The catalogue of these priestesses of Hêrê, beginning with mythical and descending to historical names, is illustrated by the inscription belonging to the temple of Halikarnassus in Boeckh, Corpus Inscr. No. 2655: see Boeckh’s Commentary, and Preller, Hellanici Fragmenta, pp. 34, 46.
[720] Xenophon, Memorabil. iii, 5, 6.
[721] Thucyd. iv, 133.
[722] This seems to me the most reasonable sense to put upon the much-debated passage of Thucyd. v, 1. Τοῦ δ᾽ ἐπιγιγνομένου θέρους αἱ μὲν ἐνιαύσιοι σπονδαὶ διελέλυντο μέχρι τῶν Πυθίων· καὶ ἐν τῇ ἐκεχειρίᾳ Ἀθηναῖοι Δηλίους ἀνέστησαν ἐκ Δήλου; again, v, 2. Κλέων δὲ Ἀθηναίους πείσας ἐς τὰ ἐπὶ Θρᾴκης χωρία ἐξέπλευσε μετὰ τὴν ἐκεχειρίαν, etc.
Thucydidês says here, that “the truce was dissolved:” the bond imposed upon both parties was untied, and both resumed their natural liberty. But he does not say that “hostilities recommenced” before the Pythia, as Göller and other critics affirm that he says. The interval between the 14th of the month Elaphebolion and the Pythian festival was one in which there was no binding truce any longer in force, and yet no actual hostilities: it was an ἀνακωχὴ ἄσπονδος, to use the words of Thucydidês, when he describes the relations between Corinth and Athens in the ensuing year (v, 32).
The word ἐκεχειρία here means, in my judgment, the truce proclaimed at the season of the Pythian festival,—quite distinct from the truce for one year which had expired a little while before. The change of the word in the course of one line from σπονδαὶ to ἐκεχειρία marks this distinction.
I agree with Dr. Arnold, dissenting both from M. Boeckh and from Mr. Clinton, in his conception of the events of this year. Kleon sailed on his expedition to Thrace after the Pythian holy truce, in the beginning of August: between that date and the end of September, happened the capture of Torônê and the battle of Amphipolis. But the way in which Dr. Arnold defends his opinion is not at all satisfactory. In the Dissertation appended to his second volume of Thucydidês (p. 458), he says: “The words in Thucydidês αἱ ἐνιαύσιοι σπονδαὶ διελέλυντο μέχρι Πυθίων, mean, as I understand them, ‘that the truce for a year had lasted on till the Pythian games, and then ended:’ that is, instead of expiring on the 14th of Elaphebolion, it had been tacitly continued nearly four months longer, till after midsummer: and it was not till the middle of Hekatombæon that Cleon was sent out to recover Amphipolis.”
Such a construction of the word διελέλυντο appears to me inadmissible, nor is Dr. Arnold’s defence of it, p. 454, of much value: σπονδὰς διαλύειν is an expression well known to Thucydidês (iv, 23; v, 36), “to dissolve the truce.” I go along with Boeckh and Mr. Clinton in construing the words, except that I strike out what they introduce from their own imagination. They say: “The truce was ended, and the war again renewed, up to the time of the Pythian games.” Thucydidês only says “that the truce was dissolved;” he does not say “that the war was renewed.” It is not at all necessary to Dr. Arnold’s conception of the facts that the words should be translated as he proposes. His remarks also (p. 460) upon the relation of the Athenians to the Pythian games, appear to me just: but he does not advert to the fact, which would have strengthened materially what he there says, that the Athenians had been excluded from Delphi and from the Pythian festival between the commencement of the war and the one year’s truce. I conceive that the Pythian games were celebrated about July or August. In an earlier part of this History (ch. xxviii, vol. iv, p. 67), I said that they were celebrated in autumn; it ought rather to be “towards the end of summer.”
[723] Thucyd. v, 16. Κλέων τε καὶ Βρασίδας, οἵπερ ἀμφοτέρωθεν μάλιστα ἠναντιοῦντο τῇ εἰρήνῃ, ὁ μὲν, διὰ τὸ εὐτυχεῖν τε καὶ τιμᾶσθαι ἐκ τοῦ πολεμεῖν, ὁ δὲ, γενομένης ἡσυχίας καταφανέστερος νομίζων ἂν εἶναι κακουργῶν, καὶ ἀπιστότερος διαβάλλων, etc.
[724] Plutarch, Phokion, c. 16.