[42] Pæan: war-song, song of triumph; originally addressed to the god Apollo.
[43] Mysians and Pisidians: rude tribes inhabiting mountainous districts of Asia Minor, and maintaining their independence in spite of the efforts of the Persian kings to subjugate them.
[44] Lotos-eaters: the lotos is a date-like fruit, fabled by Homer in the "Odyssey" to be so delicious and possessed of such marvellous properties that those who once tasted it forgot home and friends and wished only to remain where they might continue to eat it forever. See "Odyssey," Book IX., and compare Tennyson's poem of the "Lotos-Eaters."
[45] Achæans: inhabitants of Achaia, in the Peloponnesian peninsula.
[46] Peloponnesians: inhabitants of the Greek peninsula of the Peloponnesus (or so-called Island of Pelops), now known as the Morea. They were considered the best soldiers in Greece. Sparta, the rival and enemy of Athens, was the ruling city of this district.
[47] Athenian catastrophe: in 415 B.C. the Athenians sent out a powerful expedition to conquer Syracuse in Sicily. They met with a disastrous defeat, both by land and sea, many thousands being taken captive and sold as slaves. Alkibiadês, an Athenian who had taken refuge in Sparta, now urged the Spartans to attack Athens, their old rival and enemy. His vehement eloquence was eventually successful.
[48] Periklês: leader of the party of the people in Athens, and for a long time governor of the city; he was perhaps the greatest statesman that Greece produced.
[49] The war: the Peloponnesian War, 431-404 B.C. This was a desperate struggle for supremacy between the two chief powers of Greece, Sparta and Athens. The Spartans were a rough, military people, despising all intellectual culture and maintaining a narrow and tyrannical form of government from which the body of the people was wholly excluded. The Athenians, on the contrary, wished to maintain a republic in which all citizens should take part; they represented the highest civilization of Greece, and were in one sense the schoolmasters of the world.
[50] Sophists: a class of philosophers or teachers who gave instruction in rhetoric and the art of disputation. They went about from city to city, and, contrary to the general custom of Greek philosophers, took fees from their pupils. "What the Sophists, among other things conducive to success in life, really taught the people, was the art of conducting their own cases before the great citizen-juries, where every man was forced to be his own advocate." [See Myers's "Outlines of Ancient History.">[
[51] Javelin: a light spear.