Book II - Wilbourhall.org

Ix INTEODUCTION. [iii.degree to Thucydides, are the virtues which hisseverest critics have not denied that he possesses.He is always convincing and always absorbed in hissubject. We never feel in reading him, as we doso often in studying other historians, that after all itis only the man's cleverness that attracts us. Nothingmore clearly shows how entirely he is part ofhis work than the references he makes to himself; herelates errors of his own with no disguise, and withno attempt at self-justification.His sound judgmentnever forsakes him, and the brightness of hissearchingeye is never dimmed. The sagacity increased byexperience, the penetration that sees the salientpoints of the situationand knows exactly how muchto tell,— all, in short, that Lucian, his panegyrist,means by o-uveo-ts ttoXltik^ Kal Swa/Ais epfi-qvevTiK-rj,are brought to bear on his own actions just as muchas on those of his opponents.His style is strongly marked by the quality calledby the ancients fieycOos, by us, grandeur or sublimity.In this respect he was following in the footstepsof several earlier writers. The same grandeur is seenin Pindar and Aeschylus ; and both these poetsinfluenced Thucydides, though not toas we should have expected.such an extentIt is most probable thathe had learnt this secret from the speeches of Pericles.The same quality is found also in Antiphon, thoughnaturally to a less degree in one who wrote for thelaw-courts. Under the head of grandeur or sublimitymay be classed all the details in which Thucydidesresembles Antiphon, to whom he bears the samerelation as Burke in the Reflections bears to Burke as