Besides, if we look to the conduct of the Argeians themselves at a subsequent period (B.C. 389, Xenophon, Hellen. iv, 7, 2, 5; v, 1, 29), we shall see them playing an analogous trick with the calendar in order to get the benefit of the sacred truce. When the Lacedæmonians invaded Argos, the Argeians despatched heralds with wreaths and the appropriate insignia, to warn them off on the ground of its being the period of the holy truce,—though it really was not so,—οὐχ ὅποτε κάθηκοι ὁ χρόνος, ἀλλ’ ὅποτε ἐμβάλλειν μέλλοιεν Λακεδαιμόνιοι, τότε ὑπέφερον τοὺς μῆνας—Οἱ δ’ Ἀργεῖοι ἐπεὶ ἔγνωσαν οὐ δυνησόμενοι κωλύειν, ἔπεμψαν, ὥσπερ εἰώθεσαν, ἐστεφανωμένους δύο κήρυκας ὑποφέροντας σπονδάς. On more than one occasion, this stratagem was successful: the Lacedæmonians did not dare to act in defiance of the summons of the heralds, who affirmed that it was the time of the truce, though in reality it was not so. At last, the Spartan king Agesipolis actually went both to Olympia and Delphi, to put the express question to those oracles, whether he was bound to accept the truce at any moment, right or wrong, when it might suit the convenience of the Argeians to bring it forward as a sham plea (ὑποφέρειν). The oracles both told him that he was under no obligation to submit to such a pretence; accordingly, he sent back the heralds, refusing to attend to their summons, and invaded the Argeian territory.
Now here is a case exactly in point, with this difference; that the Argeians, when they are invaders of Epidaurus, falsify the calendar in order to blot out the holy truce where it really ought to have come: whereas when they are the party invaded, they commit similar falsification in order to introduce the truce where it does not legitimately belong. I conceive, therefore, that such an analogous incident completely justifies the interpretation which I have given of the passage now before us in Thucydidês.
But even if I were unable to produce a case so exactly parallel, I should still defend the interpretation. Looking to the state of the ancient Grecian calendars, the proceeding imputed to the Argeians ought not to be looked on as too preposterous and absurd for adoption, with the same eyes as we should regard it now.
With the exception of Athens, we do not know completely the calendar of a single other Grecian city: but we know that the months of all were lunar months, and that the practice followed in regard to intercalation, for the prevention of inconvenient divergence between lunar and solar time, was different in each different city. Accordingly, the lunar month of one city did not, except by accident, either begin or end at the same time as the lunar month of another. M. Boeckh observes (ad Corp. Inscr. t. i, p. 734): “Variorum populorum menses, qui sibi secundum legitimos annorum cardines respondent, non quovis conveniunt anno, nisi cyclus intercalationum utrique populi idem sit: sed ubi differunt cycli, altero populo prius intercalante mensem dum non intercalat alter, eorum qui non intercalarunt mensis certus cedit jam in eum mensem alterorum qui præcedit illum cui vulgo respondet certus iste mensis: quod tamen negligere solent chronologi.” Compare also the valuable Dissertation of K. F. Hermann, Ueber die Griechische Monatskunde, Götting. 1844, pp. 21-27, where all that is known about the Grecian names and arrangement of months is well brought together.
The names of the Argeian months we hardly know at all (see K. F. Hermann, pp. 84-124): indeed, the only single name resting on positive proof, is that of a month Hermæus. How far the months of Argos agreed with those of Epidaurus or Sparta we do not know, nor have we any right to presume that they did agree. Nor is it by any means clear that every city in Greece had what may properly be called a system of intercalation, so correct as to keep the calendar right without frequent arbitrary interferences. Even at Athens, it is not yet satisfactorily proved that the Metonic calendar was ever actually received into civil use. Cicero, in describing the practice of the Sicilian Greeks about reckoning of time, characterizes their interferences for the purpose of correcting the calendar as occasional rather than systematic. Verres took occasion from these interferences to make a still more violent change, by declaring the Ides of January to be the calends of March (Cicero, Verr. ii, 52, 129).
Now where a people are accustomed to get wrong in their calendar, and to see occasional interferences introduced by authority to set them right, the step which I here suppose the Argeians to have taken about the invasion of Epidaurus will not appear absurd and preposterous. The Argeians would pretend that the real time for celebrating the festival of Karneia had not yet arrived. On that point, they were not bound to follow the views of other Dorian states, since there does not seem to have been any recognized authority for proclaiming the commencement of the Karneian truce, as the Eleians proclaimed the Olympic and the Corinthians the Isthmiac truce. In saying, therefore, that the twenty-sixth of the month preceding Karneius should be repeated, and that the twenty-seventh should not be recognized as arriving for a fortnight or three weeks, the Argeian government would only be employing an expedient the like of which had been before resorted to; though, in the case before us, it was employed for a fraudulent purpose.
The Spartan month Hekatombeus appears to have corresponded with the Attic month Hekatombæon; the Spartan month following it, Karneius, with the Attic month Metageitnion (Hermann, p. 112), our months July and August; such correspondence being by no means exact or constant. Both Dr. Arnold and Göller speak of Hekatombeus as if it were the Argeian month preceding Karneius: but we only know it as a Spartan month. Its name does not appear among the months of the Dorian cities in Sicily, among whom nevertheless Karneius seems universal. See Franz, Comm. ad Corp. Inscript. Græc. No. 5475, 5491, 5640. Part xxxii, p. 640.
The tricks played with the calendar at Rome, by political authorities for party purposes, are well known to every one. And even in some states of Greece, the course of the calendar was so uncertain as to serve as a proverbial expression for inextricable confusion. See Hesychius—Ἐν Κέῳ τις ἡμέρα; Ἐπὶ τῶν οὐκ εὐγνώστον· οὐδεὶς γὰρ οἶδεν ἐν Κέῳ τις ἡ ἡμέρα, ὅτι οὐκ ἑστᾶσιν αἱ ἡμέραι, ἀλλ’ ὡς ἕκαστοι θέλουσιν ἄγουσι. See also Aristoph. Nubes, 605.
[100] Thucyd. v, 55. καὶ Ἀθηναίων αὐτοῖς χίλιοι ἐβοήθησαν ὁπλῖται καὶ Ἀλκιβιάδης στρατηγὸς: πυθόμενοι τοὺς Λακεδαιμονίους ἐξεστρατεῦσθαι· καὶ ὡς οὐδὲν ἔτι αὐτῶν ἔδει, ἀπῆλθον. This is the reading which Portus, Bloomfield, Didot, and Göller, either adopt or recommend; leaving out the particle δὲ which stands in the common text after πυθόμενοι.
If we do not adopt this reading, we must construe ἐξεστρατεῦσθαι, as Dr. Arnold and Poppo construe it, in the sense of “had already completed their expedition and returned home.” But no authority is produced for putting such a meaning upon the verb ἐκστρατεύω: and the view of Dr. Arnold, who conceives that this meaning exclusively belongs to the preterite or pluperfect tense, is powerfully contradicted by the use of the word ἐξεστρατευμένων (ii, 7), the same verb and the same tense, yet in a meaning contrary to that which he assigns.