135 I speak of course of the restored league after the election of one Strategus began, B.C. 255.
137 We hear nothing of a secretary under the new league after the abolition of the dual presidency. But he probably still existed (2, 43).
139 See ch. 46.
140 This is certainly the meaning of the words of Polybius. But he has confused matters. The two new Consuls designated at the comitia of 249 were C. Aurelius Cotta II and P. Servilius Geminus II, whereas Lucius Junius Pullus was the existing Consul with the disgraced P. Claudius Pulcher. What really happened is made clear by Livy, Ep. 19. The Senate sent Junius with these supplies, recalled Claudius, and forced him to name a Dictator. Claudius retaliated by naming an obscure person, who was compelled to abdicate, and then Atilius Calatinus was nominated.
141 The dangerous nature of the S. Coast of Sicily was well known to the pilots. See above, ch. 37.
142 About £500,000. For the value of the talent, taking the Euboic and Attic talent as the same, see note on Book 34, 8.
143 ἱστορήσαντας. There seems no need to give this word the unusual sense of narratum legere here, as some do.
144 Sicca Venerea, so called from a temple of Venus, was notorious for its licentiousness. Valer. Max. 2, 6, 15.
145 A line of the text appears to have been lost, probably containing an allusion to Hiero.
146 The southernmost point of Italy is Leucopetra (Capo dell’ Armi). Cocinthus (Punta di Stilo) is much too far to the north; yet it may have been regarded as the conventional point of separation between the two seas, Sicilian and Ionian, which have no natural line of demarcation.
147 Really 3/16; for 16 ases = 6 obols (one drachma or denarius) see 34, 8. The Sicilian medimnus is about a bushel and a half; the metretes 8-1/2 gallons.
148 Livy, 5, 17, 33-49; Plutarch, Camillus, 16; Mommsen, History of Rome, vol. i. p. 338 (Eng. tr.)
149 Compare the description of the Gauls given by Caesar, B.G. 6, 11-20. They had apparently made considerable progress in civilisation by that time, principally perhaps from the influence of Druidism. But the last characteristic mentioned by Polybius is also observed by Caesar (15), omnes in bello versantur atque eorum ut quisque est genere copiisque amplissimus, ita plurimos circum se ambactos clienteeque habet. Hanc unam gratiam potentiamque habent. Even in the time of Cato they were at least beginning to add something to their warlike propensities. Or, 2, 2 (Jordan) Pleraque Gallia duas res industrissime persequitur, rem militare et argute loqui. Cf. Diod. 5, 27 sq.
150 Lucius Caecilius, Livy, Ep. 12.
151 For a more complete list of Gallic invasions in this period, see Mommsen, H.R. i. p. 344. The scantiness of continuous Roman history from B.C. 390, and its total loss from 293 to the first Punic war renders it difficult to determine exactly which of the many movements Polybius has selected.
152 Ch. 13.
153 This clause is bracketed by Hultsch, Mommsen, and Strachan-Davidson. See the essay of the last named in his Polybius, p. 22. Livy, Ep. 20, gives the number of Romans and Latins as 300,000.
154 Others read Ananes and Marseilles [Ἀνάνων ... Μασσαλίας]; but it seems impossible that the Roman march should have extended so far.
155 That is, each city struck its own coin, but on a common standard of weight and value. See P. Gardner’s Introduction to Catalogue of Greek Coins (Peloponnesus) in the British Museum, p. xxiv.
156 The Pythagorean clubs, beginning in combinations for the cultivation of mystic philosophy and ascetic life, had grown to be political,— a combination of the upper or cultivated classes to secure political power. Thus Archytas was for many years ruler in Tarentum (Strabo, 1, 3, 4). The earliest was at Croton, but they were also established in many cities of Magna Graecia. Sometime in the fourth century B.C. a general democratic rising took place against them, and their members were driven into exile. Strabo, 8, 7, 1; Justin, 20, 4; Iamblichus vit. Pythag., 240-262.
157 The MS. vary between ὁμάριος and ὁμόριος. The latter form seems to mean “god of a common frontier.” But an inscription found at Orchomenus gives the form ἀμάριος, which has been connected with ἡμάρα “day.”
158 There was still an under-strategus (ὑποστρατηγὸς), see 5, 94; 23, 16; 30, 11. But he was entirely subordinate, and did not even succeed to power on the death of a strategus during the year of office, as the vice-president in America does.
159 Alexander II. of Epirus, son of Pyrrhus, whom he succeeded B.C. 272. The partition of Acarnania took place in B.C. 266.
160 Near Bellina, a town on the north-west frontier of Laconia, which had long been a subject of dispute between Sparta and the Achaeans. Plutarch Arat. 4; Pausan. 8, 35, 4.
