De Thucydide

In the treatises I have already published on imitation, I went through the poets and prose writers whom I took to be the most distinguished, Quintus Aelius Tubero, and showed briefly what virtues each of them brings, both of substance and of style, and on what points each falls most short of himself in his failures, whether because his aim did not in every case pursue the most exact reckoning, or because his power did not succeed in all his works; my purpose being that those who set out to write and speak well might have fine and approved standards on which to base their particular exercises, not imitating everything that lies in those men, but taking their virtues and guarding against their failures. When I came to the historians, I set out my views about Thucydides too, but in a compressed and summary treatment — not out of contempt or indolence, nor for want of writers able to make good my contentions, but aiming at what was appropriate to the occasion of the work, as I did with the rest. For it was not possible to give an exact and detailed exposition of each of those men once I had chosen to compress the whole work into the smallest compass. But since you wished me to compose a separate treatise on Thucydides, embracing everything that requires discussion, I postponed the work on Demosthenes, which I had in hand, and promised to do as you preferred; and now, having fulfilled my promise, I deliver it.

As I am about to take up the discussion in detail, I wish to say a few preliminary words about myself and about the kind of work this is — not, by Zeus, for your sake and that of men like you, who judge matters from the standpoint of all that is best and hold nothing more precious than the truth, but for the sake of the others, in whom there is much fault-finding, whether it springs from emulation of the ancients, or from disdain of those of their own time, or from both of these passions together, which are common to human nature. For I suspect that there will be some among the readers of this work who will reproach me for daring to declare that Thucydides, the mightiest of all the historians, both sometimes errs in his choice of words and falls weak in his power. And this consideration occurred to me: that I shall be thought to be innovating paradoxes and to be the first and only man to do so, if I undertake to bring any charge against the writings of Thucydides — opposing not only the common opinions which all men, having received them from long ago, hold inalienably, but also disbelieving the particular testimonies of the most distinguished philosophers and orators, who set up that man as the standard of historical writing and the limit of skill in political oratory. Wishing, then, to clear myself of these reproaches, which have something theatrical about them and seductive to the many, I shall be content, about myself, to say only this much: that having all my life until now guarded against this contentious and quarrelsome temper, which barks at everyone without cause, and having published no work in which I accuse anyone — except one treatise that I composed in defense of political philosophy against those who unjustly run it down — I should not now, for the first time, set out to display against the most distinguished of the historians a malice that befits neither a free character nor my own habit. About the kind of work this is I had much to say, but I shall be content with a little. Whether I have chosen arguments that are true and proper to myself, you will judge, and so will every other lover of letters.

My intention in this work, then, is not an assault on the choices and powers of Thucydides, nor a reckoning up of his faults, nor a belittling of him, nor any other such undertaking, in which I should reckon his successes and virtues worth no mention but fasten upon what was not said in the best way. Rather it is a kind of accounting of the character of his style, embracing all that has fallen to him both in common with others and as distinctive beyond all the rest. In this it was necessary to speak not of his virtues only, but also of the vices that border upon them. For no human nature is so self-sufficient as to be without fault, whether in words or in deeds; the best is the one that succeeds most often and falls short least. Let each man, then, referring what is said to this premise, become not an accuser of my purpose, but a fair examiner of the particular features of his character. That I am not the first to undertake to do this, but that many, both of old and in our own day, have done so — not choosing quarrelsome writings but ones that contemplate the truth — though I could produce countless witnesses, I shall be content with two men alone, Aristotle and Plato. For Aristotle is not persuaded that everything was said in the best way by his teacher Plato — among which are the doctrines about the Idea, about the Good, and about the Republic; and Plato himself wishes to show that Parmenides and Protagoras and Zeno and not a few of the other natural philosophers were in error; and no one reproaches him on this very ground, considering that the aim of philosophical contemplation is the knowledge of the truth, from which the very end of life becomes clear. Now where no one blames those who differ about doctrines for their purpose, if they do not praise everything that belongs to their elders, would anyone surely blame those who have chosen to display the distinctive features of styles, if they do not attribute to their predecessors all the virtues — even those that do not belong to them?

One part of my defense still remains. It is an invidious charge, and gratifying to the many, but one that can easily be shown to be unsound. For it does not follow that because we fall short of Thucydides and the other men in power, we have therefore lost our capacity for judgment of them. Even those who do not possess the same skills as Apelles, Zeuxis, Protogenes, and the other famous painters are not thereby prevented from judging their arts, nor are those who are not such great craftsmen prevented from judging the works of Phidias, Polyclitus, and Myron. For I forbear to mention that of many works the layman is no worse a judge than the craftsman — of those, that is, which are grasped by the irrational sense and by the feelings — and that every art aims at these criteria and takes its starting point from them. But let me have done with prefaces, lest without noticing it I waste my discourse upon them.

As I am about to begin my treatise on Thucydides, I wish to say a few words about the other historians, both those older than he and those who flourished at the same time as he, from which both the choice of method by which he differed from his predecessors, and his power, will become clear. Many ancient historians, then, arose in many places before the Peloponnesian War, among whom are Eugeon of Samos, Deiochus of Proconnesus, Eudemus of Paros, Democles of Phygela, Hecataeus of Miletus, Acusilaus of Argos, Charon of Lampsacus, and Melesagoras of Chalcedon; and a little older than the Peloponnesian War, extending down to the age of Thucydides, were Hellanicus of Lesbos, Damastes of Sigeum, Xenomedes of Chios, Xanthus of Lydia, and many others. These men used a similar method in their choice of subjects, and had powers that did not differ much from one another, some recording Greek histories, others foreign ones; and these histories they did not connect with one another, but divided them by nations and by cities and brought them out separately, keeping one and the same aim: to bring out into the common knowledge of all, just as they had received them, whatever records were preserved among the local peoples, nation by nation and city by city, whether writings stored up in sacred places or in profane ones, neither adding anything to them nor taking anything away. Among these there were also certain legends believed from far-off time, and certain theatrical reversals of fortune which seem to people of today to have much that is silly. And as for style, they all for the most part practiced the same — those, that is, who chose the same character of the dialects — clear, common, pure, concise, suited to the subject matter, and displaying no artificial elaboration. Nonetheless a certain bloom and grace runs over their works, in some more, in others less, on account of which their writings still survive. But Herodotus of Halicarnassus, who was born a little before the Persian Wars and lived on until the Peloponnesian, carried the historian's purpose to greater scope and more splendor: choosing to record the history not of a single city nor of a single nation, but gathering many and various deeds from Europe and from Asia into the compass of a single work. For having begun from the empire of the Lydians, he brought his history down to the Persian War, embracing in one composition all the notable deeds done by Greeks and barbarians in two hundred and twenty years; and he restored to his style the virtues that had been left out by the historians before him.

Coming after these men, Thucydides chose neither to set his history in a single place, as Hellanicus and his school did, nor to gather into one history the deeds done in every land by Greeks and barbarians, imitating Herodotus; the former he disdained as cheap and lowly and not able to benefit the readers in many ways, the latter as too great to fall within the survey of human reckoning according to the most exact method. Rather, taking up a single war, the one the Athenians and Peloponnesians waged against one another, this he set himself to record — being strong in body and sound in mind and having lived through the whole of it, and not composing the events from chance reports, but, where he himself was present, from experience, and where he was absent because of his exile, learning from those who had the best knowledge. First, then, he differed from his predecessors in this — I mean in taking a subject neither wholly of a single strand nor divided into many disconnected headings; next, in not attaching to it anything legendary, nor turning his writing into the deceiving and bewitching of the many, as all his predecessors did, recording certain Lamiae rising from the earth in woods and glens, and amphibious Naiads coming up out of Tartarus, swimming through the sea and half beast, and these coming into intercourse with men, and from unions of mortals and gods offspring that were demigods, and other such tales incredible to our way of life and seeming to have much that is foolish in them.

I have been led to say this not in censure of those men, but rather with much indulgence toward them, if they did lay hold of legendary fictions in bringing out national and local histories. For among all men, both in common by regions and severally by cities, certain records of such tales too were preserved, as I said, which children, receiving them from their fathers, took pains to hand down to their descendants; and those who wished to bring them out for the public they expected to write down just as they had received them from the ancients. For those men, then, it was necessary to variegate their local records with legendary episodes. But for Thucydides, who chose a single subject, at which he himself was present, it was not fitting to mingle theatrical enchantments into his narrative, nor to adapt himself to the deception of his readers, which those compositions are by nature fitted to bring, but to their benefit, as he himself has shown in the preface to his history, writing word for word thus: "And as for hearing, the absence of the legendary in them will perhaps appear less pleasing. But whoever shall wish to examine the truth of what has happened and of what will one day, in the course of human things, be such or similar again, will find it enough to judge these things useful. They are composed as a possession for all time rather than as a prize-piece to be heard for the moment."

It is testified to the man, perhaps by all philosophers and orators, or if not by all, at least by most, that he took the greatest care for the truth too, of which we wish history to be the priestess, neither adding to the facts anything that was not just nor taking anything away, nor taking license in his writing, but keeping his purpose blameless and pure of all envy and all flattery, and most of all in his judgments about good men. For having mentioned Themistocles in the first book, he went over the virtues he possessed ungrudgingly; and when he touched on the policies of Pericles in the second book, he uttered a eulogy worthy of the renown that is famed of him; and concerning Demosthenes the general, and Nicias the son of Niceratus, and Alcibiades the son of Clinias, and other generals and orators, being compelled to speak, he set out what was fitting to each. But I have no need to bring forward examples about these things to those who have gone through his histories. These, then, are the things one may say in which the historian succeeds in the matter of substance — fine and worthy of imitation.

But the things he constructed more defectively, and on which some bring charges against him, belong to the more technical part of the substance, what is called the management of material, which is sought in all writings, whether one chooses philosophical subjects or rhetorical ones. These are the matters of division, of arrangement, and of working out. I shall begin from division, premising that, whereas the historians before him divided their records either by places or by easily followed times, he approved neither of these divisions. For he neither divided his narratives following the places in which the events were accomplished, as Herodotus and Hellanicus and certain others of his predecessors did, nor following the times, as those who brought out local history chose to do, dividing their records either by the successions of kings, or of priests, or by the cycles of the Olympiads, or by the magistrates appointed to the annual offices. Rather, wishing to travel a new and untrodden road, untrodden by the others, he divided his history by following the summer and winter seasons. But from this the opposite of what he expected has happened to him. For the division of the times has not become clearer but harder to follow. On which account it is worth wondering how it escaped him that, when many things happen at once in many places, a narrative crumbled into small sections will not catch that far-shining and pure light, as becomes clear from the events themselves. At any rate, in the third book — for with this alone I shall be content — having begun to write the affairs of Mytilene, before he has filled out the whole narrative, he goes off to the deeds of the Lacedaemonians; and not even bringing these to a head, he mentions the siege of Plataea; and leaving this too unfinished, he mentions the Mytilenean war; then from there he leads the narrative to the affairs of Corcyra, how they fell into faction, some calling in the Lacedaemonians, others the Athenians; and leaving these too half-done, he says a little about the earlier Athenian expedition to Sicily. Then, having begun to tell of the Athenian voyage against the Peloponnese and the Lacedaemonian expedition against the Dorians, he passes on to the things done at Leucas by Demosthenes the general and to the war against the Aetolians; and from there he goes off to Naupactus. Leaving the wars on the mainland unfinished too, he again takes up Sicily, and after this purifies Delos, and Amphilochian Argos, warred upon by the Ambraciots . . . he leaves. And why need I say more? For the whole book is so chopped up and has destroyed the continuity of the narration. We wander, then, as is natural, and follow what is set forth with difficulty, the mind being confused by the tearing apart of events, and not easily or exactly recalling the half-finished memories of what was heard. But historical writing ought to be continuous and undistracted, especially when it concerns many events and hard ones to learn. That this canon is not correct nor proper to history is clear. For none of the later historians divided his history by summers and winters; rather all followed the well-worn roads that can lead to clarity.

