Book II - Wilbourhall.org

III.] STYLE OF THUCYDIDES. liiiHe has often been blamed for straining afterantithesis, in some cases justly ; but it is certainthat his object was, not to improve the form ofhis sentence, but to make his analysis of the situationas clear as possible. It must be rememberedthat in the speeches he is thinking of his readersquite as much as of the speaker. He gives us thesubstance of what was actually said, but the styleis the historian's own.Thus the antithesis was used by Thucydides notmerely because it happened to be very popular inAthens just at the time, but rather because hethought it suited to his purpose. The other figuresare only just frequent enough to deserve mention,and hardly constitute an element in his style.Dionysius, who wrote in the reign of Augustus,and Hermogenes, who wrote in that of Marcus Aurelius,agree that Thucydides combines a careless roughnessin the sounds with a remarkable dignity ofrhythm. These qualities belong to the early prosein general, being characteristic, though in a less degree,of Antiphon and Critias. The same applies tothe use of statements based on experience : theseyvw/iai continually occiu* in Thucydides, and theywere well fitted to give dignity to the style. Inclose connection with this use of general truths is thehabit, shared by the early Attic prose authors, of definingabstractterms and laying stress on single words.Dr. Jebb gives c. 62 ar^Tj/xa fxfv yap K.T.X. as an exampleof this. It was Prodicus of Ceos who firstdevoted himself to the discrimination of similarterms, and his teaching had a good eflPect, not only