[17:1] Ἀρτεμίσιον, Artemisium. The first naval battle between the Grecian forces and Xerxes was fought off Artemisium. Themistocles commanded the Athenian portion of the fleet, and the splendid victory was ascribed, in great part, to his skill and prowess.
[17:2] From Pindar,—commemorative of this battle.
[18:1] Before Dionysius the elder obtained the undisputed sovereignty of Syracuse, Sicily had been devastated by the Carthaginians, and several of its chief cities destroyed. In the first year of his reign, the Carthaginian general, after a successful campaign, offered him terms of peace, solely because his own army had suffered severely from pestilence. But in subsequent wars Dionysius repeatedly defeated the Carthaginians, and, whatever his demerits, he raised his kingdom to a high degree of prosperity, and rendered it attractive to the emigrants whom the over-peopled Greek cities were constantly sending to every region where Greek enterprise, genius, and skill could hope for recognition and reward.
[19:1] Periander was the tyrant of Corinth in the seventh century before Christ. His history is obscure; but the traditions with regard to him relate many acts of violence and cruelty, and also very great misfortunes, and his domestic life was overshadowed equally by crime and by misery. The three places named in this sentence were early Corinthian colonies, and they may have been settled by Periander’s enterprise, or may have been places of refuge from his caprice and oppression.
[19:2] The island of Leucadia was a peninsula in Homer’s time, and was probably still so when the Corinthian colony was established.
[19:3] Alexander destroyed Thebes; twenty years afterward Cassander rebuilt it. Plutarch very probably refers to the tradition that Cassander poisoned Alexander. Not that he was free from other undoubted crimes; for his whole life was marked by sporadic acts of violence. He cannot be said to have received any specific punishment; but he was kept in perpetual harassment by the quarrels among the successors of Alexander.
[19:4] That is, this temple of Delphi, the scene of the dialogue.
[20:1] In the Phocian war two Phocian leaders with their associates seized the treasure deposited in the temple at Delphi, and used it to hire foreign mercenaries. Those concerned in the robbery were wandering as outlaws in Peloponnesus, when Timoleon enlisted them for service in Sicily against the Carthaginians. They contributed largely to his success; but after their dispersion most of them encountered such disasters as were regarded as the normal penalty of sacrilege.
[20:2] So little is really known about Phalaris that he is almost a mythical personage. His name, however, will always remain associated with his brazen bull, and his trying his first experiment with it by roasting in it its inventor, who certainly best deserved the doom.
[20:3] The readers of Roman history may doubt the medicinal virtue of Marius, who certainly served as a seton on the body politic.