This text is part of:
[4]
ὅτι—this convenient form of quasi-oblique speech, where the speaker's actual words follow ὅτι, oceurs only in prose.
17. ὑμέτερον—referring of course to the royal family.
18. ἐπιόντα ἐμοί—a fine touch due to self-confidence.
20 ἐν τῷ ἀσφαλεῖ μὲν κτλ.—when he retreated (πάλιν belongs to ἀποκομιδή) himself in danger, while I was in safety.
22. γράψας—referring to; cf. c. 87. 2, but here the constn. is κατὰ σύνεσιν after ἐδήλου ἡ γραφή.
τὴν ἐκ Σ. προάγγελσιν τῆς ἀναχωρήσεως—Herod. 8.33 relates that Themistocles sent a inessage to Xerxes saying that he had persuaded the Greeks not to break down the bridges over the Hellespont, and consequently the king might retreat at leisure. The story agrees with Thuc. here, except that Herod, says the message was sent from Audios, not Salamis. The true object of Them. was to cause Xerxes to retreat rapidly, since Xerxes had been once taken in by a false message from Them. (viz. that the Greeks were about to retreat from Salamis, Herod. 8.33) and would be sure to assuine this one also was false. Them. now misrepresents the object he had had in sending the message. (Haacke and others refer τὴν ... ἀναχωρήσεως to the earlier message of Them., viz., that the Greeks were about to withdraw from Salamis. By this message Them. caused the defeat of the king; by the later one he rescued the king. This explanation seems simpler; but it looks as if the parenthesis γράψας ... διάλυσιν refers only to what Them. pretends to have done to serve the king.)
24. ἣν ψευδῶς προσεποιήσατο—Herod. says Them. urged the Gk. fleet to break down the bridges, but he was opposed by the Peloponnesians The Athenian fleet was then willing to go alone, but this Them. successfully opposed. It looks as if Thuc. did not believe in this last part of the story. (Croiset understands ‘which he misrepresented,’ others avoid the appearance of an mconsistency with Herod.)
25. οὐ διάλυσιν—cf. e.g. iii. 95. 2 τὴν οὐ περιτείχισιν: vii. 34 τὴν τῶν Κορινθίων οὐκέτι ἐπαναγωγήν.
27. τὴν σὴν φιλίαν—my friendship for you.
Commentary on Thucydides Book 1. E. C. Marchant. 1905. London. MacMillan and Company, Ltd.
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.