The English Works of Thomas Hobbes (1839) 2 vols. - Vol. 8 (65 page)

[“By your present benefit, and their feelings of hostility”.]

[
Far
more profitable.]

[“Not that practised for their own safety against the invasion”.]

[“Take heed (for this judgment of yours is not given in obscurity, but by you, highly esteemed, against us, not ill thought of) that they do not” c.]

[Blot it out, “with the entire race of Platæans” c.]

[“That when the Medes had possession of our land, we were ruined then”. Goeller.]

[“And of our then allies none aid us; and you, Lacedæmonians, our only hope, we fear that you too are not firm to us. But we beseech c”. The “mutual league” here appealed to, is mentioned ii. 71 and i. 67. No more is known of it, than that the allies, by the persuasion of Pausanias, mutually guaranteed the independence of all states, and of the Platæans in particular.]

[“The
fame
of wickedness”.]

[We have “through all” been beneficial c.]

[This yearly ceremony is described at large by Plutarch. Aristid. ch. 21. See Tacit. Annal. iii. 2: vestem, odores, aliaque funerum solennia cremabant.]

[“And we entreat you, calling aloud upon the gods c., to yield this, and not to forget the oaths we produce, sworn by your fathers; and we become suppliants at their tombs and invoke the dead, that we be not in the power of the Thebans, nor your dearest friends betrayed to their bitterest enemies”. ὁμοβωμίους καὶ κοινοὺς: Gods common to Greece, and worshipped at
altars also common
to Greece, as at Olympia, Delphi: Göll. Gods worshipped at
the same altar,
as Jupiter, Minerva, Apollo, and the other greater gods, all of the same race. Arnold.]

[“We adjure you.”]

[The subjugation of Cadmeis by the Bœotians seems to have been effected slowly and not without a hard struggle. It was the fall of Thebes and of Orchomenus (in early times one of the richest and most powerful cities in Greece, reigning over a great part of Bœotia, and making a tributary of Thebes itself) that decided the fate of the whole country: and thereupon followed the
Æolian migration
(ch. 2, note). Amongst the nations driven out, were the Minyans (apparently, another name for
Æolians
) from Orchomenus; the Cadmeians from Thebes; the Gephyræans from Tanagra, who fled to Athens; the Thracians (see ii. 29, note), who retired to the neighbourhood of Parnassus, and there disappear from history; the Pelasgians, who retired to Athens (ii. 16, note) and afterwards occupied Lemnos. The opinion that Platæa was founded by the Thebans after expelling from it “the promiscuous nations,” was perhaps current at Thebes as favoring their claim of supremacy: but it is probable that Platæa did not change its inhabitants. The Platæans considered themselves an aboriginal people, as appears from the names of their kings, Asopus and Cithæron: Platæa too, their heroine, was the daughter of the Asopus: and their indomitable hostility to Thebes may have arisen from a difference of origin.]

[“The laws of our
ancestors
”.]

[τοὺς νόμους: “
the
(its former) laws”. That this excuse of the Thebans is a mere subterfuge, is manifest from the fact of their standing a twenty days’ siege by the allies after the battle of Platæa, before they would give up their leaders, as well as from the address of Timegenides to them on that occasion, σὺν γὰρ τῷ κοινῷ ἐμηδίσαμεν (Herod. ix. 87: and see viii. 34, Βοιωτῶν δὲ πᾶν τὸ πλῆθος ἐμήδιζε.)].

[“Against us then only should you have called in the Athenians, and not c.: it being at least in your power (not to invade others), since if the Athenians” c.]

[
With
whom.]

[“It is the not repaying a benefit, when it may be done with justice, which is base: and not the omitting the repayment of such, as are justly due, but cannot be repaid without injustice”. Goeller, Arnold.]

[Because the Athenians did not; “and because you desired to do as they did, and the contrary to what the Grecians did: and now you claim the benefit of that, wherein for others’ sake you behaved well”.]

[τὴν τότε: “the mutual oath made at
that
time”: see ch. 57, n.]