Some find fault also with his arrangement, on the ground that he neither took for his history the beginning he ought to have, nor fitted to it a fitting end, saying that it is no small part of good management both to take a beginning before which nothing could come, and to embrace the work with an end that will seem to leave nothing wanting; whereas of neither of these did he take the proper care. And the historian himself has furnished them the starting point of this accusation. For having declared at the outset that the Peloponnesian War was the greatest of the wars before it, both in length of time and in the conjunction of many sufferings, he wishes at the end of the preface to state first the causes from which it took its beginning. Laying down these as two — the true one, but not spoken of openly, the growth of the city of the Athenians, and the not true one, fabricated by the Lacedaemonians, the alliance sent from Athens to the Corcyraeans against the Corinthians — he has made the beginning of his narrative not from the true one, and the one he himself thinks true, but from the other, writing word for word thus: "The Athenians and Peloponnesians began it by breaking the thirty-years' truce that had been made between them after the capture of Euboea. And as to why they broke it, I have first written down the causes and the disputes, that no one may ever have to inquire from what such a great war arose among the Greeks. For the truest cause, though least spoken of in word, I consider to be that the Athenians, becoming great and offering fear to the Lacedaemonians, compelled them to go to war. But the causes openly alleged on each side were these. Epidamnus is a city on the right as one sails into the Ionian gulf. Bordering on it dwell the Taulantians, a barbarian people, an Illyrian nation." And after this he goes through the affairs of Epidamnus and of Corcyra and of Potidaea, and the assembly of the Peloponnesians at Sparta and the speeches delivered there against the city of the Athenians. Having drawn these out to as many as two thousand lines, then he renders his account of the other cause, the true one and the one he himself thinks true, beginning from here: "The Lacedaemonians voted that the truce had been broken and that they must war upon the Athenians, not so much persuaded by the speeches of the allies as fearing the Athenians, lest they grow more powerful, seeing that most of Greece was already subject to them. For the Athenians came to their power in this manner, by which they grew." To which he adds the deeds of the city, all that they accomplished after the Persian War down to the Peloponnesian, summarily and cursorily, in fewer than five hundred lines. And recalling that these were earlier than the Corcyrean affairs, and that the war took its beginning not from those but from these, he again writes, word for word, thus: "After these things there now come about, not many years later, the things mentioned before, the Corcyrean and Potidaean affairs and all that became the alleged cause of this war. And all these things that the Greeks did, both against one another and against the barbarian, came about in some fifty years between the withdrawal of Xerxes and the beginning of this war; in which the Athenians established their empire more firmly and themselves advanced to great power, while the Lacedaemonians, perceiving it, did not prevent it, except for a short time, but kept quiet for most of the period, being even before this slow to go to war unless compelled, and at that time also somewhat hindered by wars of their own — until the power of the Athenians plainly rose and laid hold of their alliance. Then at last they no longer found it endurable, but thought they must set to with all eagerness and bring down their strength, if they could, by taking up this war."

He ought, having begun to inquire into the causes of the war, to have rendered first the true one and the one he himself thought true. For nature demanded that the earlier things should come before the later, and that the true should be told before the false; and the opening of the narrative would have become far better had it met with such management. Nor indeed could anyone who wishes to defend him say that the matters were small and not worth mentioning, or common and worn out by his predecessors, so that there was no need to make a beginning from them. For he himself reckoned that this subject, as left out by the ancients, was worthy of history, writing in these very words: "I have written these things and made this digression because for all before me this ground was a gap: they composed either the Greek affairs before the Persian Wars or the Persian Wars themselves. And of these matters, the very ones Hellanicus touched on in his Attic history, he made mention briefly and with no exactness as to the times; and at the same time it contains a demonstration of the empire of the Athenians, in what manner it was established."

This, then, was sufficient proof that the narrative was not managed by him in the best way — I mean the fact that it does not have its natural beginning. There is added to this also the fact that the history did not end at the headings at which it ought. For though the war embraced twenty-seven years, and though he lived through all this time down to its conclusion, he brought his history down only to the twenty-second year, extending the eighth book to the sea-battle at Cynossema — and this though he had said in the preface that he would embrace all that was done in this war. And in the fifth book again he sums up the times, from when it began and down to where, having advanced, it was brought to an end, having written this word for word: "And to those who relied at all on oracles, this one alone turned out securely. For I always remember that, both at the beginning of the war and down to its end, it was repeatedly brought forward by many that it must last thrice nine years. I lived through the whole of it, perceiving with my age and applying my mind, that I might know something exactly; and it befell me to be in exile from my own country for twenty years after my command at Amphipolis, and being present at the affairs on both sides, and not least with the Peloponnesians by reason of my exile, to perceive something of them the more at my leisure. The difference and confusion of the truce after the ten years, then, and the subsequent course of the war, I shall set forth."

That he is also less careful in the working out of the headings — either rendering more words than is needed for those that require fewer, or running rather carelessly over those that require more working out — though I could confirm it with many proofs, I shall use a few. The first two sea-battles of the Athenians and Peloponnesians, in which against forty-seven ships of the Peloponnesians the Athenians, with twenty ships alone . . . having fought at sea against many times their number of the barbarians, destroyed some and took others, men and all, no fewer than they had sent out to the war — these he began to write near the end of the second book. I shall set down his words: "After this there came about, on the Eurymedon river in Pamphylia, an infantry battle and a sea-battle of the Athenians and their allies against the Medes; and the Athenians conquered in both on the same day, Cimon the son of Miltiades being general, and they took the triremes of the Phoenicians and destroyed them, in all two hundred." Like to this in his work are also the infantry battles, either drawn out beyond what is needed or compressed below the proper measure. The affairs of the Athenians at Pylos and around the island called Sphacteria, in which, having shut up the Lacedaemonians, they reduced them by siege — these he began to recount in the fourth book; and having narrated by the way certain other deeds of this war between, then turning back again to the rendering of what follows, he went through everything done in the battles by both sides exactly and ably, himself assigning more than three hundred lines to the battles, and that though neither the slain nor those who gave up their arms were many. He himself, at any rate, summing up the affair of the battle, writes word for word thus: "There died on the island and were taken alive thus many. Four hundred and twenty hoplites in all crossed over; of these two hundred and ninety-two were brought back alive, and the rest died. And of these the Spartiates among the living were a hundred and twenty; and of the Athenians not many were killed."

But when he mentions the command of Nicias, when, taking with him sixty ships and two thousand Athenian hoplites, he sailed against the Peloponnese, and shutting up the Lacedaemonians in their forts, reduced by siege the Aeginetans dwelling in Cythera and in Thyrea, and ravaged much of the rest of the Peloponnese, from which he sailed back to Athens bringing a multitude of captives — these he has told cursorily, about the affairs in Cythera thus: "And a battle taking place, the Cytherians held out for a little while; then turning, they fled to the upper city, and later came to terms with Nicias and his fellow-commanders, to entrust themselves to the Athenians, saving their lives." And about the capture of the Aeginetans in Thyrea thus: "Meanwhile the Athenians, putting in and advancing at once with their whole army, take Thyrea, and burned the city and plundered what was in it, and the Aeginetans, all who were not killed in hand-to-hand fighting, they brought with them and came to Athens." But when great misfortunes befell both cities right at the beginning of the war, on account of which both came to desire peace — about the earlier, when the Athenians, their land cut up and their city ruined by the plague, despairing of all other help, sent an embassy to Sparta begging to obtain peace — he has neither named the men sent, nor the speeches delivered there by them, nor those who opposed them, by whom the Lacedaemonians, persuaded, voted down the reconciliation; but somehow he has told these things cheaply and carelessly, as of small and inglorious matters: "And after the second invasion of the Peloponnesians the Athenians, as their land had been cut up a second time and the disease pressed on them along with the war, were altered in their resolves, and held Pericles to blame as having persuaded them to make war and as the cause through whom they had fallen into their misfortunes; and they were set on coming to terms with the Lacedaemonians, and sending some envoys to them, they accomplished nothing." But about the later one, when the Lacedaemonians, setting out to recover the three hundred captured at Pylos, sent an embassy to Athens, he has both told the speeches delivered then by the Lacedaemonian and gone over the causes on account of which the truce was not concluded.

If, then, in the case of the Athenian embassy the exposition embracing the headings of what happened was enough, and there was no need of the speeches and exhortations the envoys used, the Lacedaemonians being neither persuaded nor accepting the truce, why on earth did he not keep the same procedure in the case of those who came from Sparta to Athens? For neither did those go away having accomplished the peace. But if these things had to be told exactly, why did he carelessly leave out the others? For surely he was not prevented by weakness of power from finding and setting out the available arguments about both. But if for some reason he chose to work out the one embassy, I cannot conjecture on what ground he preferred the Laconian to the Attic — the later in time instead of the earlier, the foreign instead of his own, the one that arose over lesser ills instead of the one over greater. Captures of cities and their razing and enslavements and other such misfortunes, which he is often compelled to write, he sometimes makes to appear so cruel and dreadful and worthy of pity in their sufferings that he leaves no room for excess to historians or to poets; and sometimes so lowly and small that not even a token of the dreadful falls upon the perception of those who read the man. As for what he has said about the city of the Plataeans, and about that of the Mytileneans, and about that of the Melians, I have no need to bring forward those passages in which from the height of his power he has worked out their misfortunes. But those in which he runs over and makes the sufferings small . . . in many places of the history — of these I shall make mention: "About these same times the Athenians, having reduced the Scionaeans by siege, killed the men of fighting age, enslaved the children and women, and gave the land to the Plataeans to occupy. And the Athenians, crossing again into Euboea with Pericles as general, subdued the whole of it; and the rest they settled by agreement, but the Hestiaeans they expelled and themselves held the land. And in this same period the Athenians removed the Aeginetans from Aegina, themselves and their wives and children, charging them with being not least to blame for the war against them; and Aegina, lying close to the Peloponnese, seemed safer for them to hold by sending out settlers of their own."

One might find many other things throughout the whole history that have either met with the highest working out, admitting neither addition nor subtraction, or are carelessly run over and have not even the slightest gleam of that famous force — most of all in the public speeches and in the dialogues and in the other rhetorical pieces. Foreseeing this, he seems to have left the history unfinished, as Cratippus too, who flourished at the same time as he and gathered up what was left out by him, has written, saying not only that these pieces became an obstacle to the deeds, but that they were also wearisome to the hearers. He says, at any rate, that the man himself, perceiving this, put down no rhetorical piece in the last parts of his history, though many things took place in Ionia, and many at Athens, that were done through dialogues and public speeches. If indeed one were to set the first and the eighth books side by side and compare them with one another, neither would they seem to be of the same purpose nor of the same power. For the one, embracing few and small matters, is full of rhetorical pieces; the other, composed about many and great deeds, is scant of public speeches.

