Thucydides received the form in which it has come down to us[1]. It was possible, then, for Thucydides to know the work of Herodotus; that he actually knew it, and that he pointedly alludes to it in
- ↑ Herodotus alludes to no event later than 425 B.C., the latest mark of time being a doubtful reference to the death of Artaxerxes in 425 (vi. 98). And there are instances in which his silence affords presumptive proof that later events were unknown to him. (1) In 437 B.C. Athenian colonists founded a city on the spot formerly called Ennea Hodoi, and their leader Hagnon named it Amphipolis, because the Strymon flowed on both sides of it. Herodotus mentions Ennea Hodoi (vii. 114), but nowhere speaks of Amphipolis. Had he been writing after the new colony had become important, he would naturally have mentioned it in this connection; he could scarcely have failed to do so after the battle of Amphipolis in 422 B.C. had made the place famous. (2) Demaratus tells Xerxes that Spartans never yield: it is their fixed law to conquer or die (Her. vii. 104; cf. 209). This passage would have been singularly infelicitous if it had been written after the surrender of the Lacedaemonians at Pylos in 425 B.C., when 120 Spartan prisoners were brought to Athens; an event which, as Thucydides expressly says (iv. 40), astounded the Greeks, precisely because their belief had been that which Herodotus expresses. (3) Demaratus advises Xerxes to detach 200 ships from his fleet, for the purpose of occupying the island of Cythera, and quotes the saying of Cheilon, that it would be well for Sparta if Cythera were sunk in the sea (Her. vii. 235). Xerxes neglected the advice. But in 424 B.C. the Athenians actually occupied Cythera, and the damage thence inflicted on Laconia was one of the causes which disposed the Spartans to conclude peace. Herodotus would not have omitted, if he had known, so forcible an illustration of Cheilon's saying. And there are indications that Herodotus did not live to give the last touches to his work: thus a promise made in vii. 213 is left unfulfilled. [The revolt of the Medes "from Dareius" (Her. i. 130), which Dahlmann identified with the revolt of 408 B.C. (Xen. H. i. 2. 19), has been shown by the Behistun inscription to belong to the reign of Dareius Hystaspes.]
F. W. Ullrich (Beiträge zur Erklärung des Thukydides; Hamburg, 1846) has ingeniously argued that Thucydides composed his first three Books, and Book iv. as far as ch. 48, in exile (about 421–413 B.C.); and the rest of the work, as a continuation, after the final close of the war. This view rests mainly on the alleged existence of passages in Books i.—iv, 48 which imply ignorance of later events. Classen has examined these passages in detail (Einleitung, xxxii.—liv,), and has, I think, shown that they are insufficient to support the theory built upon them. My opinion has not been altered by reading a learned essay in favour of Ullrich's hypothesis, which has appeared since Classen's Introduction was published (Ueber die successive Entstehung des Thucydideischen Geschichtswerkes, by Julius Helmbold; Colmar, 1876). But for the present purpose it is enough to assume, what even the supporters of Ullrich's view would allow, viz. that the whole work was at least revised by Thucydides after the end of the war. (See Thuc. i. 13. 18; ii. 65.) The probable influence of Herodotus is here being estimated in relation to those parts of the work of Thucydides which would have been the last to receive his finishing touches—the speeches.
