De Thucydidis idiomatibus

For my part, I supposed that I had sufficiently set forth the style of Thucydides, having gone through the greatest and most characteristic of the peculiarities belonging to him—those, at any rate, in which he seemed to me to differ most from the orators and historians before him—first in the memoranda on the ancient orators composed and addressed to your name, and then, a little while ago, in the treatise prepared concerning Thucydides himself, dedicated to Aelius Tubero, in which I went through everything that called for discussion, together with the appropriate proofs, to the best of my ability. But since you suppose that those treatises were worked out with too little precision—because, after first setting out all the features that belong to his style, I then provide the demonstrations concerning them—and since you think that the exhibition of the peculiarities of his style would be more accurate if I were to set the actual words of the author alongside each one of the propositions, just as those who compose handbooks and introductions to the study of oratory do, I have, choosing to leave nothing wanting, done this too, adopting the instructional form in place of the demonstrative.

And so that the discussion may be easy for you to follow, I shall first set out word for word all that I happen to have said before about the author, and then take up each of the propositions in turn and provide the proofs, just as you asked. What I am now about to set forth follows upon what I wrote about Herodotus. For Thucydides, coming after this man and after the others whom I mentioned earlier, and discerning the particular excellences that each of them possessed, was eager to introduce into the writing of history a kind of style peculiar to himself—neither wholly in prose nor fully in metre, but something common to both and compounded of the two. In the choice of words he often adopted the figurative, the glossed, the antiquated, and the foreign expression instead of the common and customary one in use among the men of his own day. In his figures of construction—in which above all he wished to differ from his predecessors—he brought to bear the greatest elaboration: now making a phrase out of a single noun, now compressing a phrase into a single noun; now bringing out a verbal idea in the form of a noun, now turning a noun into a verb; and even inverting the very uses of these, so that the noun becomes an appellative and the appellative is expressed as a noun, and the passive verbs become active and the active passive; interchanging the natures of plurals and singulars and predicating these of one another, joining feminines with masculines and masculines with feminines and neuters with some of these, whereby the natural sequence is led astray; turning the cases of nouns or participles now away from the signifier toward the thing signified, now from the thing signified toward the signifier; and in the connecting and prepositional particles, and still more in those that articulate the force of nouns, taking a poet's licence. One may find in him a great number of figures, varied by apostrophes of persons, by changes of tense, and by transfers of figurative indications, and presenting the appearance of solecisms; and as many cases as occur of abstract things put in place of persons, or persons in place of abstract things; and those passages in which the many intervening insertions of arguments and thoughts bring their sequence to completion only after a long interval; and the crooked, the complicated, the hard to unravel, and the other things akin to these. One might find too not a few of the theatrical figures employed by him—I mean the balanced clauses, the assonances, the plays on words, and the antitheses, in which Gorgias of Leontini and the school of Polus and Licymnius and many others who flourished in his time indulged to excess. But most conspicuous and most characteristic of him are these: the attempt to signify the greatest number of things by the fewest words, to compress many thoughts into one, and to leave the hearer still expecting to hear something further—through which his brevity becomes obscure. To put it concisely, there are, as it were, four instruments of the diction of Thucydides: the poetical quality of the words, the multiformity of the figures, the harshness of the harmony, and the swiftness of signification. Its colours are the firmly compacted, the bitter, the dense, the austere, the weighty, the forceful and frightening; and above all these in him is the emotional power. Such, then, is Thucydides in respect of the character of his diction, in which he surpassed all the others.

Now glossed and antiquated words, hard for most people to make out, are such as akraiphnes ("unmixed, pure"), epilogismos ("reckoning"), periope ("commanding view"), anakoche ("respite"), and the like. Poetical words are kolume ("hindrance"), presbeusis ("embassage"), kataboe ("outcry"), achthedon ("vexation"), dikaiosis ("vindication"), and the like. But the novelty and the manifold variation in his figures of construction, and the departure from customary usage—in which we hold that he differs most from the others—become apparent in the following examples.