I have indeed thought that, even in the rhetorical pieces themselves, this affliction has befallen the man: that on the same subject and at the same moment he sets down speeches that ought not, and leaves out those that ought, to be spoken. Such a thing he has done about the city of the Mytileneans in the third book. For after its capture and the arrival of the captives whom the general Paches sent, two assemblies taking place at Athens, the speeches delivered in the first by the demagogues — in which the people voted to kill the captives and the rest of the Mytileneans of fighting age, and to enslave the women and children — he left out as not necessary; but the speeches delivered in the second by the same men — in which a certain repentance came over the many — composed on the same subject, he took in as necessary.

And the famous Funeral Oration, which he went through in the second book — by what reckoning, after all, does it lie in this place rather than in another? For if, in the great misfortunes of the city, in which many brave Athenians perished fighting, the customary laments over them ought to be spoken, or if, in the great successes, from which some signal renown or power came to the city, the dead ought to be honored with funeral praises — in what book, rather than in this one, would it have been fitting for the funeral oration to be spoken? For in this book the Athenians who fell in the first invasion of the Peloponnesians were altogether very few, and not even these had done any brilliant deed, as Thucydides himself writes. For having said of Pericles that he guarded the city and kept it as quiet as he could — yet sent out some horsemen continually, that the scouts running ahead from the army might not work harm in the fields near the city — he says that a brief cavalry battle took place at Phrygii between one squadron of the Athenian horse, with the Thessalians on their side, and the horse of the Boeotians; in which the Thessalians and Athenians had the upper hand until, the hoplites coming to the aid of the Boeotians, there came a rout of them, and not many of the Thessalians and Athenians were killed; nevertheless they recovered them the same day without truce, and the Peloponnesians set up a trophy the next day. But in the fourth book the men with Demosthenes who fought at Pylos against the Lacedaemonian force both by land and by sea, and conquered in both battles, on account of whom the city was filled with boasting, were far more and braver than those. Why then, after all, does the historian open the public tombs for the few horsemen who won the city neither glory nor power, and bring on the most distinguished of the demagogues, Pericles, delivering that lofty tragic piece; but for the more and braver, on account of whom those who had carried the war against the Athenians fell beneath them, men fitter to obtain this honor, he did not compose the funeral oration? And — to let pass all the other battles, both by land and by sea, in which many perished who deserved far more justly to be adorned with funeral praises than the patrolmen of Attica, being ten or fifteen horsemen — those Athenians and their allies who died in Sicily with Nicias and Demosthenes, both in the sea-battles and in the struggles by land, and finally in the wretched flight, being no fewer than forty thousand and not even able to obtain the customary burial — how much fitter were they to obtain laments and funeral adornments? But he has so neglected these men that he has not even said this much: that the city set forth public mourning and performed the customary rites of the dead for those who had died on foreign soil, and appointed to speak over them the man who of the orators of that time was most able to speak. For surely it was not likely that the Athenians should publicly mourn over the fifteen horsemen, but think those who fell in Sicily — among whom more than five thousand of those on the muster-roll perished — worthy of no honor. But it seems that the historian — for I shall say what I think — wishing to make use of the person of Pericles and to compose the funeral praise as spoken by him, since the man died in the second year of this war and was present at none of the later misfortunes of the city, laid up, for that small and unimportant action, the praise that was above the worth of the matter.

One might see still more the unevenness of the historian in his working out, considering that, having left out many great matters, he draws out the preface of his history to as many as five hundred lines, wishing to show that the deeds done by the Greeks before this war were small and not worth comparing with it. For neither was the truth so, as may be shown from many things, nor does the principle of art prescribe to manage one's heightenings in this way — for it is not the case that, if something is greater than the small, it is therefore already great, but rather if it surpasses the great; and his preface, having taken so many demonstrative workings-out of his thesis, has become a history all by itself. But those who composed the rhetorical handbooks prescribe making prefaces samples of the speeches, anticipating the very headings of what is to be set forth. This, indeed, the man has done at the end of the preface, when about to begin the narrative, in fewer than fifty lines; so that all those many things that pull down the greatness of Greece were dragged in by him unnecessarily — that at the time of the Trojan War the whole was not yet called by one name "Greece," and that those who lacked sustenance began to cross by ship against one another, and falling upon unwalled cities inhabited village by village, plundered them and from this made the greatest part of their living. And what need was there to speak about the Athenians' luxury, which they used in old times — that they bound up topknots and wore golden cicadas in their hair? And that the Lacedaemonians were the first to strip naked and, undressing openly, to anoint themselves with oil along with their exercising? And the Corinthian shipwright Ameinocles who first built four triremes for the Samians, and Polycrates the tyrant of Samos who took Rheneia and dedicated it to the Delian Apollo, and the Phocaeans who founded Massalia and conquered the Carthaginians in a sea-battle, and all the other things like these — what occasion had they to be spoken before the narrative? But if it is lawful and permitted me to say what I think,

it seems to me the preface would have become best if he had fitted its last part to his thesis, leaving out all that lies between, and constructed it in this way: "Thucydides the Athenian wrote up the war of the Peloponnesians and Athenians, how they made war against one another, beginning right at its outset and expecting that it would be great and the most worthy of record of all that had gone before; reckoning from the fact that both were at the height of all preparation as it began, and seeing the rest of the Greek world taking sides with one or the other, some at once, some even intending to. For this was the greatest movement that came upon the Greeks and a certain part of the barbarians, and, one may say, upon most of mankind. For the things before these, and the still more ancient, it was impossible to discover clearly because of their lapse of time; but from the evidence in which, examining as far back as possible, I happen to put my trust, I do not think they were great, either in their wars or in other things. Neither do I trust rather to the poets, who have hymned of them, adorning them toward the greater, nor to the prose chroniclers, who composed toward what is more attractive to the hearing than truer, the things being unverifiable and most of them, through time, having prevailed incredibly into the legendary; but I reckon them to have been found out from the most signal evidences, as being adequately ancient. And this war, although men, in whichever war they are engaged, always judge the present one to be the greatest, but when they have ceased rather wonder at the ancient things — nevertheless from the deeds themselves, to those who examine them, will show itself to have been greater than they. And all that each side said in speech, either when about to go to war or already engaged in it, it was hard to remember the exactness of what was said, both for me, in the case of what I myself heard, and for those reporting to me from elsewhere; but as each seemed to me likely to say what was most needful about the matters in hand, keeping as close as possible to the whole sense of what was truly said, so it has been set forth. As for the deeds of what was done in the war, I did not think it right to write them down from any chance source, nor as seemed good to me, but having gone over those at which I myself was present, and those from others, with as much exactness as possible about each. They were found out with labor, because those present at the deeds did not say the same things about the same matters, but as each was disposed in goodwill or memory toward one side or the other. And for hearing, perhaps the absence of the legendary in them will appear less pleasing; but whoever shall wish to examine the truth of what has happened and of what will one day again, in the course of human things, be such or similar, will find it enough to judge these things useful. They are composed as a possession for all time rather than as a prize-piece to be heard for the moment. Of earlier deeds the greatest accomplished was the Persian War; and yet even this had its decision in two sea-battles and two land-battles. But of this war the length advanced far, and sufferings befell Greece in it such as no others in an equal time. For never were so many cities taken and made desolate, some by barbarians, some by the warring parties themselves, and there are some that even changed their inhabitants on being captured; nor so many flights of men and slaughter, some in the war itself, some through faction. And the things told before by hearsay, but more rarely confirmed in fact, became not incredible — about earthquakes, which prevailed over the greatest part of the earth at once and were most violent; eclipses of the sun, which occurred more frequently than those remembered from earlier time; great droughts in some places, and from them famines; and that which did not least harm and destroyed a part, the plague-like disease — for all these set upon them together along with this war. And the Athenians and Peloponnesians began it by breaking the thirty-years' truce that had been made between them after the capture of Euboea. And as to why they broke it, I have first written down the causes and the disputes, that no one may ever have to inquire from what such a great war arose among the Greeks."

Such, then, are the historian's failures and successes in the matter of substance. Now the matters of style, in which his character is most plainly visible, I am about to speak of. It is perhaps necessary first to say something about this kind too: into how many parts style is naturally divided, and what virtues it embraces; then to show in what condition Thucydides received it from the historians before him, and what parts he, first of all men, made new, whether for the better or for the worse, hiding nothing.

That all style is divided into two first parts — into the choice of words, by which matters are made clear, and into the composition of the smaller and greater members; and that of these again each is divided into further parts — the choice of the elementary members (I mean nouns, verbs, and connectives) into the literal expression and the figurative; the composition into the phrases, the clauses, and the periods; and that to both of these (I mean both the simple, indivisible words and the composite ones made from them) belong the so-called figures; and that of the so-called virtues some are necessary and ought to be present in all discourse, while others are added on and, when the first are present, then receive their own force — all this has been said by many before. So there is no need for me to speak of them now, nor from what observations and precepts each of these virtues arises, though they are many; for these too have met with the most exact working out by others.

Which of them all the historians before Thucydides used, and which they touched on only slightly, I shall go through summarily, taking it up from the beginning, as I promised; for thus will one know the man's own character more exactly. The very ancient ones, known only from their names, what kind of style they practiced I cannot conjecture — whether the plain and unadorned, having nothing superfluous but the useful and necessary things themselves, or the pompous and dignified and elaborate, having taken on the added adornments. For the writings of most of them do not survive down to our times, nor are those that do survive trusted by all to be the work of those men — among which are the writings of Cadmus of Miletus, of Aristeas of Proconnesus, and the like. But those born before the Peloponnesian War, extending to the age of Thucydides, all for the most part had similar purposes, both those who chose the Ionic dialect, which at that time was most in flower, and those who chose the ancient Attic, which has small differences from the Ionic. For all these, as I said, were more concerned with the literal expression than the figurative, and took up the figurative as a kind of seasoning; and they all practiced a similar composition of words, the unadorned and unstudied; and not even in figuring their words and thoughts did they go far from the well-worn, common, and familiar dialect of all. So the style of all of them has the necessary virtues (for it is pure and clear and adequately concise, each preserving the proper character of its dialect); but the added virtues, by which most of all the orator's power becomes plain, it has neither all nor reaching to their height, but few and in small measure — I mean elevation and beauty of expression and dignity and magnificence; nor yet tension, nor weight, nor passion to rouse the mind, nor the vigorous, contending breath, from which is born what is called force — except in Herodotus alone. For he, in the choice of words and in the composition and in the variety of figures, surpassed the others by far, and prepared his prose to become like the best poetry for the sake of persuasion and of graces and of pleasure reaching its height; and of the greatest and most brilliant virtues, except for the contending ones, he left out none . . . among these — whether because he was not well suited to them by nature, or because for some reason he willingly disdained them as not fitting for histories. For the man neither uses many public speeches nor contending discourses, nor has he his strength in making the matters passionate and dreadful.

