His
particularity
is too minute.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v25 - Tas to Tur
That sound commonly reminds us that we are growing rusty
and antique in our employments and habits of thought. His
philosophy comes down to a more recent time than ours. There
is something suggested by it that is a newer testament,- the gos-
pel according to this moment. He has not fallen astern; he has
got up early and kept up early; and to be where he is, is to
be in season, in the foremost rank of time. It is an expression
of the health and soundness of Nature, a brag for all the world,
healthiness as of a spring burst forth, a new fountain of the
Muses, to celebrate this last instant of time. Where he lives, no
fugitive-slave laws are passed. Who has not betrayed his master
many times since last he heard that note?
The merit of this bird's strain is in its freedom from all
plaintiveness. The singer can easily move us to tears or to
▬▬▬▬▬▬▬
-
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14906
HENRY D. THOREAU
I would not have every man nor every part of a man culti-
vated, any more than I would have every acre of earth culti-
vated: part will be tillage, but the greater part will be meadow
and forest; not only serving an immediate use, but preparing a
mold against a distant future, by the annual decay of the vege
tation which it supports.
There are other letters for the child to learn than those which
Cadmus invented. The Spaniards have a good term to express
this wild and dusky knowledge: Gramática parda, tawny gram-
mar,- -a kind of mother-wit derived from that same leopard to
which I have referred.
We have heard of a Society for the Diffusion of Useful
Knowledge. It is said that knowledge is power; and the like.
Methinks there is equal need of a Society for the Diffusion of
Useful Ignorance,- what we will call Beautiful Knowledge, a
knowledge useful in a higher sense; -for what is most of our
boasted so-called knowledge but a conceit that we know something,
which robs us of the advantage of our actual ignorance? What
we call knowledge is often our positive ignorance; ignorance our
negative knowledge. By long years of patient industry and read-
ing of the newspapers-for what are the libraries of science
but files of newspapers? -a man accumulates a myriad facts, lays
them up in his memory, and then when in some spring of his
life he saunters abroad into the Great Fields of thought, he as
it were goes to grass like a horse, and leaves all his harness be-
hind in the stable. I would say to the Society for the Diffusion
of Useful Knowledge, sometimes, Go to grass. You have eaten
hay long enough. The spring has come with its green crop.
The very cows are driven to their country pastures before the
end of May; though I have heard of one unnatural farmer who
kept his cow in the barn and fed her on hay all the year round.
So, frequently, the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowl-
edge treats its cattle.
A man's ignorance sometimes is not only useful, but beau-
tiful; while his knowledge, so called, is oftentimes worse than
useless, besides being ugly. Which is the best man to deal with:
he who knows nothing about a subject, and what is extremely
rare knows that he knows nothing, or he who really knows
something about it, but thinks that he knows all?
My desire for knowledge is intermittent; but my desire to
bathe my head in atmospheres unknown to my feet is perennial
―――――
-
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HENRY D. THOREAU
14907
and constant. The highest that we can attain to is not Knowl-
edge, but Sympathy with Intelligence. I do not know that this
higher knowledge amounts to anything more definite than a novel
and grand surprise on a sudden revelation of the insufficiency of
all that we called Knowledge before,— a discovery that there are
more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in our
philosophy. It is the lighting-up of the mist by the sun. Man
cannot know in any higher sense than this, any more than he
can look serenely and with impunity in the face of the sun:
Ὡς τὶ νοῶν, οὐ κεῖνον νοήσεις,— «You will not perceive that, as per-
ceiving a particular thing,"-say the Chaldean Oracles.
There is something servile in the habit of seeking after a law
which we may obey. We may study the laws of matter at and
for our convenience, but a successful life knows no law. It is
an unfortunate discovery certainly, that of a law which binds.
us where we did not know before that we were bound. Live
free, child of the mist, and with respect to knowledge we are
all children of the mist. The man who takes the liberty to live
is superior to all the laws, by virtue of his relation to the law-
maker. "That is active duty," says the 'Vishnu Purana,' «which
is not for our bondage; that is knowledge which is for our lib-
eration: all other duty is good only unto weariness; all other
knowledge is only the cleverness of an artist. "
Above all, we cannot afford not to live in the present. He
is blessed over all mortals who loses no moment of the passing
life in remembering the past. Unless our philosophy hears the
cock crow in every barn-yard within our horizon, it is belated.
That sound commonly reminds us that we are growing rusty
and antique in our employments and habits of thought. His
philosophy comes down to a more recent time than ours. There
is something suggested by it that is a newer testament, the gos-
pel according to this moment. He has not fallen astern; he has
got up early and kept up early; and to be where he is, is to
be in season, in the foremost rank of time. It is an expression
of the health and soundness of Nature, a brag for all the world,
-healthiness as of a spring burst forth, a new fountain of the
Muses, to celebrate this last instant of time. Where he lives, no
fugitive-slave laws are passed. Who has not betrayed his master
many times since last he heard that note?
The merit of this bird's strain is in its freedom from all
plaintiveness. The singer can easily move us to tears or to
-
-
## p. 14907 (#488) ##########################################
14908
HENRY D. THOREAU
laughter, but where is he who can excite in us a pure morn-
ing joy? When, in doleful dumps, breaking the awful stillness
of our wooden sidewalk on a Sunday, or perchance a watcher
in the house of mourning, I hear a cockerel crow far or near,
I think to myself, "There is one of us well, at any rate," — and
with a sudden gush return to my senses.
