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l6 TRUTHFULNESS OF HIS OWN NARRATIVE [l admiration of some other which has preceded, still the Peloponnesian, if estimated by the actual facts, will certainly prove to have been the greatest ever known. 22 As to the speeches which were made either before or The speeches could during the War, it was hard for me, and not be exactly reported. fQj. others who reported them to me, to Great pains taken to n , ,i ^ i t i ,i asce^iain the tmth recollect the exact words. Ihavethere- about events. fore put into the mouth of each speaker the sentiments proper to the occasion, expressed as I thought he would be likely to express them, while at the V same time I endeavoured, as nearly as I could, to give ■' the general purport of what was actually said. Of the events of the war I have not ventured to speak from any chance information, nor according to any notion of my own ; I have described nothing but what I either saw myself, or learned from others of whom I made the most careful and particular enquiry. The task was a laborious one, because eye-witnesses of the same occurrences gave different accounts of them, as they remembered or were interested in the actions of one side or the other. And very likely the strictly historical character of my narrative may be disappointing to the ear. But if he who desires to have before his eyes a true picture, of the events which have happened, and of the like events which may be expected to happen hereafter in the order of human things, shall pronounce what I have written to be useful, then I shall be satisfied. My history is an everlasting posses- sion, not a prize composition which is heard and forgotten. 23 The greatest achievement of former times was the Length of the tvar, Persian War ; yet even this was zvhnh «W5 attended by gpeedily decided in two battles by sea > all sorts of calamities. , 1 , 1 t-) i ti 1 ordinary and e.Mraor- ^nd tWO by land. But the Pelopon- dinary. Among the nesian War was a protracted struggle, latter might be cnii- ^^^ attended by calamities such as merated earthquakes, , , ,, , , . -.i • im eclipses, droughts, and Hcllas had never known within a like lastly, the plague. period of time. Never were so many cities captured and depopulated— some by Barbarians,