1.
παρὰ πέντε ναῦς.] If these words could really be interpreted
for every five ships,
as Göller and Arnold think, I should then agree with the latter, that the whole passage might be allowed to remain as it stands at present. But neither of them brings forward a single instance of
παρά being thus used with the distributive force commonly expressed by
κατά; and in the absence of all such proof, it seems safer to take the preposition, as Bloomfield has done, in a sense which is recognised by the grammarians. This method renders necessary one of the two corrections which have been made by the editors in the following sentence—either the omission of
καὶ πεντήκοντα, or the insertion of
τριάκοντα instead of
τρία—and though it is perhaps of little importance which is preferred, I have adopted the former, as the mistake of the copyists in that case seems more easily accounted for than in the other. See Göller's or Arnold's note. With regard to the question, why the ships should be taken in divisions of five, that number might perhaps have been fixed on for mere convenience, as the lowest which gave a round sum in talents, without any fraction. Or may we conjecture that the Lacedaemonian government had sent out five ships on the expedition, and that their quota was first considered by Tissaphernes, as a compliment to the leading state? Arnold's supposition that
it was intended to exclude any state from the higher rate of pay, whose contingent fell short of five ships, in order to encourage the allies to greater exertions,
does not seem very probable; and the idea of
τοῖς ἄλλοις referring
to those other states who had no ships at the present moment afloat, but who might at any instant be supposed ready to send some,
is surely inconsistent with the indicative mood of the verb
ἦσαν, which can only refer to such as were actually afloat at the time of the arrangement.
