This text is part of:
Ἰδομενήν—twin heights in the hills, the exact site uncertain.
ἐπὶ τῆς ἐσβολῆς—to the pass that led to Ambracia. διὰ τῶν Ἀμφιλοχικῶν ὀρῶν—i.e. inland, among the hills, in order to stop up the roads. ἅμα ὄρθρῳ—the time between first cock-crow and the dawn: ὄρθρος ἐστὶν ἡ ὥρα τῆς νυκτὸς καθ᾽ ἢν ἀλεκτρυόνες ᾁδουσιν. ἄρχεται δὲ ἑνάτης ὥρας (circa 2 A.M.) καὶ τελευτᾷ εἰς διαγελῶσαν ἡμἐραν (Phrynichus).
Δωρίδα τε γλῶσσαν—it was only thirty years since the Naupactian Messenians had left the Peloponnese. The Ambraciots spoke Doric. τῇ ὄψει—‘with the eyes,’ pointing the contrast with what they heard. Here as in other passages (e.g. VII. 75, 2) it is disputed whether the phrase means this or ‘by their appearance.’
τῶν δὲ . . ἀνεπιστημόνων—for the gen. abs. though it refers to the subj. of the verb see c. 13, 7, 55. 1.
παραπλεούσας . . ξυντυχίᾳ—‘sailing along the coast from Olpae) just at the time when the action (the fighting) occurred.’
σκυλεύσαντες—the Athenians themselves were not above this on occasions
Commentary on Thucydides Book 3. E.C. Marchant. London. MacMillan & Company. 1909.
The National Endowment for the Humanities provided support for entering this text.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.