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

κατά—a common use of κατά, and one which is not confined to words denoting time.

τὸν αὐτὸν χ—Megara was encouraged no doubt by the reports of the foundation of Syracuse by Corinth.

ὑπὲρ Παντακύου ποταμοῦ—(1) for this use of ὑπέρ ‘on,’ ἐπί w. dat. is an alternative; (2) the rule in Attic prose is that, when ποταμός is added to the name of a river, the art. is inserted before the name. But Herod. does not use the art. in such a case, and in four passages of Thuc. it is wanting. (So also in the MSS. of Isocr. 7, 80 ἐντὸς Ἅλυος ποταμοῦ, and Xen. Anab. IV. 7, 18 ἐπὶ Ἅρπασον π.)

Παντακύου—now the Porcari. Trotilon, Leontini, Thapsus, Megara all lay between Catana and Syracuse.

ὄνομα—cf. II. 37 καὶ ὄνομα μὲν . . δημοκρατία κέκληται. This adverb. accus. is commoner than ὀνόματι, for which see n. on c. 10, 2. χωρίον—χωρίον, πόλις, νῆσος, etc. regularly follow the proper name when they have no article. For the order of words Classen compares I. 45, 3.

ξυμπολιτεύσας—i.e. μετοικήσας ἐς Λεοντ. καὶ ἐκεῖ ξυμπολιτεύσας τοῖς Χαλκ.

Θάψον—a low-lying peninsula, now known as Magnisi, but scarcely occupied, except for its salt-works. Freeman quotes Aen. III. 688 vivo praetervehor ostia saxo | Pantagiae Megarosque sinus Thapsumque jacentem.

ἀποθνῄσκει—the historic pres., esp. common with such verbs as τίκτω, γίγνομαι, θνῄσκω, may be co-ordinated with another tense—ᾤκισαν—which may equally well precede or follow it.

παραδόντος—Freeman says: ‘The M. were helped by a Sikel king who betrayed the place to them’; but Stahl with the older edd rightly explains τὴν χώραν as the region in which M. was situated. Bloomfield, keeping the MSS. προδόντος, renders ‘having conceded,’ and probably Hyblon granted the land because he was unable to defend it. Classen's correction παρα- is almost certain, being in accordance with the language of Thuc., whereas προ- τὴν χώραν is a most unusual phrase.

Μεγαρέας—the city, which was never important, was destroyed by Gelon (see c. 5, 3), but was rebuilt after the Sicilian expedition and made an outpost of Syracuse. Gelon had intervened in a civil war at Megara. (The single sentence of which this section consists illustrates the great power of the Gk. participle. οἰκίσας καὶ ξυμπολιτεύσας καὶ ἐκπεσὼν καὶ οἰκίσας expresses a succession of events that are detailed in the briefest and simplest form of words possible. The style is periodic, though the period is not worked up in the rhetorical manner. Observe that τε belongs to the first καί, the two longer participial phrases making one pair, and the two shorter a second pair. Although this cumulation of participles is of course impossible in English, yet the outline of the whole sentence resembles the modern English period, strictly so ealled, rather than the more artificial Gk. period.)

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.

Γέλαν—the first Gk. city founded on the south coast of Sicily. Hippocrates, its tyrant, raised it to great prosperity: see c. 5, 3. Aeschylus died there 456 B.C. Gelon moved half of its citizens to Syracuse.

Γέλα—the Gelas, so called from its coldness by the Sicels, whose language was akin to Latin.

χωρίον—Freeman says: ‘It would seem that Gela was a later, perhaps in its beginning only a popular, name. To the first spot which the Rhodian settlers occupied and fortified, the spot which became the akropolis of the later city, they gave, in memory of one of the four cities of their own island, the name of Lindioi.’ Cf. Herod. VII. 153 κτιζομένης Γέλης ὑπὸ Λινδίων τῶν ἐκ Ῥόδου.

ἡ πόλις—i.e. acropolis; but the change of meaning is awkward.