To this man, then, and to the others whom I mentioned before, Thucydides applied himself, and discerning what virtues each of them had, he first set himself to bring into historical writing a character all his own, one overlooked by all. In the choice of words he preferred the figurative, the glossarial, the archaic, and the strange expression instead of the common and familiar to the men of his time; in the composition of both the smaller and greater members he preferred the dignified, austere, compact, firm, and harsh — roughening the ears with the clashing of the letters — instead of the clear, soft, smoothed-out, and unresisting; and in the figures, in which most of all he wished to differ from his predecessors, he brought the greatest zeal. At any rate he spent the twenty-seven years of the war, from the beginning to the end, turning the eight books — which alone he left — up and down, and filing and chasing each single part of the expression; now making a clause out of a word, now drawing a clause together into a word; now bringing out the verbal idea nominally, again making the noun a verb, and reversing the uses of these very things, so that the noun becomes appellative and the appellative is expressed nominally; and the passive verbs active, the active passive; changing the natures of plurals and singulars and predicating these of one another; joining feminine to masculine and masculine to feminine and neuter to some of these, from which the natural sequence is led astray; turning the cases of nouns or participles now from the signifier to the signified, now from the signified to the signifier; and in the connective and prepositional particles, and still more in those that articulate the powers of words, taking license like a poet. Most of all one would find in him figures altered from the customary by turnings of person and changes of tense and transferences of figurative significations, taking on the appearance of solecisms; and as many as occur of things in place of bodies or bodies in place of things; and those reflections and thoughts in which the parenthetic insertions, becoming many, carry their sequence at a long distance; and the crooked and complicated and hard-to-unravel constructions and the other things akin to these. One would find also not a few of the theatrical figures lying in his work — I mean the parisoses, the paromoioses, the paronomasias, and the antitheses — in which Gorgias of Leontini was excessive, and Polus and Licymnius and many others who flourished at the same time as he. And his most evident and characteristic feature is the attempt to signify the most matters through the fewest words, and to compose many thoughts into one, and to leave the hearer still expecting to hear something more — from which his brevity becomes obscure. But to speak summarily, there are, as it were, four instruments of the style of Thucydides: the poetic quality of the words, the variety of the figures, the harshness of the harmony, the swiftness of the significations; and its colors are the compact and the dense, the bitter and the austere, the weighty and the dreadful and the fearsome, and above all these the passionate. Such, then, is Thucydides in the character of his style, by which he differed from the others. When, accordingly, both his purpose and his power run out together, his successes become perfect and superhuman; but when his power falls short, the tension not holding to the end, then through the swiftness of the narration his style becomes obscure and brings on certain other unbecoming blemishes. For the question in what manner the strange and coined words ought to be used, and how far they should advance before stopping — fine and necessary observations in all works — he does not keep throughout the whole history.

These things having been said summarily, it is time to turn to the demonstrations of them. I shall make my discourse not separately about each kind of style, subordinating to them the language of Thucydides, but by certain passages and places, taking parts both of the narrative and of the rhetorical pieces, and setting beside the successes or failures, of substance and of style, the causes on account of which they are such; asking you again, and the other lovers of letters who will meet with this writing, to consider the intention of the subject I have chosen to examine, namely that it is a display of his character, embracing all that has fallen to him and requires discussion, having for its aim the benefit of those who shall wish to imitate the man. At the beginning of the preface, then, having used the proposition that the Peloponnesian War became the greatest of the wars before it, he writes word for word thus: "For the things before these and the still more ancient it was impossible to discover clearly because of their lapse of time; but from the evidence in which, examining as far back as possible, it befell me to put my trust, I do not think they were great, either in their wars or in other things. For the land now called Greece appears not to have been securely inhabited of old, but there were migrations in the earlier time, and each people readily abandoned its own, forced out by others always more numerous. For there being no commerce, nor mingling fearlessly with one another either by land or by sea, and each occupying their own only so far as to live off it, and having no surplus of wealth nor planting the land . . . enslaved in resolve as against the Lacedaemonians. Despising them, then, and shouting all together, they rushed upon them." This passage ought to have been constructed by him not in this way, but more in the common manner and more usefully, with the last member added to the first, and the things between taking the place after these. The expression, figured in this way, has become more crabbed and more forceful; but it would have been clearer and more pleasant constructed in that other way: "And the Lacedaemonians no longer being able to dart out where they were attacked, the light troops, perceiving them now slower, gathering together and shouting, rushed upon them all together, having taken on confidence from the sight, that they were many times their number, and despising them, since they no longer appeared as dreadful to them as before, because they had not at once suffered things answering to their expectation — the supposition they had held, when they first landed, enslaved in resolve as against the Lacedaemonians."

The whole passage being set aside, everything else has been named with the most fitting words and embraced with the most suitable figures, and has fallen short of no virtue, one may say, either of style or of substance — which I have no need to enumerate again. But in the seventh book, narrating the last sea-battle of the Athenians and Syracusans, he has named and figured the events thus: "Demosthenes and Menander and Euthydemus — for these went aboard the ships of the Athenians as generals — putting out from their own camp, sailed at once against the boom of the harbor and the gap that had been left, wishing to force their way out. But the Syracusans and their allies, having already put out with ships nearly equal in number to before, kept guard both at the exit with a part of them and around the rest of the harbor in a circle, so that they might fall upon the Athenians from all sides at once; and their infantry came to their aid wherever the ships put in. The commanders of the Syracusan fleet were Sicanus and Agatharchus, each holding a wing of the whole, and Pythen and the Corinthians the center. When the rest of the Athenians too came up against the boom, by their first onset, sailing on, they overpowered the ships drawn up against it and tried to loose the fastenings; but after this, the Syracusans and their allies bearing down on them from all sides, the sea-battle came to be no longer at the boom only, but throughout the harbor; and it was fierce, and such as no other before. For there was much eagerness on each side, on the part of the sailors, to sail on whenever the order was given, and much counter-skill of the helmsmen and contention with one another; and the marines took care, whenever ship fell upon ship, that the work from the deck should not fall short of the rest of the art; and every man, in the post to which he had been assigned, hastened himself to appear first. And many ships falling together in a narrow space — for these were the most that ever fought in a narrow space, for the two sides fell little short of being two hundred — the backings-out were few, because there was no room for backing water and breaking through; but the onsets were more frequent, as it chanced that ship fell upon ship, either in flight or sailing against another. And as long as a ship was bearing down, those from the decks used javelins and arrows and stones against it in plenty; but when they came alongside, the marines, coming to hand-strokes, tried to board one another's ships. And it happened in many places, because of the narrowness, that some had rammed others and others were themselves rammed, and that two ships, and in some cases more, were perforce entangled about one; and that for the helmsmen there was, of some ships defense, of others attack — not against each single one, but against many from all sides at once — and that the great crash from many ships falling together caused both consternation and deprivation of hearing of what the boatswains shouted. For there was much exhortation and shouting from the boatswains on either side, both by their art and in the naval rivalry: to the Athenians they shouted to force the passage out and now, if ever, eagerly to lay hold of safe return to their fatherland; to the Syracusans and their allies, that it was a fine thing to prevent them from escaping and, each conquering, to exalt his own fatherland. And the generals on each side, besides, if they saw any backing water anywhere without necessity, calling the trierarch by name, asked — the Athenians, whether they were withdrawing because they now thought the most hostile land more their own than the sea they had won with no small toil; the Syracusans, whether they, who clearly knew the Athenians eager in every way to escape, were themselves fleeing the fleers. And the infantry on land of both sides, the sea-battle standing balanced, had much struggle and tension of mind: the man from home, contending now for the greater glory; the invaders fearing that they might fare even worse than the present. For all the Athenians' fortunes being staked on the ships, their fear for the future was like nothing, and because of the unevenness they were forced to have the view of the sea-battle from the land an uneven one too; for, the spectacle being at close range and not all looking at the same point at once, if any saw their own men prevailing somewhere, they took heart and turned to call upon the gods not to deprive them of safety; but those who looked toward the part being beaten used lamentation along with shouting, and from the sight of what was done were more enslaved in mind than those in the action; and others, looking toward a part of the battle that was even, because of the uninterrupted continuity of the contest, swaying in terror with their very bodies in time with their thought, passed the most grievous of times; for always they were within a little either of escaping or of being destroyed. And there was in the army of the Athenians, as long as the sea-battle was nearly equal, everything to be heard at once — lamentation, shouting, 'we win, we are beaten,' and all the other manifold things a great army is forced to utter in great danger. And like things to these the men on the ships also suffered, until at last the Syracusans and their allies, the sea-battle having long held out, turned the Athenians and, pressing on splendidly with much crying and cheering, pursued them to the land. Then indeed the naval host, those who had not been taken on the open water, carried in one here, one there, fell out upon the camp. And the infantry, no longer divided, but with one impulse, with wailing and groaning, all hard put to bear what was happening, some ran to the aid of the ships, others to the guard of what was left of the wall; while others, and now the most, were already looking out for themselves and how they should be saved. And in that instant there was a consternation second to none of all. They had suffered things like, and themselves done like, at Pylos; for, the ships of the Lacedaemonians being destroyed, the men on the island who had crossed over were lost to them besides. And now to the Athenians it was beyond hope to be saved by land, unless something should happen against reason. And the sea-battle having become violent and many ships and men being lost on both sides, the Syracusans and their allies, prevailing, took up the wrecks and the dead and, sailing back to the city, set up a trophy."

To me, then, these things and the like seemed worthy of emulation and imitation, and I was persuaded that the man's grandeur of speech and beauty of style and force and the other virtues are in these works most perfect — reckoning from the fact that every soul is led by this kind of style, and that neither the irrational criterion of the mind, by which we are naturally fitted to grasp the pleasant or the painful, is estranged from it, nor the rational, by which the beautiful in each art is discerned; and neither would those who are not at all experienced in political discourse be able to say at what word or figure they are vexed, nor would those who are quite refined and look down on the ignorance of the many be able to blame the construction of this style; but both the judgment of the many and that of the few will have the same supposition. For that great common layman will not be vexed at the vulgarity or crookedness or difficulty of the style; and the rare craftsman, one not made by any chance training, will not blame the ignoble and base and unwrought. Rather both the rational and the irrational criterion, by both of which we think all things should be judged in the arts, will be in concord. . . . [if it] should work the one, it no longer renders the other beautiful or perfect.

I, for my part, do not know how to praise those things that seem to some great and wonderful, which do not even have the first and most common virtues, but are so overcome by the elaborate and superfluous as to be neither pleasant nor useful; of which I shall furnish a few samples, setting beside each at once the causes on account of which it has fallen round into the vices opposite to the virtues. In the third book, then, going through the cruel and unholy deeds done at Corcyra, because of the faction, against the most powerful men from the people, as long as he sets forth what was done in the common and familiar manner of the dialect, he has said everything clearly and concisely and ably; but when he begins to make a tragedy of the common misfortunes of the Greeks and to alter his thought from what is customary, he becomes by a long way worse than himself. The first part, which no one would lay hold of as faulty, is this: "The Corcyraeans, perceiving the Attic ships sailing up and those of the enemy gone, took the Messenians, whom they brought into the city, having before been outside, and ordering the ships they had manned to sail round into the Hyllaic harbor, in the while they were being conveyed round, killed any of their enemies they laid hold of, and bringing out of the ships all whom they had persuaded to embark, dispatched them. And going to the Heraeum, they persuaded about fifty men of the suppliants to submit to trial, and condemned all to death; but the many of the suppliants, all who had not been persuaded, when they saw what was happening, destroyed one another in the sanctuary, and some hanged themselves from the trees, and others made away with themselves each as he could. And for seven days, during which Eurymedon, having arrived with his sixty ships, remained, the Corcyraeans went on slaughtering those of their own whom they took to be enemies, bringing the charge against those who were subverting the democracy; but some died also for private enmities, and others on account of moneys owed them, at the hands of those who had borrowed. And every form of death came to pass, and, as is wont to happen in such circumstances, there was nothing that did not come about, and still further; for father killed son, and men were dragged from the sanctuaries and killed at them, and some were even walled up in the temple of Dionysus and died there. So cruelly did the faction advance; and it seemed the more so, because it was among the first to occur — since later, indeed, well-nigh the whole Greek world, one may say, was moved, there being everywhere differences, the leaders of the democracies calling in the Athenians, and the oligarchs the Lacedaemonians."

