Page:History of Greece Vol VI.djvu/331

 MEAVY LOSS OF THE AMBRAKIOTS. 3Q9 learned the number slain, he declines to set it down, from fear of not being believed, a scruple which we, his readers, have much reason to regret. It appears that nearly the whole adult military population of Ambrakia, was destroyed, and Demosthenes was urgent with the Akarnanians to march thither at once : had they consented, Thucydides tells us positively that the city would have surrendered without a blow. 1 But they refused to undertake the enterprise, fearing, according to the historian, that the Athenians at Ambrakia would be more troublesome neighbors to them than the Ambrakiots. That this reason was operative, we need not doubt : but it can hardly have been either the single, or even the chief, reason ; for, had it been so, they would have been equally afraid of Athenian cooperation in the blockade of Leukas, which they had strenuously solicited from Demosthenes, and had quar- relled with him for refusing. Ambrakia was less near to them 1 Thucyd. iii, 113. 7rd#of yap TOVTO pip iro'Aei 'E/l/lT/vWt fj.eyi(jTov dq TUV <cara Tbv Trn^Eftov rovde iyevero. Kc upi'&fj.bv OVK sypcnpa TUV uTrodivovTuv, 6ioTi uirtarov TO 7rA^$of ?.ye-at airohec&ai, cif Trpof TO /isye- i?of TVC TTO/leuf. 'Afiirpaxiav fievTOi ol6a OTI el kfiovhrjdriaav 'AKapvuvef nal 'Afitpilioxoi, 'Adrjvaiotf Kal Arjfioa'&Evei Trecdofievot, i^sTielv, avTofioel uv eihov vvv 6s eSeiaav, firf oi 'Adqvaiot e^ovref avrr/v xa^ETruTepot. afyiai napoiKot uai. We may remark that the expression KCLTO, TUV Tro/lf^ov Tovde, -when it occurs in the first, second, third, or first half of the fourth Book of Thucy- didey, seems to allude to the first tea years of the Peloponnesian war, which ended with the peace of Nikias. In a careful dissertation, by Franz Wolfgang Ullrich, analyzing the structure of the history of Thucydides, it is made to appear that the first, second, and third Books, with the first half of the fourth, were composed during the interval between the peace of Nikias and the beginning of tho last nine years of the war, called the Dekeleian war ; allowing for two passages in these early books which must have been subsequently intro- duced. The later books seem to have been taken up by Thucydides as a separate work, continuing the former, and a sort of separate preface is given for them (v, 26), yeypa^e 6e /cat raCra 6 avTbf OovKvdidtjc 'A^^vafof ej?f, etc. It is in this later portion that he first takes up the view peculiar to him, of reckoning the whole twenty-seven years as one continued war only nomi daily interrupted (Ullrich, Beitrage zur Erklarung des Thukydides, pp. 85, 125, 138, etc. Hamburgh, 1846). Compare kv T<> Ko^.ffj.u Ttide (iii, 98), which in like manner means the
 * or prior to the peace of Nikias.