The Peace of Nicias and the Sicilian Expedition (A New History of the Peloponnesian War) by Donald Kagan

Author:Donald Kagan [Kagan, Donald]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780801467240
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Published: 2013-01-13T23:00:00+00:00

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1 6.26.2.

2 There is not perfect agreement on the chronology of the important events of the year 415. Good discussions may be found in Douglas MacDowell’s edition of Andocides’s speech (Andokides on the Mysteries [Oxford, 1962], 181–189) and in HCT IV, 264–276. They come to conclusions that are not far apart but that differ on some important points. I accept MacDowell’s date for the assembly that voted to go to Sicily as mid-April. He believes that the fleet sailed “in the later part of June.” Dover prefers “early June.” For our purposes the difference is not significant.

3 Plut., Nic. 13.102.

4 Plut. Nic. 13.3–4.

5 Plut. Nic. 13.7. Plutarch also tells us of two very different individuals who foresaw disaster for the expedition, Meton the astrologer and Socrates the philosopher (Nic. 13.5–6). Aristophanes (Lys. 387–397) has one of his characters speak of hearing women wail tor Adonis during an assembly in which Demostratos spoke in favor of an expedition to Sicily. According to the chronology accepted here, that would place the festival of Adonis in mid-April, not in the time shortly before the sailing in June, when Plutarch puts it (Alc. 18. 3). The date for the Adonia cannot be fixed with confidence (Dover, HCT IV, 371) but some scholars would put it well past the June date for the fleet’s departure. See O. Aurenche, Les groupes d’Alcibiade, de Léogoras et de Teucros (Paris, 1974), 156–157. The reference to Zacynthian hoplites in the Lysistrata (594) has led H. D. Mattingly (BCH XCII [1968], 453–454) to associate the Adonia not with the expedition of 415 but with the reinforcing expedition under Demosthenes that sailed in 413, for Thucydides specifically mentions the enrollment of Zacynthians on the latter occasion (7.31.2–57.7). The likelihood is that Aristophanes, not writing history but comedy, is mixing up a variety of things that took place at different times for his own purposes.

6 Thucydides (6.1) mentions only mutilation of faces, but Aristophanes (Lys. 1094) makes it clear that the more obvious means of mutilation, knocking off the erect phallus, was also employed. I accept the arguments of MacDowell (Andokides, 188) for the date. Dover (HCT IV, 274–276) sets it about May 25.

7 Grote, VII, 168–169.

8 Thucydides (6.27.1) says οἱ πλεῖοτοι were mutilated. Diodorus (13.2) implies they were all so treated. Andocides (De Myst. 62) says the one near his own family home was spared.

9 Plut. Alc. 18.3–4.

10 6.27.3.

11 6.27.2.

12 And. De Myst. 14, 15 and 40; Plut. Alc 18.4.

13 And. De Myst. 11–13. Thucydides (6.28.1) says that information, not about the Hermae but about other mutilations and about performances of the mysteries in houses, was given “by certain metics and slaves” (ἀπὸ μετοίχων τέ τινων χαὶ ἀχολούθων). This first information came from a slave; the second one came from Teucrus, a metic, probably after the expedition sailed. Hatzfeld (Alcibiade 163, n. 5) suggests Thucydides has “arbitrarily put together” the evidence of Andromachus, of Teucrus, and of others denouncing the mutilation of other statues, “carried away by his habits of generalization and synthesis.

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