No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
Thucydides 3.12.3
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 February 2009
Extract
The Oxford text of this passage reads as follows:
This gives the received text and punctuation. No generally agreed meaning has been found in the opening sentence as it thus stands; nor have any of the numerous alternative versions which have been proposed gained widespread support. In this paper I suggest that good sense can, after all, be made of this passage in its received form.
- Type
- Shorter Notes
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © The Classical Association 1998
References
1 Except that 
is adopted from the scholiast, in place of the manuscripts' 
There has been general agreement among editors that this is the correct reading. I am grateful to Professor J. A. Crook, Dr J. H. Molyneux, and Professor F. W. Walbank for helpful discussion, and to Professor J. F. Drinkwater for photocopies of German publications unavailable in this country.
2 Gomme provides an introduction to the long-standing debate on this passage. Gomme favoured emendation; more recent scholars have accepted the received text, sometimes with reservations: see Macleod, C. W., JHS 98 (1978), 66 [= id., Collected Essays (oxford, 1983), p. 90], n. 8; Hornblower, and Rhodes adlocCrossRefGoogle Scholar
3 Hornblower justly remarks: ‘This is not one of those passages in Th. where a difficulty about text or interpretation makes an enormous difference: the Mytileneans’ general point here is plain enough.' Even so, a further attempt to resolve the difficulty seems worthwhile.
4 For the former view, see e.g. hukydides (Munich, 1966), p. 53; the latter is the scholiast's view. I assume that the Mytilenians do not have the Chians in mind at any point in Chapter 12.Google Scholar
5 Cp. 1.69.4; 4.126.5, 6; 5.116.1; and see Andrewes ad5.66.2.
6 It is at any rate certainly the usual interpretation, for the most part indeed taken for granted. For the alternative view, see Spratt, A. W (ed.), Thucydides: Book III (Cambridge, 1896), ad loc.Google Scholar
7 It is generally agreed that the two verbs form an antithesis; corresponsive 
is regularly used to couple contrasting terms (Denniston, The Greek Particles, pp. 324, 585). Spratt, taking 
in 12.2 to mean ‘menace’, takes 
in 12.3 to mean ‘to menace in return’, translating: ‘had we been in a position to meet intrigues by intrigues and threats by threats’; see, however, above. Even less plausible is Jowett's version: taking 
to mean ‘delay', he nonetheless translates the first sentence of 12.3: ‘If we are really on an equality with them and in a position to counteract their designs and imitate their threatening attitude, how is it consistent with this equality that we must still be at their mercy?’
8 Most alternatives to the received version are based on punctuation with a comma after 
The most obvious and serious objection to this punctuation is that it would seem to necessitate emendation of the clause that then begins at 
whether excision of the phrase 
(Boehme, Stahl) or, less drastically, acceptance of Kruger's correction of it to 
(Classen-Steup, Gomme). Kriiger himself read: 
Krúger's punctuation was that proposed by Heilmann, J. D., Kritische Gedanken von dent Charakterundder Schreibart des Thucydides [Lemgo, 1758], p. 67; punctuation after 
attributed to Heilmann in the Oxford apparatus and elsewhere, I believe first occurs in Poppo's text (Leipzig, 1826). Poppo states ad loc that he owed the idea to Gottfried Hermann.Google Scholar
9 Cp. however U. v. Wilamowitz-Mollendorff, Hermes 40 (1905), 143: ‘Man verstand den ersten Satz “wenn wir gleichermassen in der Lage waren, einander Boses bereits zu tun oder damit noch zu zogern, weshalb sollten wir unter ihnen stehen?’’ He comments: ‘Das ist freilich Unsinn’, and goes on to endorse punctuation with a comma after 
and excision of the words 
So far as I am aware, no commentator had in fact taken the subject of the opening clause of 12.3 to be both Mytilenians and Athenians.
10 Note especially 11.1: 
11 I have been supposing, with most commentators, that the phrase 
refers to equality as between Mytilenians and Athenians. But might it not refer to equality as between 
(so W Bannier, RhM n.f. 73 [1920–4], 63f.)? The decisive argument against this interpretation is that it disconnects the phrase 
from the phrase 
in the next clause (see above).
12 Noted by Macleod (n. 2 above).