[143] This word, of unknown origin, seems to be used here for the toga, or some dress equivalent to it. See 10, [4].
[144] Marcius on his return to Rome gloried in having thus deceived the king and gained time for preparations at Rome, but his action was repudiated by the Senate. Livy, 42, 47.
[145] Ismenias had just been elected Strategus of Boeotia; but the party who had supported a rival candidate had in revenge obtained a decree of the league banishing the Boeotarchs from all the Boeotian cities. They had, however been received at Thespiae, whence they were recalled to Thebes and reinstated by a reaction in popular feeling. Then they obtained another decree banishing the twelve men who, though not in office, had convened the league assembly; and Ismenias as Strategus sentenced them to the loss of all rights in their absence. These are the “exiles” here meant (Livy, 42, 43). Who Neon was is not certain; but we find in the next chapter that he had been a leader in the Macedonising party at Thebes, perhaps a son of Brachylles, whose father’s name was Neon (see 20, 5). He was captured in B.C. 167 and put to death by the Romans (Livy, 45, 31).
[147] τὰ δίθυρα, Livy (42, 44) says in tribunal legatorum, and Casaubon contents himself with the same word. Schweighaeuser translates it podium, as if a “raised platform” on which the commissioners sat was meant. I think it is used in the natural sense of a “door” leading into the hall in which they were sitting, and into which Ismenias fled for refuge. Livy used tribunal from the ideas of his age as to the construction of such a building.
[148] The text has Θήβας, which is inconsistent with what follows as to the Thebans. An inscription found on the site of Thisbae supplies the correction of an error as old as Livy (42, 46, 47). See Hicks’s G. I. p. 330.
[149] Gaius Lucretius had seen naval service as duumvir navalis on the coast of Liguria in B.C. 181. Livy, 40, 26. He was now (B.C. 171) Praetor, his provincia being the fleet, and commanded 40 quinqueremes. Id. 42, 48.
[150] Livy, who translates this passage, calls the missile a cestrosphendona (42, 65).
[151] In Phocis. The name was variously given as Phanoteis, Phanote, Phanota (Steph. Byz.)
[152] Schweighaeuser seems to regard this as a second name. But the Greeks seldom had such, and it is more likely the designation of some unknown locality. There was an Attic deme named Cropia, and therefore the name is a recognised one (Steph. Byz.) Gronovius conjectured Ὠρωπίῳ “of Oropus.”