Note 651 — Chapter LXXV · FROM THE REBUILDING OF THE LONG WALLS OF ATHENS TO THE PEACE OF ANTALKIDAS.

Xen. Hellen. iv, 5, 1; Plutarch, Agesil. c. 21.

Xenophon, who writes his history in the style and language of a partisan, says that “the Argeians celebrated the festival, Corinth having now become Argos.” But it seems plain that the truth was as I have stated in the text,—and that the Argeians stood by (with others of the confederates probably also) to protect the Corinthians of the city in the exercise of their usual privilege; just as Agesilaus, immediately afterwards, stood by to protect the Corinthian exiles while they were doing the same thing.

The Isthmian games were trietêric, that is, celebrated in every alternate year; in one of the spring months, about April or perhaps the beginning of May (the Greek months being lunar, no one of them would coincide regularly with any one of our calendar months, year after year); and in the second and fourth Olympic years. From Thucydides, viii, 9, 10, we know that this festival was celebrated in April 412 B.C.; that is, towards the end of the fourth year of Olympiad 91, about two or three months before the festival of Olympiad 92.

Dodwell (De Cyclis Diss. vi, 2, just cited), Corsini, (Diss. Agonistic. iv, 3), and Schneider in his note to this passage of Xenophon,—all state the Isthmian games to have been celebrated in the first and third Olympic years; which is, in my judgment, a mistake. Dodwell erroneously states the Isthmian games mentioned in Thucydides, viii, 9, to have been celebrated at the beginning of Olympiad 92, instead of the fourth quarter of the fourth year of Olympiad 91; a mistake pointed out by Krüger (ad loc.) as well as by Poppo and Dr. Arnold; although the argumentation of the latter, founded upon the time of the Lacedæmonian festival of the Hyakinthia, is extremely uncertain. It is a still more strange idea of Dodwell, that the Isthmian games were celebrated at the same time as the Olympic games (Annal. Xenoph. ad ann. 392).