prophets. The Athenian populace seems always to have been liable to the influence of soothsayers, who professed to utter oracles from the gods, particularly when war was threatening. This was so (e. g.) at the time of the Peloponnesian War (Thucyd. ii. 8, v. 26), and the soothsayer is delightfully caricatured by Aristophanes in the Birds and elsewhere.
§ 29. two hundred ships … one hundred were Athenian. In the Speech on the Crown, § 238, Demosthenes gives the numbers as 300 and 200. Perhaps a transcriber at an early stage in the history of the text accidentally wrote HH (the symbol for 200) instead of HHH, in the case of the first number, and a later scribe then 'corrected' the second number into H instead of HH. The numbers given by Herodotus are 378 and 180, and, for the Persian ships, 1,207.
§ 31. against Egypt, which was now in rebellion against Artaxerxes. Orontas, Satrap of Mysia, was more or less constantly in revolt during this period.
§ 32. even more certainly [Greek: palai]: lit. 'long ago'. The transition from temporal to logical priority is paralleled in certain uses of other temporal adverbs, e.g. [Greek: euthys] (Aristotle, Poet. v), and [Greek: _schol_e_] (of which, as Weil notes, [Greek: palai] is the exact opposite).
§ 34. sins against Hellas. This refers to the support given to the Persian invaders by Thebes in the Persian Wars (Herod. viii. 34).
FOR THE MEGALOPOLITANS
§ 4. Plataeae (which had been overthrown by the enemies of Athens in the course of the Peloponnesian War, but rebuilt, with the aid of Sparta, in 378) was destroyed by Thebes in 373-372. About the same time Thebes destroyed Thespiae, which, like Plataeae, was well-disposed towards Athens; and in 370 the Thebans massacred the male population of Orchomenus, and sold the women and children into slavery.
§ 11. Oropus had sometimes belonged to Thebes and sometimes to Athens. In 366 it was taken from Athens by Themison, tyrant of Eretria (exactly opposite Oropus, on the coast of Euboea), and placed in the hands of Thebes until the ownership should be decided. Thebes retained it until it was restored to Athens by Philip in 338.
§ 12. when all the Peloponnesians, &c. The reference seems to be to the year 370, shortly after the battle of Leuctra, when the Peloponnesian States sought the protection of Athens against Sparta, and, being refused, became allies of Thebes (Diodorus xv. 62). In 369 Athens made an alliance with Sparta.
§ 14. saved the Spartans. See last note. Athens also assisted the Spartans at Mantineia in 362.