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

οὐ belongs to μηδίσαι.

Ἀθηναίους—attraction to case of αὐτούς.

ἰδέᾳ—‘method.’

καίτοι . . εἴδει—‘you must surely consider the conditions under which.’

ἐτύγχανεν . . πολιτεύουσα—‘was in point of fact’: τυγχάνω, as often, not of a mere accident, but of the true state of things, as distinct from what might appear to be.

ἰσόνομον—where all the nobles are equal, and their rights are fixed by laws. But in a δυναστεία the few rulers are a law to themselves.

τῷ σωφρονεστάτῳ—‘the best order,’ i.e. an aristocracy or moderate democracy. No doubt this is said with reference to the constitution of Thebes, as existing in 427 B.C., with its two Boeotarchs and four assemblies confined to τοῖς κεκτημένοις πλῆθός τι χρημἀτων, as Theopompus or Cratippus says. (Several conjj. have been made on this unusual expression, e.g. τῷ σώφρονι πἀντων Herw.: τῷ σωφρονεστέρῳ Hude.)

τυράννου—for τυραννίδος: so δῆμος for δημοκρατία.

οὗτοι . . σχήσειν—‘these in the hope of winning power for themselves in yet greater degree.’

καὶ . . ἔπραξεν—‘so the city as a whole could not control her actions when she acted so, and it is not fair to blame her, for any crrors she fell into when she had no constitution.’

γοῦν—‘thus for example’; illustrative of the previous statement.

ἐπιόντων τήν τε ἄλλην Ἑλλάδα καὶ . . πειρωμένων—as τε cannot mean ‘and’ here, but must be correlative to καί, it is clear that ἐπιόντων governs τὴν . . Ἑλλάδα, and that the introduction of πειρωμένων changes the constr.; cf. cc. 67, 6, 94, 3 (so Steup).

ἐχόντων—after the battle of Oenophyta, 458 B.C. The battle of Coronea in 446 forced the A. to abandon Boeotia.