-
We had a remarkable sunset one day last November. I was
walking in a meadow, the source of a small brook, when the
sun at last, just before setting after a cold gray day, reached a
clear stratum in the horizon; and the softest, brightest morning
sunlight fell on the dry grass, and on the stems of the trees in
the opposite horizon, and on the leaves of the shrub-oaks on the
hillside, while our shadows stretched long over the meadow east-
ward, as if we were the only motes in its beams. It was such a
light as we could not have imagined a moment before, and the
air also was so warm and serene that nothing was wanting to
make a paradise of that meadow. When we reflected that this
was not a solitary phenomenon, never to happen again, but that
it would happen forever and ever an infinite number of evenings,
and cheer and reassure the latest child that walked there, it was
more glorious still.
The sun sets on some retired meadow, where no house is
visible, with all the glory and splendor that it lavishes on cities,
and perchance as it has never set before; where there is but
a solitary marsh-hawk to have his wings gilded by it, or only
a musquash looks out from his cabin, and there is some little
black-veined brook in the midst of the marsh, just beginning to
meander, winding slowly round a decaying stump. We walked
in so pure and bright a light, gilding the withered grass and
leaves, so softly and serenely bright, I thought I had never
bathed in such a golden flood, without a ripple or a murmur to
it. The west side of every wood and rising ground gleamed like
the boundary of Elysium, and the sun on our backs seemed like
a gentle herdsman driving us home at evening.
So we saunter toward the Holy Land, till one day the sun
shall shine more brightly than ever he has done; shall perchance
shine into our minds and hearts, and light up our whole lives
with a great awakening light, as warm and serene and golden as
on a bank-side in autumn.
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060
THUCYDIDES.
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14909
THUCYDIDES
(471 ? -400? B. C. )
BY HERBERT WEIR SMYTH
OETHE'S aphorism that the ancients are children is less true of
Thucydides than of any other Greek historian. Herodotus
looked on the world with the open-eyed wonder of the
child; Thucydides subjects it to the critical scrutiny of the man.
After the age of story-telling, which finds as much delight in its
art as in the truth, comes the age of sober investigation. The first
step in Greek history was to record the past, the second was to nar-
rate the events of the writer's own time. Thucydides is the first
writer of contemporaneous history, as he is the first critical historian
in the literature of Europe.
The author of the History of the Peloponnesian War' is our only
authority for the few facts that are known concerning his life. He
tells us that his father's name was Olorus; that he was a person of
local importance from his ownership of mines in Thrace; that he was
attacked by the plague which ravaged Athens; and that in 424 his
ill success in his military command was the cause of his exile from
Athens for twenty years. As one of the generals of the Athenian
forces, he was summoned from Thasus by his colleague Eucles to
assist him in holding Amphipolis against Brasidas. Though he made
all speed, he failed to reach that city in time to prevent its surren-
der; while his successful defense of Eion failed to mitigate the anger
of his countrymen at the loss of their chief stronghold in the north.
It was not till long after Thucydides's death that interest was
awakened in the lives of the great literary artists. In order to satisfy
the craving for anecdote and novelty, students of literature had to
piece out the facts of tradition by fanciful inferences, by confusing
persons of the same name, and by downright fabrications in the
interest of picturesqueness. This process is illustrated in the story
that when Herodotus was giving a public recital of his history at
Athens, the youthful Thucydides, as if to presage his future distinc-
tion as a historian, burst into tears. "Olorus," said the Father of
History, "thy son has a natural impulse toward knowledge. " A sift-
ing of the material in the 'Life' by Marcellinus, and in other late
writers, yields little that is trustworthy.
## p. 14910 (#494) ##########################################
THUCYDIDES
·
14910
Thucydides was born in the deme Halimus, on the coast of Attica,
near Phalerum. The date of his birth is uncertain. It was roughly
referred to 471 by Apollodorus, who calculated that in 431 the his-
torian would have reached the age of forty,- the period of intel-
lectual prime. By others the date was brought down as low as
454. We must rest content with the historian's statement that at
the outbreak of the war in 431 he had attained an age that permit-
ted maturity of judgment. His death probably took place before 399;
certainly before 396, since he fails to take account of an eruption of
Ætna in that year.
Like Demosthenes and Aristotle, Thucydides had northern non-
Hellenic blood in his veins. His father Olorus was no doubt an
Athenian citizen; but he was a descendant, probably the grandson,
of the Thracian prince of that name, whose daughter Hegesipyle
became the mother of Cimon by Miltiades, the victor at Marathon.
It may not be a fanciful suggestion that a severe love of truth was
a part of Thucydides's intellectual inheritance; for he is the only
Greek historian who prefers that truth shall be unrefracted by the
medium of poetry through which the naïve Hellene loved to view
the history of his race. By birth Thucydides was, as we have seen,
connected with Cimon, the leader of the aristocracy, whose policy
guided Athens until the rise of Pericles. His youth and early man-
hood may have been spent partly in Athens, and at a time when the
city which had taken the lead in rolling back the tide of Persian
invasion was filled with the dreams of an external empire and the
vision of a new culture in which reason and beauty were to make
life richer than it had ever been before; when Sophocles was
exhibiting his 'Antigone,' and Pheidias working at the Parthenon;
when Pericles was fashioning those ideals which were to make his
city renowned as the home of the highest possibilities of his race.
The Sophists were grappling with the problem of the relation be-
tween words and things; Anaxagoras was opening new vistas to
thought, in proclaiming the doctrine that it was mind which created
the order and harmony of the universe. Who the actual teachers
of Thucydides were, we do not know; nor did the ancients busy
themselves with the question until the 'History' had been canonized
in the first century B. C. But we may safely conjecture that the
youth felt himself under the spell of the time, and animated by that
free intellectual life on which the Athenian State rested its claims to
superiority.
