Book II - Wilbourhall.org

Iviii INTRODUCTION. [iii.this is a mistake could be easily shown from manyinstancesof self-sacrifice that are briefly alluded to bythe historian.Thucydides says that there was muchphysical distress among the sufferers from the plague,but it is only the Roman poet who, forgetting theendurance of the Greeks, refers to complaining andmoaning as symptoms of the disease. Many otherauthors besides Lucretius have imitated thiswhich none have ever surpassed.episode,It is also agreed byall the physicians who have written on the subjectthat the account given by the historian is a model ofsymptomatology, and it is only the impossibility ofmaking a scientific diagnosis in the state of knowledgeat the time that causes the wide disagreements amongmodern writers as to the nature of the epidemic.Equally subtle and impersonal is the moral sidehis history. It might have seemed probable that, ashe wrote for the benefit of practical or theoreticalpoliticians, he would arrest the narrative at times todiscourse upon the moral to be drawn from it. Buthe never once draws the conclusion for his readershe only takes care, both in the speeches and thedescriptions, to give his readers the means of drawingthe conclusion for themselves. Thus, at the end ofthe account of the Theban attempt on Plataea, we arenot told what the historian himself thought of it all.So far does he carry his dissimulation that he veryoften gives the same facts from two opposite points ofviews. This is especially common in the speeches.Even when two speakers cannot in reality have hadany communication with each other, they are oftenmade to answer each other's arguments as thoughof