Part 13

=Athenian catastrophe=: in 415 B.C. the Athenians sent out a powerful expedition to conquer Syracuse in Sicily. They met with a disastrous defeat, both by land and sea, many thousands being taken captive and sold as slaves. Alkibiadês, an Athenian who had taken refuge in Sparta, now urged the Spartans to attack Athens, their old rival and enemy. His vehement eloquence was eventually successful.

=Periklês=: leader of the party of the people in Athens, and for a long time governor of the city; he was perhaps the greatest statesman that Greece produced.

=The war=: the Peloponnesian War, 431-404 B.C. This was a desperate struggle for supremacy between the two chief powers of Greece, Sparta and Athens. The Spartans were a rough, military people, despising all intellectual culture and maintaining a narrow and tyrannical form of government from which the body of the people was wholly excluded. The Athenians, on the contrary, wished to maintain a republic in which all citizens should take part; they represented the highest civilization of Greece, and were in one sense the schoolmasters of the world.

=Sophists=: a class of philosophers or teachers who gave instruction in rhetoric and the art of disputation. They went about from city to city, and, contrary to the general custom of Greek philosophers, took fees from their pupils. "What the Sophists, among other things conducive to success in life, really taught the people, was the art of conducting their own cases before the great citizen-juries, where every man was forced to be his own advocate." [See Myers's "Outlines of Ancient History."]

=Javelin=: a light spear.

=Carbines=: short muskets, or rifles.

=Rhodian=: pertaining to the island of Rhodes, off the southwest coast of Asia Minor.

=Nineveh=: "an exceeding great city" (Jonah iii. 3), larger, says Strabo, than Babylon, having walls with 1500 towers 200 feet high. (Diodorus.)

=Cuirass=: defensive armor, covering the body from the neck to the girdle.

=Sacrificed=: not only to propitiate the gods, but to obtain omens or signs for their future guidance.

=Cubit=: a measure of length; the distance from the elbow to the end of the middle finger, or about eighteen inches.

=Corselet=: armor covering the front of the upper part of the body.

=Reins=: the small of the back, or the kidneys.

=Burial=: the Greeks believed that so long as the corpse remained unburied the spirit would roam about restlessly in the dreary under-world or common abode of departed souls.

=Kretan=: or Cretan (from Crete).

=Augury=: omen or sign.

=Libations=: wine or liquor poured out on the ground or on a victim in honor of the gods.

=Bivouac= (biv-wak'): an encampment without tents or shelter, or one in which the whole army is on guard against surprise; here, the former is probably meant.

=Sesame=: an Eastern plant from whose seeds an oil is obtained, which is used for food and other purposes.

=Boreas=: the god of the north wind.

=Demagogues=: leaders of the people, popular orators. (The word now means those who mislead the people or who pretend to be interested in public affairs and reforms merely to gain their own ends.) In Greece these orators usually addressed assemblies or bodies of citizens who acted as judges.

=Judges= (dicasts): these sometimes, as in the case of the trial of Socrates, numbered five and six hundred persons, who acted as judge and jury combined.

=Greaves=: armor for the front of the lower part of the leg.

=Daric=: a Persian gold coin worth about $5.00.

=Heraklês= (Hercules): the exploits of this god in his numerous encounters with wild beasts and robbers led to his worship on perilous journeys.

=The altar=: probably that where they had been sacrificing.

Xenophon.

=Mercenaries=: hired soldiers.