Part 14

=Milesians=: inhabitants of Miletus, Asia Minor.

=Megarian=: pertaining to Megara, a district of Greece northwest of Athens. It was famous for its commerce.

=Thunny fishery=: the thunny, or tunny, a large fish abundant in the Mediterranean and highly esteemed both for food and for the oil which it yields.

=Thurian=: an inhabitant of Thurii, a city of Lower Italy, founded by a colony from Athens.

=Odysseus=: as Homer in the "Odyssey" represents Odysseus, or Ulysses, to have done.

=Byzantium=: the modern Constantinople.

=Merchant ships=: small, one-masted vessels, not larger than our fishing-smacks.

=Kerasus=: this place is the native home of the cherry, and the origin of its name. The fruit was introduced into Italy from Kerasus about 70 B.C., and thence to England, France, and other countries conquered by the Romans.

=Targeteers=: troops carrying a light target, or shield.

=Turrets= (or small towers): the name of the people--Mosynoeki--means the "tower-dwellers."

=Paphlagonian horse=: meaning the Paphlagonian cavalry.

=Hellas=: Greece.

"The gods (says Euripidês, in the Sokratic vein) have given us wisdom to understand and appropriate to ourselves the ordinary comforts of life: in obscure or unintelligible cases we are enabled to inform ourselves by looking at the blaze of the fire, or by consulting prophets who understand the livers of sacrificial victims and the flight of birds. When they have thus furnished so excellent a provision for life, who but spoilt children can be discontented and ask for more? Yet still human prudence, full of self-conceit, will struggle to be more powerful, and will presume itself to be wiser, than the gods."

It will be observed that this constant outpouring of special revelations, through prophets, omens, &c., was (in view of these Sokratic thinkers) an essential part of divine government; indispensable to satisfy their ideas of the benevolence of the gods; since rational and scientific prediction was so habitually at fault and unable to fathom the phenomena of the future. (Grote.)

=Traverse=: thwart.

Though Xenophon accounted sacrifice to be an essential preliminary to any action of dubious result, and placed great faith in the indications which the victims offered, as signs of the future purposes of the gods,--he nevertheless had very little confidence in the professional prophets. He thought them quite capable of gross deceit. (Grote.) Thus Silanus (see p. 92) pretends to find some unfavorable indications in sacrifices which supported Xenophon.

=Phasis=: on the Euxine; means the town of that name, not the river. (Grote.)

=Minæ=: the Mina was about one pound by weight of silver, or $20. Twenty minæ would be therefore $400.

=Pipe=: a fife or flute-like instrument.

=Carpæan dance=: perhaps because one of the dancers represented a sower of grain (from karpos, fruit), or possibly from karpos, wrist, the wrists of one being bound.

=Mysian=: from Mysia, Asia Minor.

=Pyrrhic dance=: a kind of dance accompanied with every gesture of the body used in giving and avoiding blows.

This appears to have been said jocosely in reference to the Persian King.

Xenophon.

=Trireme=: a war-vessel propelled by three ranks of rowers placed one above the other.

=Three thousand staters=: about $11,500; ten thousand staters would be in round numbers about $38,000. The stater was a Greek gold coin; its value is usually given at about $5.00, but Grote here makes it considerably less.

=Cities=: cities then were generally built with walls and gates, so that it was easy to exclude any whom they did not wish should enter.

=Philo-Laconian=: Sparta-loving (Sparta being in the district of Laconia). Compare what is said of Xenophon on p. 41.