But what he adds to these is crooked and hard to follow, having figured combinations that look like solecisms, practiced neither by those who lived in his time nor by those later, when political eloquence most flourished — which I am now about to quote: "And so the affairs of the cities were in faction, and the things coming somewhat later, by the report of what had gone before, carried far the excess of innovating their resolves, both by the over-contriving of their attempts and by the strangeness of their reprisals." In these the first of the clauses is periphrased to no necessary purpose: "And so the affairs of the cities were in faction" — for it would have been sounder to say "and so the cities were in faction." And what is said next, "and the things coming somewhat later," is hard to make out; it would have become clearer if said thus: "and the cities that came later." To which is added: "by the report of what had gone before carried far the excess toward innovating their resolves" — for he wishes to say: "but those who came later, learning by inquiry what had been done among others, took on an excess toward devising something newer." And apart from the construction, not even the figurings of the words are pleasant to the ears. To these he adds another heading, more proper to poetic, or rather to dithyrambic, elaboration: "both by the over-contriving of their attempts and by the strangeness of their reprisals; and they exchanged the customary estimation of words, as applied to deeds, by their new justification." For what he wishes to make clear in this hard-to-unravel construction is this: "they took on a great increase toward devising something newer in the arts of their enterprises and in the excesses of their reprisals; and transferring the words customarily applied to matters, they thought fit to call them otherwise." But "the over-contriving" and "the strangeness of the reprisals" and "the customary estimation of words" and "the justification exchanged as applied to deeds" are more proper to poetic periphrasis. To these he adds these theatrical figures: "For unreasoning daring was reckoned courage loyal to one's party, and provident delay specious cowardice." For both of these contain paromoioses and parisoses, and the epithets are set down for the sake of embellishment; for what is not theatrical . . . but a necessary figure of style would have been such as this: "for daring they called courage, and delay cowardice." Like to these are also the things joined to them: "and prudence the pretext of the unmanly, and intelligence toward everything inactivity toward all" — which would have been more properly said thus: "the prudent were unmanly, and the intelligent in all things inactive in all."

If, having advanced thus far, he had stopped — embellishing his style here, hardening it there — he would have been less wearisome. But as it is he adds: "and to have been plotting was safety, the pretext of escape reasonable; and the man who was harsh was always trustworthy, and the one who contradicted him suspect." For in these again it is unclear whom he wishes to indicate as the harsh man and about what, and whom as the contradicter and on what point. "He who has plotted," he says, "and succeeded was intelligent, and he who suspected still more clever; but he who took forethought so that he should have no need of either was a dissolver of his party and panic-stricken before his opponents." For neither does "he who has succeeded" reveal more what he wishes to make clear, nor can the same man be thought "having succeeded and having suspected" at once, if indeed "having succeeded" is said of one who has prospered and attained what he hoped, and "having suspected" of one who has foreseen the evil not yet done but still impending. The sense would have been pure and far-shining thus: "those who plotted against others, if they succeeded, were clever; and those who suspected the plots beforehand, if they guarded against them, still cleverer; but the man who foresaw so that he should have no need either of plotting or of guarding was reckoned both to dissolve the parties and to have panicked his opponents."

Adding to these one period crabbedly expressed, yet ably along with clearly: "And simply, the man who forestalled another about to do some evil was praised, and the man who urged on one not even minded to," he uses again a poetic transference: "and indeed kinship became more alien than party, because of being readier to dare without pretext." For "the kindred thing" and "the party thing," set down instead of "kinship" and "party," are transferred; and "to dare without pretext" is unclear, whether it is set down here of the friends or of the kindred. For having given the cause on account of which they judged the kindred more alien than the friends, he adds that "they offered daring without pretext." The discourse would have been clear if he had brought it out in this way, figuring it according to his own wish: "and indeed party became more proper than kinship, because of being readier to dare without pretext." And the things after these too are periphrased, and are reported neither forcefully nor clearly: "for such gatherings were not for the benefits of the established laws, but against the standing order, through greed." The sense is of this kind: "for the gatherings of the parties did not come about for the benefits according to law, but for grasping something contrary to the laws." And "oaths," he says, "if anywhere of reconciliation, given for the moment to each in his straits, held good, as they had no power from elsewhere." In these is hyperbaton and periphrasis; for "the oaths of reconciliation" have a signification of this kind: "the oaths concerning friendship, if anywhere they came about." And "held good," set by hyperbaton, follows "for the moment," for he wishes to make clear "they held for the present moment"; and "given to each in his straits, as they had no power from elsewhere" would have been clearer if brought out thus: "given to each in his straits because of having no other power." And the coherence of the thought would have been such as this: "the oaths concerning friendship, if anywhere they came about, given to each for want of any other pledge, held for the moment."

More crooked than these are the things he sets down after: "But in the chance opportunity, the one who first took courage, if he saw the other unguarded, took vengeance with more pleasure because of the trust than from the open way; and he reckoned both the safety, and that, getting the upper hand by deceit, he won besides a prize of intelligence." Now "the chance opportunity" is set instead of "on the instant," and "unguarded" instead of "off his guard"; and "taking vengeance with more pleasure because of the trust than from the open way" is darkly periphrased, and some member is lacking for the completion of the sense. One may guess that this is what he wishes to say: "but if at any time the occasion presented itself to anyone and he learned his enemy off his guard, he took vengeance with more pleasure, because he set upon one who trusted rather than one on his guard; and he won besides a reputation for intelligence, reckoning both the safety and that he got the better of him by the deceit." "And more easily," he says, "the many, being evildoers, are called clever than the unlearned good, and at the one they are ashamed, but at the other they exult." For these things are said crabbedly and briefly, and have their signification lying in obscurity. For it is hard to learn whom, after all, he means by "the unlearned and good"; for if he sets them in contrast to the evildoers, those who are not evil would not be unlearned; and if he sets "the unlearned" among the senseless and foolish, on what ground does he call these "good"? And "at the one they are ashamed" — who? For it is unclear whether both or the unlearned. And "at the other they exult" — here too it is unclear who; for if he sets it of both, it has no sense, for neither do the good exult at the evildoers nor are the evildoers ashamed at the unlearned.

This character of obscure and entangled style, in which there is more of the troublesome darkening of the thought than of charm, is drawn out to a hundred lines. I shall set down the rest too, no longer adding any word of my own: "Of all these the cause was rule arising from greed and ambition, and from these the eagerness of those settling into rivalry. For those who took the lead in the cities, each side with a specious name — the one of the equal political rights of the multitude, the other of a temperate aristocracy — while in word tending the common interest, made it their prize; and contending in every way to get the better of one another, they dared the most dreadful things, and pursued their reprisals to ones still greater, not setting their limit at what was just and beneficial to the city, but defining it by what at each time gratified each side; and whether by the condemnation of an unjust vote or by getting the mastery by main force, they were ready to glut their present rivalry. So that neither side practiced piety, but those to whom it befell to accomplish something invidious by a specious use of words were better thought of; and the citizens in the middle were destroyed by both, either because they would not join the contest, or out of envy that they should survive. Thus every form of bad character came to be established among the Greek world through the factions; and simplicity, of which the noble has the largest share, was laughed down and vanished; and to be set against one another in mind, distrustfully, prevailed far. For there was none to dissolve it, neither secure word nor fearful oath; but all, being superior in reckoning, in the hopelessness of anything secure, looked rather to suffering no harm than were able to trust. And the poorer in judgment, for the most part, prevailed. For, fearing both their own deficiency and the intelligence of their opponents, lest they should be inferior in words and be forestalled in being plotted against out of the versatility of their adversaries' wit, they went boldly to deeds; while the others, despising and thinking they would perceive beforehand, and that they need take in act nothing of what was possible by judgment, were destroyed the more unguarded." Though I could still make it clear from many examples that he is better in narratives, when he stays in the customary and common character of the dialect, and worse when he turns the dialect from the customary toward strange words and forced figures, some of which present the appearance of solecisms, I shall be content with these, that my writing may not advance beyond what is needed.

Since I promised to make clear my views also about his public speeches, in which some think the historian's power is at its height, having divided this examination too into two, the matter of substance and the matter of style, I shall discourse separately about each, beginning from the substance. In this the first part is the invention of the reflections and thoughts, the second the use of what is invented; the former having its strength rather in nature, the latter in art. Of these the one that has more of the natural than of the technical, and needs less teaching, is something wonderful in the historian; for he brings, as from a rich spring, an unmeasured store of thoughts and reflections, superfluous and strange and paradoxical. But the one that has more of the technical and makes the other appear more brilliant is in many places more deficient than is needed. Those, then, who have admired him beyond measure, as differing in nothing from the divinely inspired, seem to have suffered this affection because of the multitude of his reflections. If one teaches them, setting beside each matter the discourse, that these things were not suitable to be said at this moment and by these persons, and that those things were not suitable to these matters nor to this extent, they are vexed, suffering something like those who are conquered by the love of some beauty not far from madness. For those men think that all the virtues which belong to fair forms belong to the women who have enslaved them, and put forward as malicious and slanderers those who try to reproach them, if there is any blemish about them; and these critics, stupefied in mind by this one virtue, bear witness to the historian even of things that do not belong to him — for what each man wishes to be in the thing loved and admired by him, that he thinks it is. But those who keep their mind uncorrupted and refer the examination of discourse to the right standards, whether they have partaken of some natural judgment or have constructed strong criteria through teaching, neither praise everything equally nor are vexed at everything, but to the successes they render the fitting witness, and if some part has gone amiss in them, they do not praise it.

I, at any rate, who in all my observations lay down standards, neither shrank before from bringing my views into the open, nor now shall I turn aside from it. Granting, then, in the first place — as I said at the outset — the historian's good aim in invention, and supposing that, if anyone has supposed otherwise, whether through contentiousness or through dullness, thinking he errs, I no longer grant the other thing, his technical skill in the management of his material, except in very few public speeches. I see also the faults of style, about which I have already spoken, most and greatest befalling these kinds; for the glossarial, strange, and coined words abound most in these, and the complicated, crabbed, and forced figures are most about them. Whether I have judged what is reasonable, you will determine, and so will every other man led to the examination of the works. The setting of them side by side will be in the same manner, comparing those that seem to me best with those that are neither well managed nor blameless in expression.

