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200 LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE speak volumes. His own politics are clearly moderate. The time when Athenian political affairs pleased him best, he tells us — not counting, presumably, the excep- tional 'Greatest-AIan-Rule' of Pericles — was during the first months of the Restored Constitution in 411. It was " a fair combination of the rights of the Few and the Many!' ^ He seems to be a man with strong personal opinions, and a genius for putting them aside while writing narrative. His reference to ^ a certain' Hyperbolus (viii. 73) — when Hyperbolus had been for some time the most prominent politician in Athens — is explicable when one realises that his history was addressed to the whole Greek world, which neither knew nor cared about Athenian internal politics. The contemptuous condemnation of the man which fol- lows, is written under the influence of the spirit current in Athens at the end of -the century. His tone about Cleon is certainly suggestive of personal feeling. But the second introduction of him^ is obviously due to some oversight either of author or scribe ; and the astound- ing sentence in iv. 28, 5, becomes reasonable when we realise that ^UJie Athenians" who '^ zuould sooner be rid of Cleon than capt7ire Sphacteria," are obviously the then majority of the Assembly, the party of Nikias. After all, his account of Cleon is the least unfavourable that we possess ; and if it is harsh, we should remember that Thucydides was under a special obligation to show- that Cleon is not Pericles. It must be borne in mind that Thucydides returned to Athens in 403 like a ghost from the tomb, a remnant of the old circle of Pericles. He moved among men who were strangers to him. His spirit was one which had practically died out of Athens nearly a generation ^ viii. 97 ; cf. ii. 65, 5, and iii. 82, 8. 2 jy 2i=iii. 36.