When the war broke out in 431, believing that it was to exceed
in importance any other known in history, Thucydides set himself
to collect the materials for his work,-a determination that shows
him to have been rather a man of letters than a man of affairs.
## p. 14911 (#495) ##########################################
THUCYDIDES
14911
We do not hear of his holding office before 424, the year of his gen-
eralship and of his banishment. The fatal tendency of the fierce
democracy of Athens to punish their generals whose only fault was
ill success, afforded the historian the opportunity to acquaint himself
with the policy and operations of both sides; and by withdrawing
him from further share in the conflict, made possible in a man of
his judicial mood an unprejudiced inquiry into the events of the
time. Whether Thucydides was indeed culpable at Amphipolis we
cannot discover, because of his customary reticence in personal mat-
ters. But it is hazardous to assume that his dislike for Cleon is due
to the agency of that demagogue in bringing about the sentence of
condemnation.
During his exile, the historian made excursions to the Pelopon-
nese,- perhaps even to Sicily and Italy,-in order to gather trust-
worthy accounts of the war. He is thought to have been present at
the battle of Mantinea in 418. The vividness of his narrative, the
detailed picture of intricate military operations, are evidence that
he depended on the testimony of his own eyes or on the words of
credible witnesses. He himself tells us that the search for truth
was attended by labor; and that he did not rely on hearsay from
any chance informant, nor presume to set down the facts of the war
on his own assumption as to their probability. The hand of death
overtook him before he had brought the narrative of the war beyond
the oligarchical revolution and the battle of Cynossema, in 411,
the twenty-first year of the contest that lasted twenty-seven years.
Whether he died peaceably, or was killed by robbers in Thrace or
in Athens (the biographers are ready with their conjectures), we
do not know. Polemon saw his grave about 200 B. C. , in the family
vault of Cimon at Athens.
The current division of the 'History' into eight books is not that
of the author, but the work of Alexandrine scholars. We hear of two
other arrangements, into nine and thirteen books respectively. As it
stands, the work falls into three parts. First, the 'Archæology,' or
masterly survey of ancient history; the causes of the final rupture
between Athens and Sparta; and the history of the ten years to
the Peace of Nicias in 421 (i. -v. 25). Secondly, the doubtful truce,
the struggle for allies in the Peloponnese, the battle of Mantinea
(v. 26–116), and the Sicilian Expedition (vi. , vii. ), where the historian
attains his highest excellence in sustained, brilliant, and vigorous
composition. Thirdly, the Decelean War down to 411 (viii. ), where
the story breaks off abruptly. That the work is a torso is evident.
A final revision would have smoothed out the inequalities and given
greater unity to the whole. The treaties inserted in the text as it
now stands do not square in all particulars with the narrative, or the
## p. 14912 (#496) ##########################################
14912
THUCYDIDES
narrative with the treaties. Repetitions occur; and the eighth book,
which alone contains no speeches, bears numerous marks of incom-
pleteness.
The genesis of the History' has caused scholars almost as much
difficulty as the evolution of Plato's philosophy. Some conclude that
Thucydides thought the war had come to an end in 421; and that
his narrative down to that point constituted the original deposit, to
which were added the later accretions due to the unexpected renewal
of the war. Others with more probability maintain that he began
to compose the 'History' after the war was over, though certain por-
tions - such as the Ten Years' War and the Sicilian Expedition -
had before this received comparatively final treatment.
―――――
Thucydides's 'History' is pre-eminently a military history, a chron-
icle by summers and winters of the events of the war. Everything
is subordinate to the main theme. Sophocles, Euripides, Aristoph-
anes, may be holding Athens captive by their dramas, Socrates may
be shaking the foundations of the old philosophy,-to Thucydides
discussions on literature, philosophy, and art are of less immediate
importance than some petty foray in Acarnania. Nor will he touch
on social conditions, or State policy, unless they have to deal with
the course and conduct of the war. To this method he surren-
ders himself with rigid severity, except in a few instances; such as the
early history of Sicily, and the corrective account of the assassina-
tion of Hipparchus in Book vi. ,- which seems to represent a separate
investigation that has there found an inorganic resting-place.
But under the hand of an artist to whom motives mean more than
things, his story rises above the level of a vivid recital of campaigns.
It becomes a tragic drama of incomparable interest, in which the
Athenian ideal is matched against the Spartan ideal,-expansive
intellect against vigorous self-restraint, a drama which is to close
with the eclipse of the supremacy of his native city. The events of
these years, so pregnant with change to the national life of Greece,
are passed in review before a cold and penetrating intellect. The
drama becomes a philosophy of life. Unlike Herodotus, Thucydides
sees in human affairs, not the immanence of Providence, but the
calculation of man unsustained of God. It is the intellect, not the
gods, that holds the master-keys of life. Oracles and prophecies
are to this ancient skeptic the lure of the foolish, not the support of
the reverent. Whatever statesmen may say, Thucydides scarcely
ever substitutes chance for the logic of events. He compels complex
motives to the sincerity of the elemental law of selfishness,-let him
get and keep who can. He strips off the cloak of pretense, and
makes men disclose their real purposes. Man is misled by fatal pas-
sion, and unexpected success breeds wanton hope. In this world of
-
## p. 14913 (#497) ##########################################
THUCYDIDES
14913
calculating logic it is the emotive forces that disturb the judgment.
