τῆς δὲ ἡμέρας—after testing each other for a great part of the day by advancing and retiring. προσπλέοντες καὶ ἀ. gives the manner in which they tested each other.
παραλαβεῖν—win.
εἰ μὴ . . . καταδύσαντες—cf.
Eur. Med. 369
δοκεῖς γὰρ ἄν με τόνδε θωπεῦσαί ποτε
εἰ μή τι
κερδαίνουσαν ἢ τεχνωμένην; It is not necessary to supply παρέλαβον.
ἀντίπαλα—that the result of the fighting had been indecisive.
ἐλπίζων—expecting. N. did not desire a fresh engagement; but he knew that the slight success won by the Syr. would prompt them to renew the attack before the A. reinforcements should arrive. Freeman says that it was ‘the obvious A. policy to avoid further action till those reinforcements came.’
τριηράρχους—Diodorus XIII. 10 says the trierarchs were eager for a fresh battle. Plutarch Nic. 20 says the new generals, Menander and Euthydemus, were eager to achieve distinction before Demosthenes should arrive.
ἐπεπονήκει—Pollux gives κακοῦσθαι as an equivalent.
σταυρώματος—this had been made in the spring of 414.
λιμένος κλῃστοῦ—such ‘closed harbours’ were common in Greece. Col. Leake Top. of Athens p. 311 says that ‘the walls, being carried down to either side of the harbour's mouth, were prolonged from thence across the mouth upon shoals, or artifieial moles, until a passage only was left in the middle for two or three triremes abreast between two towers, the opening of which might be further protected by a chain.’ The three harbours of Piraeus—Cantharus, Munichia, Zea—were so closed in 429 B.C.
διαλειπούσας—the transports, two hundred feet apart, were so stationed as to guard the gaps in the σταύρωμα. See on c. 41.1.
καθ᾽ ἡσυχίαν—nudisturbcd, the regular meaning of the phrase in Thuc. Cf. κατὰ σκότον=clam.
παρασκευαζόμενοι . . . διετέλεσαν—the only instance of διατελῶ with partic, in Thuc. διατελῶ, τυγχάνω, and φαίνομαι are often constructed with adjectives alone, as ἀσφαλέστατος ἂν διατελοίη I. 34.2.
μέχρι νυκτὸς—the art. omitted as usual with words denoting time.