When, then, he brings out a single expression, whether noun or verb, in several nouns or verbs, paraphrasing the same idea, he produces a phrase such as this: "For Themistocles, having most firmly displayed the strength of his nature, was in this respect more than any other worthy of admiration." And again, in the Funeral Oration he has written: "Nor again, on account of poverty, has anyone, though able to do the city some good, been hindered by the obscurity of his station." For in these passages it is the conciseness that gives the language such a character—as in the passage he wrote about the Lacedaemonian Brasidas, when, fighting at Pylos and wounded, he fell out of his ship: "And as he fell," he says, "into the outrigging, his shield slipped from him." For he means to indicate: "And as he fell out of the ship onto the projecting parts of the oar-bank . . ."

In passages where he casts the verbal elements of an expression into the form of nouns, he produces a phrase such as this. The Corinthian, in his speech to the Athenians in the first book, says the following: "We have, then, these claims of right against you, and an exhortation and a request for a favour of this kind." For "to exhort" and "to request," being verbs, have become "exhortation" and "request." Of this kind are both "the failing-to-wall-off of Plemmyrium" in the seventh book and "the lamentation" which he set down in the first book in a public harangue. For "to wall off" and "to lament," being verbs, he has cast into the form of nouns, "walling-off" and "lamentation."

When, on the other hand, he reverses the nature of each of these and makes the nouns into verbs, he brings out the language in this manner, as in the first book he writes concerning the cause of the war: "The truest cause, though least apparent in speech, I think was that the Athenians, by growing great, compelled the Lacedaemonians into going to war." For he means to indicate that the Athenians, by growing great, furnished a necessity for the war; but in place of "necessity" and "war," which are nouns, he has made verbal forms, both "compelled" and "to go to war."

When he interchanges the species of verbs, the passive and the active, he frames the sentence thus: "For neither does that hinder the treaty, nor does this." For "hinders," being an active verb, is taken in place of "is hindered," which is passive; and the thing signified by the expression was this: "For neither is that hindered by the treaty, nor this." And again the words in the proem: "for, since there was no commerce, nor did they mingle freely with one another." For here too "mingling," being an active verb, holds the place of "being mingled," which is passive.

When he adopts the passive in place of the active, he frames it in this manner: "And of us, all who had already been brought into dealings with the Athenians." For he means to indicate: "And of us, all who had entered into dealings with the Athenians"; but he has adopted "had been brought into dealings," which is passive, in place of the active "had entered into dealings." And what follows upon this: "but those settled rather in the interior." For in place of the active verb "having settled" he has adopted the passive "settled."

With respect to the differences between singulars and plurals, when he interchanges the order of each of these, he brings out singulars in place of plurals thus: "And if it has occurred to anyone that the Syracusan, but not he himself, is an enemy to the Athenian." For he means to speak of the Syracusans and the Athenians, but he has made each of the nouns singular. And in the passage where he says: "And we shall find the enemy more formidable, since retreat will not be easy for him again." For he has cast "the enemies" in the singular, not the plural. And he adopts the plural in place of the singular, varying the customary phrasing in this manner. The expression occurs in the proem of the Funeral Oration: "For up to this point praises spoken about others are tolerable, in so far as each man supposes himself capable of doing some of the things he has heard"—for "each" and "has heard" are singular, but what follows upon these has been brought out in the plural—"but at what goes beyond this, men, growing envious, naturally come to disbelieve as well." The verbs are framed not of one, but of many.

Counter-arrangements of masculines, feminines, and neuters, departing from the customary figures, are such as these: when he calls tarache ("disturbance") tarachos, bringing out the feminine in the masculine form, and ochlesis ("trouble") ochlos; and when he says boulomenon and dynamenon (neuter participles) for boulesis ("will") and dynamis ("power"). So he set it down concerning the Athenians, when they were dispatching the expedition to Sicily: "But the Athenians were not deprived of their will by the troublesomeness of the preparation." And in the passage where he has spoken about the Thessalians: "so that, had the Thessalians not employed a dynasteia rather than equality before the law as the native institution"—for here too he has made the feminine into a neuter; and the thing signified by the expression was this: "so that, had the Thessalians not employed a dynasteia rather than equality before the law as their native institution."

