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J. Wackernagel and E. Löfstedt have both drawn attention to Pindar's ‘Neigung, das Futurum zu setzen bei Verben, die eine jetzt vorhandene, aber auf zukünftiges Tun abzielende Willensrichtung ausdrücken’. But they regarded this as a purely grammatical phenomenon, and did not note that the Pindaric use is practically limited to statements of the type, ‘I shall sing, glorify, testify, etc.’. It was E. Bundy who first drew attention to the conventional nature of these futures and so ended years of misunderstanding. So, for example, Wilamowitz considered that P. 1.75 represented an optative with while Slotty, following Breyer, thought that N. 9. 10 was an aorist subjunctive ‘auf Grund des pindarischen Sprachgebrauches’! Postgate, following Gildersleeve, thought that 0. 8. 57 represented though the contrary would appear to be more true, cf. 0. 13. 11: and also Hoekstra sees in the future ‘den Nebenbegriff des Konnens’.
In the course of Demosthenes' lifetime, indeed within a mere decade, the whole balance of power in the Greek world was destroyed. By 338 the city states were completely overshadowed by the national state of Macedon, and it is the concern of all students of Demosthenes to analyse this dramatic change. The task is not easy. The evidence is most unsatisfactory. None of the great historians of the age has survived in other than a few precious fragments, and in the absence of Ephorus, Anaximenes, Theopompus, and the Atthidographers the pale reflections of some of them in Book XVI of Diodorus are poor consolation. It is on the Athenian orators that we have to rely, the very men most concerned in the politics of Athens, in the act of glossing over and denying their own share in the disaster and of misrepresenting that of their opponents. Memories were no longer then than they are today. In 343 both Demosthenes and Aeschines in discussing the events of a mere three years past denied all responsibility for the making of the Peace of Philocrates; one, at least, was lying, confidently. The formal documents were, generally speaking, merely heard, and only in part at that, and the orators were well practised in exploiting such material. If Aeschines and Demosthenes could lie so freely within three years of the events, what they had to say at a longer interval must be much more suspect.
The purpose of this paper is to investigate the source of Plutarch's inspiration for the impressive discourse which he presents from the lips of Ammonius in the De E apud Delphos, and in particular for the following much-quoted passage
The discoveries and work of Parry and Lord have turned the old battleground of the Homeric Question and its many side issues into a scene of fruitful tillage if not of complete harmony. The exploration in Yugoslav epic songs of the nature of oral narrative, with its identification of the moment of reciting and the moment of composing, has met with wide approval in its application to the Homeric poems. Some scholars, however, feel that the difference in literary merit between the Homeric poems and the Yugoslav epic songs, fine as many of these are, is still too great to allow us to apply to Homer without reserve the conclusions which may be valid for the Yugoslav tradition.
The average educated Greek, I am sure, knew the early history of Greece as well as the average educated European knows the history of modern Europe, and could no more separate Theopompos from the first Messenian War or put Pheidon after Kypselos than we can separate Wellington from Waterloo or make Frederick the Great follow Napoleon.
The professional historian, antiquarian, or chronographer would know much more, but could readily distort what he knew in trying to impose some theoretical pattern on the past. Where so many of our sources are theoretical (all the chronographers for example) and when they survive in fragments which are rarely substantial enough to show in detail the theory on which they worked, it is not easy to see through to the core of Greek belief on which they were based. But facts there were and in the main it was from them that the theorizing started.
Those who have studied the Athenian system of command in the fifth century have confined themselves almost entirely to the period after 440 B.C. They have raked over the evidence to discover signs of double representation of one tribe on the board of strategi, or of a supreme among the or of a chairman at least of the board of strategi. On the other hand little attention is paid to the progressive diminution of the military functions of the archon polemarchus within the state and to the great problems created in external affairs by the Persian Wars with the formation of the Greek League and then of the Athenian Alliance. Yet these matters are vital to the evolution of the system of command which can be seen in operation after 440 B.C. In particular the decisive steps were probably taken in 480–466 B.C., when Athens' national system of command had first to be integrated into a command-system of combined forces headed by Sparta in the Persian Wars and then adapted to take over the command of combined forces in continuous warfare against Persia. In this article I try to study the whole field and to avoid applying to the early part of the period the theories which have been evolved hitherto with special reference to Pericles in 440–428 B.C. The article consists of the following sections. A, Strategos and Hegemon in 501/0. B, C, current ideas on the modern term D, the historical origins of the so-called E, summary of conclusions.
When Moschion orders Daos up to him for punishment, Daos points to the spot by Moschion's had indicated (‘There?’), but then darts fearfully away. I wish I could name the originator of this attractive part-division, which makes the use of more precise; but in seminars the correct assignment of ideas is often very difficult.
My purpose is to compare the different explanations that have been offered of the expression propius periclo it timor. This is its context. Evander, king of Pallanteum, has decided to send cavalry under the command of his son Pallas to assist the Trojans and Etruscans in the war against Turnus. When a report spreads that the cavalry are about to set out, the mothers of the soldiers are alarmed.
uota metu duplicant matres, propiusque periclo
it timor et maior Martis iam apparet imago.
‘The mothers redouble their vows in fear, fear goes closer to (or in) the danger, and the image of Mars appears greater.’ James Henry writes: ‘The women, who had previously … made vows, felt fear, and seen the image of war before them (viz. in their minds), now, when the war has thus come to their very door, … double their vows, feel a sharper fear, and see their picture, image, or idea of war larger than it was before. ‘But propius periclo it has been explained in other ways. Some think periclo dative, other (like James Henry) ablative. Conington increases the confusion by citing the explanations of Heyne and Wagner as if they were compatible with his own translation.
In the following pages I shall emend or explain certain passages of the Epyllion. For the sake of brevity I shall refer the reader, wherever possible, to the material collected by Breitenstein, whose monograph I have recently reviewed. The conoscenti will hardly need to be reminded, for the purposes of my discussion, that the author of Megara was, to appropriate Geffcken's words, '‘ein doctus poeta, wie alle Alexandriner’ (Leon., p. 140), steeped in the knowledge of Homer, Apollonius, and Theocritus (especially Idyll 25). First of all, an emendation.
Twice in this chapter, according to the commentators, Plutarch has confused a pair of military engagements, Spartolos with Poteidaia and Nikias' campaign in the Megarid during 427 with that of Demosthenes in 424. In both instances this view seems to me to be of doubtful validity. In one case I would propose that instead of confusing two campaigns Plutarch simply misunderstood a very difficult passage in Thucydides, while in the second there is only flimsy evidence for rejecting Plutarch's version.
His statement that the Athenians under the command of Kalliades and Xenophon were defeated in Thrace by the Chalkidians refers to the battle of Spartolos (Thuc. 2. 79), but it has become a critical dogma that Plutarch 'gives Kalliades as the commander, clearly by confusion with Kallias son of Kalliades',3 who led the Athenian forces at the battle of Poteidaia (Thuc. 1. 62–3). The only apparent reason for this view is the coincidence of the names Kallias and Kalliades, but the frequent occurrence of these names makes this coincidence of no significance.
What is the point of isdem ? Editors of Juvenal pass over the word without comment and most translators are content with an unexplained ‘the same’. But if it means ‘the same as the ships that made the bridge’, it is odd that it should be put with the first clause. On the other hand, if Juvenal means the same ships as those that passed through the Athos canal, the reference must be to the fleet that sailed to Greece and not to the boats that formed the bridge. The awkwardness of the passage is shown up by the obscurity of the Budé translation: ‘la mer tellement couverte de ces mêmes navires que, solidifiée, elle aurait supporté les roues des chars.’