ADCOCK - Thucydides and His History

THUCYDIDES AND HIS
HISTORY
THUCYDIDES
AND HIS
HIST'ORY
BY
F. E. ADCOCK
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CAMBRIDGE
AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS
1963
PUBLISHED B.Y
THE SYNDICS OF THE CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
Bentley House, 200 Euston Road, London, N.,V. 1

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©
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
1963
Printed in Great Britain at tlie University Press, Camhridge

(Brooke Crutchley, University Printer)
CONTENTS
Preface page vu
PART I
I The Background of the Work and its
Declared Purpose 3
2 The Narrative 14
3 The Speeches 27
4 Thucydidean Dialectic 43
5 Thucydidean Ethics and Politics 50
6 The Ten Years War 58

7 The Exile: Book V 68
8 Sicily: Books VI and VII 75
9 Book VIII 83
10 Revisions and Additions 90
II Publication 96
12 Conclusion 107
PART II: INTERPRETATI0 NS 1
Li.rt of Passages Discussed I 14

Introduction: The Early Transmission of the Text 115
Discussion of Passages I 19
Index of Passages Cited 141
General Index 144
v
PREFACE
This book is an attempt to describe Thucydides, his
personaHty, his mind and his fortunes, what he set him-
self to do and how he did it, and how far. He is not to be
judged by the practice of a modern historian conditioned
by the means at his disposal and by a long tradition of
technique, which was still in the future. We may deduce
from the work itself what was possible for one who
studied the present with a strong belief in his own creative
powers. Situations and events are, as it were, caught in a
fine net of thought, itself characteristic of his age, which
was alert in observation and interpretation on a human-
istic plane. In this he is a pioneer, an adventurer in
thought, the first of his kind.
The problem presented by the fact that what has come
down to us ends so abruptly is examined, and a hypo-
thesis is advanced which seeks to explain why this
happened and its effect on the transmission of the text.
Part I is so written that it can be understood by
readers who do not possess that specialized mastery .c)f
Greek idiom which was practised by the historian. In
Part II follows the exegesis of certain passages which tend
to reveal his career and the composition and arranging of
his work in the several phases of his career and thought.
Account has been taken of the skilful work of many
scholars during a century. To provide a representative
bibliography of all this modern Hterature would add
unduly to the size of the book and require much linguistic
and technical knowledge for its proper use. Where the
author is conscious of especial obligation, this appears in
the footnotes, which otherwise present references to the
text of the work.
The work is declared to be 'a lasting possession',
VH
..
'
. '," -' • I-, \
,- ;.I f"
Preface
and that it has remained. It is to be of service,
to help its readers to meet with understanding and
courage the situations of their own time,. as these arise.
It requires of them the desire to study phases of
experience presented by a realistic and intelligible narra-
tive of what happened in the past within the scope of the
work. Thus it is written to assist the understanding of any
comparable series of events. To assist this understanding
is its primary purpose;. it is illuminated by the austere
intellectual force of Thucydides, a creation which sets
him among the greatest historians of all times.
The preparation of this book throughout several years
has been assisted by the help and counsel of many friends
and colleagues, among whom Mr G. T. Griffith claims
especial mention. Without I1is shrewd and constructive
criticism many faults and misconceptions might have
remained uncorrected. For those that remain the writer
of this book is alone responsible.
F.E.A.
CAMBRIDGE
Fehruary 1963
Vlll
PART I
NOTE
Where no author is mentioned, references

in the notes are to Thucydides
CHAPTER I
THE BACKGROUND ,OF THE WORK

AND, ITS DECLARED PURPOSE
The period during which Thucydides grew up to man-

hood provided the Athenians with an intellectual climate,
with that 'lucid air' which was brilliantly described in a
famous chorus in the Medeal when it was performed in the
first year of the war.
The mental stir induced by the sophists, who sought to
fit men's capacities to achieve practical results and' to dear
their minds of cant', had dispelled clouds of tradition and
dethroned values other than intellectual. And this had
been reinforced by the way in which students of medicine
were observing the symptoms of maladies, guiding their
art by the observation of the physical character of their
patients.2 As these observed the nature of the human body,.
so Thucydides would observe human nature as governing
the thoughts and impulses of men, the setting of the art
practised by Pericles in his persuasion of the Athenian
Assembly by opposing and dominating their excess of
hope or fear, 3 by making allowance for the vagaries of
fortune and limiting their effects by the provision of a
margin of strength that could,, if mischances occurred, do
this.
When Thucydides depicted the intellectual force and
1 LL 825 ff.
Z See C. H. Cochrane, Thucydides and the Science of History
(Oxford, 1929). 3 n, 6;, 8-9.
I-Z
3
Thucydides and his History
resourcefulness ofThemistocles,t he claimed the victory of
mind over events as possible, granted a natural strength
and suppleness, not the product of study but the gift of
inborn genius. This did not save Themistocles from
coming to an unworthy end as the courtier and vassal of
the Great King; but it showed his force and adroitness, his
power to preserve at least his own safety: so his foresight
had led Athens to make herself invulnerable by means of
her naval power,2 the spring of her greatness and of her
domination over others.
The fact that Athenian policy was apt to take shape by
discussion, heard or overheard by the mass of Athenians,
taught Thucydides to raise the figure of Pericles above his
hearers, the more inevitably because Pericles had not the
moral fauhs ofThemistocles. He exercised a magnanimous
and single-minded leadership,. wise in its mo_deration3 but
resolute to make Athens the most splendid of all cities, a
model to follow even if it rose beyond the power of others
to achieve.4 The defence of the Athenian empire, because
it was deserved not so much morally as by its very exist-
ence, raised it above challenge, like the statue of Athena
Promachos on the Acropolis, inspired by wisdom like
the Athena of legend embodied in the Athena of the
Parthenon.
Thucydides was an aristocrat: he was no more an
egalitarian than was Pericles. He was, we may surmise,
a democrat in so far as 'what was called a democracy'
could be in reality 'the control of the state by its first
citizen 'S--because it was guided by persuasion, and its
1 1,. 138, 3· 2- I '93,
·. 3-7.
4 u, 37, I. 5 n, G;, 9·
4
The Background of the Work
first citizen could persuade it to think as he thought by his
eloquence and his overriding authority.
The very first sentence of the work states Thucydides'
expectation that, if the war came, it would be on a great
scale because both sides were at the zenith of their military
preparedness, and this introduces a :reconstruction of the
earlier development of the Greek states.I This does not
claim to he based on assured knowledge,. but it does claim
a degree of probability that makes it come near to cer-
tainty.2 It is, in the main, concerned with power as the
means of power, of wealth and fleets which are dependent
the one on the other, the organization ofcities, the advance
of civilization, an estimate of Greek naval strength at the
time of the Trojan War and afrer. The Epic and the
traditions that fallowed it are judged in terms of his own
day. It is not so much discovery as evaluation, and, within
its range, it is cogent. It has been regarded as a sort of
literary device to magnify the general theme of the work,
but it is, even more, a justification of the generalization
from which it begins.3 The reader is given grounds for
belief. It is not inspired by the declared purpose of
Herodotus 'that the great deeds of the past should be
preserved from oblivion', nor the negative attitude towards
tradition of Hecataeus, nor is it Ionian speculation: it
is rather an Athenian discussion of tendencies shown in the
past that move towards a practical conclusion. It points
forward to the present as seen from the Acropolis.
The conclusion that the two groups of powers had
reached the peak of their military preparedness was
t 1, 2-19. 2 r, 21, 1.
3 See E. Taub Ier, Die Archaeologie des Thukydides (Leipzig, I 92 7)., p. 9 JI.
evident of Athens, whose naval potential in ships and
trained crews had continued to advance since the Thirty
Years Truce. The Samian revolt had failed, and Persia had
not intervened.I Sparta, too, will have recovered from the
effects of the earthquake and the Helot Revolt of the
'sixties,. and, while the Peloponnesian army was hampered
by its peasant character,2 the Spartans did not need to work
in their own fields and had, perhaps, contrived to make
more use of the military contingents of her Perioeci. It
may be added that the truer all this was, the more prob-
able it might seem that neither side would shrink from war ..
This, in itself, would help to justify the expectation that it
might come to the present conflict.
Just when the historian was born is beyond discovery,
but we may conjecture that the first event in which he was
actively engaged was the operations of the Samian Revolt,
from which Pericles returned in triumph. It taught him
that 'blood is the price of admiralty', and he may have
heard Pericles say of the young men who perished that 'it
was as if the spring had been taken from the year' ,3 but he
saw the high summer of Athenian greatness. To over-
throw that greatness, the envy and fears of her rivals would
need all their strength, as its maintenance required all the
military preparedness of Athens herself.. This clash of
opposites, did it occur, was bound to be on a great scale,
and once it seemed likely to happen, he believed it would
be a theme of great moment, most worthy of all wars to he
recorded.4 Its record would repay study by those who
care to learn from it, if its record were true and, as it were,
1 1, u5-17. 2 1, 141, 5.
3 PJutarch, Pericles, 2:8, 4; Aristotle, Rhetoric, 1, vii, 34. 4 I, I, I.
6
seen in the dry light of accuracy and understanding,l
suffused indeed by that lucid air in which the Athenians
claimed to move (p. 3). It was then in this spirit, so
inspired, that Thucydides braced himself to his task, and
we may suppose that he carried it out as best he could. It
has been held that Thucydides assumed as axiomatic that
nature has ruled that power comes through power, and as
states increase in power, they must collide just as certainly
as objects cannot occupy the same position in space, that
in a hard world there is no room for peaceful co~existence,.
so that domination and survival cannot exist apart, that in
fact it is aU as automatic as anything can he. In the world of
states
... the good old rule
Sufficeth them, the simple plan,
That they should take, who have the power,
And they should keep who can.
This may have been so, but it is not all that his ex-
perience could have taught him: since 445 B.c. two com-
parable groups had existed together in a sort of balance of
power, under an arrangement which kept each group in
a sphere apart from the other, and so reduced the areas
of friction. This had survived the Samian Revolt, and
Thucydides had come to believe that while Pericles guided
Athenian policy in moderation showing some regard for
the interests of the other group,. peace had been preserved.2
If war was to happen, one or both of the two groups would
need to diverge from this course, and this divergence he
was beginning to observe. A clash was then not automatic
or inevitable, but it remained possible.
1. 1,. 22, 4· 2 11,. 6;, ; .
7
Few communities nowadays can bring themselves to
believe that they are the aggressors, or to admit that the
preservation of peace is not their prime purpose. In the
fifth century B.c. it was admitted that peace is better than
war, but this in itself did not make it a crime to embark
upon war of whatever kind. In those days the sense of
guilt arose when to go to war involved the breach of sworn
obligations, or, though less clearly, disregard of past
benefits received from your opponent.! If an ally of
Athens denounced her alliance with Athens, the right to
act against that ally was not questioned. As appears from
the speech of the Mityleneans at Olympia when they broke
their alliance,2 they must seek to show that this is a species
of self-defence against the prospective breach of the terms
of the alliance on the part of Athens. Moreover, when
states have obligations which conflict with each other, they
can plead the one obligation against the other. This choice
between contending obligations confers what approaches
freedom of action. In defauh of such a plea, states are
expected to abide by treaties until any time-limit written
into the treaty has expired.3 Thucydides could not ignore
the general validity of these presumptions, which go some
way towards the maintenance of peace. But there is an
overriding consideration that states are, and may be,
guided by positive self-interest and that a marked disparity
in strength may justify stronger states in imposing their
will upon weaker states.
The Thirty Years Truce of 445 B.c., which impHed a
general equality between the High Contracting Powers,
1 r, 32, I. 2 III,9 ff.
3 See v, 28, 2 for the attitude of Argos in 4u B.C.
8
The Background of the Worlc
Sparta and Athens, does not precisely justify, but does
condone, action aimed at restoring the balance of power,
though sworn obligations to keep the peace retain their
formal validity. When the Spartans send to inquire of the
god of Delphi if it will he better for them to go to war with
Athens,1 the answer is not that they will be in the right if
they do so, but that the god will side with them and assist
their efforts. The issue of right and wrong is not decided:
all that is asserted is the intention of the god. When a
plague visits Athens, it makes the action of Apollo visible
as it had been in the first book of the Iliad.2 When the war
turns in Athens' favour at Sphacteria, Spartans doubt if
they were in the right six years before . Such was the
nearest thing to inter-state morality which a fifth-century
Greek would expect to exist. And it was not a historian''s
business to refute these ideas, without which his history
would be out of tune with the realities of the time.
If this is so, why did Thucydides expect that war would
come? Pericles had been credited with the saying that he
already saw a cloud of war coming up from the Pelopon-
nese,3 and he was weatherwise and presumably said what
he thought. So far as it was the duty of Sparta to justify
her hegemony in the Peloponnese by acting to assert the
interests and satisfy the wishes of her allies, Sparta could
set that duty against her sworn obligations to keep the
peace. She was free to disregard the wishes of her allies,
but at the risk of forfeiting their support of Spartan
hegemony. It must for a time have seemed to Thucydides
uncertain which way Sparta would go, towards war or
towards peace. He had seen Sparta go towards peace when
1 1, 118, J• 2 LI. 43 ff. 3, Plutarch, Pericles, 8, 7.
the quarrel between Corinth and Corcyra led them both
to the verge of war.I Two years later, she went towards
war, and the cloud of war became visible on the horizon.
Athens limited her action in support of Corcyra against
Corinth and so did not act contrary to the Thirty Years
Truce2 on a reasonable interpretation of that instrument.
But what she had done had injured Corinthian interests.
The obligation to submit disputes to arbitration before
going to war was admitted by an offer to submit this, and
any other dispute, to arbitration,3 a clause which it might
be argued did not prohibit war if no arbitration produced a
peaceful settlement. Athens' case was good in logic and
is not refuted by logic, but by the plea of honour and vital
interests that has often been the enemy of arbitration.
What is described as happening at the First Conference
at Sparta must have strengthened Thucydides' expectation
that a general war was coming. So, too, did what happened
at Potidaea, though, apart from old re]ations and rights
between Potidaea and her mother-city Corinth which did
not constitute rights under the Thirty Years Truce, this
was in itself no more a casus helli than Athenian action
against Samos and Byzantium some ten years before. The
unilateral declaration that the Thirty Years Truce was at
an end,4 like the answer of the Delphian Apollo that he
would side with Sparta,. points to the high probability of
war,. but did not justify it. If it takes two to make a quarrel,
it may take two to avoid one, and that was to Thucydides
a fact of life, and now one of the two groups had turned
towards war and away from peace.
1 I, 28, I. l 44, I.
I,
3 1, 14). 4 I, 87, 6.
10
War might be avoided if Athens was ready to make
serious concessions in the cause of peace. And that
Pericles was determined to prevent if his eloquence and
authority could prevent it.l So, instead of two sides
working towards peace there was not even one,. once
Pericles had his way.
Thucydides has no word of condemnation for Pericles,
now or at any time. He describes how the Spartans
negotiate to get their way without war, once a new set of
ephors had come into office and the Spartans become more
guided by the attitude of the king Archidamus. To judge
from the internal evidence of his narrative within the limits
of the ideas of his time, Thucydides, in the first book, gives
a fair account of what happened. His expectation was
justified by events, and in what follows we have his account
of the war that began in 431 B.c., a war in which so far as
right and wrong prescribe the actions of states, Athens was
in the right. This did not mean to Thucydides that Athens
was destined to emerge from it safe, even victorious.
Pericles is credited, in a phrase that matches him, with
the pronouncement that wars are normally won by
financial reserves guided by wise direction.2 Thucydides'
history of the Ten Years War shows how far this was true
in this particular instance. Such is the background against
which we must see his record of what lay between the out-
break of hostilities and the peace of Nicias. The history is
written adnarrandum non adprohandum. Neither the war nor
its result was inevitable,, nor was it dictated by logic, even
the logic of events, for wars do not proceed by logic, they
proceed, in his phrase, unguided by knowledge or reason,3
l I
, 127,~ 3· 2 n, 13, 2 •.
II
Thucydides an.d his History
and what happens is subject to an irrational element of
chance which may mock the wisdom of the wise and the
bravery of the brave. In so far as this is so, what happens
is dramatic, if that is what it happens to be; and the record
must be plain and true to reality, neither to' point a moral'
nor 'adorn a tale'.
As something to listen to, the absence of anything that belongs
to myth will perhaps make it seem to provide less pleasure.
But if those who will wish to study the dear record of what
happened in the past and what will, in due course, tend to be
repeated with some degree of similarity (as is the way of
human events) judge this work to he of help to them, it will
content me. It has, too, been composed to be a possession
for ever rather than a show piece for a moment's hearing.I
This is what is claimed for it. (It may be added in

passing that 'hearing' includes 'reading' for, in that
period, it was usual to read aloud to oneself.) When the
historian says 'it will content me' he means that its
primary or main purpose has been achieved, though the
author is free to add to it, when he is moved to do so,.
something that does not fall within these particular limits
of content. When,. for example, he writes of the final
disaster in Sicily and the bloodstained waters of the
Assinarus2 or the wild massacre at the defenceless town of
Mycalessus3 or the closing plea of the Plataeans to their
Spartan judges, 4 he speaks as his heart moves him to speak.
Nothing can he more vivid than the account of the :fighting
in the streets of Plataea, the pehing rain, the shrieks of the
women on the roofs, the woman moved by pity to give
1 I, 22, 4. 2 VII, 84, ).
3 vu, 29, 4. 4 m, 59, 4·
12
the fugitives an axe 'to cut the bar of an unguarded gate' .1
All this is 'pity and terror', and so the drama of what
happened comes into its own. But the primary, the main
purpose, is intellectual enlightenment-' the clear record of
what happened' for those who would study it.
The history is not didactic in form: what it supplies is
the material to study, and what his readers are, above all,.
to gain from it is a mediated experience, the possession of
that experience which is, in a statesman, the beginning of
wisdom. This help he gives his readers, and for centuries it
has served the purpose it sets out to serve. How this pur-
pose is served in the narrative and in the speeches presented
in the work, will be discussed later (chapters 2 and 3). The
reader is to be a man who, in his own day, faces a situation,
and faces it better in act or speech because he can discover
how, in the past, men of like passions to his own acted and
spoke in comparab]e situations. The more he gives his
mind to the study the more experience he gains,. and so
its value requires that it will always be at hand for the
reader to use if he has the will and wit to use it. The work
will not tell him what is destined to happen, it will train
him to use his judgment, and it may give him the courage
to act by the knowledge how in like situations 'it actually
happened'. It may not help the fooUsh or the timid, but it
will help to make clever men and brave men more clever
and more brave if they give their minds to his record.
13
CHAPTER 2
THE NARRATIVE
The story of the narrative of military operations is bound

to be related to the whereabouts of the historian and his
means of procuring information. From the beginning of
his literary activity to his exile in 424 B.C. we can only
surmise where Thucydides was at the time of events.
Until the outbreak of hostilities in 431 B.c. he could be
either in Athens or on his estate in the Thracian area, or
travelling about. Once he began to expect that a war of
great importance was approaching, he could acquire, at
first or second hand, news of what was afoot. He was a
man of rank and wealth, doubtless well acquainted with
like personages here and there throughout Greece. He
knows the composition of fleets and the names of their
admirals, at times with details that suggest knowledge
derived from the cities where enterprises began, for they
might not readily be known elsewhere.
There were at Corinth two notables, both called
Aristeus,, and the patronymics that distinguished them
might be provided by an informant who knew that this
was so.1 Even without this reason he might give to men
their patronymics just because his informant supplied
them from local knowledge and the record might be useful
later in tracing the actions of the squadrons they corn-
1 I, 29, 2; 60,See G. T. Griffith, in Proceedings of the Cam6ridge

2.
Philological Society (1961), pp. 21 ff., for Thucydides' use of patro-
nymics.
14
The Narrative
manded. In the Epic heroes are often described as the son
of this man or that, and this practice might affect an early
historical narrative.
Once the historian's attention was attracted to diplo-
matic actions at Athens, he would make sure of hearing, or
at least hearing about, the course of those actions if not
the names of their several agents. It was enough for his
purpose to call the envoys who came to Athens by the
names of the cities which sent them, as 'the Corcyraeans'
or 'the Corinthians'. These envoys represented their
cities and the pleas of each city are common~y grouped
together in one speech, even if several speeches were
delivered. Where a debate followed in the Athenian
Assembly, it was enough to generalize the effects of
speeches in favour of this or that course of action. To
be able to do this,. the historian must have knowledge of
the speeches made before a final decision was reached.
So when Peloponnesian deputations spoke for their
cities at Sparta, it would be the historian's care to discover
enough for his purpose, as it would be desirable for the
generals at Athens to be informed of the course of such a
debate. It suits the economy of Thucydides' work to put
on record what he regarded as of especial importance. The
same would be true of the Second Conference at Spartal
in which the general attitude of the Peloponnesians
towards a united effort against Athens would be elicited
by discussion, for a discussion marked an approach to
military action. The diplomatic interchanges of the
following winter were staged at Athens, and so would be
within Thucydides' knowledge, and it would be part of
l I, H9 ff..
15
that plain and intelligible account of what happened which
it was his purpose to give to his readers for their study.
Once hostilities broke out and the war was in progress,
his observation of events would require information
supplied to him from this place or that, and this means that
he took pains to procure it, and only a glance at the map
is needed to show how handy and far-reaching such sources
of information were. The Spartans tended to be secretive, I
and there is not much information which must have ori-
ginated there, but most cities were whispering galleries,,
where much could be overheard or observed by men who
could take the news to Athens. 1t would he hard for the
concentration of a fleet or army to remain unknown in the
streets or docks of Corinth, or at such a military centre as
the Isthmus became.2 And in neutral Argos there could
be a clearing-house of information well within reach of
Athens. The collection of information from these places
was Iaborious,3 but Thucydides was not the man to avoid
taking trouble.
Most enterprises were brief and at short range, and, while
they were happening, the historian could quickly learn
about what was achieved. The sailing out of a fleet from
the Piraeus would be known, if not its particular objective,
which might he concealed beneath the phrase 'round the
Peloponnese '. 4 When a fleet returned, its doings would be
reported to the Assembly and so become common know-
ledge. Athenian casualties would he reported and enemy
casualties could he known wherever the Athenians re-
mained masters of the field and handed over to the enemy
1 v, 54, 1; 68, 2. 2 E.g. n,. 10.
3 1, 22, 3. 4 IV, 2, 4.
16
The Narrative
their dead for burial. The fog of war was thin and apt to
lift. Even Spartan secretiveness was not all-concealing.
Thucydides knew that Brasidas was the first Spartan
publicly praised and that for his action at Methone,t and
what was published at Sparta would soon reach Athens in
one form or another.
In some operations, as those of Phormio off the
Corinthian Gulf in 429 B.c.,2 the record seems to reveal
autopsy3 which may derive from the presence of the
historian or from the enemy prisoners sent to Athens. For
it seems that prisoners were not kept incommunicado by
their captors. 4 So too, the Athenian defeat in Aetolia is
described with a touch of feeling which may reflect
personal knowledge at first or second hand.5
Granted that information and informants could reach
Thucydides at Athens or elsewhere, he applied himself to
the sifting and evaluation of these reports and was at pains
to reach the truth about what happened, especially by the
questioning of his informants so as not to be deceived by
mere rumours, by partisanship or forgetfulness. 6 A shrewd
and factual account could be written, and the most natural
and convenient time for this writing would be while the
situation and evidence for events were fresh in the
historian's memory and that of his informants .
This state of affairs continued until,. in 424 B.c.,
Thucydides went into exile, 7 so that most of his former
contacts were broken. From this point onwards the
narrative is less continuous and less complete, and gaps in
1 11, 25, 2. 2 u, 83 ff. 3 E.g . II, 91.

