E.C. Marchant, Commentary on Thucydides Book 1

42. 11. νεώτερός τις—in ref. to the Aeginetan War. The sing. has attracted the verbs into the sing. in spite of ἐνθυμηθέντες. αὐτά might of course have been omitted, but Thuc. is fond of putting it into the second member of a rel. sentence. (To repeat the rel. is exceptional.)

13. τοῖς ὁμοίοις ἀμύνεσθαι—to requite us with like treatment. ἀμύνομαι in this sense generally implies the paying back of injuries, and here we should expect ἀμείβεσθαι (see crit. note, and cf. L. & S. under ἀμείβομαι). Presently we have an ordinary phrase, τὸ ἴσον ἀνταποδοῦναι: but it may be that, in opposing the Corinthian “δίκαιον” to the Corcyrean “ξυμφέρον,” Thuc. purposely makes the speaker use a word that is properly used of dealings between enemies; the speaker means “They say we are your enemies (see c. 33. 3): you must judge of that by our actions in the past, and pay us for our so-called enmity with the same sort of ‘enmity.’”

15. εἰ πολεμήσει—in the event of war. The Corinthian, like the Corcyrean, insisted on (1) τὸ δίκαιον, (2) τὸ ξυμφέρον, but—as Fr. Muller says—he deals vaguely with the latter topic, since Corinth had clearly less to offer Athens than Corcyra had.

16. ἐν ᾦ—c. 37. 4. ἕπεται=‘is found,’ ‘is there.’ It is a moral sentiment—much like ‘virtue is its own reward’— but not much in point here. Grammatically τις is for τινι, being attracted into the relative clause.

[2] 17. τὸ μέλλον τοῦ πολέμου—i.e. it is not certain that war is coming.

20 ἐπαρθέντας αὐτῷ—prompted by that expectation; Eur. Orest. 286 ὅστις μ᾽ ἐπάρας ἔργον ἀνοσιώτατον (to a ...) κτλ.

22. ὑπαρχούσης πρότερον—that existed already. This is the Engl. equivalent, though ὑπαρχούσης is really imperf. partic., past in reference to ὑφείλομεν. ὑφελεῖν μᾶλλον is to diminish rather than to add to, and the gen. is partitive (μᾶλλον does not belong to σῶφρον as Classen took it). For πρότερον ὐπῆρχε cf. vii. 28 πόλεμον οὐδὲν ἐλάσσω προσανείλοντο τοῦ πρότερον υ:πάρχοντος. The transl. ‘that has existed for some time’ is simple, but scarcely justified.

διὰ Μεγαρέας—what event is alluded to? Edd. are much divided between (1) ‘the Megarian decree,’ by which Athens excluded Megara from all her ports and markets (c. 67); (2) the revolt of Megara to Athens after a dispute with Corinth (c. 103 for τὸ σφοδρὸν μῖσος that Corinth conceived for Athens on this account) in 465 B.C.; (3) the revolt of Megara with Corinthian support, from Athens in 445 B.C. (cc. 114-115). The ὑποψία is that felt by Corinth, so that (3) appeais unlikely—note ἔγκλημα. As (1) is the only one of these events that had happened since the thirty years' truce. it is the most probable; but the date of the Megarian decree is unfortunately doubtful, and some suppose, on insufficient evidence, that it was not passed so early as 433 B.C.

[3] 23. ἡ τελευταία χάρις—the service that Athens will render to Corinth by refusing the Corcyrean request. ‘This will be highly opportune, though involving a trifling sacrifice’ (Morris).

25. μεῖζον ἔγκλημα—the complaint that we have against you about Megara. (If the first explan. above is right, this ἔγκλημα would be that Athens had violated the thirty years' truce.)

[4] 1. διὰ κινδύνων — with ἔχειν=ἐπικινδύνως. Classen constructs τό with πλέον, to which it is objected that πλέον ἔχειν, not τὸ πλέον ἔχειν=πλεονεκτεῖν, be grasping; and hence Cl. proposed τι for τό. But διὰ ... ἔχειν is a combination of two phrases:

(1) διὰ κινδύνων τὴν δύναμιν ἔχειν,

(2) διὰ κινδύνων πλέον ἔχειν.

For (1) cf. vii. 8 τὸ στρατόπεδον διὰ φυλακῆς μᾶλλον ἢ δι᾽ ἑκουσίων κινδύνων ἔχων. The art. before πλέον is occasioned by the preceding δύναμις. Stahl constructs τό with ἔχειν, but the position of the two members outside the article—τῷ ... ἐπαρθέντας and διὰ κ.—is against this.