[“And others included in the oath”. The Samians, Byzantians, Thasians and others. Ducas. See i. 101, 117: and Herod. ix. 106.]

[“That exhibited your good deeds” to their ruin. Göll. Arn.]

[ἱερομηνίαις means, as in ch. 56,
any
monthly festival, the plural indicating only the sacred character of the day. The surprise of Platæa seems to have taken place at the change of the moon (ii. 4.): and the first of every month was sacred to Apollo. Goeller.]

[“To the customs of our ancestors, common to all Bœotia”.]

[“The paternal customs”.]

[And you readily coming and making agreement, at first indeed were quiet.]

[“But contrary to law to kill c., what excuse is there for that?”]

[“All
those
crimes”: the three just mentioned.]

[To let you see c.: “
and that
you may not be moved” c.]

[“That the trials you will present, will be not of words, but” c.]

[But if those in authority “would, as you will now do, give judgment by making one case an example for all cases to all the
allies
together”, men would be less c. Goeller.]

[For they had, “as they said”.]

[“Taking the Platæans by their own choice to have justly lost the benefit of the treaty”. Goeller. Arnold and Goeller consider this to be an unsound passage.]

[A house for the reception of such as might come to worship at the temple of Juno: the city no longer affording lodging. Arnold.]

[“It was, throughout even the whole of this affair of the Platæans, almost wholly for the Thebans’ sake that the Lacedæmonians were thus alienated from them”. Arn.—Xerxesrewarded the Thebans’ tardy desertion to him at Thermopylæ, by branding them and their leader Leontiades (see ii. 2, note) with the royal mark (Herod. vii. 233): but they were still the most ardent in his service of all the medizing Greeks. They were the chief advisers of Mardonius at Platæa: where they fought with great courage, losing no fewer than 300 of their chief men. Against them probably was aimed the oath of the Greek congress: “whatsoever Greeks, uncoerced and in estate whole, shall join the barbarian, them to decimate and send as slaves to the god at Delphi”: to fulfil which, the Greeks after the battle marched to Thebes; but were satisfied with the death of the chief criminals, Timegenides and Attaginus. By these events the supremacy of Thebes in Bœotia was for the time annihilated: but Sparta’s interest soon called for its revival. In consigning the Platæans to Athens (ii. 73, note), Sparta had not miscalculated: Thebes and Athens were thenceforth enemies. Her hands full of the third Messenian war and the settlement of Arcadia, she had quietly regarded the aggressions of Athens upon the maritime towns of Argolis, and the subjugation of Ægina. But returning from the liberation of Doris (i. 107), an expedition not unconnected with intrigues with Cimon and the aristocratical or Laconian party at Athens, the Spartans, barred in their passage by the Athenians, bartered Platæa, the independence of Bœotia, and their solemn oaths (ii. 71), for the aid of Thebes at Tanagra and the promise of future active hostility against Athens. The Athenian democracy, brought to the brink of destruction by the defeat at Tanagra, quickly recovered itself by the victory of Œnophyta; subdued all Bœotia, except Thebes, and established the democracy in Thebes itself. Eight years, however, of democratic rule sufficed to revive the Theban oligarchy (Aristot. v. 3); the battle of Coroneia rid Bœotia of the Athenians, and was followed by the revolt of Eubœa and Megara: and Athens, now open to invasion from Peloponnesus, was glad, by the thirty years’ treaty, to secure Eubœa at the expense of all her possessions in Peloponnesus. The true bond of union, however, between Sparta and Thebes, lay in the constitution of the latter, at this time a timocracy, confined to such as had not for ten years appeared on the market–place (ibid. iii. 3): a union which remained unshaken till the surrender of Athens, when Sparta’s resistance to the demands of Corinth and Thebes for its destruction, unmasked her design of retaining it as an instrument for her ambitious projects.—Platæa, first of all burnt to the ground by Xerxes, was after this second destruction a second time rebuilt at the peace of Antalcidas, A.C.388: and a third time destroyed, 373, by the Thebans before the battle of Leuctra; and again restored by Philip, 337.]

