MorkTheFiddle wrote:I am reading the "highlights" of Thucydides in Greek and using all the help I can find. Just now I'm reading the bit about the Spartans' attempting to build a mound of dirt against the wall at Plataea. With the actual text, two commentaries, two English translations and one French translation, I'm still not 100% clear what the Spartans did and what the Plataeans did as a countermeasure. This is Book 2, chapters 75 and 76. The translations are Rex Warner (Penguin), Crawley (Free Press) and de Romilly (Belles Lettres 2014). The Fall of Plataea and the Plague at Athens by Sutthery and Graves (Macmillan 1894) and the Cambridge Green and Yellow for Book 2 by Rusten are my "commentaries," though Rusten's is practically useless and the other of minimal help.
In that quote you cite, Cicero was quite right. :)
Though still limping along, I can brag that I am beginning to be able to appreciate Thycidides' sentence construction. But that's for a different day.
That sounds about right! Since Rusten isn't helpful, I was going to suggest a Bryn Mawr commentary, but there isn't one on Bk. 2. You might look at Shelmerdine on Bk. 6 anyway, though. Marchant's commentary on Bk. 2 is on Perseus and Google Books; it might be more helpful than Rusten.