But I have made the persons say what it seemed to me most opportune for them to say in view of each situation; at the same time I have adhered as closely as possible to the general sense of what was actually said.” So far as the language of the speeches is concerned, then, Thucydides plainly avows that it is mainly or wholly his own. As a general rule, there is little attempt to mark different styles. The case of Pericles, whom Thucydides must have repeatedly heard, is probably an exception; the Thucydidean speeches of Pericles offer several examples of that bold imagery which Aristotle and Plutarch agree in ascribing to him, while the “Funeral Oration,” especially, has a certain majesty of rhythm, a certain union of impetuous movement with lofty grandeur, which the historian has given to no other speaker. Such strongly marked characteristics as the curt bluntness of the Spartan ephor Sthenelaïdas, or the insolent vehemence of Alcibiades, are also indicated. But the dramatic truth of the speeches generally resides in the matter, not in the form. In regard to those speeches which were delivered at Athens before his banishment in 424—and seven such speeches are contained in the History—Thucydides could rely either on his own recollection or on the sources accessible to a resident citizen. In these cases there is good reason to believe that he has reproduced the substance of what was actually said. In other cases he had to trust to more or less imperfect reports of the “general sense”; and in some instances, no doubt, the speech represents simply his own conception of what it would have been “most opportune” to say. The most evident of such instances occur in the addresses of leaders to their troops. The historian’s aim in these military harangues—which are usually short—is to bring out the points of a strategical situation; a modern writer would have attained the object by comments prefixed or subjoined to his account of the battle. The comparative indifference of Thucydides to dramatic verisimilitude in these military orations is curiously shown by the fact that the speech of the general on the one side is sometimes as distinctly a reply to the speech of the general on the other as if they had been delivered in debate. We may be sure, however, that, wherever Thucydides had any authentic clue to the actual tenor of a speech, he preferred to follow that clue rather than to draw on his own invention.
Why, however, did he not content himself with simply stating, in his own person, the arguments and opinions which he conceived to have been prevalent? The question must be viewed from the standpoint of a Greek in the 5th century B.C. Epic poetry had then for many generations exercised The Greek View. a powerful influence over the Greek mind. Homer had accustomed Greeks to look for two elements in any complete expression of human energy—first, an account of a man’s deeds, then an image of his mind in the report of his words. The Homeric heroes are exhibited both in action and in speech. Further, the contemporary readers of Thucydides were men habituated to a civic life in which public speech played an all-important part. Every adult citizen of a Greek democracy was a member of the assembly which debated and decided great issues. The law courts, the festivals, the drama, the market-place itself, ministered to the Greek love of animated description. To a Greek of that age a written history of political events would have seemed strangely insipid if speech “ in the first person ” had been absent from it, especially if it did not offer some mirror of those debates which were inseparably associated with the central interests and the decisive moments of political life. In making historical persons say what they might have said, Thucydides confined that oratorical licence to the purpose which is its best justification: with him it is strictly dramatic, an aid to the complete presentment of action, by the vivid expression of ideas and arguments which were really current at the time. Among later historians who continued the practice, Polybius, Sallust and Tacitus most resemble Thucydides in this particular; while in the Byzantine historians, as in some moderns who followed classical precedent, the speeches were usually mere occasions for rhetorical display. Botta’s History of Italy from 1780 to 1814 affords one of the latest examples of the practice, which was peculiarly suited to the Italian genius.
The present division of the History into eight books is one which might well have proceeded from the author himself, as being a natural and convenient disposition of the contents. The first book, after a general introduction, sets forth the causes of the Peloponnesian War. The first nine The Eight Books. years of the war are contained in the second, third and fourth books—three years in each. The fifth book contains the tenth year, followed by the interval of the “insecure peace.” The Sicilian expedition fills the sixth and seventh books The eighth books opens that last chapter of the struggle which is known as the “Decelean” or “Ionian” War, and breaks off abruptly—in the middle of a sentence, indeed—in the year 411.
The principal reason against believing that the division into eight books was made by Thucydides himself is the fact that a different division, into thirteen books, was also current in antiquity, as appears from Marcellinus (§ 58). It is very improbable—indeed hardly conceivable—that this Origin of that Division. should have been the case if the eight-book division had come down from the hand of the author. We may infer, then, that the division of the work into eight books was introduced at Alexandria—perhaps in the 3rd or 2nd century B.C. That division was already familiar to the grammarians of the Augustan age. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, who recognizes it, has also another mode of indicating portions of the work, viz. by stichometria, or the number of lines which they contained. Thus, in the MS. which he used, the first 87 chapters of book i. contained about 2000 lines (equivalent to about 1700 lines in Bekker’s stereotyped 8vo text). (On the order of composition, see Peloponnesian War, ad init.; and Greece: Ancient History, § Authorities).