4 IV, 40, 2. 5. III, 98 ' 4· 6 l!,. 22,. J.
7 v, 26, 5·
2 17 AT
the historian's knowledge may be observed. But, as he
says, making a virtue of necessity, he was able to study
events in enemy statesl for he could move more freely
once the armistice of 42 3 B.C. was concluded.
After the Peace of Nicias and the treaty between Sparta
and Athens in 421 B.c. Thucydides may have hoped that if
Amphipolis was duly restored to Athens,2 his responsi-
bility for its loss might have been forgotten and forgiven,
so that he might return to Athens and publish what he had
written. But it did not turn out that way, and it looks as if
he continued a record of events without any clear purpose
for its ultimate use. This is suggested hy the fact that when
he marks the end of a year reckoned from his starting point
in 43 I :s.c.3 he does not, as before, say that it was of a war
'of which Thucydides wrote the history'. lt may he
observed that the source of his information now appears to
be cities in the Peloponnese including Sparta, which he
could b,e free to visit. It looks, indeed, as if he was in the
confidence of the Spartan king Agis. 4 And it may he
within these years 421-415 B.c. that he visited Syracuse
and acquired the know]edge of that theatre of war which
appears in his account of the Sici]ian Expedition.
Thucydides' account of the events of the first few years
after the Peace of Nicias makes them seem of transient
importance,. except for the Battle of Mantinea,. which gave
to Sparta a sense of security5 which could free her from that
'alarm' which explained the o:riginal outbreak of war.6
Then came the news that Athens was heing induced to
2 .
·v,18,5.
4 See v, 58, 4; 71, 1, 3.
6 1, 23, 6.
18
The Narrative
embark on a great enterprise, 'most worthy of record'. It
was a theme which might stand by itself, a war in its own
right, born of self-confidence, the self-confidence shown
at Melos the year before. He set himself to discover and
recount its origins and its vicissitudes. He may by now
have renewed his contacts with Athenian affairs even,.
perhaps, with Alcibiades himself, so as to know why and
how the Athenians set out in great strength and with high
hopes of success.
There had recently been published the work of
Antiochus of Syracuse on the history of Sicily,1 and
Thucydides could draw upon it for the picture of that
island, so diversified by Greek settlements in the more
distant past. The account of the operations of the enter-
prise during its first months reveals knowledge from both
sides, and this he might acquire when, in the winter of
41) B.c., envoys from Syracuse and that notable exile,
Alcibiades, forgathered at Corinth and then at Sparta2 with
their several stories of what had happened and why.
What followed, including the dispatch of the Spartan
GyHppus, to rally and direct the Syracusan resistance
would reveal to him the possibility that the original war
would be resumed. The news that the Athenians had pro-
vided a casus helli by an attack on Spartan territory3 and
that the division of Athenian forces had made a recru-
descence of the war a promising adventure for Sparta,4
would make him expect that the original war would he
resumed. Thus the shadow of a general war fell across his
pages, and he conceived the idea that all that had happened
1 See K. J. Dover in MAIA, VI (1953), 1-20.
2 VI,, 88, 7-10. 3 VI,, 105, 2. 4 VI, 93, I.
since the first hostilities in 4 3 I B.c. was one continuing
theme only half interrupted hy some six years of peace that
hardly deserved the name.
The Spartan invasion of Attica and the occupation of
D'ecelea marked the beginning of this continuation; he
took up again the narrative of his original history at a
time when, like almost everyone else, he believed that the
downfall of Athens was certain and imminent) But this
did not happen. With resilient courage Athens braced
herself to defy what seemed her fate. For three years2 she
held out against her old and new enemies, who now in-
cluded an active and triumphant Syracuse,. three years
which are described until his work, as we possess it, ends
in the middle of an episode.
Thucydides may well have thought, as these three years
passed, that if Athens could ward off defeat so long,. her
final collapse might be deferred or even avoided; and, if
that happened so that Athens won through to survival, or
even victory, it was a theme which he must follow to the
end, whatever the end might be. To abandon his task and
leave it for others to continue would he a denial of his self-
confident purpose, and if this was so,. he must have believed
the continuing of his work the first charge on his efforts as
a historian. In the end, as he came to write in an addition
to a famous chapter in his second book, the Athenians,.
disunited by the rivalries of ambitious men, came to utter
defeat in the crowning f oHy of Aegospotami, which
wasted that margin of financial strength and denied the
wise strategy which they had inherited from Pericles)
] VIII, 2, 1, 4• 2 See beiow, p .. 127.
3 II, 6 5, 13.
20
The Narrative
For the rest, we know only that his exi]e had lasted
twenty years before he returned to Athens, to find a
Spartan garrison on the Acropolis and the city in the hands
of the men well-named the Thirty Tyrants. What hap-
pened after that is a matter of conjecture which will be
discussed in a later chapter (pp. 104 f.).
Soon after he returned from his exile we may suppose
that he wrote or completed that second preface (v, 26)
which introduces the supplement to the history of the
ten years that ended with the Peace of Nicias.
At this point, it may be convenient to refer to
certain digressions inserted in the narrative. The first
of these, that on the fifty years that followed the Persian
war, is relevant to the Spartan alarm at the growth of
Athenian power, and its general effect is to explain that
alarm by an account of the rise of Athenian power
which reveals that ever-active enterprise which has been
adduced by the Corinthians to encourage that alarm
(1, 70). It serves its purpose well and seems to be written
ad hoe.
Critics, ancient and modern, have criticized the arrange-
ment of the first book, which has, indeed, been accused of
being 'chaotic'. But this reproach fails to take account of
a form of composition known at the time, which has been
described as an arrangement in loops (Ringkomposition).l
It is, then, a correlative of the reconstruction of early
Greek history (1, 2-20), and balances it. This balance
suggests, though it does not prove beyond doubt,. that
1 See R. Katicic, 'Die Ringkomposition im ersten Buche des
Thukydideischen Geschichtswerkes ', Wiener Studien, LXX (1957),
179-96.
2J
these two parts of the book were written with each other
in mind, and so at about the same time. As we read the
excursus we are conscious of the way Athens advanced,.
unchecked by the failure of the Egyptian Expedition, using
the power protected by her fortification, the growth of her
fleet in line with the policy of Thernistocles, the achieve-
ments of Cimon, all these establishing or maintaining
the Athenian control of her allies,. the breach with Sparta
and what is called the First Peloponnesian War. This ends
with the Thirty Years Truce, which concentrated Athenian
attention on the maintenance of what was now a system of
domination over her allies and ends with the suppression
of the revolts of Samas and Byzantium. It fills in the out-
line of the past as it must have appeared to many who
attended the first Conference of Sparta. That seems to he
its purpose and its justification in the arrangement of the
book.
A discussion of the passage in r, 97, 2 (see below,
pp. 122 f.) shows that this excursus was written before,. and
not after, the publication of Hellanicus' Attic History or of
that part of it which covers these fifty years. It may then
be regarded as providing evidence for the 'truest explana-
tion', i.e. the Spartan alarm at the advance of Athenian
power,. and may be written about the time when Thucy-
dides formulated his opinion, not long after the first
Conference at Sparta. If so, it was written when it was
needed in the economy of the work ..
Whatever Thucydides said about the chronological
shortcoming of Hellanicus, it will be observed that the
excursus does not, in fact, exemplify an exceptional degree
of precision in that respect. This becomes clear when we
22
The Narrative
attempt to reconstruct the course of events without the use
of any other evidence.
Other evidence, indeed, derived in part from inscrip-
tions, suggests that the conversion of what had been a free
confederacy into what may be caned an empire has been
placed rather too early. As is shown by Gomme,1 it omits
events of some importance. It appears to pass from the
tradition about one great figure to the next, to Themi-
stodes, to Cimon, and to Pericles, as a young man of
Thucydides' social connections would have heard of them.
The revolt of Samas, perhaps the earliest operation of war
in which the historian may have seen war, is recorded with
somewhat more detail.2 The practical cessation of hosti-
Hties between Athens and Persia after the death of Cimon
may have made little impression on him, and he has little,
at this stage, to say about the Thirty Years Truce. But
whatever its shortcomings for our purposes, it is enough
for his. It does, as he says, show how the Athenian power
took shape (1, 97, 2).
Of other digressions in Book 1,. the first (1, 126) explains
how a taint of blood-guiltiness rested upon Pericles; the
second, made in reply, that brings in not only the Spartan
Pausanias and the guilt of his death but also Themistocles,
has a remoter reference. That his purpose is to contrast the
treatment of great men hy the Spartans and by the Athe~
nians appears improbable: the Greeks would not look for
a moral to draw. It may be suggested that Thucydides was
tempted by a mistaken desire to show that what Herodotus
1 Commentary, r, pp. 394 ff.

2 See E. Harrison in Proceedings of the Camhridge Philological
Society (1912), 9·
23.
or other logographoi could do he could do better, and by
his admiration for Themistocles' intellectual resources
which inspired the tradition about him. If this be so, this
part of the book may belong to his youth rather than to his
maturer years.
In the second book (96-7) there is a sizeable excursus on
the kingdom of the Odrysian Thracians, its geography and
its resources. It is not so written as to satisfy curiosityl
about strange lands and their customs; it is concerned with
its means to make war, especially upon Macedon, and it
would be very relevant if the Thracians had become active
allies of Athens, if their invasion had crippled Macedon
and its king, Perdiccas.
Some kind of an agreement had been made for co-
operation between Thracian and Athenian forces, and it is
at least probable that the excursus was written while that
co-operation was still expected to occur. It did not, in
fact, happen; instead we are given what appears to be the
official explanation that the Athenians did not believe that
the Thracians would keep their appointment (n, 101, 1).
We may surmise that the Athenian generals came to doubt
the expediency of fighting in this company. Four years
later, in the Acharnians,. Aristophanes makes a jest of the
philathenian attitude of the Odrysian prince, and the
hiring of Thracian troops.2 This excursus, then, seems
to be a piece d' occasion and the occasion was soon past,
but the excursus, already written, survived in its original
pface.
The war draws in its borders, and Thrace, like Persia,
I Contrast the sHght note on the Echlnades (11, 102, 3-6).
2 Lt. 141 ff.
24
The Narrative
remains out of sight and out of mind for another decade
or more.
With the inception of the great expedition to Sicily a
place is found for a digression on the variegated coloniza-
tion of the island in the distant past. There is no such
digression on Sicily to introduce the lesser enterprise in
that area that began in 427 B.c. (see p. 76) to which we
may assume Thucydides himself did not attach importance.
There is nothing to suggest that the historian was then
looking forward to any great enterprise, or with any
knowledge of what in fact happened in 41; B.c. (seep. 77)
after Thucydides could have read the Sicilian History of
Antiochus of Syracuse not long before the end of the
Ten Years War (p. 19).
There remains one other digression, that on the later
history of the Peisistratid dynasty in v1, ; 4-9, which
covers in more detail some of the same ground as the
brief reference to the killing of Hipparchus by Harmo-
dius and Aristogeiton in the first book (1, 20) .. The
immediate relevance of the digression in Book VI is to
Athenian fears of a conspiracy to set up a tyranny at
Athens.. Its effect is to rebuke such fears. We are left to
believethatifitrequired Spartan help to overthrowa tyrant
dynasty, no one man without foreign help was likely to
make himself a tyrant in Athens after nearly a century of
freedom.
But, when all is said,. this excursus appears to go beyond
the normal adherence to the events of the time, and to be a
parade ofThucydides' knowledge, based upon evidence on
which the historian plumes himself, when he adds to what
he had already known about epigraphicevidence at Athens,
2)
evidence which he may have seen at Lampsacusl during his
exile, or even earlier. More than that cannot be said, and
even that is a matter of conjecture. It may, however,
suggest that a considerable interval of time lay between the
writing of Book rand Book v1, and,. in so far, it tells against
any theory that the whole work was written in one rela-
tively short continuous period of composition.
l VI, H.l, 3·
CHAPTER 3
THE SPEECHES
Thucydides has told his readers! what they are to think

about the content of the speeches either in the first part or
the whole of his work. When he wrote the sentence is not
known for certain, whether it was before he began to write
the narrative which follows, or after he had written his
account of the antecedents of the war that broke out in
431 or at some later date after he had had a quorum of
experience in writing the History or, perhaps more prob-
ably, when he had written his account of the Ten Years
War or, even conceivab]y,, at the end of the twenty-seven
years that began in 43,1 B.c. and went on untH the faU of
Athens. It is wise to suppose that he meant what he said
and was at pains to say what he meant .
If this is so,. then his readers have been warned that the
speeches are not, and could not be for reasons stated, the
ipsissima verha of the speakers.
This does not imply that, if he had before him a complete
record of what was actually said, he would have decided to
reproduce it, even after a sort of translation of the words
into his own style and dialect,. and so give the actual text
of what was said. We are told, indeed, that, in composing
his speeches, the historian kept as closely as possible to 'the
overall purport or purpose of what was actuaUy said',,
written in such a way as to coincidewithhis opinion of what
the several speakers would most likely have presented to
1 1, i.2, 1 (see below, pp. 120 f.).
27
their hearers as being 'what the situation required'. The
reference to his own opinion presents a limiting factor one
way,. as his reference to the 'overall purport or purpose of
what was actually said' is a limiting factor in another way.
Thus, when the procedure has been applied, the reader wiU
know something at least of what the historian regarded as
what the situation required and an approximation at least
to what was actually said. Thucydides limits his know-
ledge in terms of the difficulty (or even impossibility) of
remembering precisely what was said.
The speeches to which this caveat applies are speeches
which he heard himself or of which he received reports
from others who were present when and where speeches
were made.1 Frailty of memory would only concern him
where he inserts a speech in his history, and it is natural to
assume that he does not in fact insert speeches of which he
cannot have had at any rate some information. So far as
this procedure is applied,. it seems to preclude the insertion
of speeches when he does not know something at least of
what was actually said. This means that, where this pro-
cedure applies, all the speeches we have are based upon
some knowledge . Under this procedure no speech would
appear where no speech was made, for no one can have any
knowledge of a speech which never existed.
To insert speeches with no knowledge at aU of their
actual content would be so notable a departure from this
procedure that it is very difficult to believe that he would
not have warned his readers that such a departure has been
made. A very heavy burden of proof rests upon those who
assert that this happened, and a study of the relevant
1 I, 22, I.
The Speeches
circumstances strongly suggests that Thucydides did not
insert in his history speeches which are wholly fictitious in
the sense that they have no basis whatever of ascertained
fact. And it is very difficult to escape from the conclusion
that at whatever time he announced this procedure he
intended it to apply to the whole work in which it occurs.
It may be possible to suppose that, at times, he took
more freedom in the interpretation of what material he
had, but hardly possible to suppose that this freedom
extended to the insertion of speeches which are wholly
imaginary and without any basis of ascertained fact. There
may be differences between the closeness to reality of
different speeches varying with Thucydides' sources of
information ..
For example, as regards the speech of Sthenelaidasl at
Sparta, ff Thucydides was informed of the exceptional
voting procedure applied by the ephor, he would presum-
ably also be informed of 'the overall purport and purpose
of what was actually said' by him. Here and there,. it is just
possible that Thucydides assumed that a general en-
couraged his troops before battle,, as Nicias is said to do
before the first engagement against the Syracusan levies,,2
and that he felt himselfon firm ground when he attributed
to Nicias the encouragement of saying that his army was
more experienced than the Syracusan levies,, as became
almostapparentbythecourse of the battle. It was so much
whatthe situation required that he might conceivably have
taken it for granted. But this ought not to apply to
deliberative speeches on policy.
It is often asserted that such a deliberative speech could
1 1, 86. 2 VI 3 68.
not have taken its present form because no Assembly could
have followed the arguments as they Hstened to the orator
declaiming them. But the speeches we possess are not so
unintelligible as that, even if they require the reader to give
close attention to what he read. What Thucydides wrote
is for his readers to peruse at their leisure with the text
before them, and with the custom of reading aloud,. so that
they could study their meaning with knowledge of where
their study was difficult. The writer may diverge from the
ipsissima verba of the speeches, but does his best 'to come
as nearly as possible' to what matters most, 'the overall
purport or purpose of what was actually said' (p. 121). It
is not enough to say that he restricted himself to what the
speakers were convinced was true, for now and again he
makes a speaker say something which he knows the speaker
cannot have believed to be true or something which he
himself cannot have believed to be true in fact. He is well
aware that speakers making a case for some policy or
action may say things which neither the historian nor the
speaker believe to he true. The simplest and most certain
example of this is the false statement attributed to Brasidas
about the identity of his army before Acanthus with his
army before Megara some months before.I Brasidas must
have known that it was false, and Thucydides in a later
passage2 says that it was, and this could not be due to
information not yet at his disposal when he wrote the
speech he attributes to Brasidas. Brasidas, too, knew at
the time that it was false, although his Acanthian hearers
did not. Where there was a difference between what
appears in a speech and what has appeared in the narrative
1 IV, Sf. 2 IV, 1108, 5·
30
The Speeches
we must suppose that the truth as Thucydides sees it is to
be found in the narrative, which is directed to the statement
of what happened in a way the words of an orator may not
be. It is a fault in method to treat these statements other-
wise, and not to admit that a speech may contain a state-
ment at variance with the facts, but 'an approximation to
the purport or purpose of what was in fact said', and that
is all.
These considerations do not greatly diminish the value
to a historian of what appears in a speech: what is needed is
a critical and careful evaluation of what the reader reads,
after the warning which he has received. A speaker may
therefore fail to give the truth, the whole truth and nothing
but the truth, but what is given deserves close attention
within the limits which Thucydides has set himself after
giving the reader warning of what he is doing.
As a rule, the circumstances of speeches,. when care£uUy
studied, reveal a possibility of this required quota of know-
ledge. This possibility applies to speeches which scholars
have declared to possess no such basis of knowledge as
gives to them an element at least of authenticity. It may
be illustrated by three instances of speeches in which any
element of authenticity has often been denied.
Take first the speech of Athenian envoys at the first
Conference at Sparta) That Athenian envoys were present
and were allowed to intervene is stated as a fact of equal
authority with other events which are being described. It
is a priori probable that Pericles would wish to know what
was being said at Sparta. It was not alien from Greek
procedure to admit their presence and to allow them to
1 1, 73-8.
31
speak. If they were not present and so did not speak, the
statement that they were would be known to be false by
the time at which he may have expected to publish his
account of the war to which they were a preamble: what-
ever we may think of the suitability of the speech, it is very
rash to deny that a speech was made by Athenian envoys.
Secondly, we may consider the Plataean and Theban
speeches after the surrender of the city. That speeches were
made is beyond serious doubt. But how could Thucydides
have any direct knowledge about their content and general
purport or purpose? As for the Plataean speech, Thucy-
dides, in a way that is an exception to his usual practice,
names the speakers. 0 ne of them was Lacon, proxenos of
1
Sparta, who could very properly have been in favour of

capitulation on terms which included a fair judgment by
the Spartans.I If that was so, he could affirm that he had
done Sparta a service, for the capitulation was in Sparta's
interests.2 And if he did, his life would be spared and so
the historians could discover at first or second hand the gist
of his plea. As for what the Thebans said in reply, this
could be known to him at least as soon as the armistice of
423-422 enabled the historian to make inquiries about it,
at Thebes or elsewhere. It need not he just a .fictitious
refutation of what the Plataeans said.
FinaUy, we reach the Melian Dialogue (v,. 85-113). The
occasion is not just a .fiction . That there were negotiations
is beyond doubt. It was the duty of the Athenian generals
to secure, if possible,. the surrender of the city without
recourse to a siege. And the Dialogue fa highly realistic
and to the point for that purpose. The general trend of the
l HJ, )2, 2. 2 lhi,d.
The Speeches
arguments on either side was known to the Athenian
negotiators, who would report to Athens, not, of course,.
in a proces-verhal of the discussions but their general
character, if only to show they had done their best for
their purpose.
The same would be true of the report which the Melian
representatives must have made to their fellow citizens,
some of whom, if only those who betrayed the city, were
spared. We must also suppose that the first thing the
Melians did before the Athenian lines were drawn round
their cityl was to send to Sparta to ask for help, reporting
at least the trend of the negotiations. If so, this could reach
Thucydides,, who, if he was not at Sparta at the time (p. 69)
could find outwhatwasknown there from whatever source.
If this is so,. and the possibility seems to be beyond doubt,
Thucydides could procure the knowledge that he needed in
order to recount, in the form of a dialogue, the general
course of the discussion.
These are important instances of speeches, or of a
dialogue as a substitute for set speeches,, which scholars
have too hastily regarded as going wholly beyond the
historian's knowledge. He could know enough for his
purpose, which was to assist his readers to study 'the
plain reality of what happened'.
Granted that in all, or practically all, the speeches there
is an authentic element, there is to be found also a stylistic
character which is uniform throughout them all. This is
immediately apparent, and does not require justification.
It is assumed that his readers are familiar with the old-
fashioned Attic which is used for the narrative. There is
1 V, u4, I.
3 33 AT
no attempt at the vraisem.blance that might be suggested by
a. variation between the vocabulary and syntactical usage
of Pericles or any other Athenian of the day and the laconic
Doric in which we assume the kings or ephors would
address the Spartan Apella. The army which Archidamus
addressed at the Isthmus before the invasion of Attica
contained officersl who spoke in the dialects of their
cities;. the troops of Brasidas were in part helots, in part
men from Peloponnesian states, but it would not occur to
a Greek reader that they might not all equally well under-
stand what their commander was saying. What mattered
was the reader. This diction was not an absolute rule, or a
literary convention from which Thucydides could not
free himself,. as he does when it comes to the citation of a
treaty written in Doric in v,. 77 and 79. It was convenient,
the more as the argumentation used by the historian was
conceived of in his own speech as well as thought.
Tbis argumentation proceeds throughout in much the
same manner with the use of gnomic generalizations to
assist the deployment of the dialectic which is uniform
throughout as is the addiction to antitheses, above all
between 'word' and 'act'. The vulgarian Clean can echo
what Pericles had been made to say with the same forcible
dignity. Now and again, in some terse and bold, almost
contemptuous, aphorism,.we may seem to hear Alcibiades,2
or Nicias in the words of his conventional piety.3 If the
style may be the man, the man may use the style, but with
economical delicacy of touch. To the dialectical force of a
Pericles Cleon may add his natural violence, the partner of
1 n, 10, 3. 2 E.g. VI,. 18, 3·
3 vu,. 77, 3-4.
34
The Speeches
his persuasiveness.! The moral is that Thucydides is the
master of his own style and not the slave of any literary
convention.
One hint of his masterful way is a liking for paradox,
which, as it were, calls to attention the hearers of the
speeches by a sharp emphasis which challenges normality.
The historian had taken with him into exile a formed and
consistent style which, indurated by constant us,e, stayed
with him to the end of his work.
There is one apparent change in the historian's practice
which itis not easy to explain. In Book v between Brasidas'
speech before the battle of Amphipolis and the Melian
Dialogue, and throughout the whole of Book vrn, no set
speeches occur. It has been thought that Book VIII was
unfinished and would have contained speeches had it
received its final form. But when its diction is examined,
it does not appear to be less finished than some other of the
books. Some scholars have stressed a pronouncement
attributed to Cratippus that the historian decided to
abandon the use of set speeches because they hampered
the pace of the narrative and presented difficulties to the
readers.2 There is no agreement whether Cratippus was
a younger contemporary of Thucydides and so might
have been in his counsels, or whether he was a later writer
who was just giving his own deduction from the absence of
set speeches, a deduction which is no more than his own.
The most probable explanation is that Book vrrr contains
no debate of the first importance and that if Thucydides
had thought of introducing such a debate at the time of the
oligarchical revolution of 41 I B.c. he might have preferred
1 :m, 36, 6. 2 Dionysius of Halicarnassus, 16, p. 349.
to wait until he could obtain more information on his
hoped-for return to Athens. For whatever reason he did
not carry out this intention: there is no sign that he intro-
duced into his work matter to be discovered later at
Athens, such as is cited in Aristotle's Constitution of
Athens (29ff.).
The oligarchic revolution was shortlived and transient
in its effects, and Thucydides may have been content with
what is found in Book VIII as we have it. In that book we
find more of Thucydides' judgment of the personalities
and of their policies than elsewhere in the works, and this,
taken in conjunction with some reports of speeches in
Oratio Ohliqua,l may have seemed to give what was
required. And if no more seemed needed, Thucydides
may have spared himself the labour of composing set
speeches.
It may be that this explanation may apply to a part of
Book v after the Peace of N icias if Thucydides wrote
those chapters before he came to believe that they were an
integral part of his whole work, so that he wrote with less
elan and intensity of purpose than in earlier books. There
are twelve set speeches in Books VI and vn, but these were
written as belonging to a theme notable in its own right
and then as part of a crescendo of emphasis as the expedi-
tion proceeded.
There is one speech, the Epitaphios of Perides,.2 which
on one theory was written after the fall of Athens in protest
against a .movement that belittled Pericles and Periclean
Athens with him. This theory gives to the speech a dra-
matic effect, partly as a contrast between the bright hopes
1 E.g. vm, 53. 2 n, 35-46.
The Speeches
of 431 n.c. and the dark shadow of the Plague in the next
year, and partly as a contrast between the high hopes with
which the war began and the disaster which overtook
Athens at the ,end of the whole period of twenty-seven
years. There may be discovered an elegiac note in the
passage in which it is hinted that sacrifices it commemo-
rates may be in vain) Years ago I accepted this thesis,2
but it now seems to me that I was mistaken in following
what, at that time, was the dominant view,. supported as
it was by great names such as Eduard Meyer. It now
appears to me that it was written in 431 n.c., while the
voice of Pericles still sounded in the historian's ears-the
authentic echo of what was demanded of the citizens in
that hour. It is then, as other speeches are, closely linked
to the situation of the moment, when the first year of the
war had appeared to justify Peridean strategy. The fact
that few Athenians had fallen in the cavalry skirmishes of
that summer does not make it less worthy of record.
Athens still stood splendid and united in love for the city,
and this, together with the character of Athenian society,.
is celebrated at that very moment as it deserved. The moral
declension that was to be described in the third book was
still in the future.
There is one more point that deserves mention in this
context. The almost amateurish courage of the Athenians
is proclaimed as a match for the long-studied discipline of
Sparta and her army.3 It is not easy to believe that this
claim would have been made after the indiscipline and
folly of Aegospotami had thrown away Athens' last hope
of survival. Would not a speech so confident and so proud
1 11, 42, 4. 2 Camhridge Ancient History, v, 199, 483. 3 n, 39, r.
37
have seemed bitter irony to the historian if it was then that
he wrote the speech? Thus, difficult as it is to be sure, it
now seems to me that the picture of the high summer of
Athenian power and warlike confidence was written at the
moment when it was true. That bravery and self-devotion
cannot command success is part of the historian's phHo-
sophy of war, and praise is due to those who meet the
dangers of the moment, whatever the ultimate outcome
may prove to be among the paradoxes and vicissitudes
from which no war is exempt.
Whatever our conclusion may be about the date at
which the Funeral Speech was written,. it does not resolve
a question which is perhaps beyond solution. This is how
far the speech is dictated by Thucydides' own view of
Athens and how far by his admiration for Pericles which
led him to allow Pericles to think for him,. so that we may
only find in the speech praise of a community of which
Pericles had been the spiritual and intellectual begetter.
What may come nearest to the truth may be the condusion
that what Thucydides admired and what Pericles accepted
with pride was 'in name a democracy, in deed rule
exercised by the first citizen'. More will be said about this
in a later chapter (pp. 50 ff.).
We may now turn to a group of speeches which may be
considered by themselves. A battle, and a hoplite battle
in particular, often began with generals' speeches on both
sides. In a hoplite battle the speech is, as it were, part of
the battle-cry which started the charge. Thucydides at
Mantinea in 418 B.c. notes that the Spartans do not need
this tonicl and it is their business to keep their heads so as
1 v, 69, 2.
The Speeches
to be able to swing inwards and not merely rush at the
enemy. The object of the speech before such a battle is to
give the troops confidence in themselves, their cause and,
incidentally, their general. It may go back to the Homeric
practice of a man launching a phrase before he launches his
spear or his close-quarters attack. But it has a more
practical effect. In a naval battle, where signalling is
difficult, it is desirable for the captains on ships to know the
general's plan for the battle. It is also encouragement to
discipline and obedience to orders or to dispel some cause
of discouragement. But in smaller encounters Thucy~
dides does not provide a general's speech, and hardly ever
a pair of speeches, one to each side. In the two speeches
of the Peloponnesian admirals and of Phormio in the
Corinthian Gulf,1 the Peloponnesfans are told to trust to
their courage to make up for lack of trained skiH, the
Athenians to trust to discipline and trained skill to make
up for their inferior numbers. The speech of Demosthenes
at Pylos2 is answered not by a formal speech before the
Spartan attack but by the vehement call of Brasidas to
force a landing at all costs.3 Before D elium the speech of
1
Pagondas is about why they should fight,4 ofHippocrates

why they should hope to win.s Before Trafalgar Nelson's
signal in effect reminds the crews of their long acquired
obedience to orders and of their reputation. It in a way
combines the effect of both sets of speeches in the
Corinthian Gulf.
Sometimes there is only one speech, that of the general
who is about to win a victory or achieve a military success.
1 u,. 87, 89. 2 IV, IO. 3 IV, I 1,. 4.
4 IV, 92. 5 IV,, 9·5·
39
The account of the battle is made more intelligible by the
knowledge of what the general wanted to do.1 Sometimes
there may be no speech because the general has not grasped
the situation or because it changes after the operations have
begun. For example, Demosthenes in Aetolia is not given
a speech because he did not make one or anticipate the
course of the fighting. At Sphacteria there are no speeches.
Demosthenes does not explain beforehand how he pro-
poses to achieve his purpose for no such speech fa needed
or could do good. Before Amphipolis Brasidas makes a
speech, hut Clean,. who was not expecting to fight, did not
for he hardly directs the course of the battle. The two
battle speeches, in Illyria and hefore Amphipolis, of
Brasidas2 help to indicate his psychological appreciation
of the enemy and of his own troops,. and the speech of
Phormio underlines the reason for Athenian naval supre-
macy and does not explain the course of the engagement
thatfollowedhecause this is not yet known. The speech of
the Peloponnesian admirals before the battle underlines the
theme of natural courage, rather than of the tactics which
were going to be used. The speech of Demosthenes under-
lines the value of hope, when it is the only thing that
helps. 'Hope is not a good guide, but is a good companion
on the way.' It sets a determined Athenian against a
determined Spartan. The speech of Nicias before the first
engagement with the Syracusans3 states the fact that the
experienced Athenian army can expect to be superior to a
levy en masse of Syracusans. There is no Syracusan speech
1 See 0. Luschnat, Die Feldherrnreden im Geschichtswerk des

