[Meaning] into a bad place.[1] "They having made a start contrary to the terrain because of inexperience and sometimes because of the tides of the sea."[2]
*para/topon: ei)s kako\n to/pon. para/topon o(rmh/santes dia\ th\n a)peiri/an, e)/sti d' o(/te kai\ dia\ ta\s a)mpw/teis th=s qala/tths.
The headword (a single word in the Greek) is presumably extracted from the quotation given, and is thus transmitted, twice over, as the accusative singular of a masculine noun
para/topos (which one could translate as "by-way" or "side-channnel"); but see the next two notes.
[1] The same gloss is given by
Lexicon Vindobonense s.v.
para\ to/pon -- sic: i.e. a prepositional phrase. In his edition of
Polybius, F.O. Hultsch (1833-1906) gave that phrase as the headword here too, surely rightly.
[2]
Polybius fr. 191 (Büttner-Wobst, p. 539). The fragment's placement is uncertain. Indeed, the
Lexicon Vindobonense (loc. cit.) attributed it to
Synesius. And Roos (
Studia Arrianea; p. 53, n. 201) once linked the fragment to Arrian,
Anabasis 6.19, where Alexander's ships enter into and then drop anchor in a channel at the mouth of the Indus River, near Patala, ancient India (Barrington Atlas map 5 grid B1, present-day Thatta (Thatto)
Pakistan). Alexander's ships became grounded there during the extreme low tide, a phenomenon of ocean coastal regions that would be generally unknown to sailors accustomed to the benign tidal fluctuations of the Mediterranean Sea. However, Roos does not include (as Adler notes) this passage amongst the Arrian fragments (
Scripta Minora et Fragmenta).
In her critical apparatus, Adler notes that mss AM transmit
o(rmi/santes (
they having moored, brought to anchor), and ms. A gives
a)pori/an (
desperation).
T. Büttner-Wobst, ed., Polybii Historiae, vol. IV, Teubner: Leipzig, 1904
A.G. Roos, Studia Arrianea, Teubner: Leipzig, 1912
A.G. Roos, ed., Flavivs Arrianvs: Scripta Minora et Fragmenta, vol. II, Teubner: Leipzig, 1967
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