- Source
- Thucydides. Historiae, Vol 1-2. Jones, Henry Stuart, editor. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1910. (1942 printing).
- Translation
- AI-generated (gemini-3.5-flash) — machine translation; may contain errors
- Languages
- 日本語 · English · 简体中文 · 한국어
- CTS URN
- urn:cts:greekLit:tlg0003.tlg001.humanitext-grc2:4.37.1-4.37.2
- Generated
- Humanitext Reader · reader.humanitext.ai · 2026-10-29
Cleon and Demosthenes stopped the battle to prevent the total destruction of the Lacedaemonians and to take them alive, issuing a proclamation calling on them to surrender their arms.
γνοὺς1 δὲ ὁ Κλέων καὶ ὁ Δημοσθένης [ὅτι],2 εἰ καὶ ὁποσονοῦν μᾶλλον ἐνδώσουσι, διαφθαρησομένους αὐτοὺς ὑπὸ τῆς σφετέρας στρατιᾶς, ἔπαυσαν τὴν μάχην καὶ τοὺς ἑαυτῶν ἀπεῖρξαν, βουλόμενοι ἀγαγεῖν αὐτοὺς Ἀθηναίοις ζῶντας, εἴ πως3 τοῦ κηρύγματος ἀκούσαντες ἐπικλασθεῖεν τῇ γνώμῃ τὰ ὅπλα παραδοῦναι καὶ ἡσσηθεῖεν τοῦ παρόντος δεινοῦ.
But Cleon and Demosthenes, realizing that if they should give way even in the slightest degree more, they would be destroyed by their army, stopped the battle and held back their own men, wishing to bring them alive to the Athenians, in the hope that they might somehow, upon hearing the proclamation, be broken in their resolve so as to surrender their weapons and succumb to the present danger.
ἐκήρυξάν τε, εἰ βούλονται, τὰ ὅπλα παραδοῦναι καὶ σφᾶς αὐτοὺς Ἀθηναίοις ὥστε βουλεῦσαι ὅτι ἂν ἐκείνοις δοκῇ.
And they proclaimed that, if they were willing, they should surrender their weapons and themselves to the Athenians, so that the Athenians might decide whatever should seem good to them.
- 4.37.1γνοὺς
Although the subject is plural ("Cleon and Demosthenes"), the participle γνοὺς is in the masculine singular nominative. This is an instance of partial agreement (or a variation of the schema Alcmanicum), where the participle agrees only with the first subject (Cleon) or treats the compound subject as a single unit.
- 4.37.1[ὅτι]
Since the participle γνοὺς is completed by an indirect discourse construction with the accusative participle (διαφθαρησομένους αὐτοὺς), the conjunction ὅτι is syntactically redundant and is treated as a scribal interpolation, which is disregarded in the translation.
- 4.37.1εἴ πως
The particle group εἴ πως ("in the hope that", "if by any chance") introducing the optatives ἐπικλασθεῖεν and ἡσσηθεῖεν expresses expectation, hope, or an attempt. The optative is used here following the historical past main verb (ἔπαυσαν).