In the second book, then, having begun to write of the march of the Lacedaemonians and their allies against Plataea, he lays down that, the king of the Lacedaemonians, Archidamus, being about to ravage the land, envoys came to him from the Plataeans; and he renders speeches such as were likely to have been spoken by both, fitting to the persons and proper to the matters and neither falling below the mean nor going above it, and has adorned them with a style pure and clear and concise and having the other virtues; and he has rendered the harmony so musical as to bear comparison with the most pleasant. "The following summer the Peloponnesians and their allies did not invade Attica, but marched against Plataea; Archidamus the son of Zeuxidamus, king of the Lacedaemonians, led them, and having encamped his army, he was about to ravage the land. But the Plataeans, sending envoys to him at once, spoke as follows: 'Archidamus and Lacedaemonians, you do what is neither just nor worthy of yourselves nor of the fathers from whom you are, in marching against the land of the Plataeans. For Pausanias the son of Cleombrotus, a Lacedaemonian, having freed Greece from the Medes together with the Greeks who were willing to share the danger of the battle that took place in our country, and having sacrificed in the market-place of the Plataeans victims to Zeus the Liberator, and having called together all the allies, restored to the Plataeans their land and city to hold and inhabit independent, and that no one should ever march unjustly against them or for enslavement; and if so, the allies then present should defend them with all their power. These things your fathers granted us for the sake of the valor and eagerness that were shown in those dangers. But you do the opposite of those men; for with the Thebans, our bitterest enemies, you have come for our enslavement. Calling to witness the gods who were then sworn by, and your own ancestral gods and our native ones, we tell you not to wrong the Plataean land nor to transgress the oaths, but to let us dwell independent, as Pausanias judged just.' When the Plataeans had said such things, Archidamus answered as follows: 'You speak justly, men of Plataea, if you do as your words say. For just as Pausanias delivered it over to you, be yourselves independent, and join in freeing the others, all who, having shared in the dangers of that time, both swore the oath with you and are now under the Athenians; for this great preparation and war have come about for their sake and the liberation of the rest. Of this, best of all, having yourselves a share, abide by the oaths; but if not, do what we have already before invited you to do — keep quiet, occupying your own; be of neither party, but receive both as friends, neither for war. And these things will satisfy us.' So much Archidamus said. And the envoys of the Plataeans, having heard these things, went into the city; and having communicated what was said to the multitude, they answered him that it was impossible for them to do what he invited without the Athenians; for their children and wives were with them. And they feared also for the whole city, lest, those having withdrawn, the Athenians coming should not allow them, or the Thebans, being included in the 'receiving both,' should again try to seize their city. But he, encouraging them in face of this, said: 'Hand over your city and houses to us the Lacedaemonians, and show the boundaries of your land, and your trees and whatever else can come to count; and remove yourselves wherever you wish, as long as the war lasts; and when it is over, we shall restore to you whatever we received; and until then we shall hold them as a deposit, working them and bearing a tribute that shall be sufficient for you.' And they, having heard this, again went into the city, and having deliberated with the multitude, said that they wished first to communicate to the Athenians what he invited, and if they persuaded them, to do it; and until then they bade him make a truce with them and not ravage the land. And he made a truce for as many days as it was likely the journey would take, and did not cut the land. And the Plataean envoys, having gone to the Athenians and deliberated with them, came back again announcing to those in the city the following: 'The Athenians say, men of Plataea, that neither in the time before, since we became allies, have they in anything given you up to be wronged, nor will they now overlook you, but will help you with all their power; and they adjure you by the oaths your fathers swore to make no innovation in the alliance.' When the envoys had reported such things, the Plataeans resolved not to betray the Athenians, but to endure, even seeing their land cut up, if need be, and suffering whatever else might come about; and that no one should go out any more, but should answer from the wall that it was impossible for them to do what the Lacedaemonians invited. And when they had answered, then for the first time Archidamus the king set himself to call to witness the gods and heroes of the country, saying thus: 'Gods, all who hold the land of Plataea, and heroes, be witnesses that neither in the beginning unjustly — but these having first abandoned the sworn agreement — did we come against this land, in which our fathers, having prayed to you, conquered the Medes, and you granted it gracious for the Greeks to contend in; nor now, if we do anything, shall we do wrong; for having invited them to many reasonable things, we do not obtain them. Be ye consenting that those who first began the wrong should be punished, and that those who bring vengeance lawfully should obtain it.' Having thus called the gods to witness, he set the army to war."

Let us examine, beside this dialogue so beautiful and admirable, another dialogue of his, which the admirers of this character most praise. He lays down that, the Athenians having sent an army against the Melians, colonists of the Lacedaemonians, before the war began the general of the Athenians and the magistrates of the Melians came together for discussion about ending the war; and at the start he makes clear, from his own person, what was said by both; but after a single answer, having kept this figure, the narrative one, he gives a personal cast to the dialogue that follows and dramatizes it. The Athenian begins, saying this: "Since the discourse is not made before the multitude, lest the people, hearing seductive and unrefuted things from us continuously in a single speech, be deceived at one hearing — for we know that this is the intent of our being brought before the few — you who sit here can make it still safer. Do not even you answer with a single set speech, but, against whatever does not seem to be said suitably, judge by taking us up at once. And first say whether what we propose pleases you." And the councillors of the Melians answered: "The fairness of teaching one another at leisure is not blamed; but the things of the war, present already and not impending, appear at variance with it." This last sentence, if anyone shall think fit to count among figures, would not be slow to call figures all the solecisms that occur against numbers and against cases. For having set forth "the fairness of teaching one another at leisure is not blamed," then having joined to the singular, brought out in the nominative case, "but the things of the war, present already and not impending," he yokes to these a word that is singular and figured in the genitive case — whether one wishes to call it a demonstrative article or a pronoun — namely "it"; and this, fitted neither to the feminine, singular, and nominative, preserves the sequence, nor to the plural, neuter, and figured in the accusative. The discourse would have been coherent figured thus: "the fairness of teaching one another at leisure is not blamed, but the things of the war, present already and not impending, appear at variance with her." To these he adds a reflection conceived not absurdly, but expressed in a way not easy to follow: "If, then, you have come together either to reckon up suspicions of what is to come, or anything else, than to take counsel for the safety of the city from the present things and from what you see, we stop; but if for this, we would speak."

And after this, turning the dialogue of the narrative to the dramatic, he makes the Athenian answer thus: "It is likely and pardonable that men set in such a condition should turn to many sayings and seemings." Then, having laid down a seemly proposition, "Nevertheless the meeting is present already and about safety; let the discourse, in the manner you propose, if it seems good, take place," first he has uttered a reflection neither worthy of the city of the Athenians nor fitting to be said on such matters: "We, then, for our part, will not, with fine words — that either we rule justly, having put down the Mede, or are now coming against you because we are wronged — furnish a length of discourse you would not believe." This is the act of one who admits the campaign against people who do no wrong, since he wishes to render no account of either of these. To which he adds: "Nor do we think it fitting that you, either because, being colonists of the Lacedaemonians, you did not join their campaign, or because you have done us no wrong, should think to persuade us by speaking; but that each side should accomplish what is possible according to what we both truly think." This means: "you, truly thinking that you are wronged, bear the necessity and yield; and we, not ignorant that we wrong you, by force will get the better of your weakness; for these things are possible for each side." Then, wishing to give the cause of this, he adds: "Because just things are judged, in human reckoning, from equal necessity; but the powerful do what is possible, and the weak yield."

For these things it was fitting for barbarian kings to say to Greeks; but for Athenians, against the Greeks whom they freed from the Medes, it was not proper to say that just things belong to equals among one another, but violent things to the strong against the weak. And the Melians having answered a little to this — that it would be well for the Athenians to take forethought for the just, lest one day they too, tripped up by others, fall into another's power and suffer the same at the hands of the stronger — he makes the Athenian answer: "But we, even if our empire be brought to an end, are not despondent about its ending"; giving as the cause that even if the Lacedaemonians should put down their empire, they will have indulgence, themselves doing many such things. I shall set down his words too: "For it is not those who rule over others, like the Lacedaemonians, who are dreadful to the conquered." This is like saying that among tyrants tyrants are not hated. To which he adds: "And about this let it be left to us to run the risk" — which a pirate or a brigand could scarcely have said — "I am not concerned about the vengeance afterward, having gratified appetites in the present." Then, a few exchanges between having occurred, and the Melians coming down to a fair proposal — "But that, keeping quiet, we should be friends instead of enemies, allies of neither — would you not accept?" — he makes the Athenian answer: "For your enmity does not harm us so much as your friendship — a proof of weakness to those we rule, while your hatred is a proof of power" — a wretched reflection, crookedly expressed; but if one wishes to consider its thought, it is of this kind: "loving us, you will make us appear weak to the others; hating us, strong; for we do not seek to rule by the goodwill of our subjects, but by fear."

Adding to these others again — laborious and bitter exchanges — he lays down the Melians saying that the enemy bear their fortunes in common, and that to yield at once is at once hopeless, but with action there is yet hope of standing upright. Against this he makes the Athenian answer things more crooked than labyrinths, about hope, which comes to men for their hurt, writing word for word thus: "And hope, being a comfort of danger, those who use it from a superabundance, even if it harm them, it has not cast down; but to those who stake it on all they have — for it is by nature prodigal — at once it is recognized when they have failed, and in the very point where one might guard against it, once it is known, it does not leave off. Which you, being weak and on a single throw, do not wish to suffer, nor to become like the many, to whom, while it is yet possible to be saved in a human way, when, hard pressed, the visible hopes leave them, betake themselves to the invisible — divination and oracles and all such things, which with hopes work ruin." These things I do not know how one could praise as fitting to be said by Athenian generals — that the hope from the gods works ruin to men, and that there is no use of oracles nor of divination to those who have chosen a pious and just life. For if anything, this too is among the first praises of the city of the Athenians: to follow the gods in every matter and at every season, and to accomplish nothing without divination and oracles. And the Melians saying that, with the help from the gods, they trust also in the Lacedaemonians, who, if for no other reason, at least for shame will help them and not overlook their kinsmen being destroyed, he brings on the Athenian answering still more arrogantly: "Of the favor of the divine we too do not think we shall fall short; for in nothing, beyond human wishes toward the divine and toward one another, do we claim or do anything. For we hold that the divine, by repute, and the human, clearly, always by a necessity of nature, rule wherever it has power." The sense of this is hard to conjecture even for those who seem very experienced in the man, but it is shut up to some such conclusion: that all men know the divine by repute, but judge what is just toward one another by the common law of nature; and this is to rule whatever one can master. These things too follow upon the first, and are fitting to be said by neither Athenians nor Greeks.