Thukydides (Phil. Suppl. xxx1v, 1942).
2 IV, 126; v, 9· 3 VI, 68.
The Speeches
(perhaps because Thucydides did not know what they
said, perhaps because there was no time for it to be made).
Pagondas before Delium underlines his will to fight, and
suggests that the Athenians had perhaps underrated the
Boeotians' determination,. so that the attack, of itself,
would produce a psychological effect on the Athenians.
Sometimes the purpose of the speech is to underline the
importance of the battle and the tactical chances of either
side, as in the speeches before the battle in the Great
Harbour. One might have expected a speech by Demos-
thenes before the night attack on Epipolae,l but that was
not a battle that really went according to plan and it is of
course possible that Demosthenes in order to make sure
of the advantage of surprise did not make a speech but
concerted his plan secretly with the separate commanders.
The speech of Nicias before the retreat (vn, 77) is part
of the characterization of Nidas and stresses the gravity
and indeed tragedy of the retreat.
Where battle is not actually joined there are no general's
speeches. The letter of Nicias to the Athenians2 is not so
much a speech as the Thucydidean account of the situation
as Nicias saw it. The two speeches of Pericles which
discuss the strategical balance of the sides in a future war
are concerned with policy and overall strategy and not
with battle tactics.3 It looks as if Thucydides felt he
needed to know something of what was said to put his
speech in the frame of an immediate operation. In general,.
Greek battles depended more on morale than on tactics,
and the morale of troops is one branch of that psycho-
logical observation of human nature and behaviour that
2 VII, I I - I 5. 3 I, 140-4; II, IJ.
41
was Thucydides' constant study. In particular he makes
the generals' speeches fit the psychology of the general
and that of his troops. He underlines the awareness that
Athenian troops have a quality of elan which may be
brittle if anything happened to upset them.I He has a
valuation of the military quality of troops of different
cities. The tactical conduct of the battle is not anticipated
but is left to be revealed by the course of the engagement
which follows, and this is true of the speeches of Brasidas
to his troops before the battle in Illyria and the battle
before Amphipolis.2
1 E.g. IV, 96, 5· 2 IV, 126; v, 9.
CHAPTER 4
THUCYDIDEAN
DIALECTIC
Thucydides had grown up in a period in which men were

prone to think by way of argument, by the shock of one
thesis colliding with another. The notion that there are
two sides to every question was an assumption preached
by Protagoras, and illustrated in the Clouds of Aristo-
phanes. It is obvious that statesmen in a community where
decisions are reached by persuading a concourse of
citizens to vote one way or another must prevail by argu-
ment which appeals to them. A general must make his
troops so think and feel that their action will match the
purpose of their commander. In most battles a vehement
self-confidence, however induced, gives the best chance of
victory. The Orders of the Day of the Emperor Napoleon
or Field-Marshal Montgomery aim at achieving this. An
army that lost heart had lost the battle (p. 38). In the
deliberations led by statesmen something based more on
intellectual calculation was required and dialectic was here
the art of magnifying the advantages and minimizing the
disadvantages of any particular policy or course of action.
To achieve this result any argument that could persuade
was the right argument, and veracity, the servant and not
the master of argument, is a weapon among others, a
means and not an end.
At the time when Thucydides was learning, his trade, a
most potent argument was the argument from probability,,
43
which, as Aristotle was to say in his Rhetoric,.1 relies upon
the confusion of a general with a particular probability.
More and more, the Greeks had become vulnerable to the
lures of this argument which was now practised in the
courts. Hence we may expect to find, as we do, that
speeches often begin with a generalizing maxim, of which
the present thesis is asserted to be an instance. Prone to
believe that what is often true is always true,.2 a Greek
Assembly might be attuned to an orator's purpose.
A skilful use of this dialectical argument may flatter, while
it deceives,. the hearer's intelligence. The converse of this,,
an apparent paradox, appeals to the quick-witted, for it
suggests that the hearer is cleverer than his neighbours. It
is thus asserted that a man who allows something to
happen is as responsible as a man who takes positive action
to bring it about. This is not always so in real life, but it is
tempting to believe it with an uncritical readiness. It is
what Bacon might have called an idolum fori. A sharp
distinction between what is said and what is actual fact is
an argument in itself, and this distinction had to Thucy-
dides an especial appeal,. for the opposition is highly
inteHigible. So is the distinction drawn between what is
expedient and what is just; each of the two is persuasive
and each is governed by its own rationale, and where they
can be allied, their strength is great. Where their force is
unequal, either may he stressed and prove decisive.
There is one oratorical device which is not often found
in speeches because of the economy of the work. The
speeches are concerned with particular situations which
have been described in the narrative of the events that led
1 II,, XXlV,,
. 10. 2 Cf. Aristotle, Rhetoric, u,. xxi,. 11.
44
Thucydidean D'ialectic
up to them. As a rule, the veracity of the narrative is to he
assumed and what it contains can be taken as read so as to
predispose the hearer to accept the speaker's arguments.
There may be exceptions to this general rule if the
ignorance of the audience can be practised upon. Brasidas, in
his speech at Acanthus (rv, 86-7), is represented as making
a false statement about the size of his army because, as
Grote observed,1 its falsity cannot be discovered before
the decision is taken . To judge from the speech attributed
to Brasidas before the battle of Amphipolis, this mendacity
would appear to him to be a legitimate ruse de guerre,. such
as befits the skill of a shrewd general.2
It has been argued that the historian sets himself to make
his speakers say what they in their heart of hearts believe.
But to do that might be to injure their case, and this injury
is something they must avoid at all costs .
It has also b een argued that the historian's dialectic is
1
used to indicate what he himself believed, so as to correct

his narrative. If this be so, it belies what he says has been
his practice. When he refers to his own opinion it is not his
opinion of what was true hut what the situation would have
required a speaker to say, and these need not be identical..
Themistocles is said to have had a singular capacity for
improvising what the situation required of him,3 but that
might often be a lie,. from which he, of all men, would least
shrink.4
The dialectical methods of Thucydides are at the
disposal of either side in a debate, and so are used im-
partially to reinforce either. AU is fair in war,. and,. pro-
1 History of Greece, v, 3 I 8. 2 v,. 9, ).
3 r, 138, 3· 4 See 1, 137, 4.
4;
verhially, 'war is impartia]', favouring neither one side
nor the other. A speech is like a missile which has one
single purpose, to hit its target. The man who throws the
spear should be able to see his mark, and Thucydides gives
him eyes to see it. The dialectical skill put at the disposal of
a speaker will raise his actual arguments to a higher power.
Thus the reader will hest judge the case for either side,,
and so appreciate the validity of either thesis.. Hence the
validity or wisdom of whatever case prevailed. Thucy-
dides is aware that the right thing may be done for the
wrong reason,. hut his readers will be the wiser if they are
given the arguments in their most cogent and persuasive
form.
But set speeches are not the only way to illuminate the
rationale of actions. It is apparent that in the narrative of
events itis rare for Thucydides to commend o:r to condemn.
The plain and intelligible record of events leaves the
reader to use his own judgment, but, now and again,
narrative is so phrased as to indicate a judgment,. when an
action succeeds or fails according to the actors' view of
what was required. Demosthenes' adventure in Aetolia
appears to fail because he would not wait to secure the help
of troops who would be best fitted to bring it to success.I
The dialectic of action or inaction illuminates the situation.
The fortune of war, in its paradoxical way, may make
good plans fail and bad plans succeed, but it belongs to the
clear story of what happened to indicate at times whether
the plans were good or bad. The Spartans on Sphacteria
are killed or captured within twenty days, but the promise
to achieve this is condemned as 'lunatic' .2 Herein,. it is
] m, 9), 3· 2 IV, 39, 3·
Thucydidean D'ialectic
argued that success is not the one criterion of military
skill and insight. This judgment of Cleon's promise may
be inspired by malice, but that may not make it any less
cogent or less instructive to the future general, who win
learn his trade by studying what happened in the past and
how it happened. In the account of the night attack on
Epipolae, the plain tale of what happened will teach, what
the history of war has so often taught,. that few operations
are so hazardous and unpromising as night attacks, even
if in war' bad may be the best'. All this is the application
of the historian's own study of what happened.
This illumination may be provided by the historian's
choice of what to emphasize and what to leave unrecorded.
In the first year of the War the Athenians invaded the
Megarid, and this is fully described,! for it is part of
the counter-offensive which will raise Athenian morale ..
Thucydides came to know that something of this kind
happened in each of the next six years and he says so, but
in no one of these years does he mention it, for the effect
was progressively smaller. You cannot cut down the same
olive tree twice. What matters is what matters. The light
falls where there is something worth seeing, something
worth notice, and of that the historian is the judge.
Here and there, evidence from other sources shows that
Thucydides has failed to mention events of which he may
be presumed to have some knowledge. The reasons for
this are matters of legitimate conjecture, and where a
probable reason can be found it deserves consideration in
judging how Thucydides argued to himself what he would
present to his readers for their future study.2 He was a
1 u, 31. 2 1, 22, 4·
47
highly autonomous man, who made his own rules for
himself and must not he too readily assumed to be domi-
nated by the literary conventions of his successors in the
field of history.
Those who assert that Thucydides was precluded from
citing the text of a treaty by a stylistic rule must have
regard to the fact that he sometimes does so. He might, in
a final revision, have preferred to put things otherwise, hut
that would be his second thoughts or even his third. We
can only surmise that what we have was not always his
fast word. The assumption that his readers would he
wholly baffled by the sight of the original text of a treaty
in the Doric dialect is refuted by what appears in the
Acharniansl and the Lysistrata of Aristophanes.2
The upshot of all this is that Thucydides' practice was,
as it would naturally be, to describe things as he saw them
and thought it best to say them, subject to a strong inten-
tion not to allow himself to be deceived by the frailties of
others. An interesting contrast is to be found in the
description of the attack on Sphacteria, which shows no
sign of being described so as to attribute its success either
to chance, or to Demosthenes as distinct from Cleon. In
the dictum that fallows his condemnation of Cleon's
promise, namely that men of judgment welcomed the alter-
natives of securing the prisoners or of being rid of Clean,
Thucydides indulges his disapproval of Cleon at a point
where he was not inhibited by his duty to his narrative of
operations.
In the narrative, then, he seeks to he precise, to avoid in
himself the fauhs he observes in others. His facts are
1 LJ. 729 ff. 2 LI. 82 ff.; 980 ff.; rn76 ff.
Thucydidean Dialectic
caught up and preserved in a fine web of thought. For he
is writing,. not to satisfy what seems to him irrelevant
curiosity, but to assist by his own judgment and presenta-
tion 'the study of those who will give their minds to
understand how it actually happened', which may be
'why it happened at all'. And he sees events as one great
dialectical argument in which human intelligence is the
final arbiter in the seat of judgment. Securus iudicat..
49 AT
CHAPTER 5
THUCYDIDEAN ETHICS
AND POLITICS
Thucydides was a rich man of good birth and aristocratic

connections, an Athenian citizen. His normal ethical
standards may be assumed to be those of his class, and there
is nothing in his work to prove they were not. In politics-
How should a city's governors be chosen? Pericles in
the Funeral Speech approves ofequality of opportunity in
state affairs. But only' of opportunity'. Men of talent are
not excluded from office by poverty, but they are chosen
to have authority only if they seem worthy of it.1 It is
possible this is what Pericles said without its being what
Thucydides himself thought. But it seems Thucydidean:
to him the city comes first, the individual citizen second,
and, as the city needs talent wherever it can find it among the
citizens, he would not wish to see its area of choice limited.
Without' disparity of esteem' the right men might not he
chosen. It was true that,. for various purposes, citizens
were treated as equal, whether they were or not, especially
in membership of the Council or the jury courts. But with
these Thucydides is hardly concerned. What matters in a
war is the quality of generals, in the field and at home, and
those are not chosen by lot. For special missions also men
are chosen by direct choice.
The Assembly is, at least in theory, sovereign and it has
the last word. The Demos meeting in Assembly has its
1 n, 37, I.
~o
Thucydidean Ethics and Politics
faults: it is mutable,1 excitable and, as a body,. it may be
gullible. 'It is easier to mislead many men than one.'2 But
it was persuadable by skilful argument, of which it was a
good judge, and might be obedient to authority based on
personal ascendancy and the courageous use of it. Without
such guidance it may go astray. Remove its guide and
what is left may be false lights, and this cannot be denied.
So democracy might be foolish, unthinking, and, as is said
in Alcihiades' speech at Sparta,. there is nothing new to
say about it.3 Its salvation is to be persuaded into right
decisions by the wise, by men who think of the city first
and their own material advantage second,. if at all. Of
Pericles, whom Thucydides admired, it is said that his
patriotism and his incorruptibility reinforced his elo-
quence, his foresight and his courage.4
To possess these qualities is the mark of a true states-
man, the kind of man for whom Thucydides' history was
written; without these qualities, the cleverest of men may
be suspect and so not he foBowed, however wise their
policies may be. What was wrong with Alcibiades is
that he was not like Pericles,. though, when at a crisis he
put the city first,. he is praised for what, in that moment,,
he was (p. 135).
The city comes first: the interests of the city come first,
and whatever does not serve these interests is a bad thing
and not a good. The practice of private virtue,. inhibited by
private scruples, if it limits the dty's power or disregards
its interests, is dismissed with an ironical, contemptuous
phrase.5 When private virtues ~courage, self-abnegation,
1 n, 65, 4. 2 Herodotus v, 97, 2.
4 n, 60, s; 6;,. 8. s n, 63., 2.
51
honesty,. a simple-mindedness that has a farge ingredient
of nobility, I serve the community, they are highly praised:
but only then. In great affairs of state, civic virtue-
courage and devotion-is the one virtue that claims pre-
eminence. When the war has begun, this is what Athens
au
can claim to inspire in her citizens, above all a passionate
devotion which goes over all.
To turn from the citizen to the city: the city embodies
power, and power grows from power and from nothing
else. No other interests may prevail against it; no other
criterion is in place. The ancient mythical past of Athens
was full of stories of generosity, the protection of the weak,
but in the present the exhibition of these qualities is
limited by the immediate interests of the state.2 If modera-
tion is politic, a means to create a more fasting power,. his
a virtue, but only then.
To be admired is a legitimate ambition, but as the spring
of courage, the spur of action, in the pubHc interest. The
virtue of a citizen is aristocratic virtue, democratically
used if your state is democratic. That was true of Athens
in its bright day, and much of it survived in its dark day.
When men are attuned to it, it produces greatness ]n a city
and it becomes human nature on the highest plane. This is
not an ethical ideal, to be inculcated for its own sake, but
as an ingredient in Athens' greatness. The sharing of it
unites a state: what divides a state, above all civil strife, is
its enemy. Thus civic virtue is easiest preserved in peace;
it is endangered by the compulsions of war.3 But if the
1 III, 83, 1.
2 See H. Strasburger, 'Thukydides und die politische Selhstdar-
stellung der Athener', Hermes, LXXXVI (1958), 17-40. 3 m, 82, 2.
security and interests of the city lead to war, this danger
must be endured.
Thucydides observes a progressive decline in ethical
standards as war and civil strife continue.! This appears to
be inevitable, so that it becomes a reasonable expectation
that men will behave worse and worse both in public and
private-private ambition, partisan passion, disloyalty to
the state become common, and new standards of behaviour,
even new words of praise or blame, reflect this decline.
Intellectual force on this lower plane may still exist,
effective for its own purposes. Courage retains its value
and extorts admiration from the historian, and so does the
subordination of personal ambition and party feeling to
the interests of the city in war. A compromise government
that helps Athenian resistance for a time is highly praised.2
But this spirit of compromise is rare and short-lived and
throughout the history it becomes rarer and rarer. Having
observed the degeneration of civic ethics set out in phase
after phase, he has shown the true meaning of what has
happened and so the historian has done his task. We are
told of the symptoms and effect of this great malaise as we
are told the same of the great plague,3 where, too, there is
praise for self-denying patriotic courage of those who rose
above the demora]ization that the plague induced. 4
The historian has an intellectual distaste for professions
belied by acts and he explains Spartan bad faith to the
Plataeans by regarding it as an unworthy surrender to the
Thehans,s who are made as hateful as the Plataeans are
made, at least, pitiable. But it is to be observed he does not
1 111, 82-3. 2 VIII, 97, 2.
4 n, p, ;. 5 111, 68, 4·
53
hesitate to make a Spartan say what is untrue if that is
what his case requires (p. 30). His diligent desire to reach
and speak the truth about events did not make him sub-
ordinate the needs of war, in which all is fair, to the cause
of veracity.
There is a sense in which Thucydides may justly be de-
scribed as a student of ethics of communities, but this
does not deny his firm belief that great states wiH pursue
greatness with the profoundest egotism: for that is the
nature of cities, comparable with the nature of men.
It is not plain to see that Thucydides, throughout all his
history, has any declared preference for this or that form
of constitution. He observes, almost without comment,
the hostility of the many to the few and of the few to the
many,. assumed by the author of the pseudo-Xenophontic
Constitution of Athens and, later, elevated to a dogma by
Aristotle.
In general, Thucydides judges men by their purposes,
rather than by the means, however unscrupulous, they use
to attain them, and as the process of ethical decline con-
tinues he becomes apt to take for granted a personal
egotism which matches community or party egotism. In
place of men subordinating their interests to the city he
expects that they will subordinate the city to their interests,
or to their hostility to men they distrust or dislike. The
failure to use the abilities of Alcibiades as a director of war-
like resources is made responsible for Athenian defeats
and in the end to the final overthrow of Athens.I Demo-
cracy without Pericles, once his filled with jealous rivalries,
does not deserve to survive, but oligarchy is not the cure;
1 VI., 15' 4·
)4
it is another form of the disease. Thucydides may have
agreed with Pope:
For forms of government let fools contest;
Whate''er is best administered, is best.
The one criterion that has validity in war is the effective
management of the war. The one consolation for defeat is
past greatness and courage in adversity.I Greatness, the
domination and exploitation of others, cannot be forgone.
It is better to have ruled and lost, than never to have ruled
at all.
Some scholars have hoped to find in Thucydides a
Panhellenic patriotism, a search for national unity and
sympathy of Greek for Greek. Eut of this it is hard to
find a dear trace. There is pride in the Athenian share of
the defence of Greece against the Persians, but that is
above all a pride in warlike resolution and resource, the
act, not the cause. And the great possession of Athens,
that could not be taken away was the memory that she had
ruled over more Greeks than any other city2 and had fought
more wars to bring it about and preserve it. Old traditions
of benevolence and generosity on the part of Athens ar,e
silent (p. 52). What remains and fasts for ever is the
memory of courage, resilience in adversity, and resolution
and 'what is else not to be overcome'.
To all seeming, Thucydides never supposed that the
gods intervened in human affairs or, if they ever did, their
action, as that of Chance, was unpredictable. He valued
conformity with the state religion as a social bond,. a kind
of preservative of traditional ethics,. which, moulded by
2 Jh.id.
55
the community, had value for the state.I When Nicias
perished, his end was the more lamentable, not because
he was not to blame for it,. but because his faith in Heaven
had beenmisplaced. The historian's strong conviction that
human events are guided by human wits and will preserved
him from substituting a predestined Nemesis for the study
of what happened and why. Men shou]d not blind them-
selves; and he did not blind himself either. Things are
what they are, and men have made them so .
This realism does not mean that his heart did not ever
stir within him. When the Athenians decreed the massacre
of the Mityleneans, he described the decree as 'savage and
monstrous' ,2 not arguing that it was so, but simply
describing it as any sensible or civilized man would have
described it. To him needless cruelty was odious, the more
because anger darkens the mind. Though, when it comes
to that, Cleon's decree is refuted by cool dispassionate
raison d' Etat, in which the plea of pity is disdaimed.3
Thucydides is not silent about the Athenian repentance,
for he knew that without its presence and effect the
Athenians might well have committed what he believed
to be at once a crime and a blunder. His native way
of thinking was to avoid emotional excess, and an excess
of passion is the enemy of reason, which is the path of
wisdom. When he spoke of one other odious act it was
the massacre at M ycalessus,4 and the destruction of the
barbarous Thracians was the penalty executed not by
Heaven but by men. He has human sympathy for Nicias,
hoping against hope for help from Heaven,s as he has for
1 m,. 82,. 6. 2 III, 36, 4• 3 In,. 44, I-2.
4 vn, 29. 5 vn, 77, 4·
the tumult of hopes and fears of the Athenians watching
their ships sinking in the Great Harbour at Syracuse.I
We may surmise that in the days of the plague he would
not have been frightened to help his fellow citizens, for it
was a part of aristocratic ethics not to be afraid in a good
cause.
The first of crimes was passionate folly. Those who ruled
over others incurred hatred, but that was its price and the
price was worth paying. He seems to respect the Spartans'
usual adherence to a code of conduct, hut when at Hysiae
the Spartans massacred the inhabitants,2 he has no word of
blame for it, any more than for what happened at Scione
and Melos. For war is 'a violent preceptor', and its pupils
cannot evade its teaching .
1 vn, 71, 4. 2 v, 83, 2.
57
CHAPTER 6
THE TEN YEARS WAR
When Thucydides began to write his account of the war

