E.C. Marchant, Commentary on Thucydides: Book 2

οὐ. ἀμάρτυρον—‘without witnesses,’ since all contemporaries, and above all her enemies knew her greatness from her acts in every land and sea. The word has its forensic sense, as used of a plea supported only by the speaker's own testimony.

τοῖς τε νῦν—agent; this disappears in later Attic, except in the cases already noticed. See c. 7, 2.

καὶ—at the beginning of a parenthesis. See c. 2, 4.

Ὁμήρου—i.e. not needing a poet to exaggerate our history. Of course Thuc. did not object to Homer as a poet, but only as a historian.

ὅστις— i.e. ποιητής. A similar change to a relative clause is not uncommon in Isocrates; e.g. 5, 153 τοὺς μὴ μόνον κεχαρισμένως διειλεγμένους, ἀλλ᾽ οἵτινες ἂν οὕτω ποιήσωσι τὰς σὰς πράξεις θαυμάζειν ὡς οὐδενὸς ἄλλου. (The view that Pericles is intended to reprove Homer for saying so little of the ‘sons of Theseus’ is quite untenable.)

ἔπεσι—‘poetry.’

τὸ αὐτίκα—‘for the moment.’ Cf. I. 21 οὔτε ὡς ποιηταὶ ὑμνήκασι πιστεύων, οὔτε ὡς λογογράφοι ξυνέθεσαν ἐπὶ τὸ προσαγωγότερον τῆ̣ ἀκροάσει ἢ ἀληθέστερον. The mythical element in early Greek history was due to the influence of epic. See Intr. C. III. init.

τῶν δὲ ἔργων—the influence of the rel. is here lost, on the principle of c. 4, 5, 34, 5. The μὲν aud δὲ are paratactic. The gen. belongs equally to ὑπόνοιαν and ἀλήθεια. ὑπόνοιαν—‘the conception of the facts,’ aroused by poetry. So ὑπονοεῖν ‘to conjecture.’

ἡ ἀλήθεια—i.e. the knowledge gained from investigation of the facts.

ἀλλὰ—antithesis to οὐ ... παρασχόμενοι. καλῶν τε κἀγαθῶν —the MSS. κακῶν is explained to mean ‘of the harm and of the good we have done.’ For κακῶν cf. κακοπαθεῖ above. But Pericles is talking of Atheniau prowess, not contrasting the harm done to her enemies with the benefits conferred on her friends: nor is ἀγαθὰ ‘benefits’ here, but ‘acts of valour,’ which of course inflict harm on enemies. Nor is the reference to the Greek estimate of εὐτυχία, as a compound of good and ill, for which see c. 44, 1: for Pericles is here dealing not with τύχη, but with Athenian γνώμη. The substitution of κακῶν for καλῶν in this phrase, even if it made sense, would be a miserable joke.

ξυγκατοικίσαντες—i.e. while opening the whole world to our prowess, we have at the same time everywhere established monuments of that prowess, in colonies and states made subject to us, and in the scenes of many brave actions.