Page:History of Greece Vol VIII.djvu/137

TISSAPHERXES IN IONIA. 115 to ,xcuse his own treachery about the Phenician fleet, at the same u ae to protest against their recent proceedings at Antandrus ; or, at the least, to obtain some assurance against any repetition of such hostility. His visit to Ionia, however, seems to have occu pied some time, and he tried to conciliate the Ionic Greeks by a splendid sacrifice to Artemis at Ephesus. 1 Having quitted As- pendus, as far as we can make out, about the beginning of August 1 Thucyd. viii, 109. It is at this point that we have to part company with the historian Thucydides, whose work not only closes without reaching any definite epoch or limit, but even breaks off, as we possess it, in the middle of a sentence. The full extent of this irreparable loss can hardly be conceived, except by those who have been called upon to study his work with the profound and minute attention required from an historian of Greece. To pass from Thucydides to the Hellenica of Xcnophon, 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 his torical 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 preexisting models before him from which to derive them ; nor are the eight books of his work, in spite of the unfinished condition of the last, unworthy of these large promises, either in spirit or in execution. Even the peculiarity, the condensation, and the harshness, of his style, though it sometimes hides from us his full meaning, has the general effect of lending great additional force and of impressing his thoughts much more deeply upon every attentive reader. During the course of my two last volumes, I have had frequent occasion to notice the criticisms of Dr. Arnold in his edition of Thucydides, most generally on points where I dissented from him. I have done this, partly because I believe that Dr. Arnold's edition is in most frequent use among all Kuglish readers of Thucydides, partly because of the high esteem which I entertain for the liberal spirit, the erudition, and the judgment, which per vadc his critic-isms generally throughout the book. Dr. Arnold deserves, (ipeuully, the high commendation, not often to be bestowed even upon learned and exact commentators, of conceiving and appreciating antiquity as a living whole, and not merely as an aggregate of words and abstrac- tions. His criticisms are continually adopted by Giillcr in the second edi- tion of his Thucydides, and to a great degree also by Poppo. Desiring, as I do sincerely, that his edition may long maintain its preeminence among English students of Thucydides, I have thought it my duty at the same time to indicate many of the points on which his remarks either advance ~a imrly views of Grecian history d'Tercnt from my own.