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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 December 2013
In the discussion on the battle of Marathon which Mr. How and Mr. Casson have recently carried on in this Journal, both these scholars have assumed that the Athenians fortified their position by artificial means.
This opinion seems to be construed out of a passage in Cornelius Nepos, the text of which, to judge by Mr. Casson's quotations, is read by him as follows :—
Dein postero die sub montis radicibus acie regione instructa nova arte vi summa proelium commiserunt: namque arbores multis locis erant rarae; hoc Consilio, ut et montium altitudine tegerentur et arborum tractu equitatus hostium impediretur, ne multitudine clauderentur.
1 Mr.How, in J.H.S. 1919, p. 55: ‘In the actual description of Marathon the best points in Cornelius Nepos are…the means taken to strengthen the position artificially.’Google Scholar
Mr.Casson, in J.H.S. 1920, p. 44Google Scholar: ‘The nova ars, by which something approximating to barbed wire supplied the Greek lack of cavalry.’
Ibid.: ‘Troops entrenched traditionally employ obstacles. The men of Marathon were none the less heroes if they did so too.’
2 Miltiades, ch. 5, §3.
3 See the preface of Mr. Winstedt's edition.
4 So Dietsch and Winstedt.
5 Cf. Pliny, , Nat. Hist. xvii. 35Google Scholar: genera vitium separari ac singulis tractibus conseri, utilissimum.
Hor., Epistles, i. 15Google Scholar, 1. 22: tractus uter plures lepores, uter educet apros.
6 See the sheet for Marathon in Curtius-Kaupert's Karten von Attika.