In passages where he alters from the customary the cases of nouns, appellatives, participles, and the articles joined with these, he frames it thus: "For the cities, having taken to themselves discretion and security in their dealings, advanced to outright freedom, not preferring the unsound good order that came from the Athenians." Now those who frame the phrase in accordance with common usage would have joined the feminine particle to the feminine gender of the appellative, and would have placed the accusative case in place of the genitive, in this manner: "For the cities, having taken to themselves discretion and security in their dealings, advanced to outright freedom, not preferring the unsound good order that came from the Athenians" (with the article and adjective in the accusative, agreeing). But those who construe masculines with feminines, as he has done, and adopt genitives in place of accusative cases, would be said by us to commit solecisms. And further, such things as: "and not struck with dismay at their multitude." For it would not have been fitting to frame the expression in the dative case, but in the accusative: "and not struck with dismay at the multitude of the enemy." For one would not say that one fears "by the anger of the gods," but "the anger of the gods."

The phrasing that departs from grammatical agreement in the tenses of verbs is something like this: "And yet, if by ease rather than by the practice of toils, and if not so much through laws as through dispositions of courage, we should be willing to face danger, the advantage accrues to us both of not wearing ourselves out beforehand over coming pains, and, when we come to them, of appearing no more lacking in daring than those who are always toiling." For here the verb "we should be willing" is indicative of the future, while "accrues" is of the present. The consistent course would have been, if he had joined to "we should be willing" the future "will accrue." And likewise: "For I consider the difficulty of access to the place to be ours, which, while we remain, becomes an ally; but to those who withdraw, though it is hard, it will prove easy." For "becomes" is of the present, while "will prove" is indicative of the future. There is also a construction inconsistent in respect of the cases. For he has brought out, in the genitive case, both the participial noun "while we remain" and the pronominal "of us," but in the dative "to those who withdraw"; whereas it would have been more proper that this too be brought out in the same case.

When he makes the turn from the thing signified toward the signifier, or from the signifier toward the thing signified, he frames the sentence thus: "But the people of the Syracusans were in great strife with one another." For, having put a singular noun, "the people," he turned the sentence away from this toward the thing signified, which is plural, "the Syracusans." And again: "For the Leontines, after the Athenians had departed from Sicily following the agreement, both enrolled many citizens, and the people designed to redistribute the land." For from the plural noun "the Leontines" he turned the sentence away toward the singular noun "the people." . . .

Abstract things become persons in his work, as happens in the harangue of the Corinthians to the Lacedaemonians. For the Corinthian, claiming that those who stand at the head of the Peloponnese should guard its dignity toward the cities outside it, just as they received it from their fathers, says this: "With a view to these things deliberate well, and endeavour to lead the Peloponnese not less than your fathers handed it down to you." For he has here used "to lead" in the sense of advancing the Peloponnese outward while standing at its head—a thing which could not happen to the territory itself, but was possible in respect of its reputation and the affairs concerning it; and this is what he means to indicate. Abstract things in place of persons occur with him in such cases as this. It is said by the Corinthian envoy to the Lacedaemonians, comparing the qualities of the Athenians and the Lacedaemonians: "They are revolutionary, keen to conceive and to carry out in deed what they have resolved; you, on the other hand, are for preserving what you have, devising nothing new, and not even achieving in deed what is necessary." Up to this point the form of the expression preserves the sequence, being framed of both as persons. Then the sentence turns aside in respect of one of the two parts, and what concerns the Lacedaemonians becomes an abstract thing in place of persons, when he says: "and again, the one party are daring beyond their power, adventurous beyond their judgement, and of good hope amid dangers; but your character is to do less than your power allows, to distrust even what is secure in your judgement, and to suppose you will never be released from terrors." For "your character" is adopted in place of "you," being an abstract thing in place of persons. And in his arguments and thoughts the many intervening insertions, scarcely reaching their

