No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
Urban Settlement in the Second Chapter of Thucydides1
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 February 2009
Extract
In the opening sentence of 2.6, which is of key significance, the meanings or references of 
are disputed, rendering the whole passage difficult. In the most widely established version, 
while 
—‘Evidence for the statement that Athens grew morethan other places because of migration is provided by the following, viz. that...’ This is consistent with taking either Athens or the other places as the subject of the infinitive, ‘Athens grew more’ or ‘the other places grew less’. If 
recapitulates the end of 2.2, 
appears to refer to those migrations; but since it is a rare word, abnormal in that sense, and 
is obscure, Ullrich (Beitr. z. Erkl. des Th., 169 ff.) proposed 
, which makes a straight reference to migration, disposes of the obscurity, and provides an explicit subject for the infinitive. Gomme accepts this. I disagree, but yet believe that the established version, though capable of much improvement, is the best to date.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © The Classical Association 1975
References
page 26 note 1 My thanks to Professor D. M. MacDowell and colleagues for encouragement and ocriticism.
page 27 note 1 Mr. Stubbs's construction of 
, ‘did no increase by the immigration’, seems unlikely in itself. If citizenship is not intended as par of the causal chain leading to colonization its mention is surprising amid such brevity Forbes dwells on the readiness of the early Athenians, in contrast with those later, to grant citizenship; possibly such a contrast is intended, but the main one is between Athens and the fertile areas.
page 27 note 2 Perhaps (Classen) we are to understand some unexpressed growth of Athens in 2. 5; that would account for 
. But see section (6) below.
page 28 note 1 Contemporaries ‘knew’ without argument that Athens had colonized Ionia. The colonization seems the most ‘factual’ item; 
probably the most inferential. In ch. 3, the inference that early Greece was weak, derived initially from the lack of cooperative enterprise, is converted in 3. 4 into the reason for that lack.
page 28 note 2 Th. I. 8. I 
… (also I. II. I; 2. 15. 4, 39.2); 1.3. I 
… (Poppo). The last is particularly relevant; cf. Hdt. 7. 221. I.
page 28 note 3 6. 46. 5.
page 28 note 4 6. 92. 5; 8. 2. 2, 32. 3, 65. 3.
page 28 note 5 2. 77. 6; 6. 68. 3.
page 28 note 6 2. II. 9, 70.3; 5. 16. 2, 41. 2, 50. I.
page 28 note 7 Misquoted by Classen in favour of taking 
later excised.
page 28 note 8 1. 97. 2, 139. 3; 7. 64. 1, 67. 3; 8. 81. 3 
.
page 28 note 9 Kühner–Gerth3 ii. 2. 193, 195.
page 29 note 1 e.g. 1. 143. I; 2. 63. 2; 5. 110. 2. See also Krüger ad loc.
page 29 note 2 e.g. Horn. II. 10. 243 
3. 39. 2
page 29 note 3 In addition, 1. 50. 2, 55. 2; 2. 31. 2; 3. 113. 6; 5. 60. 3; 7. 29. 5. The deictic emphasis on the demonstrative is outweighed by that on the enclosing elements. (On I. 2. 6 Classen cross-refers to I. I. 2.)
page 29 note 4 e.g. 6. 18. 6, 83. 3, 85. 3, 86. 3.
page 30 note 1 See Poppo, Classen, Forbes.
page 30 note 2 Ullrich (op. cit. 170) lists cases to sugges that this verb must not only be personal bu have an explicit subject; where there is nom in the immediate clause it can be understood from the superordinate (1. 12. 1, 16, 89. I; 6. 12. 1). But in none of these is the clause a recapitulation.
page 30 note 3 So also Sumner (C.P. liv [1959], 116 ff.).
page 31 note 1 Presumably the colonization was motivated by at least prospective poverty. But in 
too much favours Athens to be taken, especially in this case, as amounting to failure. Soil causes growth by fertility; the Attic growth cannot be due directly to soil, for soil-deficiency can only permit, by precluding stasis, growth of which the positive cause is something else. The emphasis (cf. section (4) above) is on 
.
page 31 note 2 Is 
consistent with taking the 
-sentence as evidence of growth in respects other than population? That in fact is a statement, not evidence, of population growth, and if it is to be evidence, it is better that it should be evidence of something other than that of which it is a direct statement. Sumner (loc. cit.) suggests that after I. 3 
, war is shelved while prosperity and military potential are developed; 
in 1. 3 is subdivided in 2. 2 into ‘population and other development’ and 
in 2. 6 resumes the whole of that and so refers to the same expression in I. 3. This seems motivated by the above problem; increase of population in 2. 6 can now be part-evidence for growth in ‘other mattersr’ in both 2. 6 and 1. 3; whereas if 
means ‘other than in population’, 
appears an obstacle. But it is difficult to take 
as a part of the whole denoted by 
. Greatness of wars and the development of resources are not separable topics: prosperity is war-potential and war itself hinders its growth, both principle and in 2. 3–5.
