E.C. Marchant, Commentary on Thucydides: Book 7

πάντων ἀπορώτατον—note the idiom. Dem. 8.35 πάντων ἀνθρώπων φαυλότατοι; Dem. 8.58 ἀνοητότατος πάντων; Dem. 9.10 πάντων εὐηθέστατοι; Dem. 3.16 πάντων αἴσχιστα; Dem. 3.31 πάντων ἀνδρειότατον.

τό τε μὴ . . . εἶναι . . . καὶ ὅτι—a clause with ὅτι is often combined with a clause in different construction, e.g. Dem. 19.203 ἐπιδεῖξαι καὶ ὅτι ψεύσεται καὶ τὴν δικαίαν ἥτις ἐστὶν ἀπολογία.

χαλεπαὶ . . . ἄρξαι—cf. VI. 42 εὐκοσμότεροι καὶ ῥᾴους ἄρχειν.

αἱ ὑμέτεραι φύσεις—the common complaint that with Athenian freedom was mingled ἀταξία. The opponents of democracy ascribed the defect to ignorance. It was, however, mainly caused by the too rapid development of the Athenian polity after the Persian wars; the people acquired democratic institutions before they had mastered the lesson of obedience. Only exceptional men like Themistocles and Pericles were able to remedy the defect.

ἐπιπληρωσόμεθα—the fut. expressing possibility after the rel. in primary sequence, the only construction in Attie prose, except where the delib. subj. is possible. Homer uses also the subj., generally with κέν.

ἀφ᾽ ὦν . . . γίγνεσθαι—both the men that we have and the men that we lose come of necessity from the men that we brought out with us.

τά τε ὄντα refers to ὀλίγοι τῶν ναυτῶν above: though but few of the sailors in the ship are really efficient, yet we cannot turn the crews out and supply their places with others —or, if we do, we must draw on the reserves we brought; but they are badly needed to supply our losses.

τε . . . καὶ—two distinct things are here joined without repetition of the art., as in Eur. Ion 7 τά τ᾽ ὄντα καὶ μέλλοντα θεσπίζων ἀεί.

καὶ ἀπαναλισκόμενα—refers to βραχεῖα ἀκμὴ πληρώματος above. Sickness, exhaustion, and death remove many men in the crews: such losses represent a dead loss on the total sent out, since there is no source of supply except the reserves Notice (1) the chiastie arrangement here—βραχεῖα ἀκμὴ . . . ὀλίγοι . . . τὰ ὄντα . . . ἀπαναλισκόμενα—of which Thuc. is very fond. (2) the neut., used because totals are being dealt with.

αἱ γὰρ νῦν—for αἱ γὰρ πόλεις αἱ νῦν οὖσαι ξυμ.

Νάξος καὶ Κατάνη—Naxos, though the oldest Greek city in Sicily, was never important. It was destroyed in 403 B.C Pausamas says that no traces of it remained in his day (a slight exaggeration). The site is now oceupied by an orange grove. Cataha was a colony from Naxos. It is an uninteresting town, the aneient remains having been buried by earthquakes and volcanic eruptions; but it is now the second city in Sicily in point of size.