between the Peloponnesians and the Athenians, he knew
that many cities would be involved at once, and that others
might join in; and he duly makes a list of those on either
side, with a note of the kind of forces they could provide.
At the very beginning of Book II he dates and describes the
first hostilities,. due to a Theban attempt to gain control of
Plataea, its failure, and the killing of the Thebans who were
taken prisoner. As was long ago observed by Wilamo-
witz,l all this reads as if it was written at the time, with no
knowledge of what was to happen later to the Plataeans
because of it. It was a flagrant breach of the Thirty Years
Truce, but, so far, Sparta and her Peloponnesian allies were
not involved. Then, at the news that Spartan forces had
crossed their borders, Pericles advised the Athenians to
receive no more envoys, so the negotiations were at an
end.2
The assembling of an army at the Isthmus and its
advance into Attica could he regarded as the first act of a
general war,3 and this made Sparta and her allies the
aggressors. The word went out that the Athenians of the
countryside must leave their farms and homes and take
refuge in the city of Athens and the space between the
Long Walls . It was Pericles' declared strategy that Athens
should avoid a battle on fand,. mobilize her fleet and keep
1 Hermes, xxxv (1900), 553 ff. 2 n, x2, 2. .3 v, 20, 1.
The Ten Years War
a tight hold on her allies for the sake of the revenues they
provided. I This was the point at which he encouraged them
by the recital of Athenian resources in men, ships and
money. lt is all set out as inevitable and self-evident,
requiring no justification. It was war in self-defence,. and
for Athens survival and victory were the same thing. The
Athenians obeyed the call to leave their lands but reluc-
tantly for, as is explained, the most of them had for
generations lived in the countryside.2 If Attica was
invaded there was nothing else to do, and Pericles'
strategy had already been expfained earlier in the work. He
had declared he had other plans for action which would
be revealed when they took effect. 3 If Athenians could
not endure to fallow this general strategy so alien to their
temperament, then it was folly not to agree with their
adversary quickly while he was in the way. They grumbled,
they complained, but they obeyed, for the city was, in fact,
controlled by the will of the first citizen. The invasion
came and went, but before it went it left a trail of devasta-
tion behind it.
The fleets sailed out and repaid the invasion in kind here
and there, especially in areas where they could injure
Corinth, the prime mover in bringing on the war. And
when the Peloponnesian army had returned home and
dispersed, a full-scale invasion of the Megarid showed
Athens' power by land so long as the enemy army was not
there to challenge it.. It had happened as Pericles foresaw
it would happen. In the Funeral Speech Pericles had
declared that Athens was defending the splendour and
happiness which no invading enemy could take from her,
1 II, I 3, 2, 2 n, 15-16. 3 1,. 144, 1-2 •.
59
which could command sacrifice that should he willingly
endured. If this was a fair sample of the war, Athens stood
above the danger of defeat. Meanwhile, Potidaea was
under siege.
Next year came a second invasion, and before it ended
the first plan of Pericles was put into effect,. an expedition
to win over Epidaurus. What hopes went with the fleet as
it sailed we cannot tell, for Thucydides has not told us.
Instead we are told of the great plague which raged in the
Piraeus and the city. It was a disaster that no one could
have foreseen, even if, once it happened, the crowding of
the Athenians in the city made it far more destructive.
Thucydides, who at some time suffered from it, describes
its symptoms and its course so that his future readers may
know what is happening if it occurs again. The plague
was taken to Potidaea by reinforcements sent there from
the abortive Epidaurus expedition. The suffering of the
Athenians made them make overtures to Sparta without
any immediate result.. Pericles, now returned from the
region of Epidaurus, faced the Athenian Assembly. The
speech attributed to him is often supposed to have been
written after the fall of Athens, but there is no sufficient
reason for thinking this was so (see below, p. i25). He
achieved his purpose of preventing further overtures to
Sparta, even though later he was deposed from office and
:fined; and the war went on. It is impossible to read the
close of the speech without thinking of the most Periclean
of English statesmen after Dunkirk.
This outHne of events and Thucydides' account of them
will suffice to illustrate how he set himself to achieve his
prime purpose to offer to his readers that clear and realistic
60
The Ten Years War
account of the events of the past for their study, if they
wished to give their minds to it.
The chapter which follows this last speech of Pericles
deserves especial consideration for its relevance to the
composition of the whole work. The first part of the
chapter explains the purpose and effect of this speech in
encouraging the Athenians to brace themselves to continue
the war. It then says how in their resentment for their
private suffering they fined him, but not long after they,' as
is the way of the multitude', once more elected him general
and put all their affairs in his hand. They did this in recog-
nition of his past service both in the past and the present.
He survived the outbreak of the war for two years and six
months, and when he died his foresight about the conduct
of the war was yet more plainly realized. Those who
succeeded him are condemned for deserting his strategy
and for failing to live up to his disinterested guidance.
Meanwhile his authority, integrity, and power of steadying
men's judgments, rebuking their fears and restoring
their courage prevailed. Then fallows the famous verdict
that all this made Athens, though in name a democracy, in
fact controlled by its first citizen.
Then, as is argued later (see below, pp. 127 f.), there
follows what appears to be a series of observations made at
different points of time, and, it may be supposed, formu-
lated as they were made. This would enable the reader to
seewhatthe historian came to think.about events which are
relevant to the disappearance of Pericles from the scene. For
he now no longer directed Athenian policy or controlled
Athenian operations. The accumulation of these observa-
tions,, self-contained as they may appear,, adds up to a sort
61
of specialized review of the vicissitudes of the whole period
between the death of Pericles and the disaster of 405-
404 B.c. They show the historian's varying moods as
he watched over the changes of fortune, in themselves
unpredictable,. which in his mind was a characteristic
element of war, once it had replaced peace.
Within the books that describe the Ten Years War, and
occasionally elsewhere, there are passages which show the
historian's judgment of the leading actors within this
range of events,. and so the standards which he applied to
them . To achieve this we find a variation from his general
practice. This last is to leave his readers to form their own
judgments, once they have been told the story of what
happened: it is for them,. as a rule, to accord praise or
blame as their study of events induced them to do. When
he thus departs from his practice, it is useful to consider
why he does so. The dearest instance is to be found in his
treatment of Cleon, if only as an exception that proves the
rule.
His strong distaste for Clean may he more compounded
ofintellectual than moral disapproval. He does not content
himself with the single contemptuous phrase that is the
epitaph of the demagogue Hyperbolus.l Cleon is more, if
not better, than this. He is all the more dangerous to the
city for that. It is interesting to observe what Thucydides.
does. Cleon's speech advocating the massacre of the
Mitylenaeans is made to match the description of him
as 'most violent and most persuasive' .2 Armed with
Thucydidean dialectic,. he plays upon the anger of the
Assembly. He is defeated by a masterly plea of raison
1 vm, 73, 3· 2 111, 36, 6.
The Ten Years War
d' Etatl which stressed the foUy more than the wickedness
of an act which Thucydides himself has described as
'barbarous and monstrous'. For Cleon's prevention of
peace with Sparta,2 Thucydides betrays his disapproval
by leaving the Spartan arguments unanswered with a set
speech.
But when he refers to Cleon's promise to kill or capture
the Spartans on the island in twenty days he condemns it as
'lunatic'3 and adds a remark which is full of malice.4 But
he does not so represent the operations on the island as to
give all the credit to Demosthenes and fortune. As for
Cleon's conduct of the campaign to reassert Athens'
control of the Chalcidice, he appears to understate the
success Clean achieved, but it is not certain that he was
well infarmed about the opening phase of the campaign ..
That Clean was a bad general, whereas Brasidas was a
good one, appears from the account of the fater operations
which may be taken to be true, as it is, no doubt, true that
Cleon ran away, for only so would he be killed by a
peltast in the conditions of a normal battle.
If there was a doubt we may be sure that Thucydides
would not give to Cleon the benefit of it. It is said that he
opposed peace, for war obscured his disreputable conduct,.
whereas Brasidas did the same for personal motives, but
such as would appear laudable in his day.s That all this is
so does not make Thucydides impartial: it leaves him true
to his own standards as a historian, bound to be accurate
about facts and free to be anything dse in the region of
opinion. What else emerges,. and does not need to be
1 III, 42-8. 2 IV,. 21.
4 IV, 28, )• !i V,. 16, I.
established, is that his strong belief in his powers to
detect and tell the truth was not haunted by scruples or
inhibitions imposed by them, and it is not provable that
he was deflected by any sense of personal grievance.
His treatment of Brasidas is the converse of this. When
Brasidas lies to the people of Acanthus I this is not con-
cealed; but that is what Spartans were taught to do, from
youth up, and if his means were unscrupulous his ends were
generous and statesmanlike so that his purposes and his
acts deserved the admiration they inspired.
Something may now be added about the quality of
Thucydides as a student of the art of war, as revealed in his
account of the years in which he was himself involved
until his exile. It was, we may suppose, to him 'the war',
nearer to him than even the vicissitudes of the Sicilian
expedition or the comings and goings of the war across
the Aegean in the 'Ionian War'. If it is possible that the
years in which Alcibiades was the architect of resistance
and might have been the architect of victory, engaged his
hopes, that part of the story, assuming it ever existed, is
not ours to read.
If, as has been well said,.2 'a deep and ferocious interest
in human political behaviour was his chief characteristic',
he seeks to understand what happened and to describe it
clearly. As Gomme has well demonstrated,3 he assumes in
his readers a knowledge of the general character and means
of the warfare of the time. Now and again, as A. Bauer has
1 rv, 85,. 7 (seep. 30).

2 By A. Andrewes in a lecture to the Hellenic Society, 22 March
1962.
3 Commentary, 1, pp. 10 ff.
The Ten Years War
argued,1 he reveals a forward-looking attitude towards
some sides of war, of the value of cavalry and well~trained
light armed troops and regrets their absence, but he takes
the means of war as they existed and does not demand
from them more than they can provide. In his day Athens
was not a school of generals even if it was a school of
admirals. For to the Athenians the navy is the 'Senior
Service' in a special sense, the shield and the sword of
Athens, as it is to the author of the pseudo-Xenophontic
Constitution ofAthens. In a moment of deepest discourage-
ment Pericles is made to point to the command of the sea,.2
and of Pericles himself it may be said that he was at least
rather an admiral than a general.
That Thucydides himself was not a general of the first
rank seems probable enough. We may, by reasonable con-
jecture of his mission, and the means he has to use, mitigate
the reproach that in 424 B.c. he was in the wrong place
or at the wrong time. What could be saved he saved
with undaunted resolution, but at the thirteenth hour . . The
heyday of mercenaries in war had not yet arrived, or of
the close integration of policy and military and naval
strategy that was the gift of Philip of Macedon or of the
younger Pitt. The crucial importance of Thessaly in the
strategic geography of Greece was not visible to Thucy-
dides, if it everwas to Pericles. Itis hard to believe that the
Corinthian Aristeus reached Potidaea except by land,3 and
what he could do a greater, more dangerous, general could
do,, and did. It was not enough to say, or quote the saying,
that the Peloponnesians could not go far from their borders,.
1 In Plzilologus, L (N.F. IV, 1891), 401 ff. 2 u,. 62, 2.
3 I ' 6·-o, 3·
5 AT
Thucydide.s and his History
by land.1 It was wise to bar the way, if diplomacy backed
by ships and treasure could do so. In the composition of
his narrative the historian does not seem,, except very
rarely, to think of the future.
It is to he remarked, as Gomme points out,2 that there
was not at Athens that officer class that might have pro-
vided the trained foresight of a great General Staff. It
almost looks as if generals were elected because they had
done well in the past rather than to enable them to do even
better in the future. We are almost never told what they
had in mind.
Had the plague not weakened Athens' power and pros-
pects we might have seen what were the plans that Pericles
had prepared, in order to pass from a strategy of survival
to a strategy of victory. It needed the exploitation of a
lucky chance to reverse the current of the war so that a
new Thirty Year Truce even more firmly based was, for
a moment, within reach.
Thus, for all its sober restriction to the possible,, in the
almost conventional warfare of the time, his history of the
Ten Years War cannot claim to stand beside the Com-
mentaries of Caesar which Napoleon commended to the
study of those who would be great generals, the masters
of the event.
In the Periclean recipe for victory in war, financial
reserves and sensible strategy stand side by side.3 Here and
there Thucydides mentions this ingredient in his account
of the Ten Years War-the revenues of Athens from her
empire, the cost of the siege of Potidaea, the eisphora at the
rate of 200 talents imposed upon citizens at the outbreak
2 0. p. cu.
. pp. 14, 2.2, 3 n, 13, 2•
66
The Ten Years War
of the revolt of Mitylene.. But he does not make clear how
long this charge fasted. He does not mention the raising
of the tribute assessments that was introduced in 42) B.c.
It is possible that he was not able to discover how far
successful this measure proved to he, and if he believed
that the project originated with Clean, he may have
doubted its wisdom. He does not refer to the diminution
of Athenian reserves as one reason for a desire for peace in
423 B.c. or 421 B.c., and he may not have been aware of
the part it may have played in debates that preceded the
peace, if these debates revealed a weakness in the Athenian
potential for war at that moment. l t was not a time when
he could study the epigraphical material which has been
so skilfully interpreted by modern scholars.I
1 See Tod, Greek Historical Inscriptions, 1\ no. 64.
5-2
CHAPTER 7
THE EXILE: BOOK V
In the winter of 424 B.c., Thucydides became an exile,. in

the sense that he at once left, and did not revisit,. territory
controlled by Athens, either of his own volition or under
the compulsion of a sentence of an Athenian court or a
vote of the Athenian Assembly. Jf the first alternative is
true, he may not have suffered any loss of his rights and
he may have merely kept out of the way. But it seems more
likely that the Athenians, in their anger at the loss of
Amphipolis,. exiled him in due form, so that he could only
return under a general amnesty for exiles imposed in the
terms of peace in 404 B.c., or by virtue of a special decree
said to have been proposed by a certain Oenobius.l
Whatever be the truth about that, his career at Athens was
broken, and he must have been deposed from his general-
ship. If the Athenians took any immediate steps to restore
as best they could their authority in the Chalcidice, he does
not mention them, so we do not know what they were.
It has been observed that in the closing part of Book 1v,
he has very little to say about events in Greece which may
be deduced from the terms of the Armistice that was con-
cluded in the next year, or the terms of the Peace of Nicias.
It is obviously possible that for a time he despaired of
continuing his discovery and interpretation ofevents. That
he braced himself to resume his task may he a sign that his
History up to the time of his failure had already taken
1 Pausanias, t, 23, 9.
68
The Exile: Book V
literary shape.I His style remains, as it were, durable
throughout the remainder of the work, and this may well
indicate that it was already formed by the use of it, for the
continuing practice of a style by way of composition is an
efficacious way of making it a lasting possession.
His exile must have broken contacts that were at his
disposal while he was at Athens, or,. as it were, based upon
Athens. It has been observed2 that the source of what
information he gives for this period tends to be the
Peloponnese or the region of Chalcidice. This suggests
that he visited the Peloponnese or travelled about else-
where, as to South Italy or Sicily. He reveals knowledge
of the diplomatic activity of Phaeax in that area,3 and he
may while he was in these parts have improved his know-
ledge of the closing phase of the Athenian expedition of
427-424 B.C. which preceded it. He may, quite probably,
have gained more information about the activity of
Hermocrates in urging the Sicilian cities to compose their
differences, so as to strengthen themselves against
Athens.4 This speech is elaborate in emphasis and dia-
lectic.. It appears calculated to dose one chapter of
Sicilian history rather than to foreshadow another . The
reference to the possibility that Athens might return in
greater strength is,s in itself, a good argument for the
speaker's purpose, and could seem the more probable
because that, in fact, is what Athens had done in 425 B.c.,
if with slight effect.
1 For evidence that the historian's style was already formed see
J. H. Finley, 'The Origins of Thucydides' Style', Harvard Studies in
Classical Philology, L (1930), 35 ff.
2 By G. B. Grundy, Thucydides and the History of His Age (London,
1911), p. 480. 3 v, 4-5. 4 rv,. 59-64. 5 iv, 60..
When he quotes the texts of the Armistice, the Peace of
Nicias and the Spartan-Athenian Alliance,1 he may do so
to make up for gaps in the earlier narrative for which he had
not procured precise information. The rifts between what
we may deduce from these documents and the narrative
that precedes them is then due to the proverbial effect of
sewing new cloth upon an old garment.
There must have been debates at Athens before the
Peace or the Alliance were accepted in the farm proposed
by the Spartans, but nothing is done to reconstruct these
debates because, perhaps, the historian had no means of
discovering even 'the general purpose or purport of what
was in fact said'. It could not have been at once plain to
any observer that the Peace was destined not to deserve the
name, or that the composition of the Ten Years War was
not a self-contained achievement, the fulfilment of the task
announced in the very first sentence of the work, and of an
expectation justified by the events of that decade. When
Thucydides says of the Ten Years War that h was con-
tinuous and so, as it were, bows out the Armistice of
42 3 B.c. (which indeed did not affect all the theatres of
war), he betrays his belief that this war was one single
theme which he had done his best to chronicle. That the
Peace of Nicias was a compromise did not make it any
less a Peace . The Thirty Years Truce was a compromise,
but it lasted fourteen years2 and might well have lasted
longer.
If Thucydides then remembered the oracle of the first
year of the war which said it would last for thrice nine
years3 he would just have noticed that it had proved false,,
1 IV, I 18-19; V1 18-19; 23. 2: II, 2, I. 3 v,. 26, 4·
The Exile: Book V
as oracles do, and so he had not seen any need to add it to
the collection of such things about which he writes,. not
without irony, in the second book.1 There are good
grounds for denying the thesis that the history of the Ten
Years War was published at this time,2 or would be
published until he could return to Athens and supervise
its publication there. It would have been just a voice
crying in the wilderness of exile to hearers who had fresh
in their memory the cause of his punishment.
Thucydides could no longer help Athens by his services
in the field, hut he would find it worth while to continue
his observation and record of events by the use of the
opportunities offered to him by his exile, as he was to
point out later (v, 26). This is what he did, as appears from
the use of these opportunities for most of the fifth book in
the account of events that lie between the Spartan-
Athenian Alliance and the expedition to Melos, some of
them events of only transient importance, events which he
could discover by his presence in this or that of the cities
concerned. He preserves the chronology by reference to
years since the outbreak of hostilities, but he does not
assert or emphasize that it was part of that war' of which
Thucydides wrote the history'.
The one event of great and perhaps lasting importance
within those years was the Battle of Mantinea in 418 B.c.
This, as he observes, restored Spartan prestige and self-
confidence.3 It might either confirm or weaken the proh-
1 II, 8, 2; 17; cf. 54, 2-3.

2 E.g. had this happened, what was published could not have
included, e.g. n,. 65, u-12 with their references to ]ater events.
3 v, 75' 3·
71
ability that the Spartan-Athenian Alliance would endure,
for, according to the ideas of the time, the presence of an
Athenian force in the ranks of Sparta's opponents did not
constitute a casu.s helli and so induce immediate and formal
hostilities between Sparta and Athens even if it endangered
confidence in Athenian good faith. Two years after Man-
tinea it was possible to make the Athenians say in the
MeHan dialogue that they were not at war whh Sparta.I
We may now turn to the expedition against Melos in
416 B.C.
Great naval powers have, throughout history, frowned
upon the independence of islands. Athens was tempted to
claim to rule the waves. When, earlier, she did not prevent
the voyage of a friend's enemies she was said to have
neglected to refuse them passage 'through her own terri-
tory' .2 Melos remained obstinately independent, and
Athens sent a fleet to remove this exception to her rule.
A recent attempt to show that Melos had already become a
tributary ally of Athens has failed.3 The Athenian admirals
were expected to achieve their object without the need for
a siege. Melos was weak and isolated, and the Melians, if
they were wise, would capitulate to Athenian power on
reasonable terms. The Athenians made this plain to them
by refuting their pleas one after another. Nothing could
be more realistic or suited to their purpose. The potential
helpers of Melos, from the gods to Sparta, are discounted.
This is not an essay in sophistical casuistry: it was plain
1 v,. 9r, 1. 2 v, 56, 2.

3 See W. Eberhardt, 'Der Melierdialog und die Inschriften A.T.L.
A 9', Historia, vm (1959), 284-314 (in criticism of M. Treu, ihid. II
(1953-54), 253 ff.) and B. D. Meritt in Studies Rohinson, n, 298-303 .
72
The Exile: Book V
raison d' Etat, sharpened with Thucydidean dialectic . It
failed of its purpose, and the Melians are made to declare
that no power would make them abandon the autonomy
which they had enjoyed for seven hundred years)
This plea does not dissemble their courage. Thucydides
has refuted them in advance on the plane of material
realities, but we may detect a moment of admiration for
'that simple-mindedness of which nobleness is a large
ingredient', which, as he says in III, 83, 1, was becoming
laughed to scorn in the progressive decline of ethical
standards which war and civil strife had induced through-
out the Greek world of his day.
The Melians held out for months, and once exasperated
the besiegers with a temporary success. Then the city was
betrayed, and the Athenians treated the Melians as they had
treated the people of Scione,2 and had come so near to
treating the people of Mitylene. On this act, as on the
treatment of Scione, Thucydides does not pronounce,.
any more than on a like massacre at Hysiae by the Spartans
about that very time.3
Sparta did not sacrifice her alliance with Athens by
doing the one thing that might have saved Melos, by
declaring that,. if the siege was not raised,. her army would
invade Attica. The fact that Melos was originally a
colony from Sparta did not,, of itself,. oblige the mother-
city to save her at all costs. The gods remained deaf, even
if, years afterwards, the Melians had the posthumous satis-
faction of seeing their city restored to them. That was the
plain,. realistic account of what happened,. true to history
and true to the ideas of the time.
1 v, ] ]2, 2. 2 V, 32, I. 3 v, 8J, 2.
73
Thucyd£des and his History
So far as the act of Athens showed self-confidence, it
revealed the danger which always attends self-confidence.
This mood misled Athens when she entered upon the
Sicilian Expedition, but it would not have led the historian
to believe that the Athenians failed to take Syracuse
because, after taking Melos,. they had massacred the
garrison.
When, in 405 B.c., the news came of the destruction of
the Athenian fleet, men feared they would be treated as
they had treated Scione,. Melos and other cities.I But that
was fear and not repentance, the repentance which had so
narrowly saved the Mityleneans from a like total massacre.
Those that take the sword may perish by the sword, but
only if they are defeated. That Sparta refused to kill or
enslave the Athenians in 404 B.c. was due, in a large
measure, to the memory of what Athens had done for
Greece in the great danger from the Persians and to a
politic calculation of where Sparta's interests lay. The
doctrine that imperial states tend to condone the acts of
their kind was not new: it was, to some observers, as
perhaps to Thucydides himseff, a fact of life,. an axiom of
statecraft.
1 Xenophon, Hell. n, ii,. 3.
74
CHAPTER 8
SICILY: BOOKS VI AND VII
The importance of Sicily in the affairs and policies of

Greece fluctuates. The island was too large and too far
away,. as Thucydides realizes, to be an Athenian de-
pendency.I Corinth had closer ties of sentiment with her
colonies in Sicily, as with Potidaea, than was usual among
Greek communities, and these might be strengthened in
the West by a sense of Dorian solidarity,. to which a city
like Syracuse could appeal. It was materially possible for
Syracuse,. with good ship timber available in southern
Italy, to build up a considerable fleet, which might assist
the Peloponnesians to reduce the margin of Athenian
naval supremacy. Corcyra, if it could be made to serve the
strategical interests of Corinth, was a half-way house to
Greek waters,2 and this is adduced as a reason for Athenian
assistance to Corcyra against Corinth. But if Athens
could rely upon Corcyra she had little to fear from Syra-
cusan intervention and little to gain from any large-scale
enterprise in Sicily, even if that was made more feasible by
having Corcyra as a half-way house on the voyage from
·Greece to Sicily. Whatever may have been those further
plans that Pericles had conceived,3 it is impossible that
they included the diversion of large forces to so distant
a theatre of war while Athens was involved in a serious
conflict nearer home. That was too remote a prospect,
l VI,. 1, 1; cf. VI,. 11, I; 20, 3; 21, 2.

3 I, 144, 1-2.
7S
unsuited to a war that required unchallengeable strength
in the Aegean at all times and in all places. The plague had
reduced the war potential of Athens, but when Pericles
was dead and the first period of plague was over, reasons
for a very limited intervention in South Italy and Sicily
mightbearguedhyoptimists.1 What Athens didin427 B.c.
was on so small a scale that it could not serve any far-
reaching plans. It might be injurious to Corinthian
interests and it might hinder a Syracusan hegemony in the
island which might one day be of assistance to the enemies
of Athens. That was aU it could achieve, whatever else
could be said about it. It is plain that Thucydides attached
little importance to it, and treats it as a minor commitment,
economical of effort, to help the local activities of cities
with which Athens had some diplomatic ties of interest.
When it was believed that Athens made an alliance with
Rhegium and Leontini at the very moment she decided to
give a limited protection to Corcyra, this could be re-
garded as a first step in a more active attitude towards the
West. But now it has been shown 2 that what happened in
433 B.C. was no more than the renewal in identical terms of
an earlier alliance, this theory loses its force.
After two years of war and indecisive operations that
achieved little, a larger fleet was sent out but with more
immediate care for the position in Corcyra than in Sicily
itself.3 But that it was sent at all made Athens seem more
dangerous than she was likely to be, and it helps the wise
1 III,. 8.6, 4.
2 By W. Bauer,' Epigraphisches aus dem Athener Nationalmuseum ',
Klio, xv (1917), 188 ff.
3 IV, 2-4.
Sicily: Books VI and VII
Syracusan statesman Hermocrates to persuade the Greek
cities in Sicily to intermit their quarrels so as to deny to
Athens a firm base of operations in Sicily. That is the moral
of Hermocrates' speech, when, at the Conference of Gela,.
the Athenians were bowed out of the island.1 It is possible
that the Athenian withdrawal was accompanied, or fol-
lowed, by a sort of non-aggression pact that would suffi-
ciently secure Sicily and Athens from each other.2 If
such a pact was made, it would be a local repetition of the
Periclean policy that inspired the Thirty Years Truce.
In 422 B.c. Thucydides observed the activities of an
Athenian diplomat to keep alive the possibilities of
friction between these states,3 a friction which might serve
Athenian interests if they were threatened later. Little was
achieved, though it might seem that the Athenians were,.
as had been said by the Corinthians at Sparta,. 'neither
content to be at peace themselves nor allow others to be
at peace'. So far, so good, or fairly good.
Early in 41 5 B.c. there came a shift in circumstances
which appealed to the growing confidence of Athens in
her own power, the belief which the historian had criticized
before as a misplaced optimism that thought that nothing
could go amiss. 4 In this mood of self-confidence the
Athenians were induced to embark on a great enterprise
of doubtful promise. Athens was, so far, at peace with
Sparta. She had gone some way to build up again that
margin of financial strength which was one part of a
recipe for victory in war attributed to Pericles. But the
1 IV, 58-65.
2 v1, 13, 1. See Camhridge Ancient History, v, 2.2).
3 V, 4-5. 4 IV,. 65, 4•
77
other part, wisdom in using her power, went unregarded.
It might well he a mistake, such as a great and imperial city
might he prone to commit,. not because Athens is not
powerful enough to match the potential strength of
Syracuse and her friends,1 but because she stood to lose
more than she would gain if she divided her forces at that
moment. It was, in the shrewd phrase of Augustan state-
craft, 'to fish with a golden hook'. This Thucydides
discerned, and he must have observed it with Peridean
misgivings. Nicias, for the motives that weighed with
him when the Peace was made that bears his name, opposed
the project as boldly as he dared, which was not very far.
It has been suggested, not without probability, that he
preferred Athens to take a new risk in Sicily rather than
continue an over-active policy in the Peloponnese that
was more likely to bring about a conflict with Sparta.2
But he sought to limit the risks that would be taken by
stressing the size of the expedition that would he needed
to remove its danger. The Athenians, set on the enter-
prise, were not deterred,. and Alcibiades, ambitious for
himself, pressed for the expedition.
His strong desire to shine, a sharp reaction against the
rebuke of his ambition, led him beyond the practical
interest of Athens to unrealistic confidence. He is made to
caU upon the Athenians to use in combination the good
fortune that attended Nicias and his own youthful enter-
prise.3 And so the Athenians appointed this ill-matched
pair with Lamachus, a man of soldierly vigour, to take a
large force to Sicily and extract whatever advantage they
1 u, 65, u.
2 G.DeSanctis,StoriadeiGreci(Florence,.:i939),u,308. 3 v1,17,1.
could for the interests of Athens.l This was how it seemed
to Thucydides from the inforrnation that reached him, and
in the light of his opinion of Nicias and of Alcibiades, of
what he believed they would both most likely have said as
suiting the needs of the situation, as it appeared to him
to be.
In a remarkable chapter he describes the character of
Akibiades and his influence with the optimistic Demos,2
and then he adds in a kind of appendix how the Athenian
treatment of Aldbiades denied to themselves the benefits of
his gifts,. first in Sicily and then later in the closing stages
of the war (p. 134). Thus, first,. the expedition failed, and
then when a second time Alcibiades was exiled, the war
was managed not as well as he would himself have managed
it but as ill as his successors did, so that in the end Athens
came to disaster. The belief that the whole chapter was
written at one time,. and that after the fall of Athens in
404 B.c. as a direct result of the Sicilian expedition, has
induced the belief that Thucydides waited until after
Athens had fallen before he wrote his account of the
expedition . 3
But this appears to he a mistaken interpretation of this
chapter. The direct result of the expedition was not the
fall of Athens though it seemed to Thucydides, as to al-
most everyone else, to be its inevitable consequence at the
moment when the disaster happened (pp. 83 f.). Despite
it all,, Athens was able to survive and for three years,4 as
Thucydides says,. to make head against her enemies, and
1VI,26, I. 2 VI, 15, 3 (see pp. 132ff.).

