E.C. Marchant, Commentary on Thucydides Book 1

28. 15. παρέλαβον — ‘had taken with them,’ to support the request There is no difficulty in supposing that Sparta and Sicyon were ready to lend their voice to a request that Corinth should withdraw the new settlers. These οἰκήτορες must have appropriated the property of the exiled Corcyraean oligarchs; and the proceeding of Corinth was in this respect high-handed. The sending of the πρέσβεις did not commit Sparta to anything.

[2] 18. ἀντιποιοῦνται—sc. Ἐπιδάμνου.

δίκας δοῦναι—submit the case to arbitration. δ. διδόναι καὶ δέχεσθαι is a technical phrase for legal arbitration between states as opposed to war: cf. vii. 18 ὅπλα μὴ ἐπιφέρειν ἢν δίκας ἐθέλωσι διδόναι.

19. αἷς ἂν κτλ = παρ᾽ αἷς ἂν δίκας δοῦναι ἀ. ξ.

21. κρατεῖν—sc. ἤθελον.

ἤθελον δέ—an alternative suggestion to submit the decision to Apollo.

[3] 22. πόλεμον δὲ κτλ.—but they charged them not to cause a war. Notice the difference between πόλεμον ποιῶ and π. ποιοῦμαι.

23. εἰ δὲ μή— M.T. 478. καὶ αὐτοί—they in turn. The elaborate wording of the allusion to Athens is intended to mark the earnestness and reluctance of the Corcyraeans.

24. ἐκείνων βιαζομένων—if the Corinthians forced them.

25. ἑτέρους τῶν νῦν—gen. of comparison; Xen. Mem. 4.4. 25 ἄλλα τῶν δικαίων. So Lat. alius occasionally has abl. τῶν νῦν ὄντων means the Peloponnesians whose confederacy Corcyra threatens to leave. μᾶλλον goes with φίλους ποιεῖσθαι, sooner than agree to the demand of Corinth.

26. ὠφελίας ἕνεκα—in self-defence.

[4] 1. πρότερον δ᾽ κτλ. — equivalent to οὐ καλῶς ἔχειν πρότερον αὐτούς (the Corinthians and Corcyraeans) δικάζεσθαι, πολιορκουμένων τῶν Ἐπιδαμνίων, but the logic of the sentence is sacrificed to a verbal antithesis.

[5] 4. ταῦτα—i.e. withdraw the ships and the Illyrians.

ἑτοῖμοι δὲ εἶναι—Krüger supplies δικαζεσθαι, and ὥστε then =‘on the understanding that’; but this is not very satisfactory after ποιήσειν ταῦτα has intervened. Bohme and others make μένειν depend on ἑτοῖμοι εἷναι, with ὥστε pleonastic; and for this ἱκανὸς ὥστε is cited from Plat. Protag 338 c. In either case the sense is the same; they were prepared to agree that besiegers and besieged should stay as they were and make a truce until the arbitration was concluded. ποιήσασθαι is co-ordinate with μένειν. (Mr. Forbes supplies ποιεῖν ταῦτα to ἑτοῖμοι εἶναι: but ποιεῖν ταῦτα cannot=δικάζεσθαι, for in that case the second proposal of the Coreyraeans, ἢν καὶ ἐκεῖνοι κτλ., is a less conciliatory suggestion than their original proposal, 28.2.)

9. προπέμψαντες ... πρότερον—pleonasm, as in c. 23. 5.

11. ἑβδομήκοντα καὶ πέντε—the numbers given in c. 27. 2 amount to 68, but to these are to be added the νῆες κεναί from Elis.