Such were the feelings of disappointed ambition, mingled with despondency, which sprung up among a minority of the Four
especially Dr. Arnold and Poppo. Dr. Arnold considers (
Greek characters) as aneuter, and gives the paraphrase of the last clause as follows: "Whereas under an old-established government, they (ambitious men of talent) are prepared to fail: they know that the weight of the government is against them, and are thus spared the peculiar pain of being beaten in a fair race, when they and their competitors start with equal advantages, and there is nothing to lessen the mortification of defeat. (Greek characters), is, being beaten when the game is equal, when the terms of the match are fair." I cannot concur in Dr. Arnold's explanation of these words, or of the general sense of the passage. He thinks that Thucydidêes means to affirm what applies generally "to an opposition minority when it succeeds in revolutionizing the established government, whether the overnment be ademocracy or a monarchy; whether the minority be an aristocratical party or a popular one." It seems to me, on the contrary, that the affirmation bears only on the special case of an oligarchical conspiracy subverting a democracy, and that the comparison taken is applicable only to the state of things as it stood under the preceding democracy.Next, the explanation given of the words by Dr. Arnold, assumes that "to be beaten in a fair race, or when the terms of the match are fair," causes to the loser the maximum of pain and offence. This is surely not the fact: or rather, the reverse is the fact. The man who loses his cause or his election through unjust favor, jealousy, or antipathy, is more hurt than if he had lost it under circumstances where he could find no injustice to complain of. In both cases, he is doubtless mortified; but if there be injustice, he is offended and angry as well as mortified: he is disposed to take vengeance on men whom he looks upon as his personal enemies. It is important to distinguish the mortification of simple failure, from the discontent and anger arising out of belief that the failure has been unjustly brought about: it is this discontent, tending to break out in active opposition, which Thucydidês has present to his mind in the comparison which he takes between the state of feeling which precedes and follows the subversion of the democracy.It appears to me that the words (Greek characters) are masculine, and that they have reference, like (Greek characters) and (Greek characters), in the preceding line, to the privileged minority of equal confederates who are supposed to have just got possession of the government. At Sparta, the word (Greek characters) acquired a sort of technical sense, to designate the small ascendent minority of wealthy Spartan citizens, who monopolized in their own hands political power, to the practical exclusion of the remainder (see Xenoph. Hellen. iii.3, 5; Xenoph. Resp. Lac. x, 7; xiii, 1; Demosth. cont. Lept. s. 88). Now these (Greek characters) or peers, here indicated by Thucydidês as the peers of a recently formed oligarchy, are not merely equal among themseles, but rivals one with another, and personally known to each other. It is important to bear in mind all these attributes as tacitly implied, though not literal! v designated or connoted by the word of (Greek characters),
