how far and in what sense Thucydides can be called dramatic. The epithet "dramatic" is sometimes applied to narrative when no more is apparently meant than that it is vivid or graphic. In the proper sense, however, a narrative is dramatic only when it elicits the inherent eloquence of facts. Thucydides is dramatic, for instance, when he places the Melian dialogue[1] immediately before the Sicilian expedition. The simple juxtaposition of insolence and ruin is more effective than comment. The bare recital, thus ordered, makes the same kind of impression which the actions themselves would have made if one had immediately succeeded the other before our eyes. It might not be difficult, with a little adroitness, to represent Thucydides as a conscious dramatic artist throughout his work; and an ingenious writer has actually shown how his History may be conceived as a tragedy cast into five acts[2]. But it would perhaps
- ↑ In the remarkable speech of the Athenian envoy Euphemus at Camarina (vi. 82—86, 415 B.C.), the dramatic purpose of the Melian dialogue is continued and completed. The plain avowal of Athenian motives is reiterated, and their bearing on the Sicilian expedition is explicitly stated. See vi. 83, τήν τε γὰρ ἐκεῖ ἀρχὴν (in Greece) εἰρήκαμεν διὰ δέος ἔχειν, καὶ τὰ ἐνθάδε (in Sicily) διὰ τὸ αὐτὸ ἥκειν μετὰ τῶν φίλων ἀσφαλῶς καταστησόμενοι. 85, ὥστε καὶ τἀνθάδε εἰκὸς πρὸς τὸ λυσιτελοῦν καί, ὃ λέγομεν, ἐς Συρακοσίους δέος καθίστασθαι.
- ↑ Ulrici, Charakteristik der antiken Historiographie, p. 313. Book i. is a prologue, he says, which acquaints the reader with the immediate antecedents of the drama and the relative positions of the chief actors. The First Act comprises the plague at Athens, the supreme efforts of Pericles and his death, the destruction of Plataea by Sparta, the overthrow of Mitylene by Athens (ii. 1—iii. 68). The Second Act presents the typical party-strife at Corcyra; fortune wavers; the Athenians are defeated by the Aetolians, but blockade the Spartans in Sphacteria (iii. 69—iv. 36). The Third Act opens with the surrender of the Spartans; the Athenians occupy Cythera; both sides are weary of the struggle, and at length a peace is concluded. But there are signs that it cannot last, and now Alcibiades comes forward to advocate the Sicilian expedition (iv. 37—vi. 23). The Fourth Act is the crisis—the Sicilian expedition, ending in the Athenian defeat (vi. 24—vii.). In the Fifth Act the catastrophe is delayed for a moment by the recall of Alcibiades. He brings back a gleam of prosperity with him. But he is again dismissed; and then comes the final ruin of Athens (viii.).