161 Ptolemy Euergetes (B.C. 247-222).
162 The treaty, besides securing the surrender of the Acrocorinthus, provided that no embassy should be sent to any other king without the consent of Antigonus, and that the Achaeans should supply food and pay for the Macedonian army of relief. Solemn sacrifices and games were also established in his honour, and kept up long after his death at Sicyon, see 28, 19; 30, 23. Plutarch, Arat. 45. The conduct of Aratus in thus bringing the Macedonians into the Peloponnese has been always attacked (see Plut. Cleom. 16). It is enough here to say that our judgment as to it must depend greatly on our view of the designs and character of Cleomenes.
163 Phylarchus, said by some to be a native of Athens, by others of Naucratis, and by others again of Sicyon, wrote, among other things, a history in twenty-eight books from the expedition of Pyrrhus into the Peloponnese (B.C. 272) to the death of Cleomenes. He was a fervent admirer of Cleomenes, and therefore probably wrote in a partisan spirit; yet in the matter of the outrage upon Mantinea, Polybius himself is not free from the same charge. See Mueller’s Histor. Graec. fr. lxxvii.-lxxxi. Plutarch, though admitting Phylarchus’s tendency to exaggeration (Arat. 38), yet uses his authority both in his life of Aratus and of Cleomenes; and in the case of Aristomachus says that he was both racked and drowned (Arat. 44).
164 ἡγεμόνα καὶ στρατηγὸν. It is not quite clear whether this is merely a description of the ordinary office of Strategus, or whether any special office is meant, such as that conferred on Antigonus. In 4, 11 ἡγεμόνες includes the Strategus and other officers. See Freeman, Federal Government, p. 299.
165 Of Chaereas nothing seems known; a few fragments of an historian of his name are given in Müller, vol. iii. Of Sosilus, Diodorus (26, fr. 6) says that he was of Ilium and wrote a history of Hannibal in seven books. Nepos (Hann. 13) calls him a Lacedaemonian, and says that he lived in Hannibal’s camp and taught him Greek.
166 i.e. in Latium.
167 ἐπιλάβηται injecerit manum, the legal form of claiming a slave.
169 Saguntum of course is south of the Iber, but the attack on it by Hannibal was a breach of the former of the two treaties. Livy (21, 2) seems to assert that it was specially exempted from attack in the treaty with Hasdrubal.
170 From ch. 21.
171 βασιλεύς. The two Suffetes represented the original Kings of Carthage (6, 51). The title apparently remained for sacrificial purposes, like the ἄρχων βασιλεύς, and the rex sacrificulus. Polybius, like other Greek writers, calls them βασιλεῖς. Infra, 42. Herod. 7, 165. Aristot. Pol. 2, 8.
172 A promontory in Bruttium, Capo del Colonne.
173 This division of the world into three parts was an advance upon the ancient geographers, who divided it into two, combining Egypt with Asia, and Africa with Europe. See Sall. Jug. 17; Lucan, Phars. 9, 411; Varro de L. L. 5, § 31. And note on 12, 25.
174 The arae Philaenorum were apparently set up as boundary stones to mark the territory of the Pentapolis or Cyrene from Egypt: and the place retained the name long after the disappearance of the altars (Strabo, 3, 5, 5-6).
176 Livy, 21, 25, calls it Tannetum, and describes it only as vicus Pado propinquus. It was a few miles from Parma.
177 Pluribus enim divisus amnis in mare decurrit (Livy, 21, 26).
178 See on ch. 33, note 2.
179 This statement has done much to ruin Polybius’s credit as a geographer. It indicates indeed a strangely defective conception of distance; as his idea, of the Rhone flowing always west, does of the general lie of the country.
180 I have no intention of rediscussing the famous question of the pass by which Hannibal crossed the Alps. The reader will find an admirably clear statement of the various views entertained, and the latest arguments advanced in favour of each, in the notes to Mr. W. T. Arnold’s edition of Dr. Arnold’s History of the Second Punic War, pp. 362-373.
181 περί τι λευκόπετρον, which, however, perhaps only means “bare rock,” cf. 10, 30. But see Law’s Alps of Hannibal, vol. i. p. 201 sq.
182 His life according to one story, was saved by his son, the famous Scipio Africanus (10, 3); according to another, by a Ligurian slave (Livy, 21, 46).
183 Livy says “to Mago,” Hannibal’s younger brother (21, 47). This Hasdrubal is called in ch. 93 “captain of pioneers.”
185 “He crossed the Apennines, not by the ordinary road to Lucca, descending the valley of the Macra, but, as it appears, by a straighter line down the valley of the Auser or Serchio.”—Arnold.
186 The marshes between the Arno and the Apennines south of Florence.
187 ἀπεκοιμῶντο Schw. translates simply dormiebant. But the compound means more than that; it conveys the idea of an interval of sleep snatched from other employments. See Herod. 8, 76; Aristoph. Vesp. 211.