The Athenian boasts of his superior acuteness, and his wisdom turns
to folly. Thucydides is no moralist, and moral conventions play no
part in the struggle he depicts. Virtue may vaunt itself, but it may
often be resolved into mere generous shame. The nobility of simple-
minded sincerity is the butt of unscrupulous cleverness; justice and
self-interest have not acknowledged the identity to be set forth by
philosophy; suspicion, born of a suicidal over-acuteness, inaugurates a
reign of distrust. No doubt the picture of society in Thucydides is
that of an organism tainted by the moral poison of war-times. Man
tramples under foot his creation, law. But between abstinence from
moral judgment, and cynicism, there is a gulf; nor must we look,
with some, for the sardonic smile of the cynic when the historian
relates some new sad reversal of fortune. It did not lie in Thucydi-
des's purpose to let fly the shafts of a sava indignatio, when in the
very pity of all these atrocities, these treasons, these travesties of
justice, lay their tragic pathos, needing no word of his to interpret.
them. To be the apostle of an evangel of a higher ethical code while
narrating the miseries of a war fruitful in miseries, is more than we
can demand of any Greek historian.
Thucydides gives us the impression of a man of noble character,
and of a powerful intellect ripened by converse with enlightened
men. He possessed a soul capable of rising to the greatness of his
theme. The most authentic bust (belonging to the Earl of Leicester)
displays, according to Professor Mahaffy, those qualities of sternness,
strength, and modernness which stamp the character of the history.
He is distinguished by dignity, elevation, and calm. He disdains.
trivialities, the accidental sides of personality. Gossip and scandal he
puts aside, as he finds no place for those kindly familiarities which
awaken interest at the expense of elevation. He looks at men and
things with a large vision. Raised above a traditional prejudice for
aristocracy, while he recognizes the wisdom of Pericles, whose policy
his work may be said to vindicate, he confesses that Athens was never
better governed than under the oligarchy of 411 B. C. He is a
master in the art of suppressing his emotions. "Under the marble
exterior of Greek literature," says Jowett - and the remark is true
of Thucydides -" was concealed a soul thrilling with spiritual emo-
tion. " Probably no other writer possesses the tremendous reserve
force of Thucydides, in recounting disasters that must have been
heart-breaking to a patriot. Rarely indeed do we find such an expres-
sion as "sufferings too great for tears," used when he is describing -
the disasters of the Athenians before Syracuse. He may even affect
us with the hostility of impatience, as in the bald narration of the
utter brutality of the Athenian policy toward the Melians.
But as
XXV-933
## p. 14914 (#498) ##########################################
14914
THUCYDIDES
his inquiry must not be liable to assault on the ground of bias, he
withdraws his personality to a safe distance from the scene. From
personal judgment he abstains, except when his readers might be
tempted to form false conclusions.
If in the narration of contemporary events Thucydides is the
most objective of the ancient historians, from the point of view of
style he is, with the possible exception of Tacitus, the most subject-
ive of all. When he began to write, Attic prose was in its infancy.
His predecessors were the Ionic chroniclers, whose easy-flowing, un-
periodic style was ill suited to a theme demanding a powerful and
compressed idiom. The problem before Thucydides was to chisel
out of the rough marble of Attic speech a form of expression that
would comport with the gravity of his subject and the philosophic
character of his mind. Tragedy could be called upon to augment his
vocabulary; the formal rhetoric of the Sophists could supply him
with devices for varying his native power of plain but vigorous
description. The chief difficulty was to find adequate expression
for the new and pregnant political and philosophical ideas of the time.
Here he had to create a style from the stubborn material of an
unsettled speech; and here it is that we find the chief examples
of his austerity. When Thucydides was exiled, men had only just
been awakened to the power that lies in the artistic arrangement of
words in prose. The result was a conventional and high-strung rhet-
oric, which Thucydides in his exile could not unbend by contact
with the newer teachers. When he returned to Athens, his style, like
his ideals, had become irrevocably fixed. Meantime, at Athens, the
process of adjusting. expression to the spirit of the age had resulted
in the plain and ungarnished style of Lysias. While much of Thu-
cydides's harshness may be ascribed to the unformed condition of nas-
cent Attic speech, and some part of his irregularities may be charged
to the account of the copyists, enough remains to show that the pe-
culiarities of his diction are largely individual. When he wishes, he
can write simply and nervously ("The lion laughs," says an ancient
commentator), as in the description of the siege of Platea. When
we come from the reading of Plato or Demosthenes, we feel that it
is from his very striving after clearness that Thucydides becomes
obscure.
His particularity is too minute. He uses high where we
should use low relief. Naturally terse, his brevity leads him to pack
a paragraph into a sentence, a sentence into a single word. The
very words seem to pant for air. He hurries us on to a new thought
before we have grasped the one that preceded ("semper instans sibi,**
says Quintilian). He is especially fond of antithesis, -a mark of the
«* Ever pressing close upon his own heels. "
## p. 14915 (#499) ##########################################
THUCYDIDES
14915
time. He differentiates synonyms as if Prodicus were at his elbow.
Formal grammar he rarely violates, and verbal association will gen-
erally explain the apparent irregularities. If the style is rugged it.
is never mean; it often attains a noble beauty and grandeur; and
throughout, it mirrors the deep moral earnestness of the man. Irony
he possesses, but no humor.
The peculiarities of this style are most marked in the speeches;
which are either deliberative (including the hortatory addresses to
the soldiers), panegyrical as in the famous oration of Pericles, or
judicial. They are usually arranged in pairs, so as to set forth the
interest and policy of the conflicting parties. It is interesting to
note, however, that no speaker voices the opposition to Pericles. In
one case, instead of two speeches, we have a dialogue between the
Athenians and the Melians; placed with fine dramatic irony at that
point where the recital of Athenian insolence is to be succeeded
by the story of Athens's downfall. The speeches serve not only to
relieve the monotony of annalistic narration: they illuminate the
character of the great personages; they personify a national cause;
and they enable us to realize with intense vividness the policy of the
leading statesmen of the time. Not that they are authentic. Thu-
cydides says that he has merely put into the mouth of each speaker
the sentiments proper to the occasion, expressed as he thought the
speaker would be likely to express them, while at the same time he
has endeavored to embody the substance of what was actually said.
