Note 717 — Chapter LIV · TRUCE FOR ONE YEAR.—RENEWAL OF WAR AND BATTLE OF AMPHIPOLIS.—PEACE OF NIKIAS.

Thucyd. iv, 132. Καὶ τῶν ἡβώντων αὐτῶν παρανόμως ἄνδρας ἐξῆγον ἐκ Σπάρτης, ὥστε τῶν πόλεων ἄρχοντας καθιστάναι καὶ μὴ τοῖς ἐντυχοῦσιν ἐπιτρέπειν.

Most of the commentators translate ἡβώντων, “young men,” which is not the usual meaning of the word: it signifies, “men of military age,” which includes both young and middle-aged. If we compare iv, 132 with iii, 36, v, 32, and v, 116, we shall see that ἡβῶντες really has this larger meaning: compare also μέχρι ἥβης (ii, 46), which means, “until the age of military service commenced.”

It is not therefore necessary to suppose that the men taken out by Ischagoras were very young, for example that they were below the age of thirty, as Manso, O. Müller, and Göller would have us believe. It is enough that they were within the limits of the military age, both ways.

Considering the extraordinary reverence paid to old age at Sparta, it is by no means wonderful that old men should have been thought exclusively fitted for such commands, in the ancient customs and constitution.

The extensive operations, however, in which Sparta became involved through the Peloponnesian war, would render it impossible to maintain such a maxim in practice: but at this moment, the step was still recognized as a departure from a received maxim, and is characterized as such by Thucydidês under the term παρανόμως.

I explain τοῖς ἐντυχοῦσιν to refer to the case of men not Spartans being named to these posts: see in reference to this point, the stress which Brasidas lays on the fact that Klearidas was a Spartan, Thucyd. v, 9.