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Thucydides, who had already expressed the opinion quoted by many a modern Philistine, "The wife who deserves the highest praise is she of whom one hears neither good nor evil outside her own house," anticipates a later verdict, in words that might have been the foundation of Iphigenia's lament:
Such were the events of this winter; and with it ended the sixth year of this war, of which Thucydides was the historian. Seventh Year of the War Occupation of Pylos Surrender of the Spartan Army in Sphacteria
And this is exactly what Polybius has done as well as Thucydides.
Alas, not Fate itself may undo the work of Fate. The historian's one task is to tell the thing as it happened. A fair historian, a Xenophon, a Thucydides, will not accept that position. He may nurse some private dislikes, but he will attach far more importance to the public good, and set the truth high above his hate; he may have his favourites, but he will not spare their errors.
Improved standards of accuracy led men to perceive that an author must be studied in his own tongue: in order that no shade of meaning might be lost. Here again the two periods are easily distinguished. Nicholas V set his scholars, Poggio and Valla, to translate the Greeks, Herodotus and Thucydides, Aristotle and Diodorus.
The serious admiration of Thucydides for Sparta, the ironic admiration of Socrates, Plato's appeals to Crete and to ancient Lacedsemon, these are not renegadism, not disloyalty to Athens, but fidelity to another Athens than that of Kleon or of Kritias. History never again beheld such a band of pamphleteers! In the history of Rome, during the second war against Carthage, a similar moment occurs.
Don't tell me I am grown old and peevish and supercilious name the geniuses of 1774, and I submit. The next Augustan age will dawn on the other side of the Atlantic. There will, perhaps, be a Thucydides at Boston, a Xenophon at New York, and, in time, a Virgil at Mexico, and a Newton at Peru. At last, some curious traveller from Lima will visit England and give a description of the ruins of St.
He had scarcely time to realise that this wonderful thing had happened before the mobile creature had darted to his book-shelves and was examining a Thucydides upside down. "How clever to know Greek!" she exclaimed. "And do you really talk it with the other dons?" "No, we never talk shop," he laughed. "But, Winifred, what made you come here?" "I had never seen Oxford. Isn't it beautiful?"
We have already mentioned that Thucydides is contradicted by Homer, in his assertion that the Greek ships, at the siege of Troy, had no decks; perhaps, however, they were only half-decked, as it would appear, from the descriptions of them, that the fore-part was open to the keel: they had a mainsail, and were rowed by oars.
It was quite impossible to hear any normal sound down the passage; and so Gordon was quite unaware of the Chief's intention to revisit them and see if they were really working, till the door opened and the Chief walked in. Gordon lost his head; he sat up in bed and gaped. Thucydides lay on one side of the bed, the crib on the other. The Chief picked up the book.
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