Voltaire's criticism.
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. Voltaire has described the introduction of set speeches as "a sort of oratorical falsehood, which the historian used to allow himself in old times." The strongest characteristic of Thucydides is his devotion to truth, his laborious persistence in separating fact from fiction; and it is natural to ask why he adopted the form of set speeches, with the measure of fiction which it involved, instead of simply stating, in his own person, the arguments and opinions which he conceived to have been prevalent. Tthe Greek view.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 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 eight books.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 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 book 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 words in which Grote bids farewell, at that point, to Thucydides well express what every careful student must feel. " To pass from Thucydides to the Hellenica of Xenophon is a descent truly mournful; and yet, when we look at Grecian history as a whole, we have great reason to rejoice that even so inferior a work as the latter has reached us. The historical purposes and conceptions of Thucydides, as set forth by himself in his preface, are exalted and philosophical to a degree altogether wonderful, when we consider that he had no pre-existing models before him from which to derive them. And the eight books of his work (in spite of the unfinished condition of the last) are not unworthy of these large promises, either in spirit or in execution."
Origin of that division.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 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 3d or 2d 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).
Order of composition.Ullrich has maintained with much acuteness that Thucydides composed the first three books and about half of book iv. "in the years 421-413, and the rest of the work after 404. His general ground is the existence in i.-iv. of passages which seem to imply ignorance of later events. Classen has fully examined the evidence, and, as a result, has arrived at the following conclusion. It is possible that a first rough draft of the History, down to 413, may have been sketched by Thucydides before 405. But the whole History, from the first book onwards, was worked up into its present form only after 404. This view is confirmed by some passages, found even in the earliest books, which imply that the writer already knew the latest incidents, or the final issue, of the war. We have seen that, after 404, Thucydides may have enjoyed some six or seven years of leisure. Several peculiarities of expression or statement in book viii. suggest that it had not yet received the author's final revision at the time when death broke off the work. The absence of speeches from the eighth book has also been remarked. But it should be observed that much of the eighth book is occupied with negotiations, either clandestine or indecisive, or both. Its narrative hardly presents any moment which required such dramatic emphasis as the speeches usually impart. The mere misrepresentations by which Alcibiades and Chalcideus prevailed on the Chians to revolt certainly did not claim such treatment.
Mode of reckoning time.The division of the war by summers and winters (Kara Btpos xal Mode of Xfip&va) the end of the winter being considered as the end of the reckoning year is perhaps the only one which Thucydides himself used, for time, there is no indication that he made any division of the History into books. His "summer" 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 laud and sea, are wholly or partly suspended. When he speaks of " summer " and " winter as answering respect ively 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. It is at least beyond doubt that the study of Thucydides contributed a very powerful influence to the style of Demosthenes, though that influence rather passed into the spirit of his oratory than showed itself in any marked resemblances of form. 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.
MSS., &c.Among the best MSS. of Thucydides, the Codex Vaticanus 126 (llth cent.) 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 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 (llth cent.); the Casselanus (1252 A.D.); the Augustanus Monacensis 430 (1301 A.D.). A collation, in books i. ii., of two Cambridge MSS. of the 15th century (N. 3. 18, KK. 5. 19) has been published by Shilleto. Several Parisian MSS. (H. C. A.! .), ami 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 tvo 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.
Of recent editions, the most generally useful is Classen's, in the Weidmann series (Berlin, 1862-78); each book can be obtained separately. Arnold's edition (1848-51) contains much that is still valuable. For books i. and ii. Sliilleto's edition (1872-76) furnishes a commentary which, though not full, deals admirably with many difficult points. Among other important editions, it is enough to name those of Duker, Bekker, Goeller, Poppo, and Kriiger. Be"tant's lexicon to Thucydides (2 vols., Geneva, 1843) is well executed. Jowett's translation (Oxford, 1883) is supplemented by a volume of notes. Dale's version (Bohn) also deserves mention for its fidelity, as Crawley's (London, 1876) for its vigour. Hellenica (London, 1880) contains an essay on "The Speeches of Thucydides," pp. 266-323, which has bet-n translated into German. The best clue to Thucydidean bibliography is in Engelmann's Scriptores Graeci, pp. 748 sq., 8th ed., 1880.(R. C. J.)