Though I could still furnish many sentiments that have a wicked cleverness, that my discourse may not become beyond measure, I shall take up only the last addition, which the Athenian spoke as he left the meeting: "But of your resources, the strong ones, being hoped for, are still to come; and the present ones are few to prevail over those already drawn up against you." "Much unreason of mind," he says, "do you display, if you will not, having removed us, resolve on something else more temperate than these things." To which he adds: "For surely you will not turn to that shame which, in shameful and manifest dangers, most destroys men. For to many, while they yet foresaw into what they were being carried, the so-called 'shame,' by the power of a seductive name, drew them on, overcome by the word, in fact to fall, with open eyes, into incurable misfortunes." That the historian neither himself shared in this meeting, being then present, nor heard the Athenians or Melians who made these speeches, is easy to learn from what he himself writes about himself in the book before this — that after his command at Amphipolis, driven out of his country, he spent all the rest of the war's time in Thrace. It remains, then, to consider whether he has composed the dialogue fitting to the matters and suitable to the persons who came together for the meeting, keeping as close as possible to the whole sense of what was truly said, as he himself foretold in the preface of his history. Were, then, the discourses about freedom — exhorting the Athenians not to enslave a Greek city that did them no wrong — proper and fitting to the Melians? And were the discourses about justice, in the same way, fitting to the Athenian generals — discourses that allow it neither to be examined nor spoken, but bring in the law of violence and greed, and declare that these things are just for the weak, whatever seems good to the stronger? For my part I do not think that these things are proper to be said by commanders sent out from the most law-abiding city to the cities abroad; nor would I think it right that the men of small cities, the Melians, who had shown no signal deed, should take more forethought for the honorable than for the safe and be ready to undergo all dreadful things that they might be compelled to do nothing unseemly, while the Athenians, who chose to abandon their land and city in the Persian War that they might submit to no shameful command, should accuse as fools those who chose the same things. And I think that, if any others had attempted to say these things in the presence of Athenians, the men who civilized the common life would have borne it grievously. I, then, for these reasons, do not praise this dialogue, comparing it with the other. For in that one Archidamus the Lacedaemonian both invites the Plataeans to just things and uses a style pure and clear and having no figure tortured or incoherent; but in this one the most prudent of the Greeks bring the most shameful reflections and embrace them in the most unpleasant style — unless indeed the historian, bearing a grudge against the city for his condemnation, has poured these reproaches upon it, from which all were bound to hate it. For what those who preside over cities and are entrusted with such great powers seem to think and say to the cities on behalf of their own country, all men suppose to be common to the city that sends them. And about the dialogues enough.

Of the public speeches, I have admired the one delivered at Athens in the first book by Pericles, about not yielding to the Lacedaemonians, the one that has this beginning: "Of my judgment, men of Athens, I always hold the same, not to yield to the Peloponnesians" — as both expressed divinely in its reflections, and as not troubling the ears either in the composition of the members or in the variation of incoherent and forced figures, but as having embraced all the virtues that arise about public speeches; and the speeches delivered by Nicias the general at Athens about the expedition to Sicily; and the letter sent by him to the Athenians, in which he asks for another and a successor force, being weak in body from disease; and the exhortation of the soldiers he made before the last sea-battle; and the consoling speech, when he was about to lead the army away on foot, having lost all the triremes; and any others there are of such public speeches, pure and clear and suited to the true contests. But above all those carried in the seven books I have admired the defense of the Plataeans, for nothing so much as that it is neither tortured nor over-studied, but adorned with a true and natural color. For the reflections are full of feeling and the style does not turn the ears away; and the composition is graceful and the figures proper to the matters. These, then, are the enviable works of Thucydides; and from these I propose to those writing history to take their models.

But the defense of Pericles in the second book, which he made on his own behalf, the Athenians being exasperated because he had persuaded them to take up the war, I do not praise whole; nor the public speeches about the city of the Mytileneans, which Cleon and Diodotus delivered, those in the third book; nor that of Hermocrates the Syracusan to the Camarinaeans; nor that of Euphemus the Athenian envoy, the speech opposite to it; nor those like these. For it is not necessary to enumerate all the speeches constructed in the same character of the dialect. But that no one may think I make assertions without proof, though I could furnish many proofs, I shall be content with two public speeches, that the discourse may not become long — the defense of Pericles and the accusation of Hermocrates to the Camarinaeans against the city of the Athenians.

Pericles, then, says this: "Both your anger toward me has come about as I expected — for I perceive the causes — and I have called the assembly for this reason, that I may remind and reproach, if in anything you are wrong either to be harsh with me or to yield to the misfortunes." These things, for Thucydides writing about the man in the historical figure, were proper; but for Pericles defending himself before an exasperated crowd they were not suitable to be said, and that at the beginning of the defense, before softening with some other words the angers of those who were reasonably distressed at their misfortunes — their best land cut up by the Lacedaemonians, much of the crowd lost in the plague, and the man himself having furnished the cause of these evils, the war which, persuaded by him, they took up. And the figure most suited to the thought was not this, the reproachful, but the deprecating; for it is not fitting for public speakers to provoke the angers of crowds, but to soften them. To these he adds a thought true indeed and forcefully expressed, but not useful to the present occasion: "For I think," he says, "that a city profits the private citizens more when it stands upright as a whole than when it prospers in each of its citizens severally but is brought down all together. For a man faring well in himself, his country being destroyed, perishes with it none the less; but one ill-fortuned in a fortunate city is far more saved." For if some of the citizens privately were harmed, but the commonwealth prospered, he spoke this well; but since all were in the uttermost misfortunes, no longer well. For neither did the hope about the future — that these dreadful things would turn out to the good of the city — have anything secure; for the future is unseen to man, and fortunes turn men's judgments about what is to be toward the present.

To these he adds a still more burdensome thought, and least suited to the present occasion: "And yet you are angry with such a man as I, who think myself inferior to none both in knowing what is needful and in expounding it, and a lover of my city and superior to money." For it would be wonderful if Pericles, the greatest of the orators of that time, was ignorant of what no one with moderate sense would have been ignorant of — that everywhere those who praise their own virtues unstintedly appear burdensome to their hearers, and most of all in contests before the courts and the assemblies, in which, that is, the danger to them is not about honors but about punishments. For then they are not only burdensome to others, but also unfortunate to themselves, calling out the envy of the many; and when a man has the same persons as judges and accusers, he needs countless tears and lamentations for this very thing first, to be heard with goodwill. But the demagogue is not content with these things, but works them out further and rephrases what was said: "For he who knows and does not teach it clearly is in the same case as if he had not thought it; and he who has both, but is ill-disposed to the city, would not similarly speak in a friendly manner; and if this too be present, and he be overcome by money, all these things together would be sold for this one." I do not know who would agree that, just as these things were true, so also it was fitting for Pericles to say them among Athenians exasperated against them. But it was not the invention of the best reflections and thoughts, by itself, that was worthy of effort, unless it should also be proper to the matters and to the persons and to the occasions and to all else. Rather, as I said at the outset, the historian, displaying his own judgment which he held about the virtue of Pericles, seems to have said these things out of place. He ought himself to declare whatever he wished about the man, but to render to the man in danger the humble and deprecating discourses that turn away anger; for this was fitting for a historian wishing to imitate the truth.

Wearisome too are those boyish embellishments of style and the complicated figures of the reflections: "to go to meet the enemy and ward them off not with high spirit only, but also with contempt. For high spirit is engendered even by a fortunate ignorance, and in a coward too; but contempt belongs to one who trusts that he excels his opponents in judgment also — which is the case with us. And intelligence, from an equal fortune, renders daring more secure by means of the over-confident; and it trusts less to hope, whose strength is in helplessness, and more to judgment from present resources, whose forethought is more secure." For these "high spirits" are rather frigid, and more proper to the manner of Gorgias; and the explanation of the words is both sophistical and tasteless; and "the daring which intelligence, from an equal fortune, renders more secure by means of the over-confident" has a revelation more obscure than the darknesses of Heraclitus; and "the strength of hope in helplessness" and "the more secure forethought of judgment from present resources" is too poetically periphrased. For he wishes to say that one ought to trust rather to the judgment we take from present things than to the hopes whose strength is in the future.

I have indeed reflected on this too: that while consoling the anger that had seized them over their present misfortunes — most of which befell them contrary to reckoning and unexpectedly — and exhorting them to bear their misfortunes nobly, not effacing the dignity of the city, but, having grieved out their private griefs, to lay hold of the common safety; and after this, having gone through how, holding the empire of the sea securely, they will be brought down neither by the king nor by the Lacedaemonians nor by any other nation of men (the proof of which was not the present but the future, and had its security not in forethought but in hopes) — then, forgetting these things, he thinks fit to bid them not trust the hope whose strength is in helplessness. For these things are contrary to one another, if indeed the painful thing had its perception already present, but the revelation of the benefit was still absent. But just as I do not praise these things, either in the matter of substance or in that of style, so I have admired those others as both exactly conceived and superbly expressed and pleasantly composed: "For to those to whom a choice has been given, prospering otherwise, it is much folly to make war; but if it was necessary either to yield at once and submit to one's neighbors or to prevail by running the risk, he who fled the danger is more to be blamed than he who stood it. And I am the same and do not change my ground; it is you who alter, since it has befallen you to have been persuaded while whole, but to repent while suffering." And still these: "For high spirit is enslaved by the sudden and the unexpected and what befalls with the greatest unreason . . . Yet, dwelling in a great city and reared in ways that match it, you ought to be willing to endure even misfortunes and not to efface your dignity. For men think it just, in equal measure, both to blame for failing of one's existing reputation whoever falls short through softness, and to hate for reaching after what does not belong to him whoever grasps in rashness." And still those things that rouse the souls of the Athenians toward their ancestral spirit, these: "It is likely too that you should help the city in the honor it has from empire, in which you all glory, and not flee its toils, or else not pursue its honors; nor think you are contending about one thing only, slavery instead of freedom, but also about the loss of empire and the danger of the hatreds you have incurred in your rule. From which you can no longer even withdraw, if anyone, fearing this too in the present, plays the good man through inactivity. For you now hold it as a tyranny, which to take seems unjust, but to let go is perilous." And the things like these — all that have moderate exchanges of words and figures, and are neither over-curious nor hard to follow.

From the public speech of Hermocrates I can praise these successes of the historian: "But we have not now come to declare, among those who know, how much the city of the Athenians wrongs — an easily accusable city; rather, much more to accuse ourselves, that, though we have the examples of the Greeks over there, how they were enslaved through not defending themselves, and now the same sophistries are present against us — settlements of Leontine kinsmen and aids of Egestaean allies — we are not willing, gathering together, to show them the more eagerly that these are not Ionians here, nor Hellespontines and islanders, who, ever changing their master, whether the Mede or some one man, are enslaved, but free Dorians, dwelling in Sicily from an independent Peloponnese. Or do we wait until each of us is taken city by city, knowing that in this way alone we are to be captured?" For these things, said in the clear and pure manner of the dialect, have taken on swiftness and beauty and tension and magnificence and force, and are full of contending feeling; things one might use both in a court and in assemblies and in conversing with friends. And besides these, those: "And if anyone envies or even fears — for the greater powers suffer both these things — and on account of them wishes Syracuse to be brought low, that we may be chastened, but to survive, for the sake of his own safety, he hopes for a wish beyond human power. For it is not possible for the same man to be at once the steward, alike, of his own desire and of fortune." And the things lying at the end of the speech: "We beg, then, and we call to witness, if we do not persuade you, that we are plotted against by Ionians, ever our enemies, and betrayed by you, Dorians by Dorians; and if the Athenians subdue us, they will prevail by your judgments, but be honored by their own name, and will take as the prize of victory no other than the one who furnished the victory." These things, then, and the like, I hold fine and worthy of emulation. But those others I do not know how I could praise: "For now they go to Sicily on a pretext, which you hear, but with an intent which we all suspect. And they seem to me to wish not to settle the Leontines, but rather to unsettle us." For the play on words is frigid and does not strike feeling, but study. And still those entangled figures that have many coils: "And so it was not for freedom, then, that either these of the Greeks or the Greeks resisted the Mede on their own behalf, but the one for enslaving us to themselves and not to him, the others for the change to a master not less intelligent but more ill-intelligent." And still the surfeit of the shifting from the plural to the singular and from speaking of persons to the person of the speaker: "And if it has occurred to anyone that the Syracusan, but not himself, is the enemy to the Athenian, and thinks it dreadful to run the risk on behalf of my land, let him reflect that he will be fighting in my land not for mine rather, but in equal measure for his own at the same time, and so much the more safely, in that, I not being destroyed beforehand, but having me as an ally, he will not contend deserted; and that the Athenian seeks not to chasten the enmity of the Syracusan." For these things are both boyish and over-curious and more obscure than the so-called riddles. And still these besides: "And if he err in judgment, having bewailed his own evils, he might perhaps one day wish again to envy my goods; but it is impossible for one who has thrown me away and not been willing to take on the same dangers — not about the names, but about the deeds." To which he adds an exclamation not fitting even for a boy: "For in word a man might save our power, but in deed his own safety."

