Harold North Fowler, Commentary on Thucydides Book 5

This chapter is part of the official document recording the peace. It determines the day with which the peace shall begin for all parties, and gives the names of the men who are to take the oath. In c. 20 the narrative is resumed with the mention of the date of the ratification of the treaty. The indics. ἄρχει, ὤμνυον καὶ ἐσπένδοντο, are not unusual in treaties. See Steup, Stud. I. p. 68.

ἄρχει: the manner of dating differs from that of iv. 118. 49, inasmuch as here, not the day, but the year appears as subj.; for ἔφορος Πλειστόλας and ἄρχων Ἀλκαῖος are the usual expressions for the year, Ol. 89, 3. The dats. (τετάρτῃ and ἕκτῃ) denoting the day immediately follow the nouns denoting the year. Lit., the year of the Ephor Pleistolas, etc., begins the peace on the fourth day from the end of Artemisios; i.e. the peace begins on the fourth, etc. The 27th of Artemisios in Sparta or the 25th of Elaphebolion in Athens for the year 421 B.C. fell about the middle of April. See Curtius, Hist. of Greece, III. p. 207.

Πλειστοάναξ, Ἆγις: see App.— 8. Ἀθηναίων δέ: of the seventeen Athenians, eleven (since for Ἀριστοκρίτης of the Mss. we must certainly write Ἀριστοκράτης from c. 24; cf. viii. 89. 12) are known to us as generals in the course of the war. Among these Nicias, Laches, Hagnon, Lamachus, and Demosthenes are the most noted. Lampon was celebrated (Plut. Per. c. 6) and derided (Ar. Av. 521, 988) as an oraclemonger. Only Isthmionicus, Procles (for the general Procles of Ol. 88. 2 fell in the campaign against the Aetolians; see iii. 98. 23), Myrtilus, Iolcius, and Timocrates are not elsewhere mentioned. The reason for the number seventeen cannot be determined with any degree of certainty. Ullrich suggests on the Athenian side perhaps two priests, half of the generals of that year, and one citizen of each phyle. Perhaps the oath was taken on the Lacedaemonian side by a number of Lacedaemonians and one each from the allied cities which took part in the peace. Certainly the words καὶ ὤμοσαν κατὰ πόλεις in c. 18. 2 seem to imply that the allies took part in the oath as prescribed in c. 18. 47 ff., though Ullrich, p. 19, believes that they did not. Perhaps the number of Athenian envoys at Sparta had gradually risen to seventeen, all of whom were then commissioned to take the oath, or perhaps Kirchhoff is right in deducing the number from the peculiar Spartan constitution, in which case the seventeen Athenians would be appointed to correspond to the seventeen Spartans. See App. on c. 18. 50.