3 See W. Schadewaldt, Das Geschichtswerk des Tkukydides (Bedin,
1929), pp. J4, 100. 4 On this number see below, p. 12.7.
79
the history, as we have it, ends immediately after the
Athenians rejoiced to discover that they could win a naval
victory.I
In fact, in 410 B.c. and in 406 B.c. Sparta twice offered to
Athens a peace which, if disadvantageous, left her a great
power with a chance of survival if not of plain victory, had
she cut her losses and taken the best settlement that she
could get.
The theme of Books VI and VII is of the vicissitudes of
war, an earlier phase when Syracuse seemed to approach
a caphulation on terms, the failure to prevent the Spartan
Gylippus reaching Syracuse to bring courage and resource
to her defence, the decline of the Athenian fleet, and the
failure to complete the circumvallation of the city as Nicias
admitted in his appeal to Athens 2 either to abandon the
enterprise or to send out another general and more forces
to avert disaster. It is hard to believe that this narrative
was not (most ofit at least) written at the time, as hopes and
fears agitated the historian as he wrote.
That he was able to have written these books near the
time seems to be beyond doubt. In the winter of 415 B.c.
Alcibiades and Syracusan envoys were at Corinth and
then at Sparta,3 and their several accounts of what had
happened could be at the historian's disposal if, as is likely
enough, he was in the Peloponnese at this time. Alcibiades
could tell him of the debate between the three generals at
Rhegium when they arrived there, of the successful first
advance on Syracuse, and the withdrawal to Catana after
it, of the debate at Camarina when the Athenians tried to
win the city over to their active support. He could have
1 VIII, 106, J, 2 VII, I 5. 3 VI, 88, 7-IO.
So
heard,. or heard of, the speech of Alcibiades at Sparta,l in
which he urged the resumption of the war and the occu-
pation of Decelea as a thorn in the side of Athens.
He observed, too, how the Spartans after sending
Gylippus to Syracuse, began to think that resumption of
the war, morally justified by an Athenian attack on their
coast,. was now a more hopeful project, so that, at last,. they
invaded Attica, and the original war was resumed with
better prospects of success.2
The decline of the Athenian fleet and the rise of Syra-
cusan naval strength in their own Great Harbour would
have been reported by N icias. 3 Athens had not met
sufficiently and in good time the needs of the expedidon,4
but when a second expedition was sent out under Demos-
thenes all or something could have been retrieved. The
hazardous venture ofa night attack which, had it succeeded,
might have turned the scale against Syracuse, failed. Even
so, though victory was past hoping for, a withdrawal was
possible which would have restored the Athenian com-
mand of the sea throughout the Aegean. Then came an
eclipse of the moon. As superstitious as his men, Nicias
did not sail while it was still possible. 5 This, too, would
be known at Athens, to be fallowed by the news that they
had been defeated in the Great Harbour.
The account of that and the final attempt at retreat, told
whh a moving force that is unsurpassed in the history of
war, may have been written not longaftertheexpeditionif
the historian visited the theatre of war and could speak
1 VI, 89-92. 2 v1, 93, 1-2; vn, 18, 2.

3 vn, II, 1. 4 II, 65, II.
5 vu,. 50, 4·
6 81 AT
with Athenian refugees from the retreat who established
themselves at Catanal and from the Athenian prisoners
who languished in the quarries at Syracuse. The catalogue
of the states that were drawn into this great struggle 'so
glorious to the victors,. so disastrous to the defeated '2
may be based upon some memorial set up on the eve of
victory to the greater glory of Syracuse and of her
allies. The fact that Sparta had been induced to resume
hostilities with Athens made this not just a great military
episode but an integral part of 'the war of which Thucy-
dides wrote the history'.
Had it turned out otherwise,. had it ended in Athenian
success, this record could have stood alone, and there are
signs that, when it began, Thucydides thought of it as the
theme of a separate work. It is prefaced by a description
of the Greek colonization of Sicily, which may have
drawn upon the recently published history of Antiochus of
Syracuse (p. 19). This review of colonization in Sicily is
in a sense a counterpart to that reconstruction of early
Greek history which is found in the first book. It, too,
would show that the war was 'a great one and most worthy
of record'; and had the diversity of the communities in the
island helped Athens to success,. it would have been part
of the rationale of the whole adventure and an instructive
introduction to a work on a war that,. as it were, existed in
its own right. Then, once the expedition had led to the
reopening of hostilities in 413 B.c. it is, so to speak,.
subsumed in the greater story. This, it would seem, is the
significance of Sicily and the expedition in the whole work.
1 VII, 85, 4·
CHAPTER '9
BOOK VIII
Some ancient doubts of the Thucydidean authorship of

this Book have been set to rest. It was not seriously denied
even during that period of modern scholarship when such
doubts were most fashionable. A careful examination of
its style shows that no one else of that day could have
written it, and that, even if it has not received a final polish
and revision from end to end, it does not fall below some
earlier books in that respect. It has not the vigour or the
moving quality of the book that precedes it,. but that is
not to be expected; it has not, and could not have, the
unity derived from its concentration on one great enter-
prise in one theatre of war. It begins in an atmosphere of
despair,l in the belief that Athens had been overthrown
and that all that could now happen was the consummation
of her overthrow. The naval predominance of Athens was
gone, it might seem past reviva]. During the years that
followed the Peace of Nicias her enemies could build new
ships and recruit experienced rowers and steersmen so that
already an Athenian squadron had failed to defeat a com-
parable Corinthian fleet.2 The legend of invincibility had
sunk in the waters of the Great Harbour of Syracuse. The
treasures on the Acropolis no longer matched all the needs
of a war to prevent that secession from Athens which now
seemed safe. The prudent citizens of Chios seemed to
Thucydides j,ustified in coming out against Athens.3
1 VIII,. 2. 2 VII, 34, 6-7·
There was no way to isolate the empire by the command
of the sea,. for the days when the appearance of a Spartan
admiral with a fleet in those waters was a portentl were
now past. So far as Athens had friends in the allied cities,
they had to face the argument that they would faU with
a falling cause. Nothing was left but the resilient courage
of Athens, the chances of war, an enemy embarrassed by
the choice of enterprises or the disunion among enemies,
who, in Napoleon's phrase,. 'saw too many things at the
same time'. The occupation of Decelea had made Athens
half-way to a besieged city.2 Nicias and D emosthenes
1
were dead, Alcibiades an exile.: there was no one left who

had past victories to help his leadership . The initiative was
with her enemies,. who had so much to gain and so little
to lose. There remained the contrast, set out in the
Corinthian speech at Sparta nearly twenty years before,
b,etween the Athenians and the Spartans who were now
'the most convenient of enemies' .3
If, as is possible, the historian now visited Sicily to
gather evidence for the completion of his account of the
downfall of the expedition, he would return to observe a
war that seemed approaching a final catastrophe. But, as
he writes in the review of the war in II, 65,. 12 (seep. 127),
Athens did hold out through three years of varied opera-
tions,. with squadrons playing hide-and-seek off the coast
of Asia Minor until he recorded the unhoped-for mercy of
an Athenian victory at sea.4 All there was to do was to
record, as he came to know of them, the rapid changes as of
a kaleidoscope. Even if we could be sure that his inforrna-
tion was all-embracing, he could not impose upon events
1 nr, 31. 2 vu, 27-8. 3 vm, 96, 5. 4 YEH, 106, ) •
Book VIII
a logical pattern which they did not possess. There are
some inconsistencies in what his sources of information
provided at the time which he could not resolve, and what
we read seems to have been written pari passu with the
events.
And now the war had come within reach of the Persian
satraps in northern and western Asia Minor, Pharnabazus
and, above all,. Tissaphernes. Pharnahazus was, so it
seems, a cool and vigorous ruler, and his power lay
dangerously near to the Dardanelles, through which
passed the convoys that warded off famine from Athens .
Tissaphernes was a different man. His portrait on a coin
shows him a handsome, calm, impressive Persian grandee.
But in the pages of Book VIII he appears as a kind of
psychological riddle to which nehher Alcibiades nor
Thucydides knew the answer. The purposes of the Great
King, far away in Susa or Ecbatana, were also hard to
conjecture. No one could be sure what were his ends and
what means he would devote to their accomplishment. In
this shadow-theatre of policies Alcibiades was a skilful
actor. He, at least, knew what he wanted and how to set
about bringing it to pass. Thucydides, another exile, may
have been in his confidence, so far as Alcibiades would
confide in anyone. But he does not make this clear, perhaps
because he did not whoHy trust Alcibiades to be true even
to himself. Behind the shifting scene of minor operations
there appears the question whether Persia could be
persuaded to keep the war alive or decide its issue for her
ulterior purposes. This process is observed and described
at short range, for a long-range view was out of reach at
the moment.
There was one other shifting complication, the relation
of Athenian politics to the war and to the purposes of
Alcibiades. During the winter of 412 B.c. came the news
that a great plot was in the making: what Thucydides
describes as the hard task of supplanting the democracy
that had dominated Athens for a century.I Alcibiades
would serve the democracy if the democracy would serve
him as its first citizen, as it had served Pericles. U ntrust-
worthy himself, he could not trust it to do him that more
than justice which he thought his due if he made survival
possible by preventing whole-hearted Persian support of
her enemies.
Thucydides, it cannot be doubted, heard of what was
happening at Athens from men who escaped from it to
save themselves. His judgment of men is of their practical
capacity, and personal ambitions were assumed as suiting
that demoralization of character he had observed as the
product of war and civil strife. Thus, and on this plane, he
describes men with no apparent reference to ethical stan-
dards. In his account of the oligarchic revolution he does
not mention what he may not have known, fair-sounding
decrees which masked the movement under constitutional
forms. The long-drawn fear that the Athenian resistance
might be destroyed by internal disunion explains the high
praise he gives to a compromise fallowing the failure of the
oligarchs, a compromise which restored union for the
purposes of the war by means of political and social give
and take.2 But the compromise was not destined to endure
long enough to have a lasting effect. When this was later
replaced by a restored democracy he may have looked
l vnr, 68, 4. 2 VIII, 97, 2.
86
Book VIII
in vain for that first citizen who would guide Athenian
policy within the forms of democracy.
Alcibiades is praised earlier in the book for his persuasion
of the fleet at Samas to put the preservation of Athenian
power in those parts hefore the desire to overthrow the
oligarchical government in Athens . 1 He observed the
success of Athens in these waters and this is perhaps the
moment when he refers to the capacity of Alcibiades to
organize and direct the war effort of Athens (seep. 134).
The second exile of Alcibiades led to the transference
of leadership to less gifted men .
We now approach the end of the Book. The naval power
of the Peloponnesians, the more as the Syracusan squadron
had gone home, required Persian help. The Phoenidan
fleet was brought as far west as Aspendus, but by now the
Great King, with the fear of revolts to hamper him,. was
not willing to see it committed to action on the Pelopon-
nesian side. It is, the refore,. not surprising that his fleet
goes no farther. The book ends with Tissaphernes sacri-
ficing to Artemis, and that is alL
The absence of set speeches in this book is discussed else-
where (pp. 35f.) and is explicable on other grounds than
a presumed incompleteness or lack of a degree of revision.
It will not be denied that Thucydides could not have
regarded this incident as a fitting end to his work. So
some other explanation must he sought, and this is at-
tempted in a later chapter.
It is of some importance to decide as far as possible when
this book was composed. It has been analysed by Wilamo-
witz in a skilful article in Hermes for 1908, and his results
1 VIII, 86, 4.
are accepted and strengthened by the chapter on the Eighth
Book (pp. 72 ff.) in Schwartz, Das Geschichtswerk des
Thukydides. They point out that there are some loose ends
in the narrative, which are left as they would be had the
historian written his narrative at the time. They also point
out that the book appears to be written without any
knowledge of future events, even if a reference to them
would have been in place. The compromise government
after the fall of the Four Hundred rallied the strength of
Athens and led to a revival of her power. This may indicate
a knowledge of the victory at Cyzicus, and if it does the
book could have been finished by 410 B.c. and not later..
It has been argued by P. A. Brunt 1 that part of the
narrative must be based on information supplied by
Alcihiades. But this, if it is so, does not require composi-
tion so late as the second exile of Alcibiades in 406 B.c., for
there is no difficulty in supposing that the historian could
have been in touch with Alcibiades during the very years
with which the hook is concerned.
It is therefore possible to combine the use of information
derived from Alcibiades with a date of composition that
ended not later than 410 B.c.
It may be added that those who believe that Book VIII
was written after 404 B.c. may be embarrassed by the fact
that Thucydides does not modify what he says about the
manreuvres of the oligarchs in 4 I I B.c. by adducing the
decrees which appear in Aristotle's Constitution ofAthens,
decrees which he could have consulted after his return to
Athens in 404 B.c. This argument should not be stressed
1 In • Thucydides and Alcibiades ', ReYue des Etudes Grecques,
LXV (1952), 59 ff.
88
Boole VIII
too far, for the historian may have attached no importance
to these documents, believing that he had already given a
realistic account of these events as seen far away from
Athens, for it is what they meant for the war that was his
prime concern, and that he has given us. It may, however,.
be observed that the absence from the History of what he
could have discovered after his return to Athens is most
easily understood if he wrote Book VIII whfle this informa-
tion was beyond his reach. It is not a point of much
substance,. but it may properly he mentioned.
CHAPTER 10
REVISIONS AND ADDITIONS
It is obvious that Thucydides, as long as his writings were

in his hand and not yet published, could make additions
to his text or alterations in it. With characteristic boldness
Laqueurl argued that the additions were very numerous;
he speaks of some 300 in all. If we may judge from the
number of phrases marked as parenthetic in the standard
editions this estimate is too high. But additions there are,
as is only natural. Some few of them break the general
construction of the passages in which they occur, or are,
strictly interpreted, inconsistent with what precedes or
follows them.
It was plainly possible for the historian to rewrite the
whole of a passage so as to remove an effect of this kind,
but as Laqueur points out, this does not seem to have
become his practice. This suggests that when he changes
his mind, or makes an addition, he tended to leave for a
future occasion any rewriting which would remove incon-
sistencies or inconcinnities. As they remain unremoved,
it is reasonable to deduce that, for whatever reason, he did
not reach the point of making these changes. One would
expect them to be made in a final revision of the work as
late as possible before or during that multiplication of his
autograph original which constituted publication in his
day, so that what we possess represents a penultimate
1 'Forschungen zu Thukydides', Rlieinisches Museumfur Phi/ologie
(1937), PP· 316-57.
Revisions and Additions
condition of the autograph original subject to any cor- .
ruption which.may have happened in the transmission of
the text at whatever period that occurred. An example of an
addition without the adjustment of the surrounding text is
explained in Part n under 1, 97, 2 (pp. 122 f.), which intro-
duces at once an inconsistency of meaning and an inconcin-
nity of form which Thucydides can hardly have intended
to leave uncorrected when his work was published. This
suggests that he was prevented by some event beyond his
control from proceeding to a fina] revision of what he had
written and intended to publish. When additions of this
kind occur we may assume that they were inserted in a
text which had already taken a literary form . The question
arises whether there are indications that at some particular
time or phase of composition a partial antepenultirnate
revision may have been made . There are, in fact, signs that
this happened when he has reached in his work the end of
the Ten Years War that ended in 421 B.c.· This would not
he surprising,. for, with the proverbial hope of an exile, he
might have looked forward to returning to Athens w~ich
was the centre of the book trade and the home of his
immediately prospective readers. The Peace of Nicias
provided for the restoration of Amphipolis to Athens,t
and, once this happened, the historian's responsibility for
its loss might he forgotten and forgiven.
The opening words of the work had given the author's
name and his expectations that, if a general conflict came
about, it would be a war most worthy of record. The
account of the early development of Greece which follows
justifies his statement that the two protagonists, the
1 v, 18, ,..
Peloponnesians and the Athenians, were approaching
the zenith of their military preparedness. The superior
claim to veracity of a contemporary account of events over
a reconstruction of the distant past is asserted, provided
more trouble is taken to be accurate than the generality of
histodans would take or their readers would insist upon.I
After instances of this carelessness he includes in this
introductory matter a statement of the procedure adopted
in the writing of speeches and in the investigation and
narrative of military operations.2 This procedure would be
best assessed after it had been tested in practice during the
record of the Ten Years War and its antecedents, and it
would be natural to write chapter 22 once this point has
been reached with the end of the war which he has
described.
Then in the next chapter (1, 23) he reverts to his state-
ment that the war had been as great as he expected it to be.
This is in accordance with a traditional arrangement and
has been called 'loop-composition' (Ringkomposition).3
Confirmation of the greatness of the war is supplied by
the statement that it lasted a long time and by adducing
natural phenomena and incidents, such as the depopulation
of cities, that attended it. These are registered by compari-
son with what happened in that kind 'within an equal
period of time'. 4 The length of this period therefore was
known when the words were written, and that could only
be at the end of the Ten Years War that ended with the
I ·
1, 20. 2 r, 22, 1-3..
3 R. Katicic, 'Die Ringkomposition im ersten Buche des Thuky-
dideischen Geschichtswerkes ', Wiener S tudien, LXX ( 19 57), 179-9,6.
4r,23,1.
92
Peace of Nicias in 421 B.c. For had the period extended to
404 B.c., it would have included the fatal eclipse of the
moon at Syracuse in 413 B.c. This then is part of a preface
to the Ten Years War and was presumably written in
42 I B.c. or not long afterwards.
It is possible that this point in time is also reflected in
the reconstruction of early history in the first book. In
three placesl events or periods are dated by reference to
'the end of this war'. It would have served the historian's
purpose as well or better to have reckoned back from 'the
beginning of this war' (or just 'to this war '),2 and this he
might have done during a first writing of the passages in
question. That the end of the war is chosen may be due
to the calculation of these periods from approximately
421 B.c., so that this is the moment at which the dates
were introduced. Those which refer to the rise of
Corinthian naval shipbuilding and the first sea battle in
Greek history, that between the Corinthians and the
Corcyraeans, may have been taken over from the recently
published work of Antiochus of Syracuse,3 which might
refer to them by a calculation like 'until my own days'.
So too the length of time during which Sparta has possessed
the same constitution, which is calculated the same way,.
may come from some other contemporary work which
would justify elsewhere a r.eference to 'those most
accurately versed in the tradition of the Peloponnese ', 4
whatever that work may have been. Here then we appear
to have additions made at the point when they reflect
what the historian had come to know after the first formu-
1 I, 13, 3 ;. IJ, 4; 18, I. 2 I,. 18, 3.
3 K. J. Dover in MAIA,. vr (1953), 1-20. 4 .,.
• 9,. 2.
.
93
Thucydides and lzis History
fation of his reconstruction. We have then evidence for a
partial revision that might most naturally be made when
the publication of Thucydides' work seemed a not too
distant prospect. It is part then of what may be called an
antepenuhimate revision by the author, conducted at the
end of the Ten Years War. The same may he true of the
reference (1, 8, 1) to the evidence of the Carian occupation
of the islands provided hy the purification of Delos in
426-425 B.c. (nr, 104, 2).
Thucydides may have added the confirmation of the
tradition when he came to know of the exhumation of the
bodies in the island, or at some rather later time, when it
was still fresh in his memory.
Elsewhere we may find traces of later or penultimate
additions as in the latter part of n, 6 5, where reference is
made to what happened from the Sicilian expedition to the
fall of Athens (seep. I 29). Here we have a pronouncement
on the Sicilian expedition, on the years of survival after
the disaster, and to Athenian war effort and politics
between that moment and the final surrender.
Finally, there is one other addition which may be set at
the time of the peace of Nicias.. In IV, 48, ; , the historian
refers to the almost complete disappearance of the aristo-
cratic party in the hill country of Corcyra which meant the
end of the civil war in the island. 'For there was nothing
left of either side which was of any account.' The period
during which this was true is then confirmed and limited by
the addition' so far at least as this war is concerned'. That
this was so would become known in 421 B.c. which might
well he the moment at which the phrase was inserted, and
that, perhaps, during a partial revision of the work at the
94
end of the Ten Years War or soon after.1 Until the end
of that war was reached, h could have stood as it was; it is
the further limitation and confirmation which constitutes
the addition. These are perhaps enough instances to suggest
that about this time Thucydides read over his work and
made some additions to it, perhaps with the possibility of
publication in his mind.
It has been observed that in a number of places through~
out the work as we have it,. short passages are inserted
without introducing modifications of their context. An
eminent instance of this, a sentence apparently inserted,
is 1, 97, 2, which is strictly inconsistent with what im~
mediately precedes and fallows it (see the discussion
below, pp. 122 f.). This sentence about the shortcomings of
the Athenian history of Hellanicus appears to be put in
as an afterthought after the Excursus on the fifty years
after the Persian wars had already taken shape and
serves to justify the retention and use of what Thucydides
had already written. It has the air of the footnotes that
appear in learned discussions in which the author refers to:
some very recent article which has none the less not caused
him to change what he had written. Had Thucydides used
footnotes this remark would have been relegated to one
of them. Where we find slight inconsistencies or incon~
cinnities of this kind they may be there to remind the
author to take account of them in a later and more final
revision of the work, which would happen on the eve of
publication.
1 The fater revival of ain oligarchic party in Corcyra in 410 B.c.