καὶ ὅ—‘attende rariorem syntaxin,’ says Stahl. It would be more usual if ὅ were omitted. Were the pronoun in an oblique case, the ordinary form would be that of II. 4, 5 ὁ ἦν τοῦ τείχους καὶ αἱ θύραι ἀνεῳγμέναι ἔτυχον αὐτοῦ: but even then Thuc. sometimes omits the pronoun altogether in the second clause, as in VII. 29, 5 ὅπερ μἐγιστον ἦν αὐτόθι καὶ ἄρτι ἔτυχον οἱ παῖδες ἐσεληλυθότες, sc. ες αὐτό. If, however, the first clause be neg. and the second positive, the rel. must be repeated; as II. 43, 2 οὐκ εν ῷ κεῖνται μᾶλλον, ἀλλ᾽ ἐν ᾧ ἡ δόξα αὐτῶν . . καταλείπεται. II. 44, 2 λύπη οὐχ ὧν ἄν τις . . ἀγαθῶν οτερίσκηται, ἀλλ̓ οὗ ἂν . . ἀφαιρεθῇ. In Lat. the same omission of or snbstitution for the rel. is frequent in Cic.; and cf. Livy XXIII. 8 cum quo . . steterat, nec eum . . patria majestas sententia depulerat. In Eng. cf. Hooker, Eccles. Pol., ‘Whom though to know be life, and joy to make mention of His name.’ Johnson, Tour in the Heb., ‘We treated her with great respect, which she received as customary and due, and was neither elated by it, nor confused.’ Macaulay, Warren Hastings, ‘He hired musicians to whom she seemed to listen, but did not hear them.’

καλεῦται—B was thought to have originally contained καλοῦνται, but this seems doubtful. Herw., in support of the plur., quotes IV. 102 τὸ χωρίον τοῦτο, ὅπερ πρότερον Ἐννέα ὁδοὶ ἐκαλοῦντο, V. 49 ἡ καταδίκη δισχίλιαι μναῖ ἦσαν But it is clear that the verb is not necessarily plur: cf. Herod. VI. 47 μεταξὺ Αἰνύρων τε χώρου καλεομένου: I. 168 ἔκτισαν πόλιν Ἄβδηρα, τὴν . . οὐκ ἀπόνητο: V. 115 τῶν πολίων ἀντέσχε . . πολιορκουμἐνη Σόλοι τὴν . . εἷλον: VII. 193 (Παγασαὶ) ἔστι χῶρος: IV. 20 τὸ ἐμπόριον τὸ καλἐεται Κρημνοί: VII. 201 καλἐεται δὲ ὁ χῶρος . . Θερμοπύλαι.

νόμιμα Δωρικά—introduced from Crete (Aristot. Pol. II. 7, 3 ἔχει δ᾽ ἀνἀλογον ἡ Κρητικὴ τάξις πρὸς τὴν Λακωνικήν), and perhaps from Rhodes, though of Dorian institutions in the latter nothing is heard elsewhere. But the Tripolis of Rhodes —Lindus, Ialysus, Cameirus—belonged to the Dorian Hexapolis, which had a common centre in the temple of Apollo at Triopium (Herod. I. 144). There is nothing against the assumption that before Athenian influence was felt in Rhodes, the Dorian institutions had prevailed. In later times the constitution of the island was generally democratie. The family of the Eratidae, who formed a Dorian aristocracy in Ialysus, were banished between B.C. 428 and 412.

Ἀκράγαντα—Girgenti, ‘fairest of mortal cities,’ καλλίστα βροτεᾶν πολίων, Φερσεφὀνας ἕδος (Pind. Pyth. XII. 1). It was destroyed by the Carthaginians in 406, but restored subsequently. The river from which the town was named is S. Biagio, the smaller of two streams that flow into the sea through one mouth.

ὀνομάσαντες . . ποιήσαντες . . δόντες—these aorists do not refer to things that occurred before the action of the main verb, ᾤκισαν, but express merely the manner of the foundation. That this is so is elear from δόντες. (Cf. Forbes, Thuc. I. 2 p. 143.) νόμιμα δέ—μέν . . δἐ . . δἐ serve rather to co-ordinate the details than to contrast them.

