερίου: Pierium; its position is uncertain. Liv. xxxii. 15 has Pieria or Pierium.

κωλυόντων τῶν Θεσσαλῶν: as they always tried to do. Brasidas alone succeeded in passing through by his tact and ingenuity, iv. 78 f. Ischagoras had been stopped, iv. 132. § 2, 3.—καὶ ἅμα: introduces, as usual, an important reason: and besides since Brasidas was now dead. Almost like ἄλλως τε καί. See on i. 2. 9.— 4. ᾧπερ ᾖγον: dat. of the ‘person for whom’ coinciding with the limit of motion. Cf. iv. 37. 4, βουλόμενοι ἀγαγεῖν αὐτοὺς Ἀθηναίοις ζῶντας.— 5. οὐδένα καιρὸν εἶναι ἔτι: an abs. expression: “it was now no longer the time,” “the favourable moment was past.” The connexion is made plain by the inf. δρᾶν τι . . . ἐπενόει, which belongs to ἀξιόχρεων. Herbst, Philol. Anz. 1871, p. 51, connects δρᾶν τι with καιρὸν εἶναι, and takes ἀξιόχρεων as abs., as elsewhere in Thuc. But the position of the words and the emphasis upon αὐτῶν seems to demand the connexion of δρᾶν τι with ἀξιόχρεων. In the rel. clause ὧν κἀκεῖνος ἐπενόει, καί has its freq. observed proleptic force. Cf. i. 74. 25; 83. 7; 117. 16; ii. 86. 5. “Since the Athenians, in consequence of a defeat (ἥσσῃ expresses the reason more distinctly than μεθ᾽ ἧσσαν) had gone away, and they themselves were not prepared to carry out on their own account any part of what he had had in mind.”

μάλιστα δὲ ἀπῆλθον εἰδότες τοὺς Λακεδαιμονίους κτἑ.: Thuc. here lays peculiar stress upon the state of public feeling which prevailed at Sparta. This has been kept in the background throughout the narrative of Brasidas's successes, though plain reference was made to it in iv. 80 and 108. 35 ff., in contrast with Brasidas's eagerness for action. But now that Brasidas is dead, the weaker members of the war party feel the full force of the desire for peace which they well know prevails at home. With this accurate presentation of the reasons which induced the Lacedaemonian generals to return home without having accomplished anything, Thuc. closes his account of the actual events of the ten years' war, and prepares thereby a transition to a retrospective glance in the next three chapters at the general course of the war. In these chapters he also shows, as he proceeds, the inclination of both sides toward peace, and then, in c. 17, tells of its conclusion.