(Diodorus x1n, 48) need not have be,en known to the historian when he
wrote these words.
95
CHAPTER II
It is generally agreed that Thucydides did not himself

supervise the publication of his work as we have it. Its
division into books was not of his making. There is
evidence of a division into thirteen books which, for a
time, rivalled the eight hooks that appear in our manu-
scripts. The division of the books into what we call
chapters was also made after his time. The one subdivision
which was of his own making was the arrangement of the
narrative into years, themselves subdivided into summers
and winters, reckoning on from the outbreak of hostilities
in 431 B.C. He put in these chronological references him-
self, as is suggested by the phrases which may fallow them. I
Where he ends Book VIII as we have it before the end
of a war-year, a sentence is added in our manuscripts,
which provides for the right continuation of the narrative
if and when this becomes possible (see pp. I 36f.). The
precise beginnings and endings of the summer and winter
periods need not be always the same, so that there may be
slight variations to suit the economy of the narrative. This
division helped to induce composition in the form of a
series of situations, each of which falls within the limits of
a war-year. Chronological division into these units of
time has the merit Thucydides claims for it as universally
precise.2 It is contrasted with an arrangement in terms of
annual magistrates, as these enter office at different times
1 E.g. m, 89, :r:; iv, 52, r. 2 v, 20,. 2.
96
Publication
in different states. It is better than reference to festivals as
these in different states might not occur at precisely the
same point in the calendars of various communities . The
arrangement in war-years begins with the beginning of the
Ten Years War, and that is the moment from which all
fater years are reckoned. It may have gratified him to
record that the Ten Years War lasted ' just ten years'
within a very narrow margin of excess.1 Whoever was
responsible for the publication of the work which we
possess naturally followed the indications given in the
autograph original which was at his disposal.
It has been a long-disputed question how faithfully this
autograph was copied out for multiplication when the
work was made available for those persons who wished
to procure a copy. Some scholars, above all Eduard
Schwartz,2 have supposed that the work was edited by
someone who did not hesitate to make changes which his
judgment approved. This thesis is difficult to maintain, for
such an' editor' would hardly have been content to allow
the narrative in Book v111 to end in the middle of an inci-
dent, just because that was where the autograph in his
possession ended.. Only a person dominated by :fidelity to
the material before him would have let this happen. The
word 'editor' applied to the man who supervised the
multiplication of the autograph may be misleading, and so
it has seemed best to call him by the neutral term 'Re-
dactor'. Who then was this Redactor, who did for the
historian what,. for whatever reason, he was unable to do
for himself? No certain answer can be given to this
1 v, 20, I,
2 In Das Geschichtswerk des Thukydides (Bonn, 1919).
7 97 AT
question,. hut there is a name which has a claim for con-
sideration. That name is the name of Xenophon.
The work of publication is attributed to Xenophon in
a sentence which presumab]y said what its author,
Diogenes Laertius, believed to be attested, righdy or
wrongly,. by tradition (see pp. 137f.). In his account of
Xenophon,1 after giving a list of works which passed
under that author's name,. he says that there is a tradition
that Xenophon 'advanced to pubiic repute the books of
Thucydides [which must mean the texts extant in anti-
quity] which were concealed from general knowledge and
which he could have appropriated as his own' .2 This
tradition is doubtless quoted so as to redound to Xeno-
phon's credit,. but that does not prove that it is not true,
and we may assume that Diogenes Laertius believed that
it was. What was the origina] basis of this tradition is
uncertain. It is not sufficiently explained by the fact that
Xenophon wrote a work of his own which began where the
published books of Thucydides left off.. The reference to
'the books' of Thucydides would indicate that the tradi-
tion took its present shape when the copies of the work
in public or private libraries were already divided into
Books, but that does not prove it to be without foundation.
There the matter must be left, as a possibility,. in the hope
that evidence which will prove or disprove it may come to
light..
If, in fact, Xenophon did publish the work, this might
fit in with a suggestion made by M. Delebecque,3 that
Thucydides had chosen out Xenophon to continue his
1 In his History of Pllilosophy. 2 See below, pp. q7f.
3 Es.mi sur la vie de Xenophon (Paris, 1957).
Publication
work and provided him with material to enable him to do
so. This use of Thucydidean material would apply to all
or most of the first two books of Xenophon's Hellenica,
the part that continues the story of the Fa11 of Athens and
its immediate consequences. But it seems,. in itself, im-
probable that Thucydides would have chosen a young
man of no great intellectual pretensions, even if this
young man had enjoyed the acquaintance of Socrates.
Xenophon cannot yet have acquired the experience of war
provided by his later career. As has been observed by
Professor Andrewes in a lecture to the HeHenic Society in
March I 962, Xenophon sometimes writes 'like a cadet from
a military school'. In the first part of the Hellenica he does
not write Hke a man drawing upon the mature work of a
historian of Thucydides' temper and intellectual force. It
also appears possible that Thucydides would have arranged
his material in strict chronological sectors by war-years,
and, if so, the chronology of this part of the Helle.nica
would ·have avoided its present defects.I
However, even if this particular thesis of M. Dele-
becque is not accepted,. another part of his Essai offers
.promising arguments for the supposition that Xenophon
had begun to write his Hellenica before he joined his
friend Proxenus in Asia Minor and entered the service of
Prince Cyrus in the summer of 401 n.c. He points out that
Xenophon in this part of the Hellenica refers to personages
such as Coiratadas, Eteonicus,. Clearchus, Cyrus, Lysander
without a hint of his opinion of them acquired in the course
of the events in 401-400 B.c. If this condusion is accepted,
what follows is of some importance. It is almost impossible
1 See Camhridge Ancient History, v, 483 ff.
99'
to suppose that Xenophon would have set himself to
write the history of the years 41 I to 404 B.c. unless he had
good reason to believe that no account of this written by
Thucydides could appear to rival it. For him to be sure
of this, Thucydides must either be dead or permanently
disabled from writing, and anything he had written about
these years must have perished beyond recall. If so, it
becomes almost impossible to believe that Thucydides was
still alive and capable of writing at the time whenXenophon
left Athens in 401 B.c.
There are, indeed, no cogent reasons for believing that
Thucydides lived into the fourth century B.c. There is one
passage (n, 100) which has been taken to prove that he was
still alive and writing when Archelaus, King of Macedon,
died in 399 B.c. but the passage adduced to show this,. as
Gornme points out ad loc., could quite well have been
written soon after the king succeeded Perdiccas in 413 B.c.
If Archdaus, like others of his line, was concerned to secure
his unchallenged succession to the throne, the means he
use,d would be appHed at the beginning of his reign, and
would be known to Thucydides when it became true.
There is no evidence in Thucydides for a regular practice
of praising no man until he was dead for flattery to 'soothe
the dull cold ear of death'. Thus, whether or not Xenophon
is responsible for the actual publication of the work as w,e
possess it, his decision to begin his historical writing when
M. Delebecque believes he did does point to this know-
ledge that there was room for it as an independent work
which began almost precisely where the published work
of Thucydides left off.
If then the Redactor was a man who set himself to
100
Publication
publish whatever of Thucydides' work was in his posses-
sion, neither more nor less, the question arises why what
was in his possession, and so published,. ends where it does,
for no Redactor could suppose that it was intended to end
in the middle of an incident. 'One possible explanation is
this.. In the Fifth Century B.c. the practice of the papyrus
manufacturers was to sell their wares already made up
into rolls.'1 As Kenyon observed,2 a normal roll wou]d
have room for just about a book of Thucydides . When
Thucydides, after finishing the account of the Sicilian
expedition, would begin a roll with the new topic of what
followed the disaster, that roll would be full after the
composition of just about that amount. At the foot of the
last column in this roll might be added words by the author
or the Redactor to show how the next roll would begin
(see below, pp. 136f.). The implication that the author
intended to go further with the narrative or that the
Redactor expected a continuation is plain. This note would
remain in the possession of the Redactor, and it has survived
in practically all the manuscripts which we possess.
There are various possibilities that may be kept in
mind. The first is that Thucydides remained in Athens
after his return in 404 B.c. working on his history, which
when he returned had not yet got further than the events
of the summer of 411 B.c. That he had got no further seems
improbable if he described the events of 413-41 I not long
aft.er they happened.3 He might have got so far as, say,
1 See N. Lewis, 'L'industrie du papyrus dans l'Egypte Greco-

Rornaine' ,. Bull. de la Soc. Arch . d'Alexandrie (I936), no. 30.
2 See Oxford Classical Dictionary, p. 141.
3 Seep. 85.
IOI
410-409 B.C. and then ceased to write because of some
sudden illness which ended his career as an active historian.
If that was so, then the additional sentence would leave
open the possibility that he might recover and resume his
labours. One reason against supposing that he was out
of action during the closing years of the war is that, for
example,. in 11, 65 or v1, r;, he was able to formulate so
directly and emphatically his opinion of what happens in
those closing years (see pp . 127, 134). What is said about
those events in these two chapters suggests that he expected
to present to his readers the narrative which would
justify his verdict upon them .
A second possibility is that though he was well able to
continue to write, he preferred to abandon the narrative,
or the literary presentation of it, at that point, in order to
undertake a retractation or reinterpretation of what he had
a]ready written. But it is very hard indeed to believe that
he would do this, and there is no clear and certain indi-
cation that he ever did so. He was a self-confident man,.
aware of his duty to his readers, which would not be
performed if he was content simply to collect material
without adding that interpretation and literary presenta-
tion which would make it serve his purpose.
Another possibility is that he contented himself for
many years with the collection of material,. and then, not
earlier than 404 B.c., decided to transmute this material
into a history of the whole war. It is then assumed that a
sudden death ended this process. Hut if this occurred, it
has to face a strong apriori improbability that he worked in
any other way than to complete the literary presentation of
each situation pari passu with events (seep. 17). Also the
102
Publication
Redactor if he wrote the additional sentence must have done
so when he believed that the narrative could be continued,
and that though the historian would not be alive to write it.
The most probable hypothesis seems to he that Thucy-
dides did in fact continue his narrative beyond this point,
but that some cause beyond his control prevented what
he had written from coming into the possession of the
Redactor. If we are entitled to deduce from what we have
in Marcellinus (see below, p. 139) that the historian
perished at sea, it appears highly probable that the event
which ended his life also limited the autograph material
that was in the possession of the Redactor. A conjectural
hypothesis may now be adduced to complete the story.
When a man perishes at sea, his luggage is apt to perish
with him, and so the same stroke of fate ends the historian
and limits his work as published. The Redactor who knows
that the historian has disappeared in the course of the
voyage of a ship that never reached the Piraeus might, for
a time, hope against hope that he had left behind, wherever
he had been, what he had written, so that this might reach
him in time to be added and this additional sentence is
there to facilitate the continuation. For he would know
that if the rest of that war-year arrived, any succeeding
years that survived would fall into their place in the
sequence of the work. What matters is then the junction
between what he has and what he had hoped to have and
that was his immediate concern. The formal possibility
cannot be denied that Thucydides may have come short of
a complete narrative, but that he did write more than we
possess seems almost inescapable.
Just how far he had got and why whatever he had written
103.
beyond our Book vnr was never published is a matter for
conjecture. One conjecture was made by Miiller-Stri.ibing
in 1881.l He supposed that v,. 26 proves that Thucydides
completed his task and he then conjectures that his enemies
destroyed him and his whole work, but that there was an
alternative manuscript covering what we possess and that
this was then published by its possessor as the work of
Thucydides. This is conceivable, but it seems improbable
that those who could destroy the historian and his work
could not also be able to prevent this happening. That
Thucydides would have been at pains to write out so
much of his work in duplicate is also improbable. It is
not surprising that scholars were allergic to this hypothesis
the more as its author-an enfant terrible in Thucydidean
studies-put it forward with a dogmatism which did not
conciliate assent.. It may be suggested as a more probable
hypothesis that there was only one autograph original and
that the earlier part of this survived in the care of a man in
the historian's confidence, and that the remainder perished
by accident (seep. 140). The destruction is due to a ship-
wreck that overwhelmed the author with the later part of
his work. How did this happen? This requires a further
conjecture. Thucydides returned to Athens after twenty
years of exile2 beginning with the winter of 424 B.c. and
so in the latter half of 404 B.c., shortly after the capitulation
of Athens. He would find a Spartan garrison on the
Acropolis and the city in the hands of the Thirty Tyrants.
It might be hoped that their rule would not last for ever,
but until it was ended, Athens was a dangerous place for
a rich man such as Thucydides continued to be by virtue
1 Thukydideische Forscliungen, pp. 74 ff. 2 v,. .:z6, f.
104
Puhlication
of his Thracian property. It was a reign of terror under
which it was possible to say that more Athenians perished
in eight months than in ten years of the war.1
It is thus probable enough that Thucydides soon left
Athens, all the more as evidence of the closing stages of the
war could now be procured elsewhere, at Sparta for the de-
bates about the treatment of Athens after her surrender, and
in the north-east of the Aegean for most of the latest naval
operations. That he would leave in safe keeping a series of
rolls ending with the narrative of 41 r B.c. and take away
the rest of his writing, so far as it had got, so as to add to it
is natural to the point of being probable. When the Thirty
Tyrants fell and Athens was made safe for historians and
Redactors, he would set out for home with the intention
of finishing anything that might be unfinished and of
overseeing the publication of the whole at Athens.. But
that 'perfidious bark' defeated his intentions, book and all.
Thus, ifhe left Athens and deposited with some trusted
friend that earlier part of his work which he would not be
completing during his absence, he would only take with
him the later part. If he left Athens he would hope to
return, but it might seem wise to ensure that part at any
rate of his work would survive him if he did not live to
return. The Redactor then would be the man who had in
his possession what he published or, if not the same man,
someone whose help was enlisted to oversee publication.
If it is argued that Thucydides would commit the
custody of this part of his autograph original to some old
friend trusted from long friendship, that man might be,
for example, the father of Xenophon, namely Gryllus,.
1 Xenophon, Hell. u,. iv, 21.
10)
from whom it passes, for whatever reason, into the hands of
Xenophon ff Xenophon was in the end the Redactor. Those
who are convinced that Xenophon did not publish the
work,. do not have to reject more than this p·art of the
hypothetical reconstitution. And it is not necessary to
assume that Thucydides must have completed the whole
of his work. The hypothesis would be equally possible if,
when he was shipwrecked, what perished with him fell
short of being the very end of the history. That something
perished appears probable, but precisely how much that
something was is a conjecture which can stand by itself.
If this hypothetical reconstruction is criticized as being
a 'tissue of probabilities', it still appears defensible against
the charge that it is ' a tissue of improbabilities'.
106
CHAPTER 12
For well over a century scholars have tried to discover a

provable and indisputable answer to the questions by what
stages and when Thucydides composed his work as we
have it. There have been many theories or variants on
theories, but no one of them has driven out all its rivals so
as to stand alone universally accepted. And it may be
prophesied with some confidence that this state of affairs
will continue . There is evidence, but some of this evidence
is of very slight weight, like straws in the wind. If one
more scrutiny of this evidence appears to suggest that
most of them drift in one direction, it becomes possible
to conclude that we know which way the wind is blowing.
But the wind 'bloweth whither it listeth' and, when all is
done, an impish gust may deceive the observer. What may
be discovered at the end of it all cannot well he certainty,,
hut, at best, probability, so that a daim to provide one
more orthodoxy is out of place.
The reason for being at pains to come to the most
probable conclusion is that, if right, it may help, and, if
wrong, may hinder, the understanding of the work or of
this or that part of it.
The History as we have it is a torso,. whether or not
there was a moment when it was complete or near comple-
tion, written in the historian's own hand, or, as to part of
it, still in the historian's head. And he has been chary of
revelation which of these it is.. He has to]d us when he
began to write it; he has told us with what purpose he did
so, though the possibility cannot be denied that he formu-
lated his purpose, not at the very beginning of his task, but
after he had made proof of his powers by exercising them.
But it will be admitted that he reveals himself as a self-
confident man, tenax propositi, so that it is likely that his
judgment of what he was after continued to be in the same
general direction. If this be so, his aim was to assist his
future readers to study a realistic, inteHigible account of
what happened within the range of his work) This
avowedly concerned itself with conflict between states or
combinations of states, equally valuable, equally instruc-
tive,. whatever the ultimate result of the conflict proved to
be. He is providing,. as it were, a reading glass and not a
telescope.
The work was then not written to show why the uhi-
mate result was this or that, but to make plain what
happened at each stage, in a world in which no one, not
even Pericles, could forecast with certainty how it would
all end, but only discern what was happening when it
happened and its foreseeable consequences. That is all his
readers can compare with events and situations in their
own day. For they, too, have to act the living present, and
it is for the day of that action that they will be better
equipped by the study of his work. Their appreciation of
the present and the foreseeable future, argued from the
present,. is to be made easier and surer by reference to the
observation how men proved to act in much the same way
in much the same situations. That postulate Thucydides
allows himself. It is valid to his mind because he believes
1 r, 22, 4.
108
Conclusion
that what happens is what men cause to happen, not fore-
ordained by any Providence, good or bad. What the wits
and will of men can make in the past they can make in the
present, though they need not do so. What happens is the
test: the pudding is known by the eating and not deduced
from the recipe.
If this conclusion be accepted, it becomes highly prob-
able that Thucydides would not turn his eyes from what
was happening or wait to see how it all turned out. He has
been called a 'retrospective prophet' and if that means that
he was looking backwards while pretending to be looking
forwards, it would not be in tune with what seems to be
his purpose and his method. As has appeared from the
study of his work, if the study matches the evidence, he
proceeded, not by intuition or by having a preconceived
philosophy and using events to justify it but by obser-
vation and the deductions which .rest on observation and
human experience.
He has, too, been, at times, described as a critic of the
ethic of communities. This is true within the range of his
history which is concerned with war, and it is based on
observation rather than on theory or any racial presupposi-
tions. When he observes how ready the Spartans are to be
afarmed by the rise of Athenian power or depressed by
mistakes, and, on the other hand, how resilient the Athe-
nians are to misfortunes and how prone to optimism,. he
applies his observation to the course of events. His
opinion of the motives of communities is, or appears to
be, based on observation rather than on any philosophic
doctrine. In this he is true to the intellectual atmosphere of
Athens at the time.
It is, therefore, in no way surprising that it appears to
the present writer most probable-more cannot be said-
that Thucydides composed his history pari passu with
events and with his observation of them. It is this general
picture of his procedure and method of composition that
emerges from the attempts made to interpret what evi-
dence can be deduced from events which seem to he
significant passages in his work. It is also maintained as
probable that the composition of the work proceeds,
situation after situation, affected by the historian's career
in its various phases.
A conclusion of this kind has the advantage of suiting
the means of securing information and is affected by his
presumable attitude towards events at each phase of the
period he covers. It seeks also to take into account the
conditions of his day as available to a writer, which appears
to prescribe, as most convenient, periods of composition
near in time to the acquisition and examination ofevidence
as it would reach him. It is worth remembering how diffi-
cult it would be to spend many years in collecting notes and
then afterwards to convert them into a literary record.
In the circumstances of today, a historian can collect and
preserve in convenient form references to published works
and notes of what he finds in them. Thucydides, who is
creating his record and not repeating the records of others,
might make some notes of the discussions he had with his
informants. But to preserve so great a mass of detailed
information, together with what he thought about it, was
a difficult task, and, what is more important, a task best
completed while what he heard and thought about it all
remained vivid and inteiligible in his memory. This means
110
Conclusion
that when he notes the end of a year of which Thucydides
'wrote the history', the words had become true when he
wrote them.
The terse and cogent narrative of events, the integration
of speeches with the situation to which they belonged,
both of these point to composition along with,, or soon
after,. the events. We know that he began to write his
history of the war when it began (p. 119}, and it is hard to
see why he did not continue that process in the years that
followed that beginning. The acquiring of information
and its prompt conversion into a literary record within
the range of a series of war-years would best enable him
to do his duty by his readers and not leave to an unknown
future the achievement of what he had set himself to do.
The more closely his work is studied, the more probable it
appears that this would seem to himself the sensible,.
practical, provident procedure to adopt. He is conscious
of the advantage of writing in the present about the
present. But he, at times, realizes that there are series of
events or phases of thought which can with advantage be
subsumed under topics, such as the later fortunes of the
war as he sees them happen or the development of a pro-
gressive deterioration of personal or co1nmunity ethics.
Some parts of the History that fall within this category are
discussed in Part 11.
It is not to be forgotten that while the work was under
his hand he could not be prevented from occasional addi-
tions of what he thought it desirable to interject into his
record. It may also be conjectured that at particular times
he went some way in revising or adding to his text,. most
otten perhaps when he was led to hope that a publication
III
of a part or the whole of it at Athens was coming within
sight.
The effect of the fact that he did not, for whatever
reason, oversee the publication of his work himself, has
been taken into account, and an attempt has been made to
produce a hypothesis which may explain how this came
about. It is in the nature of the whole question that prob-
ability must he the criterion, for lack of apodeictic proof.
Some parts of this hook may be of use to those who wish
to study the work whether or not what is propounded in
this chapter wins their overall assent,. and if it prove to be
of use 'it will suffice'.
112
PART II
INTERPRETATIONS
8 AT
LIST OF PASSAGES DISCUSSED,
Thucydides:
I, I, I page I 19
8, I 120
22 120
97, 2 122
103, 1-3 123
I 16, l 124
n, 64, 2-3 125
65, 12 127
III, 31, I 13r
82-3 l)I
VI, 1), 3-4 1J2
VIII, 86, 4 135
109, 2 136
Diogenes Laertius:
n, 57 137
Marcellinus:
16-17, 31, 55 lJ8
Pausanias:
I, 23, 9 1 39
INTROD,UCTI,ON: THE EARLY
TRANSMISSION O,F THE TEXT
There is one respect in which the text of Thucydides is

inevitably affected by the fact that he did not himself
prepare and supervise his work for that multiplication of
his autograph original which constituted publication in his
day. Whether or not the cause of this which has been sug-
gested above (pp. 102 f.) is accepted, the fact seems to be
beyond serious doubt. He could not have intended his
work as published to end in the middle of an incident which
he could have omitted or completed if he was there to do so.
What we now possess reached publication by the inter-
vention of a Redactor, a man who caused to be copied all,.
neither more nor less, that was in his possession. Such
fidelity is evidence against the theory that the Redactor
was an editor in the sense that he was more than an inter-
mediary between the autograph original and the public.
We cannot confidently assume the existence ofan organized
publishing establishment as elaborate as that of Atticus in
the time of Cicero, even though there is evidence that books
were sent abroad from Athens about this dme.1 The
Redactor is not likely to have been a man who had first-hand
knowledge of events earlier than the middle of the fifth
century and thus could have corrected or supplemented
the original in his possession from his own resources.
Throughout the work there are signs that it had not
received that ultimate revision by the author which would
naturally accompany,, or immediately precede, his own
I See Pauly-Wissowa, s.v. Buchhandel, cols. 974-5.
115 8-2
Interpretations
supervision of the publication of the work. Granted that
this is the situation,. the method of multiplication becomes
relevant to the history of the text. The archaeological
evidence for the practice of scribes shows that it would be
difficult to copy direct from the autograph as this would
need to have been under the immediate eye of the scribe as
he wrote his copy. The n1ost convenient procedure would
be to collect a number of scribes and read to them at
dictation speed what the Redactor (or a man employed by
him) had before him in the autograph original.I This
would be simpler than a possible alternative, simultaneous
copying of parts of the work, each part by a different
scribe. If that device was adopted it would induce a
variety of misreadings, and the verification of each copy
of the text by collation with the original would be a compli-
cated and laborious task,, if it was to ensure correctness.
Unobtrusive inconsistencies or inconcinnities which the
author might himself have corrected or rewritten would be
left as they were by a Redactor, moved by fidelity rather
than the desire to improve.
Where we have papyrus fragments of parts of the work
they do not, as a rule, seem to offer variants due to in-
structed or logical correction. When,. many years after-
wards, the archetype from which our manuscripts are
derived took shape, it would tend to pass on such long-
standing errors, in all good faith . Thus where either the
study of events or, less frequently, the comparison with
other ancient evidence makes a reading suspect, the un-
animity of the existing manuscripts does not in hse]f
1 See T. C. Skeat, 'The use of dictation in ancient book-pro-
duction ',Proceedings of the British Academy, XLII (1956), 179 ff.
116
Interpretations
suffice to dispel this suspicion. It does not afford as great
confirmation as in a text which from the outset has enjoyed
the degree of correction which only the author himself
might have provided. Furthermore, a high degree of
reliance on one of the manuscripts is limited in this way,, for
not even what seems to be the best manuscript can have
avoided early corruption before being copied again and
again since the first publication of the work.
On the assumption of multiplication by way of the
dictating of the text, corruption would occur ifthe Redactor
(or a Reader employed by him) either misread his text or
mispronounced what he had seen in it. If that happened,.
the several copies of the several scribes would tend to
reproduce the same false readings in their texts.
At this point human nature comes into its own. The
Redactor or his Reader would be apt to believe that what
appeared in all the several copies would be correct. If he
was not already conversant with the historical events, he
would not observe the fa]sity of readings if they made
sense so far as he knew. This failure would be particularly
apt to happen in numbers or unfamiHar proper names, as
they would not arouse suspicion)
When after a lapse of time new copies were called for,
they would most easily be made by copying a copy,
especially if the autograph original had suffered decay or
was no longer in the possession of the man who arranged
the making of these later copies. For the life of a papyrus,
kept at Athens and not in Egypt, was apt to be relatively
short.
The successive copyings, unchecked by reference to an
1 See K. J. Dover in Classical Review, n.s. vn (1957), pp. 24-5.
117
Interpretations
autograph original no longer available, enlarges the area
within which suspicion may he aroused in the mind of
modern scholars. More often than some may suppose,
readings may properly he suspect, and yet all that the
editor can do is to print what the manuscripts offer and
indicate that there are good grounds for thinking that it is
not what the historian wrote or what he would have left
unchanged had he been able to supervise the multiplication
of his work. The occasional obscurity of Thucydides'
style and his freedom from the conventions of later writers
must always be borne in mind. It is, indeed, often neces-
sary to indicate a fault without being able to remedy it,
and so to practise what has been called the ars diflicillima
nesciendi.
These general comments do not affect, and are not a
substitute for, that skilful and systematic evaluation of
particular manuscripts which requires more expert and
wide experience in the technique of recension than I can
claim to possess. But they deserve to be taken into account
in the interpretation of the text, especially by historians .
118
D,ISCUSSION OF PASSAGES
I, 1, I
8oVKV8 toris ,Aeri.vo::tos ~vveypo::\.j)e