Ζάγκλη—now Messina, a city which, after suffering from every form of calamity in both aneient and modern times, is now second only to Palermo as a commercial centre. Thuc. gives no date for the foundation of Zancle and Himera (Freeman, Sicily, I. 586).

Ὀπικίᾳ=Samnium and Campania.

λῃστῶν—‘As regarded the Sikel inhabitants all Greek settlers were alike pirates. . . What is meant is that these settlers were private adventurers who were not sent forth under an aeknowledged founder, with the traditional ceremonies observed in the sending forth of a colony’ (Freeman).

ἀπὸ Κύμης—in the second and formal foundation.

Χαλκίδος—as mother-eity of Cumae.

ὄνομα—accus, according to FI. Muller, cf. II. 37 ὄνομα μὲν . . δημοκρατία κέκληται. But Kruger rightly takes it as nom.; sc. αὐτῆς from above.

ἧν . . κληθεῖσα—translate, ‘its name was at first Zancle, having received the name from the S. because . .’; i e. this is not a periphrastic form for ἐκέκλητο, but the passage is the same as Plat. Crat. 412 ἀνδρὶ ἦν ὄνομα Σοῦς: Aristoph. Av. 1293 Μενίππῳ ἦν χελιδὼν τοὔνομα: Demosth. 21, 32 ούδενὶ θεσμοθέτης ἔστ᾽ ὄνομα, and many others. The dat. is usual with ὄνομα ἔστι, but the gen. is also found, as in Demosth. 21, 32, after the passage above. For κληθεῖσα we might expect κληθείσης (αὐτῆς), but, as αὐτῆς=τῆς Ζάγκλης, the attraction to Ζάγκλη is quite natural. For the partic. following ἦν in this manner, cf. II. 67, 1 οὗ ἦν στράτευμα τῶν Ἀθηναίων πολιορκοῦν.

Σικελῶν—therefore Z. was not occupied for the first time by Gks.

δρεπανοειδές—‘The sickle-shaped peninsula is the distinguishing feature of the place; this natural breakwater has enabled the city under all changes to keep up its character as a haven of the sea’ (Freeman).

τὴν ἰδέαν—slightly pleonastic after -ειδές, but wrongly suspected by Haacke. This meaning of ἰδέα is not common.

ζάγκλον—the Etym. Mag. quotes Callimachus for ζάγκλον in the sense of δρέπανον. The coins of Z. before the name was changed bear the forms δανκ, δανκλ, δανκλη.

αὐτοί—the Chalcidians.

Σαμίων—the story is told in Herod. VI. When Miletus and Samos fell to Persia in 494, the Ionians were invited by Scythes, tyrant of Zancle, to settle in Sicily. Fugitives from Samos and Miletus adopted a suggestion of Anaxilas, tyrant of Rhegium, that they should seize Z. while Scythes and his army were absent, being occupied in the siege of some Sicel city. Cf. Aristot. Pol. 1303a Ζαγκλαῖοι Σαμίους ὑποδεξάμενοι ἐξέπεσον αὐτοί.

Ἀναξίλας—made himself tyrant of Rhegium 494 B.C., and quarrelled with Scythes of Zancle, though hitherto the two cities had been closely connected. Between 493 and 476 he drove out the Samians in turn.

ξυμμείκτων ἀνθ—taken with οἰκίσας, which is constructed like πληρώσας (Clas.). Widmann compares Eur. Hec. 875 Λῆμνον ἀρσένων ἐξῴκισαν.

Μεσσήνην—Freeman, Sicily II. Appendix IX. gives reasons for thinking that the change of name may have been later than the time of Anaxilas.

τῆς ἑαυτοῦ—Rhegium was peopled soon after Zanele by Chaleidians and by settlers from Peloponnesian Messene.

ἀντωνόμασε—Class. supports this word from Dio Cass. (I. 55), from whom also Bloomfield quotes ἀντωνομάσθη, with the note that the word is extremely rare.