[“At the ransom, as was voiced, of 800 talents guaranteed by their proxeni: but in truth, having engaged to bring over Corcyra to the Corinthians”. Some doubt the correctness of the word ὀκτακοσίων; considering it an incredible ransom for two hundred and fifty men, when that of a heavy–armed soldier was only two minæ (Herod. vi. 79). But at a time when the ransom of a hoplite did not exceed from three to five minæ, Æschines (de fals. leg.) speaks of a talent as that of a not wealthy individual; and an ambassador of Philip is said to have paid nine talents for his ransom: and these wealthy merchants of Corcyra, the richest in Greece, might well pay one of three talents each. Arn. The ransom, which was merely nominal, would naturally be high, the better to mislead as to the real object of their return.]

[ἔπρασσον: “they
practised
to make the city revolt”. Hac voce πράσσειν infinitis locis utitur Thucydides de his, qui quocunque dolo, arte, ac fraude aliquid moliuntur ac machinantur. Duker.]

[On
the
articles. See i. 44.]

[ἐθελοπρόξενος.
Proxeni
homines dicebantur privati, quibus in patria urbe degentibus honorificum jus cum alia civitate publicitus intercedebat: his id muneris erat præcipue injunctum, ut sedulo prospicerent ne quid publica istius civitatis res a civibus suis caperet detrimenti, legatos illius venientes hospitio exciperent, ad populum deducerent, utque iis bene esset procurarent. Valck. The ἐθελοπρόξενος,
voluntary
proxenus, was one that discharged the functions of proxenus to some state without the public authority of that state, or of the state in which he resided: it is disputed which. It appears that cities sometimes appropriated certain lands to the office of proxenus: and that the office sometimes descended as an inheritance from father to son.]

[χάρακας: “vine–poles”: that is, that they had cut in the sacred woods poles for making vine–poles. Göll. Arn. These five men were probably, like the Roman aristocracy with respect to the public lands, the tenants of the sacred grounds whence the poles were cut; and from long possession derived from their ancestors, had come to consider the lands as their own property. The Agrarian law at Rome, concerned the right of property in the
public
lands only. Arnold.]

Of our money about 15
s.
7½
d.
[Hobbes has probably taken the golden stater, which was twenty drachmæ: but Goeller and Arnold conceive the silver stater or tetradrachm to be here meant, which is not quite 2
s.
2
d.
]

[“Being shut out by the law (from their hope of paying by instalments)”. Goeller.]

[“Conspired
together
”.]

[“That it was for the advantage of Athens, what they had done”. Goeller.]

[“And the haven adjacent to it and opposite to the continent”.]

[“Into the country”. A district lying to the west of the city, between it and mount Istone: called also τὸ πεδίον,
the plain;
and by Xenophon, ἡ χώρα.] Goeller.]

[“Late in the afternoon”.]

[αὐτοβοεὶ: see ii. 81, n. “And fearing lest the people should attack and
instantly
make themselves masters of the arsenal, and put them to the sword, to stop their passage set fire to their own houses (οἰκίας) and the houses of the lower orders (ξυνοικἰας), round about the agora, sparing neither the one nor the other. So that not only was much merchandise entirely consumed, but the whole city was in danger of being destroyed, if a wind arose and carried the flames that way. And they gave over fighting; and each side kept quiet, but upon the watch, during the night. And when” c.—οἰκία is a house belonging to or hired by a single, and therefore a rich person: ξυνοικία one hired or inhabited by several persons or families, and therefore belonging to the lower orders. Arnold.]

[“
The leaders
of the people”.]

[“And they
picked out
their enemies for these ships”.]

[“And endeavoured to encourage them (to go)”.

[The Corcyræans c. “were through their own means in much distress:
and
the Athenians, fearing c., did not charge those opposed to them either in a body or in the centre, but charged” c.]

[“In expectation c.”, is considered by Bekker and the rest to be an interpolation.]

[“At nightfall they (the Peloponnesians) had notice by fires
from Leucas
c.” If the Athenian ships had as yet reached Leucas, the Peloponnesian fleet could not (as they afterwards did) have crossed the isthmus. Goeller.]