Tov ir6/\eµov Twv Tiei\o-
irovvncricuv Ko::i 'A6-J1vo::lwv, &is e1Toi\eµricrav npos O:i\i\~J..ovs,
O:p~aµevos eu6us Kcrl1HTTO:µfoov KO:l EAiTlO"O:S µeyav TE eaeo-6ai
\ °'S: ,._ "'°"' ~I
KCU O\,lOt\OYWTaTOV "TOOV
I
Tipoyeyevriµevwv,
I '
TEKµatpoµevos OTl
r "I" :;t_ / - - ; ' ,
TD 1T0::0'11J KO:l TO·
::1 ,
CXKµa3ovTES TE T)O"O::V aµ<p0Tep01 1TO:pCXcrKEV1J
OAAO .EAAT)VlKOV 6pwv ~WlO"TCcµEVOV npos EKcnepovs, TO µsv
evevs, TO OE Kai 01avoovµevov.
It would he very strange if these words were not written

at the time when they became true. There is no reference to
the length of war or to any incident in it,. and it requires no
more knowledge than was at the historian's disposal
whenever he wrote n, 7-9. It would be normal Greek
practice to suppose that the reader mentally supplies
~vyyp6:cpe1v or ~uyyp6:~a1 with 6:p~6:µevo5. Some scholars
have supposed that the word ·~vyypacpeiv meant not to
'compose' but to 'collect material for later use', but that
can hardly be the meaning of the word where it occurs in
the formula that marks the end of war-years. Thucydides,
in that formula, must mean beginning of' the war of which
Thucydides composed the history' not 'for which he
collected material for future composition'. If that be so
then what the historian says is that his composition of the
history began simultaneously with the beginning of the
war, and a heavy burden of proof rests upon those who
believe that he was not speaking the truth. The impor-
tance of the war would be best revealed as the work pro-
ceeded, and so early a beginning is justified by the
119
Interpretations
expectation which the historian had formed before he
began to write.
The sentence naming the work refers only to the Pelo-
ponnesians and Athenians. Had the historian then known
that there would be operations in Sicily, as those of 427 to
424 B.c., one would expect the title to be more inclusive,
and afortiori if it had been written after the twenty-seven
years mentioned in the' Second Preface' (v, 26) the period
covered or to he covered by the work, including the account
of the great Sicilian expedition, it is strange that it appears
as it is. It was,. when it was written, the title, as it were, of
a work on the war which began in 431 B.c. and ended after
just about ten years, with the peace of Nicias, however
impermanent that peace later proved to be.
I, 8, I
µo:pwp1ov Se· /1fi'Aou yap Ko:6cnpoµEVTJS V1TO •A&rwo:fo.:iv ev
TC1JOe T4'> 1TOAEµc.p KO:l TWV 6:71Kw'v O:vcnpE6e1crwv oua1 flcro:v TWV
Te6vewTwv EV Tfj vficr~, \nrtp fiµtuv K5:pes E<pavricrav ....
This phrase adduces, as witness to the occupation of
islands by Carians, the results of the opening of graves
duringthepurificationofDelosin426-425B.c.(111,104, 1) .
It was therefore written not earlier than that date and
appears to be an addition made not very long after it when
it came to the historian's notice.
r, 22
The meaning of this chapter is discussed earlier (pp. 27 ff.).
It contains only one phrase which calls for elucidation.
exoµEv'fl• OTl EYyVTcrTO: TTlS ~VUTiaans yvwµ11s TC'W &i\riews
AexetvToov ....
1.20
Interpretations
The reading seems to be beyond doubt. The one variant is
7\ey6vTwv for AEXHEvTwv, which is found in the Codex
Britannicus and entered as a variant (yp6:q>eTa1) in the Codex
Monacensis. The reading A.ey6vTc.vv seems inadmissible, for
the word 6:/\116ws appears otiose with /\ey6vTc.vv, and the
present participle is out of tune with the rest. If then, we may
assume that Thucydides wrote Twv O:J'\riHws i\ex6evTwv,
which means 'of what was actually said' (for any other
meaning of a/\:116ws would neither suit his practice nor
give something of general application to all the speeches).
The question is what is the meaning to be attached to
Tfjs ~vµTr6:011s yvwµ11s. An interpretation of the word as
meaning 'political attitude' offered by Patzer has found
much acceptance. But that interpretation would not
always he relevant, nor would there be any need to qualify
it with the generalizing word ~vµTI6:CJ11s.
There are many speeches in which the political attitude
of the speaker is not what matters. What matters to give
due force to exoµEVViJ' is something that is conditioned by
Ta &A11Hws /\ex6evTa. Thucydides can hardly be concerned
with the political attitude of the Corcyraeans and Corin-
thians at Athens, of the Corinthians at the two Conferences
at Sparta, of Diodotus in the Mitylenean Debate, of the
speech of the Plataeans and of the Thebans after the
surrender of the city, of the speeches of the Peloponnesian
admirals and of Phormio before the second engagement of
429 B.c., of Brasidas in Illyria or before the Battle of
Amphipolis,. or the negotiations at Melos, and so on. What
is common to all the speeches as something to follow is
what is revealed by the historian's information, the line
taken or the arguments used. We may grant that the
121
Interpretations
intention of the speakers and what they actually said
cover what is required and both may be qualified by the
word ~uµrracrris. The word yvwµ11 then combines the
purpose and the purport of what was said. These two
words, taken in conjunction, will sufficiently indicate the
content of yvwµ71 as will the use with it of the adjective
~uµrr6:crris, for the purpose of the speakers may have an
overriding purpose and the purport a degree of generaliz-
ation. It is also to be noticed that the dative case of
exoµi§vqJ connects it with E06Kouv and so with the writer's
judgment of what each was. It has a limiting effect on
what the historian writes, and that is why the phrase is
there, and it is of importance for that reason and implies
some knowledge of what was actually said in a speech
which was actually delivered, and it imposes a heavy
burden of proof upon those who urge that there are
speeches which are entirely without some basis of know-
ledge of 'what was actually said' (see p. 28).
r, 97, 2
EYPO:\f'O: Si: o:VrO: Kai Tfiv EKf'oi\fiv TOV /\6yov enon10-6:µflV ·Bia
T65e, OTl 'TOlS npo E:µov O:rracnv EKAlTI"ES TOVrO ilv TO xcvpiov
Kal ii Ta npo 'TWV M11S1KOOV CEAAT)VlKCx ~UVE'Tieeo-o:v Ti cx&-rO: Tel
MT1fitK6:' TOlnUJV OE ocnrep Kai D\f'CXTO EV 'Tfj Ann<fj1 ~uyypcxq:riJ
J
·EA./\6:v11<os1 (3pCX)(ECV5 TE Ko:l ToTs xp6vo1s ovK &Kp1J3&s ElTe-

µv~cr611 · &µex Be Kai T~S &pxfis aTI6oe1~1v Ex_e1 Tfjs Twv
'A011vo:fwv sv oi<'..}> 7p6rr<{) KCXTScrTT).
K. Ziegler in the Rheinisches Museum, LXXVIII (1929), 66,

n. 2, points out that the second sentence in this passage is
a later insertion: for two reasons, the first that it is in con~
122
Interpretations
sistent with the preceding statement with its emphatic
&no:cnv and, second, that the subject of E:xe1 refers back to
the first sentence and not to the second sentence. Thus the
second sentence interrupts the grammatical construction
of the passage. The validity of this observation is beyond
doubt, and his conclusion that the second sentence is a
later addition is accepted by Jacoby. 'The context of
1, 97 leaves no doubt that the few words relating to H
(i . e. Hellanicus) were added (to put it as cautiously as
possible) as an afterthought to the motivation of the
digression' (Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker,.
vn, 5). If this is so, the sentence supplies,. not a terminus
post quem for the composition of the whole excursus but a
terminus ante quern, which is a very different matter (see
journal ofHellenic Studies, LXXI (1951), ll). This is true
whether, as Gomme suggests, the work of Hellanicus was
published in instalments or as one book not earlier than
406 B.c., the year of Arginusae, the latest dated event in
the fragments that survive. For the significance of this
conclusion see above,. p. 22.
1,. 103,. 1-3

Qi E» EV 'l6wµ13 8eK0:-r':J ETEl, ilis OVKETl e8uvavTO clVTEX~:tv,
~UVEJ'1)0-0:V . • • KO:t cnrrovs oi "A61)VO:iol oe~aµevm Kerr' ex6os
~,811 To Aat<e8mµoviwv E) No:Vrreo<:.Tov t<crr'9K10-av.
The undecided controversy about the correctness of

6e1<6:T<t> is well reviewed by Gomme ad loc. There is no
certainty precisely when the blockade of I thome began,,
but it was most probably in progress as early as 462 B.c.
(1, 102, 1). If the manuscripts had offered a smaller
123
Interpretations
ordinal number it would not be suspect. It may be as-
sumed that the settlement of the rebels at Naupactus
followed immediately upon their capitulation after the
Athenians had reason for hostility towards Sparta (1,
io2, 4). It is at least possible that, if the number is wrong,
it is due to the misreading of an ordinal number in the
autograph original and the easiest misreading (whether
by a copyist or by a man reading to him) will he EKTf:t>
as 5eKerrcp. This may be compared with the same mis-
reading which may have produced SeKaTov in 1, 116,. 1
below.
The change to TETapT\{), which assumes the use of an
Attic acrophonic number, seems a priori improbable.
1,.116,1
TccrcrapOO<oVTa 88 vavcri Kai TEcrcro:pcn ncplKAEOVS OEKCrrOV

> - - , '
o:VTou crTporrriyowTos evcruµcxxricrav.
This is the reading of the manuscripts except that in two of

them (C and E) the word aUTov is omitted. It is just con-
ceivable that the omission of c:xVTov in C and Eis justified,
and that in those two manuscripts SeKchov is an interpo-
lation, for, by itself, it does not make sense. But a reason
for this interpolation of BeKerrov is hard to see, though
earlier (e.g. r, 98, 1; r,. 100, 1; r, 102, r) Thucydides is
content with Kfµwvos a-rpaTTlyavvT05. lf then we regard
oeKcl-rov aVTov as the reading of the archetype, it is a
question whether the ordinal number is corrupt or what
Thucydides can have meant to write. He may have written
8eK6Tov hy a slip of the pen, in which event he would pre-
sumably correct it to some smaller number. But this he
124
Interpretations
was not able to do. The words as they stand must mean to
indicate how many generals were serving under Pericles
in the actual battle, and it is practically certain there were
fewer than nine. Thucydides is aware that the Athenian
fleet in the battle was short of sixteen ships (despatched
elsewhere),, which must have had at least one general in
charge of them, and he would also be aware that at least
one general must have remained in Athens to conduct the
business of that office at home. If we are to arrive at the
right number it must fall short of nine if the idiom is used
in the normal way. It may be suggested that if this smaHer
number was one that could most readily be mistaken for
s,eKaTov it would he EKTov by a misreading or mishearing,
such as may have led to a like confusion in I, 103, 1 (see
above, p. 124). The circumstances are so different from
those inn, 13,, 1 that that passage does not support 5eKcnov
in this. Thus, apart from the possibility of an uncorrected
slip of the pen by the historian himself, it may be supposed
probable that EKTOV should be read.
II, 64, 2-3

TMCX yap Ev e6e1 Tfj6e Tij 1TOAE1 1Tp6Tep6v TE fiv vvv TE µfi Ev
vµiv Kcui\v0fj. yvwTE Se ovoµa µey1crrov O:VTflV exovcrav iv
&rro:aw &vepckiTI01s 510: To To:is ~uµcpopo:rs µ~, eiKew, 1TAEiCJTo: oe
o-cl:iµcrrcx Kotl 1T6vovs cXvTJAWKevo:1 TTOi\Eµc:p, Kai 8uvaµ1v µcyicrTTJV
Bf'i µexp1 Tov6e Ka<TiiµE:vT)v, Tis es d:t51ov 'Tots En1y1yvoµevo1s 1
fiv KO:i VVV l/'TrEVfiwµfo 1TOTE (1TCcVTO'. yap 1TE!p'Ul<E Kai e/\ao-o-ou-
aeat), µvfiµTl Ka'Tai\ei\e{i.yETo:t K.T.i\.
The last words in this passage, especially those in paren-

theses, have often been interpreted as revea]ing knowledge
125
Interpretations
of the final surrender of Athens in 404 B.c. and therefore as
evidence of the late composition of the whole passage.
This interpretation is at fault, first because the passage
refers to the circumstances of the moment as is shown by
vuv. ~v Ko:l vvv repeats the vuv TE of § 2 with the same
meaning. The noTe which fallows adds a touch of vague-
ness so that it refers, with tactful obliqueness, to the
possibility that the Athenians may resume their overtures
to Sparta which Pericles is seeking to prevent (see § 6).
The phrase in parentheses is, as Gomme says, ad loc.,. a
commonplace which could be written at any time. The
implication of KO:l before si\acraofio-f}a1 is that States, like
other things, were by their nature apt to decline as well as
to rise. What is in the speaker's mind is a tentative approach
to giving way and not a complete surrender, for which
Thucydides uses the verb ev8106vcn (see n, 65, 12, ov
np6Tepov E:vl:oocrav).
The double composition of vrrevo&µev is written with
intention. Thus the passage does not reveal any knowledge
of the ultimate collapse of Athens and it is not to he re-
garded as an' indication of late composition'. There is one
further possible confirmation in the apparent citation of a
phrase in this speech ( w5 TVpavvi8cx yap ~ori exeTE &u-nlv,
n, 63, 2) in Cleon's speech in the Mitylenean Debate
(TVpavviOa yap exen TI)v &px~v, n1,. 37, 2), the phrase
being apparently inserted as echoing something which the
historian's readers will have read. If this be so, it suggests
that this part of Pericles' speech was written before the
composition of Clean' s speech, which there is every reason
to believe was written long before the fall of Athens, at a
time, indeed, when it was relevant to a recent situation,
126
Interpretations
in which Cleon was still alive to make a speech which
matches the description of what he was at that moment
(nr, 36, 6).
n,.65,12
The paragraph which calls for especial discussion is § 12,
which runs as follows:
mpcxAEvTES
-. "}.I
8e Ev 2.:tKEAiq: aAA1J TE Tiapo:01<evfj Kai TOV VCXUTIK0.0
I \ \ \ _I")_ »~ ) f JI tl
T~ 1Tt\EOV1 µopt!{) Kal Ko:'TO: TijV 1TO.t\1V T)uTj EV O'TO:O'El O\ITES: oµOJS
Tpfa µ.Ev ETfl exvTeixov Tois: TE np6"Tepov VTI6:pxovm Tioi\eµiois:
Kai Tots O:Tio 21Kei\ias µeT) rn.JTwv, Kai TWV ~uµµO)(wv ETt Tois
Tit~EOC'lV
"\ I
mpEOiT'llKOO'l, K'
• ' "
Vpu,:> TE VO"Tepov 1::1.. '\ ' .
l-'O:O"lt\El0S: ~·
TrO:lul
1TpocryevoµEv(fl, OS' napeixe xp~µCCTO: neA01TOVVT)O'lo1) ES TO
VauTlKOV, Kai ov rrp6Tepov eveoomxv fl c:NToi mpicn KCCTO: TOS sv
i6ias 81mpopa) 1TEpl1TEO'OVTES ecrcp6:i\T)crav.
Before examining this passage it is desirable to consider the
construction of the whole chapter.
The first part, §§ 1-9, comments on the immediate con-
sequences of the speech that precedes it, and praises
Pericles for his power to sway the Assembly and stresses
the effect of his authority and dominating personality.
This is summed up in the famous phrase eyiyvETO TEAoyq>
µev 011µ0Kp<rrfa, spy<:f> Be v1T6 'Tau irpooTav &vopos apxfi.
So far the chapter is closely relevant to his speech and its
effect.
Those scholars who are convinced by chapter 64, § 3,
that the speech was written after the faU of Athens in 404 B.c.
suppose that the whole of the chapter 6; was written after
the fall of Athens,. and are confirmed in their belief by
what they read in § r 2, cited above. But if the arguments
advanced elsewhere(pp. 12; f.) for denying that conclusion
are accepted, then the interpretation of the chapter
127
Interpretations
may fallow another line. If, as is a priori probable, the
speech and the first part of the chapter which expounds
its effect were written at the same time as the speech,
we are no longer bound to regard the whole as written
afrer 404 B.c. and in one continuous time of composition.
What we may discover in the second part of the chapter is
a series of observations of events separated in time and so,
perhaps,. separated in the time of their composition. These
sections from 10 to 12, it may he suggested, follow as the
historian observes them. They have, it is true, a common
theme, the effect of situations and actions that followed the
death of Pericles. There is recorded the difference between
Pericles and the leaders who followed him,. who have not
the same control over the Athenian Demos, but follow its
shifts of feeling rather than direct them. This state of
affairs may be observed within the period that lies between
the death of Pericles and the inception of the great Sicilian
expedition.
Then follows a judgment on the degree of error which
attended the undertaking of that great enterprise. It was
not condemned from the very beginning by a lack of
resources comparable with those of the Sicilian cities. But
the rivalries of leaders induce a failure to send the addi-
tional help which the expedition required for its success.
And this failure is accompanied by rivalries for leadership
whkh caused a confusion of policy within Athens itself.
This could be observed in various stages of the operations.
Then comes § 12. It begins with the disaster that
completes the failure of the expedition, and involves the
loss of military strength and of the greater part of the
Athenian fleet, and the onset of civil strife within the city.
128
Interpretations
But we are told that despite all this the Athenians held out
for three years, if that number is correct. The Athenians
are said to have held out against their original enemies and
the Sicilian forces which now operate with them. The
period Thucydides has in mind is a period in which
Athens, weakened at sea, has to face not only the Pelopon-
nesians but a Sicilian squadron. To justify this we need to
consider the operations that preceded the withdrawal of
the Sicilian ships; and that period beginning with the
resumption of general hostilities makes up three years. If
this was written when it can be observed, it would be
within 41 r-410 :e.c. Then the situation changes and-we
may fairly suppose-what is described afterwards are the
changed circumstances of a second period which covers
the years to the disaster of Aegospotami, from which
Athens could not hope to recover.
By 410 B.c. when the Spartans offer peace on the status
quo, the greater part of the Athenian empire had broken
away from Athens;l and after that the king's son Cyrus
intervened in the war. He financed the recovery of the
Peloponnesian nava~ strength although the Athenians did
not give in until,. blundering by reason of their private
dissensions, they came to grief. This accounts for the
collapse of Athenian naval power, which made surrender
inevitable. Here we have what Thucydides observed
during the ~atest phases of the war.
If this exegesis is justified, then once more we have an
addition written as Thucydides witnessed its happening.
The last paragraph, as it were, closes the circle by the
assertion that Pericles was right to believe, while he was
1 See Cambridge Ancient History, v, 344.
9 129 AT
Interpretations
stiU alive,. that he had bequeathed to Athens that financial
superiority which would have made it easy for Athens to
survive the war against the one enemy she had when the
speech was made, namely the Peloponnesians. The reader
is left to realize for himself how the changes that had
happened refuted the first forecast of Pericles. They aban-
doned his strategy, were deprived of his authoritative
control, and entered on an enterprise which proved
disastrous. Despite their successful resistance for a time,
the odds were too great for them and their mismanagement,
due to their dissensions, ended in disaster.
Thus the latter part of the chapter is a series of later
observations which is most readily explained by what
happened, as it happened, not as part of an inevitable
process which began when Pericles disappeared from the
scene, for it required a series of adverse circumstances to
bring about the fall of Athens despite the period of success-
ful resistance,. even after the Sicilian disaster, which, at the
time, had seemed to bring her defeat into sight as an im-
mediate consequence of the failure of the expedition with
an that that meant.
The whole chapter may be compared with v1, r 5 (see
pp. r 3r ff.), in which after the picture of Alcibiades as he was
when he made his speech, his fortunes, his two exiles,
prevent him from serving Athens by his skill in the
direction of the war.
To return to § r 2. This stress laid on the resilience and
courage with which Athens faced her enemies, new and
old, interjects a moment of hope that if Athens could hold
out for three years she might have still averted her
destruction. The period of this phase of resistance is of
IJ,O
Interpretations
three years, and so that figure appears to be what Thucy-
dides wrote in this passage. That a number is given at
all indicates that it should he a number which does not
cover the whole period from the Sicilian disaster to the
fall of Athens, and should be a part and not a whole of the
period between 413 B.c. and 405 B.c., when Aegospotami
left Athens without a fleet or the means of making one.
III, 3 I,, I
1TElO"ElV TE oYecrecn Kal nicrcrov6v11.v WO"TE ~vµnoi\eµEiv.
This phrase occurs in a passage in which exiles from Ionia

and the Lesbians in their company urged upon Alcidas in
427 B.c. the seizure of an Ionian city so as to embarrass or
injure the Athenians. Their supposition that the Persian
satrap Pissuthnes could be induced to enter the war· on
their side is not supported by any evidence of its prob-
ability. It would need none if readers remembered how he
had gone some way towards this at the time of the Samian
Revolt (1, 115), and if Thucydides expected them to
remember this he must have already mentioned it in his
excursus on the Pentekontaetia in the first book. This then
points to the early composition of that excursus (see
above, p. 22).
III, 82-3
The question of the genuineness of chapter 84 need not be
debated here. It is worth observing that the probability
that it is genuine would be enhanced by the supposition
that it originally preceded and did not follow chapters 82
and 83. Of these two chapters Gomme (on 111, 82, 3) has
observed that he is not sure that all of this was written at
9-2
Interpretations
one time. They appear to show observations first made
when the general extension of the scope of the war after
the Sicilian disaster became apparent to the historian
(82, r and 3). It is possible that the reference to condem-
nation by way of' an unjust vote' (82, 8) may reflect the
means used to induce the condemnation of the generals
after the Battle of Arginusae, of which Thucydides must
have come to know even in his exile.
So far as this is true, there may be a certain resemblance
to the suggested building up of n, 65 and v1, 15, as will
he seen below.
VI, I), 3-4

§ 3: WV yap Ev a~iwµa-n VTIO TWV ao-rwv, Tais ETit.6vµfms
! '1'\ '\ '\ C f !I 1 ) ru !JI \
µEt3ocnv T1 KCITO: Tr1v vrra:pxovcrav ovcrro:v EXPTJTO ES TE Tars

hnroTpocp{as Kai Tas 0:/i.:A.as 5cnr6::vas· orrEp Kai Ka0e1Aev
,,
ucrrepov , - ~Ae 'JlValVJV
TtlV TC.OV
, 1TO/\IV
,• , T]KHJTa.
" ovx §. 4: cpot-'11-
fl.
eevTES yap oi TIOAAOi TO PEye6os Ti\S TE KCITa TO ECXVTOU awµa

napo:voµfas ES Ti)v Sfo:nav Kai Tfl!S 61avoias wv
Ka6' EKo:o-rov ev
ev oTcp yiyvono eTipo:crcrev, ws wpavvioos ETI1.6vµovvT1
TI07'.sµ101 Ka6Emo:cro:v, Kal 071µ00-i<?= Kp6:Ttcna: 01o:aE:vT1 Ta
-rov TIOAEµov lO!c;x sKacrTot Tois En1T118euµo:cr1v aUT·ov &x6ecr-
efoTES, Kai &ti.1i.01s ErrnpsifavTes ov Bia µo:t<pou Emp'J1/\o:v
T~V 1TOAlV. TOTE o' ouv nape:A.6wv Tois , A9·qvaio1s napiJve1
TotaOE.
This passage is adduced by Schadewaldt as indicating that

Thucydides wrote his account of the Sicilian expedition
after the fall of Athens in 404 B.c. Fortified by the
eminentauthorityofWilamowitz,hetakesKo:0eii\evvcrTepov
T~v Twv •AB·qvo:iwv n67uv ovx flKtcrro: as repeated in sense
by the words ov 610: µaKpoO ecrqrqi\o:v T~v 116A.1v, the event
being the fall of Athens in 404 B.c. Thus he regards the
132
Interpretations
account of the Sicilian expedition from its inception
onwards as written after 404 B.C. The whole chapter is
thus dated from the last event mentioned in it.
The first two sections of the chapter look forward to the
speech which follows in vr, 16 ff. It hdps to explain the
attack on Alcibiades in Nicias' speech at chapter 12, 2, to
which Alcibiades replies in kind. If,. as we may suppose,
the two speeches were written at one and the same time,
the account of Alcibiades' lavish expenditure explains why
he enjoyed the reputation he did at that time. What
happened after the expedition started is not relevant to this,
and it is not unreasonable to suppose that it could be
written later as befits OcrTEpov •. Thus it appears probable
that the passage which begins chrep KO:t K0:6EIAEV UCJTEpov is
a later addition, written after the disaster of 413 B.C. The
motives that led the Athenians to turn against Akibiades,
his napavoµ{o: and the fear that he aimed at tyranny, are
described in the next sentence (§ 4). The words Ko:0Ei7\ev
Ti)v 1TOAtv then describe the effect of his recall, i.e. his
consequent flight into exile and the effect of this exile, his
absence from Sicily at the crisis of the siege of Syracuse,
and his influence with the Spartans, encouraging them
to send out Gylippus and later to resume the war by
the invasion of Attica and the occupation of Decelea,
however slow the Spartans were to foUow his advice
(v1, 93, 1).
The Sicilian disaster and the recrudescence of the original
war combine to produce the situation with which Book vnr
begins, in which the rapid collapse of Athens is almost
universally anticipated (vnr, 2, r). It may be conjectured
that it was in that mood of despair, in 413 B.c., that the
Interpretations
words were written. But it did not turn out so. Athens
with amazing resilience, withstood her enemies, as is'
described in n, 6), 12. Alcibfades, as we are told later
(v1n, 86, 4), now persuaded the fleet at Samas to remain
there to continue the war, so his firm attitude contributed
to the Athenian resistance in that vital theatre of war.
But though he returned to Athens and directed the war,
he was once more overthrown by his enemies and, shortly
afterwards, the Athenians came to grief (Ecrcp11i\av TtlV
TI6i\w) . This refers, we may suppose, to that overthrow
and destruction of their fleet that happened at Aegos-
potami, when the warnings of Aldbiades, now again in
exile, and replaced by others ( &i\i\ms ETrlTpEl.jJO:VTES) ·
could not save them. It is then to this period of Alci-
biades' conduct of operations between his return and his
second exile that the words Kpc:rncrTo: 81o:SevT1 'Ta Tov
lTOAEµou refer.
If this be so, then we have here a second addition
written after Aegospotami, which robbed Athens of her
last hope of survival. These two sections wHl then be
comparable with 11, 65, 11-12, except that these additions
are made with especial reference to Alcibiades, whose
career after the decision to undertake the Sicilian expedi-
tion had a direct reference to their effect on the course of
the war.
If their intrusion between the introduction of Aki-
biades before the speech and the speech itself appears
strange, it may, for instance,. he suggested that the historian·
left a space (or inserted a sheet) before the words TOTE B' ovv
7rape/l.6wv Tots 'AB11vafm5 nap1Jve1 To1aoe. Thucydides
would he aware that his reader was to read his account of
134
Interpretations
the Sicilian expedition and that within the same work if,
by then,. he had decided to include Ta L:1KEA1K6: in the work
he began to write at the beginning of hostilities in 431 B.c.
This would explain the brevity of these insertions.
VIII, 86,. 4
KO:l 8.oKEi 'AAKa(316:611s 1TpOOTOV TOTE KO:L OVOEVOS e/\aacrov tjv
TIOAlV oo<pe?\flm:xt.
The manuscripts give efi6Ket or 8oKei (which is read by