end—through which the phrasing becomes hard to follow—are very numerous throughout the whole History; but two taken from the proem alone will suffice. The one is that which sets forth the weakness of the early affairs of Greece and renders the causes of it: "For, since there was no commerce, nor did they mingle fearlessly with one another either by land or across the sea, and since each pastured their own holdings only enough to live on, having no surplus of wealth, nor planting the land—it being uncertain when someone might come upon them and, being moreover unwalled, carry it off—and thinking that they would everywhere alike command the necessary sustenance, they were not unwilling to remove." (For if he had added "they were not unwilling to remove" to the first period and framed it thus: "For, since there was no commerce, nor did they mingle fearlessly with one another either by land or across the sea, and since each pastured their own holdings only enough to live on, they were not unwilling to remove," he would have made the sense more apparent; but by the interposition of the many intervening matters he has made it obscure and hard to follow.) The other is that concerning the expedition of Eurystheus against Attica, this: "Eurystheus having been killed in Attica by the Heraclidae—and Atreus being his mother's brother, and Eurystheus having entrusted, when he set out on the campaign, Mycenae and the rule to Atreus on the ground of kinship (and he happened to be in exile from his father on account of the death of Chrysippus)—and as Eurystheus did not return, the Mycenaeans being also willing, through fear of the Heraclidae, and Atreus seeming moreover to be powerful and having courted the populace, Atreus took over the kingship of the Mycenaeans and of all whom Eurystheus had ruled."

In passages where the construction of the arguments becomes crooked, complicated, and hard to unravel, it stands thus in his work. The passage occurs in the Funeral Oration: "And, having taken vengeance upon their enemies as more to be longed for than these things, and having reckoned this the fairest of dangers, they resolved to take vengeance upon the one and to aim at the other—entrusting to hope the uncertainty of success, but in the deed itself, with regard to what was already before their eyes, deeming it right to trust in themselves; and, in the act of defending themselves, judging it better to suffer than to save themselves by yielding, they fled the disgrace of the word but endured the deed with their bodies; and in the briefest moment of fortune, at the very height of their glory rather than of their fear, they were released from life." Of such a kind too are the things said about Themistocles by the author in the first book: "For Themistocles, having most firmly displayed the strength of his nature, was in this respect, more than any other, especially worthy of admiration. For by his native intelligence, and neither having learned anything beforehand toward it nor learned anything afterward, he was, of things in the moment, the ablest judge through the briefest deliberation, and of things to come, over the longest span, the best conjecturer of what would be; and what he had in hand he was also able to expound, while of things in which he was inexperienced he was not unfit to judge sufficiently; and the better or the worse, while still in the unseen, he foresaw. And, to put it all in a word, by the power of his nature and the brevity of his preparation, this man became the ablest of all to improvise on the spot what was needed."

The boyish figures of antitheses, assonances, and balanced clauses, in which the school of Gorgias especially ran to excess—least suited to this style of his, which has an austere conduct and stands the furthest possible from the elegant—are such as these in the author. "For it appears that what is now called Hellas was not of old securely settled." And again: "The one party are daring beyond their power and adventurous beyond their judgement; but your character is to do less than your power allows, to distrust even what is secure in your judgement, and never to suppose you will be released from terrors." And in the passage where he goes through the calamities that overtook Greece on account of the factions, writing such things as these: "For unreasoning daring came to be reckoned courage loyal to one's party; provident delay, specious cowardice; moderation, a screen for unmanliness; and being intelligent toward everything, being idle toward everything." Many such things one might find said throughout the whole of his History; but these too are enough to have been adduced by way of illustration. You have, dear Ammaeus, the observations on each of these matters, examined out of the common treatise, just as you were inquiring.