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Thucydides 1.42.2 and the Megarian Decree

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

Christopher Tuplin
Affiliation:
Trinity College, Oxford

Extract

Is there or is there not a reference here to the Megarian Decree? Opinions have differed and no doubt will continue to do so. However, considerable authority has recently been thrown behind the proposition that the matter can be decided on purely linguistic grounds, that merely as a matter of use of Greek the passage cannot contain a reference to the Megarian Decree. This seems, on investigation, to be false, and since confusion appears to persist in the books about the interpretation of Thucydides' text a short discussion may perhaps be of value.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1979

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References

1 There were, of course, several Megarian Decrees, not to mention the other (Thuc. 1.67.4). Throughout I use ‘Megarian Decree’ as a shorthand for some action of Athens towards Megara in the fairly immediate past in 433.

2 de Ste. Croix, G. E. M., The Origins of the Peloponnesian War (London, 1972), p. 230.Google Scholar

3 e.g. Gomme, A. W., Historical Commentary on Thucydides i (Oxford, 1945),Google Scholar ad loc. Brunt, P. A., AJP 72 (1951), 271 n. 9;Google ScholarLepper, F. A., JHS 82 (1962), 54;CrossRefGoogle ScholarKagan, D., The Outbreak of the Peloponnesian War (Cornell University Press 1969), p. 256;Google ScholarMeiggs, R., The Athenian Empire (Oxford, 1972), p. 430;Google ScholarDe Ste. Croix, , loc. cit.;Google ScholarLegon, R., CP 68 (1973), 169.Google Scholar

4 Loc. cit.

5 Op. cit., p. 233.Google Scholar

6 e.g. Crawley: ‘the unfavourable im pression which your conduct to Megara lias created’ (repeated without change in Harding, H. R., The Speeches of Thucydides [Lawrence, Kansas, 1973)).Google Scholar

7 e.g. Sealey, R., CP 70 (1975), 103 n. 26.Google Scholar

8 von Fritz, K., Die griechische Geschichtstchreibung i (Anmerkungen) (Berlin, 1967), 286–7 n. 37:Google Scholar ‘… weil hier, auch in Anivendung auf eines speziellen Fall, ein allgemeines Prinzip ausgesprochen wird: eine spater erwiesene freundliche Handlung lasst einen früheren Affront bzw. das gegen die Macht die ihn begangen hat daraus snstandeneMisstrauen verschwinden oder wenigstens verblassen.’

9 Loc. cit. The same translation in Bonner, R. J., CP 16 (1921), 239.Google Scholar

10 e.g. Jowett, B., Thucydides i (Oxford, 1881), ad loc.;Google ScholarBusolt, G., Griechische Geschichte iii. 2 (Gotha, 1904), 811 f. n. 1 (following Classen-Steup4 ad loc.)Google Scholar

11 Loc. cit. The disagreements here expressed with De Ste. Croix's treatment of Thuc. 1.42.2 do not, of course, connote any lack of respect whatsoever for this brilliantly stimulating work of scholarship.

12 Similar interpretations seem to lie behind the translations of Meiggs, loc. cit. (‘suspicions that you once aroused because of Megara’) and de Romilly, J., Budé Thucydides (Paris, 1953), ad loc.Google Scholar (‘la suspicion anterieurement creee par le cas de Megara’), both of whom also take the reference to be to events of c. 460.

13 He writes that is a ‘fatal difficulty’ for the view that the reference is to the Megarian Decree.

14 Thuc. 1.103.4.

15 See further below, pp. 305 f.

16 It is a melancholy fact that the relevance of 1.72.1 to the interpretation of 1.52.2 was long ago noted in Classen-Steup4 ad 1.42.2 (after Steup, J., Thukydideische Studien ii (Freiburg/Tübingen, 1886), 22).Google Scholar

17 i.e. is to be supplied. LSJ9 s.v. ii.2 translates 'gradually to take away part of. Stephanus, , Thesaurus Graecae Linguae s.v. suggests ‘minuere’.Google Scholar

18 Thuc. 1.139.1–2; 140.3–4:144.2.

19 Loc. cit.

20 Cf. 1.140.4.

21 They are not mentioned at all after 1.124.3.

22 1.103.4.

23 That what in 1.42.2 is merely in 1.103.4 is is simply Thucydides' tacit comment on the tactful way the Corinthians expressed themselves in 433. It should be noted that the pro-Athenian action of the Corinthians in 440 in the matter of Samos(Thuc. 1.40.5; 41.2) is not inconsistent with the subsistence of this at least if the rationale for that action was what the Corinthians in 433 claime it to have been.

24 1.103.4.

25 1.27.2.

26 Thanks are due to Robin Seager for reading an earlier draft of this note.