Note 589 — Chapter LIII · EIGHTH YEAR OF THE WAR.

Thucyd. iv, 54; Herodot. vii, 235. The manner in which Herodotus alludes to the dangers which would arise to Sparta from the occupation of Kythêra by an enemy, furnishes one additional probability tending to show that his history was composed before the actual occupation of the island by Nikias, in the eighth year of the Peloponnesian war. Had he been cognizant of this latter event, he would naturally have made some allusion to it.

The words of Thucydidês in respect to the island of Kythêra are, the Lacedæmonians πολλὴν ἐπιμέλειαν ἐποιοῦντο· ἦν γὰρ αὐτοῖς τῶν τε ἀπ᾽ Αἰγύπτου καὶ Λιβύης ὁλκάδων προσβολὴ, καὶ λῃσταὶ ἅμα τὴν Λακωνικὴν ἧσσον ἐλύπουν ἐκ θαλάσσης, ᾗπερ μόνον οἷον τ᾽ ἦν κακουργεῖσθαι· πᾶσα γὰρ ἀνέχει πρὸς τὸ Σικελικὸν καὶ Κρητικὸν πέλαγος.

I do not understand this passage, with Dr. Arnold and Göller, to mean, that Laconia was unassailable by land, but very assailable by sea. It rather means that the only portion of the coast of Laconia where a maritime invader could do much damage, was in the interior of the Laconic gulf, near Helos, Gythium, etc., which is in fact the only plain portion of the coast of Laconia. The two projecting promontories, which end, the one in Cape Malea, the other in Cape Tænarus, are high, rocky, harborless, and afford very little temptation to a disembarking enemy. “The whole Laconian coast is high projecting cliff, where it fronts the Sicilian and Kretan seas,”—πᾶσα ἀνέχει. The island of Kythêra was particularly favorable for facilitating descents on the territory near Helos and Gythium. The ἀλιμενότης of Laconia is noticed in Xenophon, Hellen. iv, 8, 7, where he describes the occupation of the island by Konon and Pharnabazus.

See Colonel Leake’s description of this coast, and the high cliffs between Cape Matapan—Tænarus—and Kalamata, which front the Sicilian sea, as well as those eastward of Cape St. Angelo, or Malea, which front the Kretan sea (Travels in Morea, vol. i, ch. vii, p. 261: “tempestuous, rocky, unsheltered coast of Mesamani,” ch. viii, p. 320; ch. vi, p. 205; Strabo, viii, p. 368; Pausan. iii, c. xxvi, 2).