page 32 note 1 . 2. 2–3 
See also section (ii) below.
page 33 note 1 e.g. Bloomfield takes 
as individuals, 
as their oligarchic power (cf. 3. 62. 4) and supplies from 
the subject of 
. But 
suggest that 
denotes communities, the collapse of 
should be beneficial, and the link between individual power and stasis, though plausible, is not entirely clear.
page 33 note 2 Classen takes 
as subject of all four verbs with the sense of power dominant in two instances, that of its possessor in the latter two: the power of landowners weakens the state through stasis so that it cannot withstand the external attacks. Correct enough, except that the outbreak of stasis is still not clear and the transition between senses is disadvantageous.
page 33 note 3 e.g. I. II. I, 59. 2, 121. 3; 4. 83. t; 6. 102. 4; 8. 17. 2; and especially 2. 39- 3, 4. 55.1 and 76. 5, where it is 
. With the latter compare 1. 9. 1, 3. 62. 4.
page 34 note 1 Now the scholiast's 
for 
does not, after all, look so unprepossessing.
page 34 note 2 Mr. Stubbs refers 
to the wealthy: they caused overcrowding by their immigration, but being wealthy could survive despite the poverty which they caused others in a country of bad soil. This argument lacks conviction; and Thucydides does say that the migrant peoples had no accumulations of capital.
page 35 note 1 The impression in 12. 4 is that thi gradual development of settled life ulti mately enabled colonization, while in 12. 1 the Trojan War postponed settlement colonization is a goal to which earlier event are a preparation or a hindrance.
page 35 note 2 
explains not what precedes but, as a narrative link, the growth of Athens; this is inferred from the colonization but presented as the result of immigration; the last is an inferential generalization, in view of the colonization, from traditions about refugees. With Gomme evidence and explanation are confused.
page 36 note 1 Suspense is due to the postponement from 2. 5 not only of growth but of freedom from war; this is to be inferred from 
facilitated because the peculiar word 
would recall 
This is the first occurrence (L.S.J.) of the former, and unique in Thucydides; its form suggests a passive sense; 
is more normal, used in A. Pers. 348 and E. Med. 826 of Attic freedom from conquest; cf. also E. Hec. gob and S. O.C. 700 ff., where the idea is associated metaphorically with the olive (cf. p. 33 above); 
is possibly a deliberate coinage to recall the other.
page 36 note 2 Contrast Sumner (loc. cit.), ‘In spite of her freedom from the general causes of migration, she in her turn, from a different cause, became subject to the general rule... that migration impeded the progress... in the early period.’ But ‘it was mainly the best soil’ suggests that soil was merely a distributive mechanism. With Sumner, not merely different, but opposite causes (good and bad soil) have the same result; this would seem to preclude all progress.
page 37 note 1 See p. 35 above. But also, if Athens derives her growth from the failure of the rest, she is not an independent example of the rule. But the soil-paradox is about stability, not growth, and Athens, stable before the refugees arrive, is independent evidence of that; the rest of the story is support not for the truth but for the relevance of the paradox (section (9) above).
page 37 note 2 Migratoriness, which, concentrated in certain places by the paradox, is the cause at 2. 2 fin. and 2. 3 ff. of failure to grow, is introduced (because it replaces the Heroic Age, the usual argument for early large scale) as causing original small scale. Hence we are prone to conclude that originally all Greece, Athens included, was small in scale because nomadic, so that progress too will be universal. This impression, not borne out by recent history, we should revise at 2. 3; but then we tend to reinforce it by the further assumption that failure is confined to the earlier period, whereupon inference from recent stasis looks like anachronism. In fact the continued failure of the primitive is essential for civilized progress, and migratoriness, which could apply in both ways to the opposite cases, does not (2. 5) apply to Athens in either way.
page 38 note 1 Hence the obscurity: in 2. 1–2 we an assumed aware that Athens' seniorip excludes her from the newcomers; with-out warning of antithesis, we are plunge directly into the first side of it; not only does 2. 3 exemplify 2. 1–2 but even this covers one side only; initially that side is Greece, Athens a minority of one.
page 39 note 1 Despite 10. I. Present size is no direc guide to the past; but present contrast may suggest a theory applicable to the past The implied admission of past Mycenaeai prosperity is turned by the treatment of th Trojan War into the exception that prove the theory; unnatural wealth typical squandered on war.
page 39 note 2 i.e. not a universal law. Good soil cal in principle give success (the colonic are mature from foundation); but given an initial majority of improvident-warlike nations, the stronger among them exclude the weaker from the good soil, but, bedevilled by stasis, attain only limited success; Athens too, because of and despite bad soil, has relative success; but the spectacular growth of Greece results, in the presence of Athens, from the effect upon population of the initial unpromising dispensation.