Book 5
31.6
Immediately after them the Corinthians and Thrace-ward Chalcidians also entered into alliance with the Argives; but the Boeotians and Megareans, holding each the same language as the other, remained quiet; being περιορώμενοι.] To the interpretation of this word which Arnold adopts from Bishop Thirlwall, Poppo, in his last edition, objects that there was nothing in the terms of the peace to raise such a feeling in the minds of the Boeotians and Megareans. But surely they might share the jealousy and suspicion which, we are told, were excited throughout the whole of the Peloponnese by the clause of the treaty empowering Sparta and Athens to make alterations in it by themselves, without the consent of the allies in general. Chap. 29. 3. At any rate, such a clause seems quite incompatible with the supposition of the Megareans and Boeotians having been treated at this particular time, however they might have been in general, with that extreme respect and attention which Poppo speaks of, and which Göller and other commentators consider to be expressed by περιορώμενοι. The absence of μέν and δέ, which one would certainly have expected, to mark the opposition between the two clauses, may in some measure be supplied by the adversative force which I have given to the καί; that conjunction in Attic writers sometimes passing into the signification of καίτοι. See Jelf, Gr. Gr. 759. 3.—This difficulty would be entirely avoided, and a very. appropriate meaning given to the whole sentence, if περιορώμενοι could be taken in the sense of left to themselves, not interfered with, permitted to do what they pleased. The verb is very frequently used in a manner closely approaching to this, as well as the cognate ones from which it borrows some of its tenses; but in such cases it is usually followed by a participle, infinitive, or adjective, which serves to limit its meaning to some particular case. If, however, it should be thought possible for it to have been here used without such limitation, it would give a very good reason why the states should prefer the Lacedaemonians alliance to that of the restless and meddling Athenians. It would also express an important difference between the case of the Megareans and Boeotians and that of the Eleans, with whose policy towards the Lepreans Sparta is mentioned as having interfered; and that of the Mantineans, who are expressly said to have abandoned their connexion with her, because they expected similar interference Ch. 29. 1, ἐνόμιζον οὐ περιόψεσθαι σθᾶς τους λακεδαιμονίους ἄρχειν, ἐπειδὴ καὶ σχολὴν ἦγον neglected by the Lacedaemonians, and yet thinking that the democracy of the Argives was less suited to them, with their oligarchical form of government, than the constitution of the Lacedaemonians.