Classen adducing videtur in Valla). TipwTov is read by B
for 1Tpc7:nos, the reading of the other manuscripts.
The question is what Thucydides wrote and what he
meant by it. SoKei seems preferable, for it is more worth-
while to say what Thucydides thinks (which is indicated
by ooKEi) than what was thought at the time,. presumably by
those who heard Alcibiades speak. What is the meaning of
TIPOOTOS? Some compare VIII, 68,. 4 of Theramenes ev Tois
~vyi<<rrai\v·ovcr1 Tov oflµov Trpci:i.Tos fiv K.T.A.,, which seems
to mean that Theramenes was eminent among those who
joined together to overthrow the democracy, being a man
of great capacity. If this is a parallel, the sentence means
that Alcibiades appears to have pre-eminently benefited
the city, but that is already indicated by ov5ev6s E/\a:crcrov.
To avoid this tautology it looks as if1TpwTov is to be read.
But perhaps npwTos is not a tautology: it may mean that
Alcibiades was pre-eminent among those who acted so,,
and that the service he rendered was of pre-eminent
importance. But the impression we have is not of a man
who is among those who urge a course of action, but of a
man whose single voice swayed the Assembly.
135
Interpretations
If this he so, Tip&Tov is what Thucydides wrote,. and
means then' for the first time', but that is more usually TOTE
TrpwTov than npwTov TOTE. Also, that would turn praise
for the present into blame for the past. But that may not
be what Thucydides intends. It appears to show a kind of
peripeteia in Akibiades' conduct, the kind of thing that the
Greeks were apt to emphasize. It is then to Thucydides
the turning over a new leaf in that variable character, and
this may have induced the historian to use the less normal
order npooTov TOTE. The agreement of all the manuscripts
except Bis explained if npwTov was corrupted into npwToS
early enough to find its way into the archetype.
If npwTov was what Thucydides wrote, then it belongs
to a phase in the historian's thinking about Alcibiades
which began at that moment and so is worthy of emphatic
mention. It leads on to that appreciation of Alcibiades in
v1, 15, 4, which comments on his eminent direction of the
war effort Kpc.rnaTo: 81a6foT1 Ta Tov no7\Eµov which is first
exhibited at this moment and was fallowed by his briUiant
victory of Cyzicus in the next year. It may then be written
between 41 r B.c. and the second exile of Alcibiades, to
which the later words of vr, 15 refer.I
VIII, 109, 2
OTCXV 0 PETO TOVTO TO 6Epos xeiµwv TEAEVT~0"1J, ~v Kai EiKOCJ'TOV
ETO) 1TAT] po\rrcn.
1
Some editors omit these words altogether,, others add them

in brackets. It is clear that they are not part of the Thucy-
l For another view see P. A. Brunt in Revue des Etudes Grecques
(19p.), p. 61, n. 1, who defends lTpwTos,. or rather attacks rrpwTov.
Interpretations
didean narrative, and he may well not have written them.
But they did not write themselves. They appear in all the
manuscripts except in the Laurentianus ( C) and there they
are added by a' Corrector' in antiquity.
If they were added byaRedactor, they serve the purpose
of showing the junction between the end of the book as we
have h and subsequent matter which would continue the
story, so that if this became available, it could be added at
the right place. It looks forward to the possibility of more
material for the copying, and, in so far, may have been
put where it is to fit an expectation that was never realized.
It is, therefore, in tune with the hypothesis that Thucy-
dides was supposed to have continued his work, though,
for whatever reason, the continuation did not materialize.
Diogenes Laertius, n,. 57

/\~yETa1 6' 0T1 Kai Ta 8ouKvoieov (31(31\io: i\ave6:vovTo:
ucpei\to-6m ovvaµevo5 al.rros eis 56~av fiyayev.
This must mean that the books of Thucydides (i.e. the

eight books we have) might never have become known as
his, but Xenophon himself brought them into repute,
though he could have appropriated them to his own use.
The previous sentence,. saying that the work attributed
to Xenophon was not his, adduces the authority of
Demetrius of Magnesia. It is possible, though not more
than possible, that Diogenes derived the tradition about
Xenophon publishing Thucydides from the same source.
D·emetrius concerned himsdf with Xenophon, as is
pointed out by Schwartz in P. W. s. v. Demetrius (So),
and there does not seem to be any reason why the Redactor
137
Universitat Hamburg
Seminar fill klassisd1e PlUlologi.1
Interpretations
of the works of the historian should not he known, and
possibly mentioned by Demetrius, though Diogenes does
not say so. The words cannot be sufficiently explained by
the simple fact that Xenophon's Hellenica began where
our text of Thucydides ended.
What the sentence seems to say is that the books of
Thucydides were unknown and that then Xenophon did
something to make them, and their author, known,. and
that this was achieved by their publication, for which
Xenophon was responsible.
This is the meaning attached to the sentence by editors
of Diogenes Laertius, in particular by so good a Greek
scholar as R. D Hicks, who was not concerned to support
1
any particular theory about Tbucydides, but only to

reproduce the plain sense of the passage.
Marcellinus, Vita Thucydidis, 31, 55 and 16-17

31: 01 µ.Ev ovv a&rov EKei AEyOVO"lV chro6avEiV eveo: Ko:l 61hpt~E
<pvyO:s oov 1 Ko:i qiepovm µ.o:pwp1ov Tov µi) Kelcr0cn To a&µa
Erri Ti)s •ATTtKfjs· iKptov yap Erri Tov Taqiov KEicr6oa, Tov
i<evoTmpiov 8E To0To yvoopmµo: E1vm hnxwp1ov Kai v6µ1µov
'ATTtKOV TWV errl TOlalrrlJ OVOTV)(.lqt TETEAEUTT)KOTC.VV KO:l µT]
ev •Aei;vms To:cpevTc.vv.
55: hei\svTricre 8e sv Tfj 8p*K1J. Kai oi µev i\eyovcrtv 0T1 EI<Ei
ET6:<pT), aAAOl 5E AEyOVCJlV OTl EV TO:iS, ASfivo:ts fivsxen aVTOU TcX
6c::rr& Kpvq:>o: rrapa TWV cruyysvwv K.ai o(rrws h6:<pT). ov yap
e~fjv q>CWEpws ecnITEIV EV •A9i)vms TOV ETil rrpo8ocric;r: <pEVyOVTO:.
EO"Tl ,5.E aVTOU Tacpos TIAllcr{ov TWV 1TVAWV, EV xwp{c:+> Tfl5
'ATT11<fj5 o Koii\:ri KMEiTm, Ka66: q:>T)cnv "'AvTVA.i\os, &~16irtcrTos
&vr1p µapTVpflcrat Kal krropfav yv~wcn Ko:l S186:~m oe1v6s.
Kal o-ri]/\T) Be, i:priodv, ECJT11KEv ev Tfj1Koi:ATJ ''8oV1<VSioris ('O!i.6-
pov) 'A/uµoucrios' exovao: hriypo:µµa. TlVES Be npocre611Kav
138
Interpretations
KO:t TO ' ev66:os KEiTO:l '. &A.A.a A.eyoµev OTl voovµev6v EO'Tl TOVTO
l<O:l TIPOO"VlTo:KOVOµevov • ov5e yap EKElTO E\.I T<{J hnyp6:µµo:-r1.
To these passages may he added Marcellinus 16-17 on the

spelling of Thucydides' father's name:
oTt yap .,Oi\op6s l:O"Ttv, i} o-ri}i\ri Srii\oi ii hrl Tov Tacpou o:VToO
KIHµEvri, sveo: Kexapoxrm· '90VKvSi611s 'Oi\6pov "Ai\1µoucnos.'
npas yap Ta:is MeA.1T!cr1 m.Jii.ms xo:AovµE\10:15 e(r-riv Ev Ko£i\i;1 Ta
l<O:Aovµeva: Ktµwvto: µv~µCXTO:, evea: Ssh<VVTO:U 'Hpo56TOV l<O:l
Go\JK\Jot6ov T6:cpos. evptOl<ETal Sfii\ov OT1 TOU MlA'TlCxOO'IJ
yevous wv· ~EvOS yap ovoEis EKEi 66:1TTETO:l. Kai Hoi\eµwv OE
EV T~' rrepl cii<porr6AEOO) TOVT01S µcxpTVpEi' eveo: Kcxi Ttµ66eov
v(iov) aVT<{J yeyevflcr6m Trpomcrropet.
Pausanias, I, 2 J, 9, of statues on the acropolis in his time:

Oivo~{<1J OE Epyov EO"T~V is 8 0VKVoi5nv TOV )Oi\6pou xp11o-r6v·
1
'+'~q;ncrµo: yO:p eviKncrev Oiv6{310s Kcrrei\6eiv es 'Aef]vas 8oVKv-

51S11v, Ko:{ oi ooi\ocpovr16svT1 ,oos KaT~e1 µvfiµa eo-r1v o,v
n6ppw TIVi\wv MEll.n{o,wv.
The concrete facts that may be deduced from all this are
that in the time of Pausanias (that is, in the second
century A.D.) there was a memorial to Thucydides bearing
his name but not the words ev66:5e KSiT0:1. It was therefore
a cenotaph, for the words Ev66:5i: KEiTcn did not foil ow the
name. It stood near the Melitid gate, along with memorials
of the family of Cimon, who was Thucydides' uncle on his
mother's side. The memorial bore an ikrion. This word
may mean a part of a ship's hull, and this suits the expla-
nation given by Marcellinus § 31, namely,. thatitindicated a
monument to a man who had perished at sea (Twv ETTi
TOlCXVTI]OVOLUXlQ: TE'TSAEU'TflKOTWV ).
Had Thucydides died in Athens and been buried there,,
1 39'
Interpretations
we may fairly assume that the monument would have
shown the words Ev06:6E KEiTcn after the name and would
not have had an ikrion on it.. The whereabouts of the
historian's death was not known for certain, as witness the
speculations about it quoted in Marcellinus. It is a reason-
able assumption that the material data have been truly
reported by Antyllus, a writer of unknown date, who is
cited in scholia to Thucydides as well as by Marcellinus,
and that Pausanias had himself seen the monument he
refers to. This use of an ikrion does not appear until a late
relief, so we have to take the interpretation of it as a local
Attic use on trust.
All that this adds up to is the probable conclusion that
the historian died elsewhere than in Athens, and the
possible conclusion that he perished in the course of a
voyage; and the ikrion being a part of a ship, suggests
that the disaster was caused by a shipwreck, as by the
ship running upon a rock. There is, of course, room for
doubt and no certainty-no more than some degree
of probability.
INDEX OF PASSAGES CITED
ARISTOPHANES 36, .2 75
Acharnians, 141 ff. 24 44, I 10
729 ff. 48 44., 3 7)
Lysistrata, 82 ff. 48 60, 3 65
980 ff. 48 73-8 31
1076 ff. 48 86 29
ARISTOTLE 87, 6 JO
Rhetoric, r, vii, 34 6 93, 3-7 4

n, xxi, I I 44 97, 2 22, 23, 91, 95'
11, xxiv, 10 44 98, I 124
JOO, I 124
DmnoRUS S1cuLus,. xn1, 48 95 102, [ 124
DIONYSIUS OF HALICARNASSUS IOJ, I 12)
16, p. 349 35 II) IJ.I
EURIPIDES, Medea, 825 ff. 3 n;-17 6
n8, .3 8, 9
HOMER, Iliad, 1, 4 3 ff. 9
n9 ff. I)
PLUTARCH 126 23
Pericles, 8, 7 9 127, 3 II
28, 3 3 137, 4 45
THUCYDIDES 138, 3 4, 45
I I40, I II
1, I 6 140-4 41
2-19 ) 141, 4 66
2-20 21 141, 5 6
8, I 94 144, ]-2 ;9, 75
9, 2 93 145 ID
13, 3, 4 93 n
I 8, I 93 2, I 70
20 92 4, 2, 4 17
21,. I 5 8, 2 71
22, I 27, 28 10 16
22, 3 16,. 17 10, 3 34
22,. 4 7, 12, 47, 108 12, 2 ;8
23,. 6 18 13 41
28, I 10 13, 2 II, 59, 66
29, 2 14 15-16 59
32, I 8 25, .2 17
141
Index of Passages Cited
31 47 IV
35-46 36 2, 4 16
37, I 4 2-4 76
39, I 37 JO
39
42, 4 37 11, 4 39
48, 3 53 21 63
p, 5 )3 28, 4 63
54, 2 -3 71 39,J 46, 63
60, 5 )I 40, 2 17
62, 2 6) 48, 5 94
63, 2 p )2, I 96
64, 3-5 55 58-65 77
65, 5 4, 7 59-64 69
65, 8 )I 60 69
65, 8-9 3 65, 4 77
65, 9 4 85 30
65, II 78, 81 85, 7 64
65, 11-12 71 86-7 45
83 ff. 17 92 39
87, 89 39 95 39
91 17 96, 5 42
96-7 24 108, 5 30
IOO IOO 108,. 9 70
JOI,..I 24 126 40,42
102, 3-6 24 v
JU 4-5 69, 77
9 ff. 8 9 40, 42
31 84 9, 5 45
36, 4 56 I6, I 63
36, 6 35, 62 18, 5 18, 91
42, 8 63 18-19 70
44, 1-2 56 23 70
52, 2 32 26 21
59, 4 Jl2 26, 4 70
65, 4 77 26, 5 18
82, 3 53 28,. 2 8
82, 6 36 32, I 73
86, 4 76 39, 3 18
89, I 96 p, 2 18
95, 3 46 )4, I 16
9·8, 4 17 56, 2 73
104, 2 94, 120 56, 5 18
142
Index of Passages Cited
58,. 4 18 15 86
69, 2 38 18, 2 81
71, 1, 3 18 27-8 84
75, 3 18, 71 29 56
81,. 2 18 29, 4 12
83,. 2 73 34, 6-7 83
83, 4 18 .p, 4-5 4I
8)-113 32 50, 4 lh
91, I 72 71, 4 57
I 14, I 33 77 41
VI 77, 3-4 34, 56
I,. I 7) 84, 5 13
II, I 75 85, 4 82
I J, I 77 87,. 5 82
15 102 VIII
I5' J 79 2 83
I)' 4 54 24, 4-) 83
16 ff. 133 n 36
17, I 78 68, 4 86, 135
18, 3 34 73, 3 62
20, I 97 86, 4 87
20., 2 96 96, 3 84
20, 3 75 97, 2 86
21, 2 n 106, I So
26, I 79 106,. 5 84
26, 5 104
68 29, 40 see also List of Passages Discussed
83., 2 57
(p. 114)
88, 7-rn 19, 80
XENOPHON
89, 6 )I
Hellenica, n, ii, 3 74
89-92 81
n, iv, 21 105
931 I 19, 81
105, 2 19 INSCRIPTION
vu M. N. Tod, Greek Historical
11, I 81 Inscriptions, 11, no. 64 67
II-15 41
143
GENERAL IND,EX
Acanthus, Brasidas' speech at, 30, Athena

45 Parthenos, 4
Acharnians of Aristophanes, 24, Prornachos, 4
48 Athenian envoys at Sparta, 31
Aegospotami, battle of,. 20, 37, 41, Athens
129, 134 fortification of, 22
Aetolia, operations in, 17, 39, 46 constitution,. 5o, ; 4, 12 7
Agis, king of Sparta, 18 politics, 86, 128
Alcibiades, 19, 34, p, 54, 78,. 80, Attic diction of Thucydides, 33,
85, 87, 130, 133, 134, IJ6 35
Alcidas, Spartan admiral, I 3 1
Alliance, of Athens and Sparta, Bra~da~ 17,30, 34,39, 45, 64
70, 72, 73 Byzantium, revolt of, 10, 22
allies of Athens, 22
Amphipolis, 18, 91 Caesar, 66
battle of, 35, 39, 45 'CaUias, Peace of', 23
Antiochus of Syracuse, on history Camarina,. debate at, 80
of SicHy, 19, 25, 82, 93 Carians in islands, 94, I 20
Antyllus, 140 casual ties, 16
Apollo, 9 Catana, 80, 82
oracle of, 9, 10 Chalcidke, 63, 68, 69
arbitration, rn Chios, 83
Archelaus, king of Macedon, 100 chronology, of HeUanicus, 22, 95
Archidamian War,. see Ten Years Cirnon, 23
War Clearchus,, 99
Archidamus, king of Sparta, 11 Cleon, 34, 39, 46, 48, 62, 63, 67,
Arginusae, battle of, 132 127
Argos, 8, 16 Clouds of Aristophanes, 43
Aristeus, Corinthian notables, 14 Coiratadas, 99
Aristophanes, 24, 48 conferences at Sparta, 15, 22,. 84
Aristotle Corcyra, Corcyraeans, 1 o, 1 5, 7),
Constitution of Athens, 36, 88 76, 94, 95 n. I
Rhetoric, 44 Corinth, Corinthians,. 10, 16,. 75,
armistice of 423 B.c., 70 80
Aspendus, 87 speeches at Sparta, 21
assessment of tribute (425 B.c.), 67 Cratippus, 3 5
Assinarus, river, Athenian disaster Cyrus, prince, 99, 127, 129
at, 12 Cyzicus, battle of, 88
144
General Index
Decelea, 20, 84 Hysiae, massacre at, )7, 73
Delium, battle of, 39
Delos, purification of, I 20 Illyria, battle in, 39, 41
Delphi, oracle of,. 9, 10 'Ionian War',. 64
Demetrius of Magnesia, 137, 138 Isthmus,. of Corinth, 16, 34
Demosthenes of Aphidna, 39, 48, Ithome, blockade of, I 2 J
63, 8 I
digressions, 23 ff., 95 Lacon, Spartan proxenos at Pla-
Diodotus,. 121 taea, 32
Diogenes Laertius, 98, l 37 f. Lamachus, Athenian general, 78
Leontini, see Rhegium
early Greece, account of, 21 Long WaHs, ; 8
Echinades, 24 n. 1 Lysander, 99
Egyptian expedition, 22 Lysistrata of Aristophanes, 48
eisphora, 66
Epidaurns, expedition against, 60 Macedon, 24
Epipolae, attack on, 41 Mantinea, battle of, 18, 38, 71
Epitaphios of Pericles,. 36, 37, 50, Marcellinus,. 138 ff.
59' Megara, 30
Eteonicus, 99 invasion of, 46, ;9
Euripides, Medea, 3 Melos, Melian, 62, 121
Dialogue, p, 33, 3 5, 72, 73
'Four Hundred' at Athens, 88 Methone in Laconia,. 17
Funeral Speech, see Epitaphios Mitylene, Mityleneans
speech at Olympia, 8
Gela, confer.ence of, 77 debate,56,62, 121, 126
Great Harbour, battle of,. 81, Mycalessus, massacre at, 12, ; 7
83
Gryllus,. IO) Nidas, Athenian general
Gylippus, 80 speeches of, 29, 34, 39, 411, 78,
1 33
Harmodius and Aristogeiton) 25 letter to Athens, 41
Hecataeus of Miletus, ; Nicias, Peace of, II, :u, 70, 81, 93
Hellanicus, 22, 9'.h 123 Napoleon, 43, 84
Hellenica,. see Xenophon
Helots, revolt of, 6 Odrysian Thracians,. see Thrace
1
Hermocrates of Syracuse, 77 Oenobius, decree of, 68

Herodotus, 2. 3 ' Olympia, 8
Hippocrates, Athenian general, Oratio Obliqua, speeches in, 36
speech of, 39
Homer, Iliad, 9, 15, 39 Pagondas. 39
Hyperbolus, 62 speech of before Delium 39
145
General Index
papyri, IOI, IO) Samos, Samians, 87,. 134
patronymics, use of, I4 revolt, 6, 7, 10, 22, 94
Pausa11ias of Sparta, 23 Scione, massacre at, 69, 73, 74
peace offers by Sparta, 80, 129 Sicily, Sicilian,. 82
Peace of Nicias, 18, 21 expeditions, 18, 76
Peisistratids, 25 digression on, 25
Peloponnesfans, army, 6,. r 8 Socrates, 99
Peloponnesian War, First, 22 Sparta, 9
Perdiccas, king of Macedon, 24, conferences at, 22,84
JOO Spartan-Athenian alHance, 70,
Perides, 4, 20, 2 3, 3 r ,. 34, 36, 5 r, 72, 73
eh, 66, 75, 124 Sphacteria, 9, 40
speeches of, 41; see also Sthenelaidas, Spartan ephor,
Epitaphios speech of, 29
Perioeci, 6 style and diction, 69
Persia, 6, 24, 85, I 31 in speeches, 3 3 f.
Persian War, 21, 55 Syracuse, Syracusans, 18, 29, 75 ff.
Phaeax, 69
Phamabazus, 8 5 Ten Years War, chap. 6 passim;
Philip II of Macedon, 65 II, 2), 70
Phoenician fleet, I 87 text, transmission of, 1 1 5 ff.
Phormio, Athenian admiral,. 16, Thebes, Thebans, speech of,.
17, 39 I2I
Piraeus, I 6, 1 o I Themistocles, 4, 22, 2 3, 24
Pissuthnes, satrap of Sardes, 13 1 Theramenes, 113 5
Pitt, the Younger, 65 Thessaly, strategic importance of,
Plague at Athens,. 37, 57, 66 65
Plataea, Pfataeans, speech of, 12, 'Thirty Tyrants' at Athens, 21
32, !21 Thirty Years Truce, 6,. 8, 10, ::u,
Potidaea, 60, 6;, 75 77
Protagoras, and dialectic, 43 Thrace, Thradans, 24
Tissaphemes, 85, 87
'Redactor', 97, 101, 103,. 10;, 137 Trojan War, 5
reHgion, )), 56
Rhegium, 76 Xenophon, 98, 99, 100, 105,. rn6,
and Leontini, renewal of aHi- 137, 138
ance with Athens, 76 Xenophon, pseudo-, Constitution of
'Ringkomposition' (loop com- Athens, 54, 65
position), 21, 92

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THUCYDIDES AND HIS

Bentley House, 200 Euston Road, London, N.,V. 1

Printed in Great Britain at tlie University Press, Camhridge

6 The Ten Years War 58

PART II: INTERPRETATI0 NS 1

Li.rt of Passages Discussed I 14

Where no author is mentioned, references

THE BACKGROUND ,OF THE WORK

The period during which Thucydides grew up to man-

This is what is claimed for it. (It may be added in

The story of the narrative of military operations is bound

1 I, 29, 2; 60,See G. T. Griffith, in Proceedings of the Cam6ridge

1 11, 25, 2. 2 u, 83 ff. 3 E.g . II, 91.

1 Commentary, r, pp. 394 ff.

Thucydides has told his readers! what they are to think

Sparta, who could very properly have been in favour of

Pagondas is about why they should fight,4 ofHippocrates

1 See 0. Luschnat, Die Feldherrnreden im Geschichtswerk des

Thucydides had grown up in a period in which men were

used to indicate what he himself believed, so as to correct

Thucydides was a rich man of good birth and aristocratic

THE TEN YEARS WAR

When Thucydides began to write his account of the war

1 rv, 85,. 7 (seep. 30).

THE EXILE: BOOK V

In the winter of 424 B.c., Thucydides became an exile,. in

1 II, 8, 2; 17; cf. 54, 2-3.

1 v,. 9r, 1. 2 v, 56, 2.

SICILY: BOOKS VI AND VII

The importance of Sicily in the affairs and policies of

l VI,. 1, 1; cf. VI,. 11, I; 20, 3; 21, 2.

1VI,26, I. 2 VI, 15, 3 (see pp. 132ff.).

1 VI, 89-92. 2 v1, 93, 1-2; vn, 18, 2.

Some ancient doubts of the Thucydidean authorship of

were dead, Alcibiades an exile.: there was no one left who

REVISIONS AND ADDITIONS

It is obvious that Thucydides, as long as his writings were

1 The fater revival of ain oligarchic party in Corcyra in 410 B.c.

It is generally agreed that Thucydides did not himself

1 See N. Lewis, 'L'industrie du papyrus dans l'Egypte Greco-

For well over a century scholars have tried to discover a

There is one respect in which the text of Thucydides is

8oVKV8 toris ,Aeri.vo::tos ~vveypo::\.j)e

It would he very strange if these words were not written

·EA./\6:v11<os1 (3pCX)(ECV5 TE Ko:l ToTs xp6vo1s ovK &Kp1J3&s ElTe-

K. Ziegler in the Rheinisches Museum, LXXVIII (1929), 66,

1,. 103,. 1-3

The undecided controversy about the correctness of

TccrcrapOO<oVTa 88 vavcri Kai TEcrcro:pcn ncplKAEOVS OEKCrrOV

This is the reading of the manuscripts except that in two of

II, 64, 2-3

The last words in this passage, especially those in paren-

This phrase occurs in a passage in which exiles from Ionia

VI, I), 3-4

µEt3ocnv T1 KCITO: Tr1v vrra:pxovcrav ovcrro:v EXPTJTO ES TE Tars

eevTES yap oi TIOAAOi TO PEye6os Ti\S TE KCITa TO ECXVTOU awµa

This passage is adduced by Schadewaldt as indicating that

The manuscripts give efi6Ket or 8oKei (which is read by

Some editors omit these words altogether,, others add them

Diogenes Laertius, n,. 57

This must mean that the books of Thucydides (i.e. the

any particular theory about Tbucydides, but only to

Marcellinus, Vita Thucydidis, 31, 55 and 16-17