CHAPTER XC
τοὺς μετοίκους—the
μέτοικοι are mentioned as serving on board the Athenian fleets,
i. 143;
iii. 16, etc. Some of them too were heavy-armed men,
ii. 13,
καὶ μετοίκων ὅσοι ὁπλῖται ἦσαν. It appears from
i. 121 and 143 that the navy was partly manned by hired
ξένοι: but Classen observes that no other instance is recorded of impressing ‘all the foreigners in Athens’ into military service.
ὕστερος—not simply the converse of
πρότερον, ch. 89, 8, but implying that Hippocrates came too late to help, as the plot was discovered.
τὸ ἱερὸν τοῦ Ἀπόλλωνος—with regard to these words, which have somewhat the appearance of an explanatory note which has crept into the text, Poppo points out that Thuc. often repeats a description which he has already given (ch. 76, 22), and often separates an appositional construction by intervening words, e.g.
ii. 12,
Μελήσιππον πρῶτον ἀποστέλλει ἐς τὰς Ἀθήνας τὸν Διακρίτου.
τὸ ὶερὸν καὶ τὸν νεών—so
v. 18,
τὸ δ᾽ ἱερὸν καὶ τὸν νεὼν τὸν ἐν Δελφοῖς: cf
Hdt. vi. 19. When the words are thus distinguished,
νεώς denotes the actual temple or shrine; while
ἱερόν is a more general term, which might be applied for example to all the precincts and surroundings of a convent, or of the colleges in Oxford and Cambridge.
ἀνέβαλλον...παρακαταπήγνυντες—‘a rampart was made, consisting chiefly of the earth thrown up from the ditch, with a palisade set along it; but they threw in besides other materials, such as brushwood obtained from the vines which grew round the temple, and stones and bricks procured by pulling down the adjacent houses. That the vines were used in building the wall appears from ch. 100, 16, and their use appears to have been to form a sort of wattling to keep the earth together; as at Plataeae the clay for the besiegers' mound was rammed into flat cases or frames of reeds (
ἐν ταρσοῖς καλάμου ἐνείλλοντες), and as the earth was enclosed besides in a wooden frame,
ὅπως μὴ διαχέοιτο ἐπὶ πολὺ τὸ χῶμα,
ii. 75, 76’ (Arnold).
ἀνέβαλλον—rare in this lit. sense:
Xen. An. v. 2, 5,
τάφρος ἦν εὐρεῖα ἀναβεβλημένη καὶ σκόλοπες ἐπὶ τῆς ἀναβολῆς. Comparing
ii. 76 we see that
χοῦς is the material of which a
χῶμα or mound was made: cf.
Hdt. vii. 23,
παρεδίδοσαν τὸν ἀεὶ ἐξορυσσόμενον χοῦν.
ἄμπελον—generic sing. like
πλίνθον infr.; so ch. 48, 13,
τῷ κεράμῳ.
κόπτοντες...καθαιροῦντες—imperfect, corresponding to the verbs: cf. ch. 48, 18, where we have the same tense and the same participial use. We should say ‘they threw in vine-wood cut down from the precincts of the temple, and stones taken from the houses around’.
οἰκόπεδα—‘home-steads’; the word means either the site of a house, or the site with its buildings.
ᾗ καιρὸς ἦν—ch. 54, 25,
οὗ καιρὸς εἴη. ὑπῆρχεν—ch. 4, 15.
στοά—a cloister or colonnade.
τρίτῃ ὡς—=
ἐξ οὗ, Lat. ut. Poppo compares
i. 6,
οὐ πολὺς χρόνος ἐπειδή:
i. 13,
ἔτη τριακόσια...ὅτε.
τὸ μὲν στρατόπεδον—cor. to
Ἰπποκράτης δέ. In the morning of the fifth day the works were nearly finished. The main body of the Athenians accordingly started for Attica, and while the heavy armed men took up a position near Delium, the light troops mostly (
οἱ πλεῖστοι) continued their march. Hippocrates himself had not yet left the fortress. The imperfects
ἡσύχαζον and
καθίστατο leave the narrative at this point, and the writer turns to the movements of the Boeotians.
τὰ περί—‘what belonged to’. The
προτείχισμα or ‘outwork’ is apparently the rampart and ditch before described.
