E.C. Marchant, Commentary on Thucydides: Book 3

τίς—‘what form of trustworthy friendship or freedom was this turning out to be?’ i.e. how could we put any confidence in a friendship or a freedom like that? (Dion. Hal. Antiq. VI. 78 τίς οὖν ἡ τοιαύτη φιλία καὶ πίστις, ἐν ᾗ παρὰ γνώμην άλλήλους θεραπεύειν ἀναγκασθησόμεθα; seems to have found ἡ, not ἢ, after αὕτη in his MS., and our MSS. have ἡ.)

παρὰ γνώμην—‘without sincerity,’ οὐκ ἀπὸ γνώμης ἀλλ᾽ ἀπὸ γλώσσης μόνον.

ὑπεδεχόμεθα—this word can be used of every kind of reception or welcome afforded to a ξένος, short of rejection: e.g. in Lycurgus § 133 οὐδεμία πόλις αὐτὸν εἴασε παρ᾽ αὑτῇ μετοικεῖν is repeated in the form τοῦτον δὲ τίς ἂν ύποδέξαιτο πόλις;

ὅ τε . . πίστιν βεβαιοῖ, ἡμῖν τοῦτο . . ἐχυρὸν παρεῖχε— passages sometimes cited as parallel to this (as II. 40 δ τοῖς ἄλλοις άμαθία μὲν θράσος, λογισμὸς δὲ ὄκνον φέρει and IV. 125 ὄπερ φιλεῖ μέγιστα στρατόπεδα ἀσαφῶς ἐκπλήγνυσθαι) bear little resemblance to it. If πίστιν, which Stahl bracketed, is sound, we should assume, with Kruger, a conflation of relative with epexegetic clause—ὃ εὔνοια βεβαιοῖ with εὔ. πίστιν βεβαιοῖ. A schol. already takes this view; and unless the text is corrupt, no other explanation can be entertained. (The other scholium is a mere paraphrase, but its conclusion—διὰ τοῦτο ἄπιστος ἦν ἡ φιλία ἀμφοτέρων—shows that the writer discerned that in the whole passage, from τίς οὖν to παραβήσεσθαι ἔμελλον, the underlying idea, not clearly expressed, is that of a πίστις ἄπιστος. Both πιστή above and πίστιν here have been removed by critics more intent, perhaps, on the language than on the thought. ξύμμαχοι ὑπὸ δέους πιστοί are ξύμμαχοι ἄπιστοι.)

παράσχοι—representing ὁποτέρους ἂν παράσχῃ in past sequence. 10

ἀσφάλεια—‘sense of security.’

καί—‘as a consequence’ of the θάρσος.

διὰ . . μέλλησιν refers to δοκοῦμεν ἀδικεῖν: this might be a reason for objecting that they should have waited till some wrong was inflicted on them.

τὰ δεινά=‘methods of coercion’; for the whole cf. I. 25 κατὰ τὴν Φαιάκων προενοίκησιν τῆς Κερκύρας.

εἰ γὰρ δυνατοί.—with the text before us, which (except for ἀντιμελλῆσαι) follows the MSS., we must render, ‘had we been in a position both to intrigue like them and to delay like them (i.e. to put off our attack, but at the same time to have our plan of attack ready), what need was there for us to remain, nevertheless, at their mercy?’ The M. might of course defer the attack, but if they waited for the Athenians to attack they were lost. This is fairly satisfactory, the only difficulty being that ἐκ τοῦ ἴσου and ἐκ τοῦ ὁμοίου (‘just as we were,’ aeque atque fuimus) have no correspondence. It is in connexion with the next sentence that doubts arise. (1) ἐπιχειρεῖν clearly corresponds to ἀντεπιβουλεῦσαι, and προαμύνασθαι to ἀντιμελλῆσαι (or ἀντεπιμελλῆσαι); (2) the statement ‘we need not have remained in their power’ is hardly equivalent to ‘we need not have revolted because we should have retained our independence’; (3) ἐπ᾽ ἐκείνοις εἶναι looks suspicious before έπ᾽ ἐκείνοις ὄντας. A great many changes have been proposed, and those of Heilmann and Kruger indicated in the crit. note and adopted by Classen give a much better correspondence and an improved sense. Yet I do not feel that the objections to the MS. reading are decisive. The general sense is: we cannot be blamed for taking the first move merely because they delayed to take action against us.