Page:History of Greece Vol VI.djvu/302

 HISTORY OF GREECE. inferior to his sketch of the pestilence at Athens, the symptoms of a certain morbid political condition, wherein the vehemence 'Arnold : "But safely to concert measures against an enemy, was accounted but a decent pretence for declining tlie contest with him altogether." Now the signification here assigned to u.Trorpo~^ is one which does not belong to it. 'A-orpo:r^, in Thucydides as well as elsewhere, does not mean " tergiversation, or declining the contest:" it has an active sense, and means, " the deterring, preventing, or dissuading another person from something which he might be disposed to do. or the warding off of some threatening danger or evil:" the remarkable adjective a? jrpoTratoc is de- rived from it, and Trporpon^, in rhetoric, is its contrary term. In Thucy- dides it is used in this active sense (iii, 45) : compare also Plato, Legg.ix,c. 1, p. 853 ; Isokrates, Areopagatic. Or. vii, p. 143, sect. 17 ; JEschines cont. Ktesiphon. c. 68, p. 442; JEschyl. Pers. 217; nor do the commentators produce any passage to sustain the passive sense which they assign to it in the sentence here under discussion, whereby they would make it equivalent to uvaxupelv avaxupqaif or i^ava^upelv (Thucyd. iv, 28 ; v, 65), "a backing out." Giving the meaning which they do to cnrorpoTr^, the commentators are fartlnr unavoidably embarrassed how to construe aaQaZeia de TO ixipovl^Ev- aa<rd 21, as may be seen by the notes of Poppo, Goller, and Dr. Arnold. The Scholiast and Goller give to the word Impovl.evaaadai the very unusual meaning of " repeated and careful deliberation," instead of its common meaning of : ' laying snares for another, concerting secret measures of hostility : " and Poppo and Dr. Arnold alter tiafydfaia into the dative case aatfxikeiq., which, if it were understood to be governed by TrpoaETe&rj, might make a fair construction, but which they construe along with TO ImSovAevoaa&ai, though the position of the particle <5f, upon that supposi- tion, appears to me singularly awkward. The great difficulty of construing the sentence arises from the erroneous meaning attached to the word u-orpo-^. But when we interpret that word " deterrence, or prevention," according to the examples which I have cited, the whole meaning of the sentence will become clear and consistent. Of the two modes of hurting a party-enemy 1. violent and open attack ; 2. secret manoeuvre and conspiracy Thucydides remarks first, what was thought of the one ; next, what was thought of the other, in the perverted state of morality which he is discussing. To 6" IfirrhijiiTUf bi) avdpbf [toipip -xpocf: redij d<T0u/,em 6? TO httftat.7ie6 " Sharp and reckless attack was counted among the necessities of tin manly character: secret conspiracy against an enemy was held to be safe precaution, a specious pretence of preventing him from doing the like." According to this construction, rd iTripovhevaaad-i is the 8 abject; uatya "keta belongs to the predicate and the concluding words, uxo -p