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Tylor's wider range of observation, conspicuously supplemented by other work of Lubbock, embraced all human activities in one formula of comparison, which is indeed as old as Thucydides. We can infer, that is, something about early stages of an advanced culture from the present-day practices of savagery.
But I would rather hear that talk, though on the affairs of a hamlet, than babble again with recreant nobles and blundering professors about commonwealths and constitutions. When I want to see how little those last influence the happiness of wise men, have I not Machiavelli and Thucydides? Then, by and by, the parson will drop in, and we argue.
Thucydides says, that, passing over land to the Aegaean Sea, he took ship at Pydna in the bay of Therme, not being known to any one in the ship, till, being terrified to see the vessel driven by the winds near to Naxos, which was then besieged by the Athenians, he made himself known to the master and pilot, and, partly entreating them, partly threatening that if they went on shore he would accuse them, and make the Athenians to believe that they did not take him in out of ignorance, but that he had corrupted them with money from the beginning, he compelled them to bear off and stand out to sea, and sail forward towards the coast of Asia.
A young man, whatever his genius may be, is no judge of such a writer as Thucydides. I had no high opinion of him ten years ago. I have now been reading him with a mind accustomed to historical researches, and to political affairs; and I am astonished at my own former blindness, and at his greatness. I could not bear Euripides at college. I now read my recantation. He has faults undoubtedly.
Still, few readers can fail to pronounce Tacitus, as Macaulay affirms, and even Lord Monboddo admits him to be, the greatest of Latin historians, superior to Thucydides himself in the moral painting of his best narrative scenes, and in the delineation of character without a rival among historians, with scarcely a superior among dramatists and novelists.
The spirit of rationalism which we recognised in Herodotus as a vague uncertain attitude and which appears in Thucydides as a consistent attitude of mind never argued about or even explained, is by Polybius analysed and formulated as the great instrument of historical research. Herodotus, while believing on principle in the supernatural, yet was sceptical at times.
The Thucydides has a long dedicatory address by Aldus to a Roman patrician; the Sophocles has no such introduction.
Nor was there ever a sterner indictment of aggression than that given in the dialogue between the spokesmen of Melos, the little island that desired to stand out of the conflict, and the Athenian representatives who were determined to force her into their policy. And after that dialogue comes, in Thucydides' great drama, the fall of Athens.
Such are the histories of Herodotus and Thucydides, the annals of Sallust and Tacitus, the narratives of Homer, Livy, and Gibbon.
His sympathies with the Stoic sect were instinctive, but in his reserve and deep reticence he resembles, not Seneca, but Machiavelli or Thucydides. A passage in the Annals may fitly represent the impression of reserve which these three mighty spirits, Tacitus, Thucydides, and Machiavelli, at moments convey.
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