The idealized and majestic form is undoubtedly Thucydidean, though
some attention has been given to differentiating the styles of the
speakers. The speech of the ephor Sthenelaïdas has a laconic brev-
ity; that of Alcibiades is as full of metaphors as it is of egotism.
All the speeches, even that of Cleon the tanner, show an elevated
style. The longer orations display a subtle acquaintance with the
character of the speakers, and are truly Thucydidean in keeping our
intellectual faculties on the stretch. In inserting these public har-
angues, Thucydides set the type which becomes merely artificial in
imitators like Sallust and others. In him they are a natural product
of that period in the growth of Attic prose when prose writing was
almost entirely confined to oratory.
The Greek standard in matters of literary indebtedness was not
the modern standard. Failure to acknowledge one's debt in ancient
times is generally to be regarded as merely evidence of agreement;
and Thucydides passes over the name of Stesimbrotus who wrote
on Themistocles, and of Antiochus of Syracuse to whose work he was
largely indebted. Allusion to a predecessor serves only as an oppor-
tunity to bring him to penance. Herodotus castigates Hecatæus,
Thucydides castigates Herodotus and Hellanicus. How far is Thu-
cydides himself invulnerable?
## p. 14916 (#500) ##########################################
14916
THUCYDIDES
If we consider the difficulties of composing contemporaneous his-
tory in ancient times, when inscriptions were the only written records,
we shall not wonder if Thucydides may have blundered here and
there. One inscription shows that he (or was it the defenseless copy-
ist? ) misstated the name of a general. There are a few variations of
minor importance between a treaty inserted in the text and the act-
ual document discovered on the Acropolis. It has been reserved for
our generation to produce an advocatus diaboli, who, in the person of
Müller-Strübing, endeavors to shake our belief in the general accu-
racy of the historian. He charges him with suppressing frequently
facts of prime importance. When the last word on this score has
been said, we may still believe that if Thucydides, a writer of con-
temporaneous history, had been inaccurate, he would have raised up
a cloud of witnesses ready to impeach him. The ancients regarded
him as fair-minded, and he makes upon us the impression of a truth-
fulness and a candor that are free from all simulation. In the third
century B. C. , Thucydides was the ideal truthful historian, who, as
Praxiphanes the pupil of Theophrastus says, "though mostly unknown
in his lifetime, was valued beyond price by posterity. " Conscious of
the single purpose to narrate events as they really were, Thucydides
says with lofty confidence that he "will be satisfied if his work shall
prove useful to those who wish to see the truth, both of what has
happened and will happen again, according to the order of human
things. " Dionysius, his chief student in antiquity, learned from him
that history is philosophy teaching by examples. Only a profound
conviction of the truth could have led Thucydides to the belief that
by the past we can foresee the future; and emboldened him to the
statement that "unlike the narratives of those who intermingle fables
with history to delight the hearer for the moment, his work is a pos-
session to keep forever. "
Herbert Weir Suryth
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE. The first edition of the text is that of
Aldus (1502).
The elaborate edition in eleven volumes by Poppo
(1821-40) is still a storehouse of information. Stahl has re-edited
1886 ff. ) the abbreviated Poppo (four vols. ) in a convenient and serv-
iceable edition with Latin notes. The edition by Arnold (1831-35)
is interesting for its historical comments. Grammatical interpreta-
tion is the strong feature of the German edition by Classen, several
of whose volumes have appeared in an English dress. Hobbes, the
author of the 'Leviathan,' translated Thucydides in 1628. The most
recent translation is that of Jowett (1881), from whom the following
extracts are taken.
H. W. S.
## p. 14917 (#501) ##########################################
THUCYDIDES
14917
THE NIGHT ATTACK ON PLATEA
AND
ND now the war between the Athenians and Peloponnesians
and the allies of both actually began. Henceforward the
struggle was uninterrupted, and they communicated with
one another only by heralds. The narrative is arranged accord-
ing to summers and winters, and follows the order of events.
For fourteen years the thirty years' peace
remained
unbroken. But in the fifteenth year, when Chrysis the high-
priestess of Argos was in the forty-eighth year of her priesthood,
Enesias being ephor at Sparta, and at Athens Pythodorus having
two months of his archonship to run,
and at the begin-
ning of spring, about the first watch of the night, an armed force
of somewhat more than three hundred Thebans entered Platæa, a
city of Boeotia which was an ally of Athens.
They were
invited by Naucleides, a Platæan, and his partisans, who opened
the gates to them. These men wanted to kill certain citizens of
the opposite faction, and to make over the city to the Thebans,
in the hope of getting the power into their own hands.
There was an old quarrel between the two cities; and the The-
bans, seeing that war was inevitable, were anxious to surprise the
place while the peace lasted, and before hostilities had actually
broken out. No watch had been set; and so they were enabled
to enter the city unperceived. They grounded their arms in the
agora; but instead of going to work at once, and making their
way into the houses of their enemies, as those who invited them
suggested, they resolved to issue a conciliatory proclamation,
and try to make friends with the citizens. The herald announced
that if any one wished to become their ally, and return to the
ancient constitution of Boeotia, he should join their ranks. In this
way they thought that the inhabitants would easily be induced to
come over to them.
