A portrait of Antonius (see Notes to Brutus, c. 52) would be an idle impertinence. He is portrayed clear and distinct in this inimitable Life of Plutarch.
Here ends the Tragedy of Antonius and Cleopatra; and after it begins the Monarchy, as Plutarch would call it, or the sole rule of Augustus. See the Preface to the First Volume.
[481] Of Athens.
[482] The various stories about Plato’s slavery are discussed in Grote’s ‘History of Greece,’ part ii. ch. 53.
[483] Aristomache and Arete.
[484] Periodical northerly winds or monsoons.
[485] The ceremony of the libations seems to correspond to our “grace after meat.” See vol. i. Life of Perikles, ch. 7.
[486] Grote paraphrases this passage as follows:—“A little squadron was prepared, of no more than five merchantmen, two of them vessels of thirty oars, &c.” On consulting Liddell and Scott’s Lexicon, s.v. τριακόντορος, I find a reference to Thuc. iv. 9; where a Messenian pirate triaconter is spoken of, and for further information the reader is referred to the article “πεντηκόντορος (sc. ναῦς), ἡ, a ship of burden with fifty oars,” Pind. P. 4. 436, Eur. I.T. 1124, Thuc. i., 14, &c. But none of these passages bear out the sense of a “vessel of burden.” The passage in Pindar merely states that the snake which Jason slew was as big or bigger than a πεντηκόντορος. Herod, ii. 163, distinctly says “not ships of burden, but penteconters.” In Eur. I.T. 1124, the chorus merely remark that Iphigenia will be borne home by a penteconter, while Thucydides (i. 14) explicitly states that, many generations after the Trojan war, the chief navies of Greece consisted of but few triremes, and chiefly of “penteconters or of long ships equipped like them.” From these passages I am inclined to think that the true meaning of the passage is the literal one, that the soldiers were placed on board of two transports, that the two triaconters, or thirty-oared galleys, were ships of war and acted as convoy to them, and that the small vessel was intended for Dion and his friends to escape in if necessary. In Dem. Zen. a πεντηκόντορος undoubtedly is spoken of as a merchant vessel; but this does not prove that there were no war penteconters in Dion’s time.
[487] Kerkina and Kerkinitis, two low islands off the north coast of Africa, in the mouth of the Lesser Syrtis, united by a bridge and possessing a fine harbour. ‘Dictionary of Antiquities.’
[488] The Greek word is κοντός, which is singularly near in sound to the East Anglian “quant.”