There are also other things in this public speech worthy of blame, about which I have no need to say more; and I think I have made the matter sufficiently plain even through these — that of the style of Thucydides the best is that which has departed moderately from the customary and keeps the first and necessary virtues, and the worse is that which takes much turning aside from the common words and figures into the strange and forced and incoherent, on account of which not even any of the other virtues displays its own power. For this kind of expression is useful neither in the assemblies, in which the cities come together to deliberate about peace and war and the introduction of laws and the ordering of constitutions and the other common and great matters; nor in the courts, where the discourses are made, about death and exile and disfranchisement and bonds and the taking away of property, to those who have taken on the authority over these things ( . . . which distress the political crowd, not being accustomed to such hearings); nor in private conversations, in which we discuss the affairs of life with fellow-citizens or friends or kinsmen, narrating something of what has befallen us, or taking counsel about something necessary, or admonishing or exhorting or rejoicing with friends in their goods or grieving with them in their evils. For I forbear to say that not even their mothers and fathers would endure those who converse thus, because of the unpleasantness, but, as though hearing a foreign tongue, would need interpreters. These are the things of which I was persuaded about the historian, said with all truth according to my power.

It is necessary also to examine briefly the things some say in his favor, that I may not seem to have passed anything over. That this character is suited neither to political contests nor to private conversations, all will agree who are not corrupted in mind but have their perceptions in their natural state. But certain not undistinguished sophists undertake to say that this character is not suited to those prepared for crowded gatherings and pleading just causes, but that to those who bring out historical works — which need magnificence and dignity and the power to strike — it most of all befits to practice this expression, the glossarial and archaic and figurative, altered from the customary figures toward the strange and superfluous. For these writings, they say, are not constructed for market-place men, nor cobblers, nor handicraftsmen, nor the others who have not shared in a liberal upbringing, but for men who have come through the general studies to rhetoric and philosophy, to whom none of these things will appear strange. And some have undertaken to say that the historian wrote his histories thus, aiming not at those who would come after him, but at those of his own time, to whom this dialect . . . [was familiar]. [But it is] useful neither for the deliberative nor for the forensic contests, in which the men of the assembly and the jurors — not such as Thucydides supposed — come together.

To those, then, who think that to read and understand the dialect of Thucydides belongs to the well-educated alone, I have this to say: that they take away from the common life the necessary and useful thing for all (for nothing could be more necessary or more profitable), making it the possession of altogether few men — as in cities governed by oligarchy or tyranny; for easily counted are those able to put together all of Thucydides, and not even these without grammatical explanation in some places. And to those who refer the dialect of Thucydides to the ancient life, as though it were familiar to the men of that time, a brief and clear discourse suffices me: that of the many orators and philosophers who arose at Athens during the Peloponnesian War, none of them used this dialect, neither the orators around Andocides and Antiphon and Lysias, nor the Socratics around Critias and Antisthenes and Xenophon. From all these it is plain that the man was the first to have practiced this style of expression, that he might differ from the other historians. When, then, he uses it sparingly and moderately, he is wonderful and comparable to no other; but when he uses it to surfeit and tastelessly, neither marking off the occasions nor seeing the proper measure, he is to be blamed. I, for my part, would not think it right that historical writing be squalid and unadorned and commonplace, but that it should have something poetic too; nor wholly poetic, but having departed a little from what is customary; for surfeit is wearisome even of things very pleasant, while symmetry is everywhere useful.

One discourse still remains to me, the one about the orators and historians who imitated the man — necessary, like any other, to the completion of the subject, but causing me a certain hesitation and much caution, lest we furnish some occasion of slander to those accustomed to slander everything, foreign to the fairness we have used both about the discourses and about characters; to whom we shall perhaps seem to do a malicious and ill-natured thing, if we bring forward those who have not used imitation well and produce their writings, on which those men prided themselves most, and through which they acquired great wealth and were judged worthy of brilliant repute. But that no such suspicion may arise against us, the reproaching of any and the recalling of their faults we shall let pass; and about those who succeeded in imitation, adding a little, we shall there bring our discourse to an end. Of the ancient historians, then, as far as I know, no one became an imitator of Thucydides in these respects, in which he seems most of all to differ from the rest — in the glossarial and archaic and poetic and strange expression, and in the inverted and complicated thoughts that wish, by clipping, to signify many matters and take their resolutions at a long distance, and besides these, in the awkward figures that wander from the natural conjunction and have no place even in any poetry — from which the obscurity that ruins all that is fine and casts darkness over the virtues passed into discourse.

Of the orators, Demosthenes alone, just as of all the others who seemed to do something great and brilliant in discourse, so also became an emulator of Thucydides in many things, and added to his political speeches, taking from him, the virtues which neither Antiphon nor Lysias nor Isocrates, who held the first place among the orators of that time, possessed — I mean the swiftness and the compressions and the tensions and the bitterness and the compactness and the force that rouses the feelings; but the over-glossed and strange and poetic in the style, not thinking it suited to true contests, he left out, and neither did he love the wandering of figures from the natural sequence nor the solecistic appearance, but stayed in the customary, adorning his expression by changes and by variety and by bringing out no thought simply unfigured. But the complicated thoughts, signifying much in little and carrying their sequence at a long distance and bringing their reflections out of the unexpected, he emulated and added both to his deliberative and his forensic speeches, less in the private cases, but more lavishly in the public contests.

I shall set down examples from both — a few, though they are many, and sufficient for those who have read the man. There is a public speech of his having for its subject the war against the king, exhorting the Athenians not to take it up rashly, on the ground that neither is their own power a match for the king's, nor will the allied power lay hold of the dangers faithfully and securely; and he exhorts them, having prepared their own power, to be plain to the Greeks that they will undergo the danger on behalf of the freedom of all, if anyone goes against them; but before being prepared he does not allow them to send envoys to the Greeks to summon them to the war, as they would not obey. Taking this thought, he has constructed and figured it thus: "But then, if indeed you do what we now think you should, no one, surely, of all the Greeks is so high-minded in his own conceit that, seeing a thousand cavalry, and hoplites as many as one likes, and three hundred ships, he will not come and beg, thinking that with these he would most safely be saved. So that from summoning comes, even now, to beg, and to fail if you do not obtain; but from holding back while preparing your own affairs comes both to save those who beg, and to know well that all will come." These things have been altered from the political and familiar manner of expression of the many, and are better than the layman's; yet they have not been darkened, nor become obscure so as to need explanation. And having begun to speak about the preparation, he adds this: "But the first thing of the preparation, men of Athens, and the greatest, is for you to be so disposed in mind that each willingly and eagerly does whatever may be needed. For you see, men of Athens, that whatever you ever willed, and after that each thought it his own concern to act, never once escaped you; but whatever you willed, and after that looked to one another, as though each himself would not act, but his neighbor would do what was needful, never once came about for you." For here too the thought is complicated in a complicated way, yet it has been spoken so as to depart from commonness into the unfamiliar expression, while what is superfluous in it is kept within clarity. And in the greatest of the public speeches against Philip he has at once constructed the very beginning thus: "Many speeches being made, men of Athens, in well-nigh every assembly, about the wrongs Philip does, ever since he made the peace, not only to you but to the rest as well; and all, I know, would say, even if they do not do it, that one must both speak and act so that he may cease from his insolence and pay the penalty — yet I see all our affairs given up and let go to such a point that I fear to say a thing blasphemous, but true: if even all who came forward wished to speak, and you to vote, in such a way that things should be at their very worst, I do not think they could be worse disposed than now." Like to these are also those: "Then do you think that, if to those whom he did no harm, but who guarded perhaps against suffering it, he chooses rather to deceive than, forewarning, to use force, against you he will make war by forewarning, and that while you are willingly deceived?" And in the strongest of the forensic speeches, the one written on the Crown, having made mention of Philip's cleverness, by which he had outgeneraled the cities, he has figured the thought thus: "And I add no longer that of the cruelty which it is possible to see in those over whom Philip became master once for all, it befell others to make trial; but of the humanity which, throwing the rest of his affairs about himself, he feigned toward you, you, doing well, have reaped the fruits." And where he declares those who betrayed their affairs to Philip the cause of all the evils that befell the Greeks, he writes word for word thus: "And yet, by Heracles and all the gods, if one had to look at the truth, removing from the midst the lying and saying anything out of enmity — who in truth were they on whose head all men might reasonably and justly lay the cause of what has happened? You would find them to be the men like this one in each of the cities, not those like me; men who, when Philip's affairs were weak and altogether small, though we often forewarned and exhorted and taught the best things, for the sake of their own shameful gain gave up the common interest, deceiving and corrupting their fellow-citizens each in his own city, until they made them slaves."

I could bring countless examples from the speeches of Demosthenes, both the deliberative and the forensic, which have been constructed after the character of Thucydides — the one that has its variation in the common and familiar dialect. But that my discourse may not become longer than is needed, being content with these as sufficient to confirm what is proposed, I would not hesitate to lay it down for those who practice political discourse — those at least who still keep their judgments undistorted — that, using Demosthenes as their counselor, whom we are persuaded to have been the mightiest of all orators, they should imitate those constructions in which the brevity and the force and the strength and the tension and the magnificence and the virtues akin to these are plain to all men; but those that are riddling and hard to learn and need grammatical explanations and have much that is tortured and solecistic in their figurings, they should neither admire nor imitate. And to speak summarily, it has no reason that both should be equally worthy of emulation — both the things said unclearly by the historian and those that have taken on, along with the other virtues, clarity. We must rather agree that the more perfect things are better than the more imperfect, and the more manifest than the more obscure. What, then, have we learned, that we praise the whole dialect of the historian and force ourselves to say that Thucydides wrote these things for the men of his own time, as being familiar to all and known, but that of us who were to come after he took no account — we who cast out from the courts and the assemblies the whole style of Thucydides as useless? Rather we do not agree that the narrative part of it, except for a very few places, is wonderfully fine and well-fitted for all uses, but that the public-speaking part is not all suited to imitation, but only that part of it which is easy for all men to understand, though not possible for all to construct. I had things more pleasant than these to write to you about Thucydides, best Quintus Aelius Tubero — but not, indeed, truer.