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

πρέσβεις—c. 28.

τῶν Ἀθηναίων—the order as in c. 22, 5.

παρεσκεύασαν — ‘got them to.’

οἱ ἐν τέλει are the ‘government,’ i.e., presumably, the Strategi, who, in time of war, could have a special meeting of the Ecclesia summoned.

αὖθις γνώμας προθεῖναι—‘allow a fresh debate’: to re-open a matter that had been settled in a recent meeting of the Ecclesia seems to have rendered the person responsible to impeachment; but the Ecclesia, as the sovereign power, could by a majority of course do anything, provided that the Prytanies and the president of the meeting consented to submit a proposal for discussion. (The evidence on the point is doubtful; but the account here given reconciles the various passages that bear on it.)

ἔνδηλον ἦν—the personal constr., esp. common with δῆλος.

τινας—‘persons’: after τοὺς ἐν τέλει we should expect αὐτούς; but the speakers, rather than the officials, are referred to A special Assembly (σύγκλητος ἐκκλησία) was summoned for the purpose. (G. Gilbert, B. zur innern Geschichte Athens, 142, assigns the debates on Mytilene to the end of the official year 428-7. It is probable that Cleon was in that year Strategus, having replaced Lysicles the προβατοπώλης, who had been killed in Caria in the winter. Busolt, however, places the debates in the first prytany of the following year, 427-6, wheu Cleon and those like him were replaced in the strategia by Nicias and Laches, men strongly opposed to Cleon. In either case, it is obvious that party-feeling must have run very high just at this time.