130 HISTORY OF GREECE In the spring of 431 B.C., the Spartans, then organizing their first invasion of Attica, and full of hope that Athens would be crushed in one or two campaigns, contemplated the building of a vast fleet of five hundred ships of war among the confederacy. A considerable portion of this charge was imposed upon the Italian and Sicilian Dorians, and a contribution in money besides ; with instructions to refrain from any immediate declaration against Athens until their fleet should be ready. 1 Of such expected succor, indeed, little was ever realized in any way ; in ships, nothing at all. But the expectations and orders of Sparta, show 1 Thucyd. ii, 7. Ka2 AaKedaipovioi.? ptv, npof rale avrov v-rrapxovaatf, e; 'Ira/U'a? Kal 'ZiK.eAia.f rolf TdKsivuv k'/M^ivoi^, vavf e^ETux&'noav iroiEiG&ai Kara fieye'dof ruv irufauv, (if if TOV TTU.VTCL apid[j.bv KEVTaKoaluv veuv eabfie- vov t etc. Respecting the construction of this perplexing passage, read the notes of Dr. Arnold, Poppo, and Goller : compare Poppo, ad Thucyd. vol. i. ch. xv, p. 181. I agree with Dr. Arnold and Goller in rejecting the construction of avrcv with ef 'IraAtof /cat St/ceA/af, in the sense of " those ships which were in Peloponnesus from Italy and Sicily." This would be untrue in point of fact, as they observe : there were no Sicilian ships of war in Peloponnesus. Nevertheless I think, differing from them, that avrov is not a pronoun referring to ef 'IraAtaf not 2^/ceAmf, but is used in contrast with those words, and really means, " in or about Peloponnesus." It was contemplated that new ships should be built in Sicily and Italy, of sufficient number to make the total fleet of the Lacedaemonian confederacy, including the triremes already in Peloponnesus, equal to five hundred sail. But it was never con- templated that the triremes in Italy and Sicily alone, should amount to five hundred sail, as Dr. Arnold, in my judgment, erroneously imagines. Five hundred sail for the entire confederacy would be a prodigious total : five hundred sail for Sicily and Italy alone, would be incredible. To construe the sentence as it stands now, putting aside the conjecture of vr)tq instead of vaOf, or In-era^i?^ instead of tTrerdx&riaav, which would make it run smoothly, we must admit the supposition of a break or double construction, such as sometimes occurs in Thucydides. The sentence begins with one form of construction and concludes with another. We must sup- pose, v-ith Culler, that ai ituKeiq is understood as the nominative case to e^ETux^aai'. The dative cases (A-anedainovioie /io/zevof) are to be con- sidered, I apprehend, as governed by vf/ef eirETaxdrjaav : that is, these dativo cases belong to the first form of construction, which Thncydiues has no* carried out. The sentence is begun as if vfjEf iireruxdrjaav were intended
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