188 Livy, 22, 4-6. For a discussion of the modern views as to the scene of the battle, see W. T. Arnold’s edition of Dr. Arnold’s History of the Second Punic War, pp. 384-393. The radical difference between the account of Livy and that of Polybius seems to be that the former conceives the fighting to have been on the north shore of the lake between Tucro and Passignano; Polybius conceives the rear to have been caught in the defile of Passignano, the main fighting to have been more to the east, where the road turns up at right angles to the lake by La Torricella. Mr. Capes, however in his note on the passage of Livy, seems to think that both accounts agree in representing the fighting on the vanguard as being opposite Tucro.
189 This treatment of non-combatants was contrary to the usages of civilised warfare even in those days, and seems to have been the true ground for the charge of crudelitas always attributed to Hannibal by Roman writers, as opposed to the behaviour of such an enemy as Pyrrhus (Cic. de Am. 28). It may be compared to the order of the Convention to give no quarter to English soldiers, which the French officers nobly refused to execute.
190 Polybius expresses the fact accurately, for, in the absence of a Consul to nominate a Dictator, Fabius was created by a plebiscitum; but the scruples of the lawyers were quieted by his having the title of prodictator only (Livy, 22, 8).
191 Ramsay (Roman Antiquities, p. 148) denies this exception, quoting Livy, 6, 16. But Polybius could hardly have been mistaken on such a point; and there are indications (Plutarch, Anton. 9) that the Tribunes did not occupy the same position as the other magistrates towards the Dictator.
192 The ager Praetutianus was the southern district of Picenum (Livy, 22, 9; 27, 43). The chief town was Interamna.
193 On the Appian Way between Equus Tuticus and Herdonia, mod. Troja.
194 Holsten for the Δαύνιοι of the old text; others suggest Calatia.
195 Added by conjecture of Schw. One MS. has δευτέρα ἡ ἀπὸ τοῦ Ἐριβανοῦ.
196 Near Cales.
197 Homer, Odyss. 10, 230.
198 See i. 16.
199 ἐξ ἀσπίδος ἐπιπαρενέβαλλον. The ordinary word for “forming line” or “taking dressing” is παρεμβάλλειν. In the other two passages where ἐπιπαρεμβάλλειν is used, ἐπί has a distinct (though different) force. I think here it must mean “against,” “so as to attack.” And this seems to be Casaubon’s interpretation.
200 There is nothing here absolutely to contradict the picturesque story of the death of Paulus given by Livy (22, 49), but the words certainly suggest that Polybius had never heard it.
201 A town on the lake of Trichonis, in Aetolia, but its exact situation is uncertain. Strabo (10, 2, 3) says that it was on a fertile plain, which answers best to a situation north of the lake.
204 The Achaean Strategus was elected in the middle of May, the Aetolian in the autumn. Aratus would be elected May 12, B.C. 220, and come into office some time before midsummer; Ariston’s Aetolian office would terminate in September B.C. 220. See v. 1.
205 The capture of Sicyon and expulsion of the tyrant Nicocles was the earliest exploit of Aratus, B.C. 251. Plutarch, Arat. 4-9. The taking of the Acrocorinthus from the Macedonian garrison was in B.C. 243, ib. ch. 19-24. For the affair at Pellene see ib. 31. The capture of Mantinea was immediately after a defeat by Cleomenes. See Plutarch, Cleom. 5.
206 The city of Pheia was on the isthmus connecting the promontory Ichthys (Cape Katákolo) with the mainland: opposite its harbour is a small island which Polybius here calls Pheias, i.e. the island belonging to Pheia.
207 Caphyae was on a small plain, which was subject to inundations from the lake of Orchomenus; the ditches here mentioned appear to be those dug to drain this district. They were in the time of Pausanias superseded by a high dyke, from the inner side of which ran the River Tragus (Tara). Pausan. 8, 23, 2.
208 The Olympiads being counted from the summer solstice, these events occurring before midsummer of B.C. 220 belong to the 139th Olympiad. The 140th begins with midsummer B.C. 220.
209 But outside the natural borders of Arcadia. Mod. Kalávryta.
210 By the diolcos which had been formed for the purpose. Strabo, 8, 2. Ships had been dragged across the Isthmus on various occasions from early times. See Thucyd. 3, 15.
211 Reading, μόνου. See ch. 13.
212 A mountain on the frontier, on the pass over which the roads to Tegea and Argos converge.
214 See ch. 15.
215 See ch. 24.
216 See Stobaeus Floril. 58, 9, who gives three more lines.
217 Cf. ch. 74.
218 The hero of the second Messenian war, B.C. 685-668 (Pausan. 4, 14-24). The story told by Pausanias, who also quotes these verses, is that Aristocrates, king of the Arcadians, twice played the traitor to Aristomenes, the Messenian champion: once at the battle of the Great Trench, and again when Aristomenes renewed the war after his escape from the Pits at Sparta; and that on the second occasion his own people stoned him to death, and set up this pillar in the sacred enclosure of Zeus on Mount Lycaeus.