-
The Plateans, when they found that the city had been sur-
prised and taken, and that the Thebans were within their walls,
were panic-stricken. In the darkness they were unable to see
them, and greatly overestimated their numbers. So they came
to terms, and accepting the proposals which were made to them,
remained quiet, the more readily since the Thebans offered
violence to no one. But in the course of the negotiations they
somehow discovered that their enemies were not so numerous as
## p. 14918 (#502) ##########################################
14918
THUCYDIDES
they had supposed, and concluded that they could easily attack
and master them. They determined to make the attempt; for
the Plataan people were strongly attached to the Athenian alli-
ance. They began to collect inside the houses, breaking through
the party-walls that they might not be seen going along the
streets; they likewise raised barricades of wagons, unyoking the
beasts which drew them, and took other measures suitable to
the emergency. When they had done all which could be done.
under the circumstances, they sallied forth from their houses;
choosing the time of night just before daybreak, lest, if they
put off the attack until dawn, the enemy might be more confident
and more a match for them. While darkness lasted they would
be timid, and at a disadvantage, not knowing the streets so well
as themselves. So they fell upon them at once hand to hand.
When the Thebans found that they had been deceived, they
closed their ranks and resisted their assailants on every side.
Two or three times they drove them back. But when at last
the Platæans charged them with a great shout, and the women
and slaves on the housetops screamed and yelled and pelted
them with stones and tiles, the confusion being aggravated by
the rain which had been falling heavily during the night, they
turned and fled in terror through the city. Hardly any of them
knew the way out, and the streets were dark as well as muddy,
for the affair happened at the end of the month when there was
no moon; whereas their pursuers knew well enough how to pre-
vent their escape: and thus many of them perished.
The gates
by which they entered were the only ones open; and these a
Platæan fastened with the spike of a javelin, which he thrust
into the bar instead of the pin. So this exit too was closed, and
they were chased up and down the city. Some of them mounted
upon the wall, and cast themselves down into the open. Most
of these were killed. Others got out by a deserted gate, cut-
ting through the bar unperceived, with an axe which a woman
gave them; but only a few, for they were soon found out. Others
lost themselves in different parts of the city, and were put to
death. But the greater number kept together, and took refuge
in a large building abutting upon the wall, of which the doors on
the near side chanced to be open; they thinking them to be the
gates of the city, and expecting to find a way through them into
the country. The Platæans, seeing that they were in a trap,
began to consider whether they should not set the building on
## p. 14919 (#503) ##########################################
THUCYDIDES
14919
fire, and burn them where they were. At last they, and the
other Thebans who were still alive and were wandering about
the city, agreed to surrender themselves and their arms uncondi-
tionally. Thus fared the Thebans in Platea.
The main body of the Theban army, which should have come
during the night to the support of the party entering the city in
case of a reverse, having on their march heard of the disaster,
were now hastening to the rescue. Platea is about eight miles
distant from Thebes, and the heavy rain which had fallen in the
night delayed their arrival; for the river Asopus had swollen,
and was not easily fordable. Marching in the rain, and with
difficulty crossing the river, they came up too late; some of
their friends being already slain and others captives. When the
Thebans became aware of the state of affairs, they resolved to
lay hands on the Platæans who were outside the walls; for there
were men and property left in the fields, as would naturally
happen when a sudden blow was struck in time of peace. And
they meant to keep any one whom they caught as a hostage, and
exchange him for one of their own men if any of them were
still alive. But before they had executed their plan, the Platæ-
ans, suspecting their intentions, and fearing for their friends out-
side, sent a herald to the Thebans protesting against the crime
of which they had been guilty in seizing their city during peace,
and warning them not to touch anything which was outside the
walls. If they persisted, they threatened in return to kill the
prisoners; but if they retired, they would give them up. This
is the Theban account; and they add that the Platæans took an
oath. The Platæans do not admit that they ever promised to
restore the captives at once, but only if they could agree after
negotiations; and they deny that they took an oath. However
this may have been, the Thebans withdrew, leaving the Platæan
territory unhurt; but the Platæans had no sooner got in their
property from the country than they put the prisoners to death.
Those who were taken were a hundred and eighty in number;
and Eurymachus, with whom the betrayers of the city had nego-
tiated, was one of them.
When they had killed their prisoners, they sent a messenger
to Athens and gave back the dead to the Thebans under a flag
of truce; they then took the necessary measures for the security
of the city. The news had already reached Athens; and the
Athenians had instantly seized any Boeotians who were in Attica
## p. 14920 (#504) ##########################################
14920
THUCYDIDES
and sent a herald to Platæa bidding them do no violence to the
Theban prisoners, but wait for instructions from Athens. The
news of their death had not arrived. For the first messenger
had gone out when the Thebans entered, and the second when
they were just defeated and captured: but of what followed, the
Athenians knew nothing; they sent the message in ignorance,
and the herald, when he arrived, found the prisoners dead. The
Athenians next dispatched an army to Platæa, and brought in
corn. Then, leaving a small force in the place, they conveyed
away the least serviceable of the citizens, together with the
women and children. The affair of Platæa was a glaring vio-
lation of the thirty years' truce; and the Athenians now made
preparations for war.
PERICLES'S MEMORIAL ORATION OVER THE ATHENIAN DEAD
OF THE FIRST CAMPAIGN
MⓇ
OST of those who have spoken here before me have com-
mended the lawgiver who added this oration to our other
funeral customs: it seemed to them a worthy thing that
such an honor should be given at their burial to the dead who
have fallen on the field of battle. But I should have preferred
that when men's deeds have been brave, they should be honored
in deed only, and with such an honor as this public funeral
which you are now witnessing. Then the reputation of many
would not have been imperiled on the eloquence or want of elo-
quence of one, and their virtues believed or not as he spoke well
or ill.
