Book II - Wilbourhall.org

III.] STYLE OF THUCYDIDES. fixthey were talking face to face.This is the case withthe harangues of the generals before the second battlein the Gulf of Corinth. But he never delivers anopinion on any moral question :he merely transcribeshis sense of the facts and leaves us to judge of them.Even in the case of Cleon, to whom he imputesactions which flattery itself could only describe asdiplomatic, it is quite certain that Grote was mistakenin supposing that Thucydides had allowed hispersonal animosity to interfere with his judgment.WTiether his sense of the truth always correspondswith the truth itself it is scarcely possible to saybeing away from Athens during twenty years of thewar, he may have been occasionally misinformed, or atleast have thought that there could be but one opinionof actions which really admitted of more than oneinterpretation. And yet, in spite of his reticence, adeep moral purpose underlies all his work. Fromthe earnest tone of the writer throughout, even inthe purely descriptive parts, we can see that, had helived to finish his work, we should have had nodiflRculty in drawing the morals which he meant tobe drawn from the war ; though we may be sure thathe would not have stated them for us in so manywords. For in every line of the narrative a stillsmall voice is whispering quite distinctly the samequestion that Euripides asks us twice in the Bacchae :*What is Wisdom, what is that gift from God to manthat is fairer than any victory won ?Earnestness, truthfulness, and clearness of insight—the qualities summed up in the word tzoXltiko^which Hermogenes says is applicable in a very special