The division of the war by summers and winters (κατά Θέρος καί χειμώυα)—the end of the winter being considered as the end of the year—is perhaps the only one which Thucydides himself used, for there is no indication that he made any division of the History into books. His “summer” Mode of Reckoning Time. includes spring and autumn and extends, generally speaking, from March or the beginning of April to the end of October. His “winter”—November to February inclusive—means practically the period during which military operations, by land and sea, are wholly or partly suspended. When he speaks of “summer” and “winter” as answering respectively to “half” the year (v. 20, 3), the phrase is not to be pressed: it means merely that he divides his year into these two parts. The mode of reckoning is essentially a rough one, and is not to be viewed as if the commencement of summer or of winter could be precisely fixed to constant dates. For chronology, besides the festivals, he uses the Athenian list of archons, the Spartan list of ephors and the Argive list of priestesses of Hera.
There is no reference to the History of Thucydides in the extant Greek writers of the 4th century B.C.; but Lucian has preserved a tradition of the enthusiasm with which it was studied by Demosthenes. The great orator is said to have copied it out eight times, or even to have learnt it by heart. The Alexandrian critics acknowledged Thucydides as a great master of Attic. Sallust, Cornelius Nepos, Cicero and Quintilian are among the Roman writers whose admiration for him can be traced in their work, or has been expressly recorded. The most elaborate ancient criticism on the diction and composition of Thucydides is contained in three essays by Dionysius of Halicarnassus.
Among the best MSS. of Thucydides, the Codex vaticanus 126 (11th century) represents a recension made in the Alexandrian or Roman age. In the first six books the number of passages in which the Vaticanus alone has preserved a true reading is comparatively small; in book vii. it is somewhat MSS., &c. larger; in book viii. it is so large that here the Vaticanus, as compared with the other MSS., acquires the character of a revised text. Other important MSS. are the Palatinus 252 (11th century); the Casselanus (A.D. 1252); the Augustanus monacensis 430 (A.D. 1301). A collation, in books i., ii., of two Cambridge MSS. of the 15th century (Nn. 3, 18; Kk. 5, 19) has been published by Shilleto. Several Parisian MSS. (H. C. A. F.), and a Venetian MSS. (V.) collated by Arnold, also deserve mention. The Aldine edition was published in 1502. It was formerly supposed that there had been two Juntine editions. Shilleto, in the “Notice” prefixed to book i., first pointed out that the only Juntine edition was that of 1526, and that the belief in an earlier Juntine, of 1506, arose merely from the accidental omission of the word vicesimo in the Latin version of the imprint. Some papyrus fragments were published in Grenfell and Hunt’s Oxyrhynchus papyri (1908), vi., which also contains an anonymous commentary (pub. 1st century) on Thuc. ii.
The most generally useful edition is Classen’s, in the Weidmann Series (1862–1878; new ed. by Steup, 1882–1892); each book can be obtained separately. Arnold’s edition (1848–1851) contains much that is still valuable. For books i. and ii. Shilleto’s edition (1872–1876) furnishes a commentary which, though not full, deals admirably with many difficult points. Among other important complete editions, it is enough to name those of Duker, Bekker, Goeller, Poppo and Krüger. For editions of separate books and selections (up to 1895) see J. B. Mayor’s Guide to the Choice of Classical Books. Special mention may be made of those by E. C. Marchant. Later editions of the text are by H. Stuart Jones (1900–1901), in the Oxford Scriptorum classicorum bibliotheca, and C. Hude (“Teubner Series,” 1901; ed. minor, 1903). Bétant’s lexicon to Thucydides (1843) is well executed. Jowett’s translation (1883) is supplemented by a volume of notes. Dale’s version (Bohn) also deserves mention for its fidelity, as Crawley’s (1876) for its vigour. Hellenica (1880) contains an essay on “The Speeches of Thucydides,” which has been translated into German (see Eduard Meyer, Forschungen zur alten Geschichte, Bd. ii. pp. 269-436). The best clue to Thucydidean bibliography is in Engelmann’s Scriptores graeci (1880), supplemented by the articles by G. Meyer, in Bursian’s Jahresbericht, (1895) lxxix., (1897) lxxxviii. Busolt, Griechische Geschichte, iii. 616–693, is invaluable. For the life of Thucydides, U. von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, “Die Thukydidcs-Legende,” Hermes, (1878) xii., is all important. All works on ancient Greek History contain discussions of Thucydides, and an interesting criticism is that of J. B. Bury, Ancient Greek Historians (1909). F. M. Cornford,