For it is difficult to say neither too little nor too much;
and even moderation is apt not to give the impression of truth-
fulness. The friend of the dead who knows the facts is likely to
think that the words of the speaker fall short of his knowledge
and of his wishes; another who is not so well informed, when
he hears of anything which surpasses his own powers, will be
envious and will suspect exaggeration. Mankind are tolerant of
the praises of others so long as each hearer thinks that he can
do as well or nearly as well himself; but when the speaker rises
above him, jealousy is aroused and he begins to be incredulous.
However, since our ancestors have set the seal of their approval
upon the practice, I must obey, and to the utmost of my power
## p. 14921 (#505) ##########################################
THUCYDIDES
14921
shall endeavor to satisfy the wishes and beliefs of all who hear
me.
I will speak first of our ancestors; for it is right and becom-
ing that now, when we are lamenting the dead, a tribute should
be paid to their memory. There has never been a time when
they did not inhabit this land, which by their valor they have
handed down from generation to generation, and we have re-
ceived from them a free State. But if they were worthy of
praise, still more were our fathers, who added to their inherit-
ance, and after many a struggle transmitted to us their sons this
great empire. And we ourselves assembled here to-day, who
are still most of us in the vigor of life, have chiefly done the
work of improvement, and have richly endowed our city with
all things, so that she is sufficient for herself both in peace and
war. Of the military exploits by which our various possessions
were acquired, or of the energy with which we or our fathers
drove back the tide of war, Hellenic or Barbarian, I will not
speak; for the tale would be long, and is familiar to you. But
before I praise the dead, I should like to point out by what prin-
ciples of action we rose to power, and under what institutions and
through what manner of life our empire became great. For I
conceive that such thoughts are not unsuited to the occasion,
and that this numerous assembly of citizens and strangers may
profitably listen to them.
Our form of government does not enter into rivalry with the
institutions of others. We do not copy our neighbors, but are
an example to them. It is true that we are called a democracy;
for the administration is in the hands of the many and not of
the few. But while the law secures equal justice to all alike in
their private disputes, the claim of excellence is also recognized;
and when a citizen is in any way distinguished, he is preferred
to the public service, not as a matter of privilege, but as the re-
ward of merit. Neither is poverty a bar, but a man may benefit
his country whatever be the obscurity of his condition. There is
no exclusiveness in our public life, and in our private intercourse
we are not suspicious of one another, nor angry with our neigh-
bor if he does what he likes; we do not put on sour looks at
him, which though harmless are not pleasant. While we are thus
unconstrained in our private intercourse, a spirit of reverence
pervades our public acts: we are prevented from doing wrong by
respect for authority and for the laws; having an especial regard
## p. 14922 (#506) ##########################################
14922
THUCYDIDES
to those which are ordained for the protection of the injured,
as well as to those unwritten laws which bring upon the trans-
gressor of them the reprobation of the general sentiment.
And we have not forgotten to provide for our weary spirits
many relaxations from toil: we have regular games and sacrifices
throughout the year; at home the style of our life is refined; and
the delight which we daily feel in all these things helps to banish
melancholy. Because of the greatness of our city the fruits of
the whole earth flow in upon us; so that we enjoy the goods of
other countries as freely as. of our own.
Then again, our military training is in many respects superior
to that of our adversaries. Our city is thrown open to the world;
and we never expel a foreigner, or prevent him from seeing or
learning anything of which the secret if revealed to an enemy
might profit him. We rely not upon management or trickery,
but upon our own hearts and hands. And in the matter of
education, whereas they from early youth are always under-
going laborious exercises which are to make them brave, we live
at ease, and yet are equally ready to face the perils which they
face. And here is the proof. The Lacedæmonians come into
Attica not by themselves, but with their whole confederacy fol-
lowing: we go alone into a neighbor's country; and although our
opponents are fighting for their homes and we on a foreign soil,
we have seldom any difficulty in overcoming them. Our ene-
mies have never yet felt our united strength; the care of a navy
divides our attention, and on land we are obliged to send our own
citizens everywhere. But they, if they meet and defeat a part
of our army, are as proud as if they had routed us all; and when
defeated they pretend to have been vanquished by us all.
If then we prefer to meet danger with a light heart but with-
out laborious training, and with a courage which is gained by
habit and not enforced by law, are we not greatly the gainers?
Since we do not anticipate the pain, although, when the hour
comes, we can be as brave as those who never allow themselves
to rest; and thus too our city is equally admirable in peace and in
war. For we are lovers of the beautiful, yet simple in our tastes,
and we cultivate the mind without loss of manliness. Wealth we
employ, not for talk and ostentation, but when there is a real
use for it.
To avow poverty with us is no disgrace: the true
disgrace is in doing nothing to avoid it. An Athenian citizen
does not neglect the State because he takes care of his own
## p. 14923 (#507) ##########################################
THUCYDIDES
14923
household; and even those of us who are gaged in business
have a very fair idea of politics. We alone regard a man who
takes no interest in public affairs, not as a harmless but as a
useless character; and if few of us are originators, we are all
sound judges, of a policy. The great impediment to action is,
in our opinion, not discussion, but the want of that knowledge
which is gained by discussion preparatory to action. For we
have a peculiar power of thinking before we act, and of act-
ing too; whereas other men are courageous from ignorance but
hesitate upon reflection. And they are surely to be esteemed
the bravest spirits, who, having the clearest sense both of the
pains and pleasures of life, do not on that account shrink from
anger. In doing good, again, we are unlike others: we make our
friends by conferring, not by receiving favors. Now he who
confers a favor is the firmer friend, because he would fain by
kindness keep alive the memory of an obligation; but the recipi-
ent is colder in his feelings, because he knows that in requiting
another's generosity he will not be winning gratitude, but only
paying a debt. We alone do good to our neighbors not upon
a calculation of interest, but in the confidence of freedom and in
a frank and fearless spirit.