219 But Pausanias represents the pillar as put up by the Arcadians, not the Messenians (4, 22, 7).
220 The text is uncertain here.
221 Reading with Hultsch, τὰ καλὰ.
222 However cogent may be the reasons for his prophecy adduced by Polybius, there are no signs of its being fulfilled. Indeed, the bank at the mouth of the Danube, which he mentions, has long disappeared. The fact seems to be that he failed to take into calculation the constant rush of water out of the Euxine, which is sufficient to carry off any amount of alluvial deposit.
223 Xenophon, Hellen. 1, 1, 22.
224 Or Tylis, according to Stephanos Byz., who says it was near the Haemus. Perhaps the modern Kilios.
225 Seleucus II. (Callinicus), B.C. 246-226. Seleucus III. (Ceraunus), B.C. 226-223. Antiochus the Great (son of Callinicus), B.C. 223-187.
226 Of Seleucus Callinicus.
227 That this was the name of a yearly officer at Byzantium appears from a decree in Demosthenes (de Cor. § 90), and Byzantine coins, Eckhel, ii. p. 31. The title seems to have been brought from the mother-city Megara; as at Chalcedon, another colony of Megara, the same existed (C. I. G. 3794). It was connected with the worship of Apollo brought from Megara, Müller’s Dorians, i. p. 250. It seems that this use of the name (generally employed of the deputies to the Amphictyonic council) was peculiarly Dorian. See Boeckh. C. I., vol. i. p. 610.
228 Or Lyctos (Steph. Byz.)
229 Of Arcadia, a city of Crete (Steph. Byz.)
230 Which had a harbour formed by a projecting headland called Lisses. Steph. Byz., who quotes Homer, Odyss. 3, 293:
ἔστι δέ τις Λισσὴς αἰπεῖά τε εἰς ἅλα πέτρη.
231 As a measure of weight a talent = about 57 lbs. avoirdupois. The prepared hair was for making ropes and bowstrings apparently.
232 Gortyna or Gortys is an emendation of Reiske for Gorgus, which is not known. Gortys is mentioned by Pausanias, 5, 7, 1; 8, 27, 4; 8, 28, 1; it was on the river Bouphagus, and in the time of Pausanias was a mere village.
233 See 2, 41. We have no hint, as far as I know, of the circumstances under which such recovery would take place. We may conjecture from this passage that it would be on showing that losses had been sustained by reason of a failure of the league to give protection.
234 Stephanos describes Ambracus as a πολιχνίον close to Ambracia.
235 Though it was in the territory of Acarnania (Steph. Byz.)
237 The position of Dodona, long a subject of doubt, was settled by the discovery of the numerous inscriptions found about seven miles from Jannina, and published by Constantine Caraponos in 1878, Dodon et ses Ruines. See also Journal of Hellenic Studies, vol. i. p. 228.
238 See ch. 68.
239 Reading ἁλίαν. See Muller’s Dorians, vol. II, p. 88.
240 The local name of Tarentine, though doubtless originating in fact, had come to indicate a species of mercenary cavalry armed in a particular way. Arrian, Tact. 4, distinguishes two sorts of light cavalry for skirmishing Tarentines armed with javelins (δορατία), and horse archers (ἱπποτοξόται). Cp, 11, 12. Livy 35, 29; 37, 40.
241 Pausanias (8, 26, 7) calls him Hypatodorus; and mentions another work of his at Delphi (10, 10, 3). He flourished about B.C. 370. He was a native of Thebes. Sostratos was a Chian, and father of another statuary named Pantias. Paus. 6, 9, 3.
242 That is the office of the Polemarch, as in Athens the Strategium (στρατηγίον) is the office of the Strategi. Plutarch, Nicias, 5.
243 Yet the avowed project of Cleomenes was the restoration of the ancient constitution. Plutarch, Cleom. c. 10.
244 See ch. 59.
245 From 4, 6, it appears that the election took place at the rising of the Pleiades (13th May) and that the new Strategus did not enter upon his office until some time afterwards, towards the middle of June or even midsummer. But the custom apparently varied, and the use of τότε seems to indicate a change.
247 Νεοκρῆτες, cf. cc. 65, 79. Livy (37, 40) transcribes the word Neocretes. It is uncertain what the exact meaning of the word is. It seems most reasonable to suppose that, like Tarentini, it had ceased to be an ethnical term, and meant mercenary soldiers (νέοι) armed like Cretans, that is, as archers.