Saturday, July 02, 2022
A Motley Crew
Thucydides 7.5.4 (tr. Jeremy Mynott):
E.C. Marchant ad loc. compares Livy 22.43.2 (of Hannibal's troops; tr. B.O. Foster):
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And in terms of spirit it was unthinkable that men who were Peloponnesians and Dorians should not expect as a right to overcome a group of Ionians, islanders and other assorted rabble and drive them from the land.A.W. Gomme et al. ad loc.:
τῇ δὲ γνώμῃ οὐκ ἀνεκτὸν ἐσόμενον εἰ μὴ ἀξιώσουσι Πελοποννήσιοί τε ὄντες καὶ Δωριῆς Ἰώνων καὶ νησιωτῶν καὶ ξυγκλύδων ἀνθρώπων κρατήσαντες ἐξελάσασθαι ἐκ τῆς χώρας.
In ξυγκλύδων Gylippos turns against the Athenian forces the reproach which Alkibiades (vi.17.2) used against the Sikeliots.σύγκλυς = "proper. tossed by the waves, fig. forming a rabble, collected at random" (Franco Montanari, The Brill Dictionary of Ancient Greek).
E.C. Marchant ad loc. compares Livy 22.43.2 (of Hannibal's troops; tr. B.O. Foster):
...the soldiers, the mingled offscourings of every race on earth...See also Jordanes, Gothic History 39.204 (speech of Attila before the Battle of the Catalaunian Plains in 451; tr. Charles Christopher Mierow):
...milites mixtos ex conluvione omnium gentium...
Despise this union of discordant races!
adunatas dispicite dissonas gentes.