To sum up: I say that Athens is the school of Hellas, and
that the individual Athenian in his own person seems to have
the power of adapting himself to the most varied forms of action
with the utmost versatility and grace. This is no passing and
idle word, but truth and fact; and the assertion is verified by
the position to which these qualities have raised the State. For
in the hour of trial, Athens alone among her contemporaries is
superior to the report of her. No enemy who comes against
her is indignant at the reverses which he sustains at the hands
of such a city; no subject complains that his masters are un-
worthy of him. And we shall assuredly not be without witnesses:
there are mighty monuments of our power, which will make us
the wonder of this and of succeeding ages; we shall not need
the praises of Homer or of any other panegyrist, whose poetry
may please for the moment although his representation of the
facts will not bear the light of day. For we have compelled.
every land and every sea to open a path for our valor, and
have everywhere planted eternal memorials of our friendship and
of our enmity. Such is the city for whose sake these men nobly
fought and died: they could not bear the thought that she might
## p. 14924 (#508) ##########################################
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THUCYDIDES
be taken from them; and every one of us who survive should
gladly toil on her behalf.
I have dwelt upon the greatness of Athens because I want to
show you that we are contending for a higher prize than those
who enjoy none of these privileges, and to establish by manifest
proof the merit of these men whom I am now commemorating.
Their loftiest praise has been already spoken. For in magnifying
the city I have magnified them, and men like them whose virtues
made her glorious. And of how few Hellenes can it be said as
of them, that their deeds when weighed in the balance have been
found equal to their fame! Methinks that a death such as theirs
has been, gives the true measure of a man's worth; it may be
the first revelation of his virtues, but is at any rate their final
seal. For even those who come short in other ways may justly
plead the valor with which they have fought for their country;
they have blotted out the evil with the good, and have benefited
the State more by their public services than they have injured
her by their private actions. None of these men were enervated
by wealth, or hesitated to resign the pleasures of life; none of
them put off the evil day in the hope, natural to poverty, that a
man though poor may one day become rich. But deeming that
the punishment of their enemies was sweeter than any of these
things, and that they could fall in no nobler cause, they deter-
mined at the hazard of their lives to be honorably avenged, and
to leave the rest. They resigned to hope their unknown chance
of happiness; but in the face of death they resolved to rely upon
themselves alone. And when the moment came, they were minded
to resist and suffer rather than to fly and save their lives; they
ran away from the word of dishonor, but on the battle-field their
feet stood fast: and in an instant, at the height of their fortune,
they passed away from the scene, not of their fear, but of their
glory.
Such was the end of these men; they were worthy of Athens,
and the living need not desire to have a more heroic spirit, al-
though they may pray for a less fatal issue. The value of such
a spirit is not to be expressed in words. Any one can discourse
to you for ever about the advantages of a brave defense, which
you know already. But instead of listening to him, I would
have you day by day fix your eyes upon the greatness of Athens,
until you become filled with the love of her: and when you are
impressed by the spectacle of her glory, reflect that this empire
## p. 14925 (#509) ##########################################
THUCYDIDES
14925
has been acquired by men who knew their duty and had
the courage to do it; who in the hour of conflict had the fear of
dishonor always present to them; and who, if ever they failed in
an enterprise, would not allow their virtues to be lost to their
country, but freely gave their lives to her as the fairest offering
which they could present at her feast. The sacrifice which they
collectively made was individually repaid to them; for they re-
ceived again each one for himself a praise which grows not old,
and the noblest of all sepulchres,- I speak not of that in which
their remains are laid, but of that in which their glory survives,
and is proclaimed always and on every fitting occasion both in
word and deed. For the whole earth is the sepulchre of famous.
men; not only are they commemorated by columns and inscrip-
tions in their own country, but in foreign lands there dwells also
an unwritten memorial of them, graven not on stone, but in the
hearts of men. Make them your examples; and esteeming cour-
rage to be freedom and freedom to be happiness, do not weigh too
nicely the perils of war. The unfortunate who has no hope of a
change for the better has less reason to throw away his life than
the prosperous; who, if he survive, is always liable to a change
for the worse, and to whom any accidental fall makes the most
serious difference. To a man of spirit, cowardice and disaster
coming together are far more bitter than death striking him
unperceived, at a time when he is full of courage and animated
by the general hope.
Wherefore I do not now commiserate the parents of the
dead who stand here; I would rather comfort them. You know
that your life has been passed amid manifold vicissitudes; and
that they may be deemed fortunate who have gained most honor,
whether an honorable death like theirs, or an honorable sor-
row like yours, and whose days have been so ordered that the
term of their happiness is likewise the term of their life. I
know how hard it is to make you feel this, when the good for-
tune of others will too often remind you of the gladness which
once lightened your hearts. And sorrow is felt at the want of
those blessings, not which a man never knew, but which were a
part of his life before they were taken from him.
Some of you
are of an age at which they may hope to have other children;
and they ought to bear their sorrow better: not only will the child-
ren who may hereafter be born make them forget their own lost
ones, but the city will be doubly a gainer,- she will not be left
## p. 14926 (#510) ##########################################
14926
THUCYDIDES
desolate, and she will be safer.
