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Thucydides and Athenian Strategy in the Early 450s: A Consensus of mistranslations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2009

T. T. B. Ryder
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Extract

Now that many students of ancient civilization, whether at school or at university, are necessarily studying the ancient sources in translation, it has become more important than ever that the translations should be accurate. It is true that some errors make little or no difference to the interpretation; for instance, it does not really affect Thucydides' explanation at 3.15 of the reluctance of Sparta's allies to take part in a second invasion of Attica in 428 to bring relief to Mytilene that Warner (Penguin Classics, revised edition 1972, p. 201) translates ἐν καρпο ξυγκομιδσαν as ‘were busy in harvesting their corn’, when the chronology makes it clear than the time is August and well after the corn harvest. It is true also that a good many errors will be noticed by the teacher or tutor who knows Greek (or, as the case may be, Latin) or suspected even by his pupils as a result of reading some modern comment or interpretation (as in the case cited above) or of comparing different translations, although either of these exercises, especially the latter, may merely suggest that there is legitimate doubt and one may have some degree of choice about which version to follow. I should like, however, to offer one case affecting a historical episode which falls within a good many syllabuses, where the translations are in agreement, but seem to me to have got it wrong, where the structure of the Greek has not, as far as I know, been discussed in any commentary and where, I think, it does matter which meaning is taken.

Type
Research Article
Information
Greece & Rome , Volume 25 , Issue 2 , October 1978 , pp. 121 - 124
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1978

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References

NOTES

1. See Gomme, A. W., Historical Commentary on Thucydides vol. ii (Oxford, 1956)Google Scholar, ad loc.i Warner has καρпός rightly as ‘fruit’ in 4.88.

2. On this possibility see below, n. 6.

3. In P. A. Brunt's revision and abridgement of Jowett, (New English Library, originally New York, 1963)Google Scholar the whole section 1. 100–17 is omitted.

4. Readers of French can find the sentence translated correctly by J. de Romilly in the Budé edition (1964), where, I am assured, her ‘ils devaient trouver les Athéniens, qui, ayant fait le tour avec une escadre, leur barreraient le passage’ contains no ambiguity.

5. There is no comment on it in the editions of Bekker, I. (Oxford, 1821)Google Scholar, Bothe, F. H. (Leipzig, 1848)Google Scholar, Poppo, E. F. (Leipzig, 1866)Google Scholar, Forbes, W. H. (Oxford, 1895)Google Scholar, and Marchant, E. C. (London, 1927)Google Scholar. The German editors, Classen, J. and Steup, J. (Berlin, 1966)Google Scholar, do take пεριпλεύσαντες as describing an action that had taken place, but provide no supporting argument.

6. Warner makes double intentions of 6.104.1 and 7.83.4; Crawley is so free as to be obscure on these two and on 3.11.4 (but here, as I suggest, precision matters less). The Lactor translation is of 1.87.6–118.2 only.

7. So Warner, Forster Smith, and Jowett; Crawley takes the opposite view.

8. The sentence under discussion is in direct speech, but it would not be impossible for Thucydides here to be presenting Spartan observations in view of αὺτοîς έφαίνετο in the next sentence; cf. Thuc. 7.48.2: καὶ ν γάρ τι… κτλ. in a passage otherwise in indirect speech.

9. e.g. Beloch, K. J., Griechische Geschichte vol. ii, 1. (Berlin and Leipzig, 1927), pp. 167–8Google Scholar; Walker, E. M., CAH V (Cambridge, 1927), 79Google Scholar; Kagan, D., The Outbreak of the Peloponnesian War (Cornell, 1969), pp. 89–90Google Scholar. De Ste. Croix strangely abstains from discussing the aims of the Spartans, (op. cit., p. 190 n. 80)Google Scholar; Forrest, W. G., A History of Sparta 950–192 B.c. (London, 1968), p. 106Google Scholar, and Jones, A. H. M., Sparta (Oxford, 1967), p. 63Google Scholar, makes but the barest reference to them.