I have found it difficult to remember the precise words used in the speeches which
I listened to myself and my various informants have experienced the same
difficulty; so my method has been, while keeping as closely as possible to the
general sense of the words actually used, to make the speakers say what in my
opinion, was called for by each situation.
(1, 22)Most readers probably feel that there is more of Thucydides than of actual historical
reality in these speeches. In the narrative of events Thucydides rarely intervenes with
interpretive comment; in what is often a plain style he endeavours to tell us straight-
forwardly what happened. The narrative is complemented by speeches written in a
quite different style, more abstract and condensed, in which issues and motives are
explored. For example, he does not intervene in the narrative to define the different
characteristics of the leading protagonists; instead he puts the characterisation of the
innovating Athenians as against the conservative Spartans (explored further in the
funeral oration of Pericles) in the speech of the Corinthian envoy to Sparta at the
beginning of the war (1, 70). The speeches, therefore, have dramatic effect, and to
some extent fulfil an artistic function in bringing the whole conflict to life. But they
are also scientific; for in them is included the main burden of the political (and
sometimes military and social) analysis. In the debate, for example, between Cleon
and Diodotus on the fate of the inhabitants of Mitylene (3, 9–14) or in the Melian
dialogue (5, 85–113), Thucydides starkly dramatizes the calculations of those who are
impervious to any considerations other than their own self-interested power. We are
forced to draw our own conclusions.
Thucydides is hard-headed in the determination of fact and rigorous in his
political analysis. His history is also written with great imaginative power and
dramatic intensity, evidenced especially in the account of the Sicilian disaster in
Books Six and Seven. Even those who disagree with his analysis generally accord to
Thucydides more respect than to any other ancient historian. Herodotus had
celebrated the triumph of Greece in which Athens had played a leading role.
Thucydides shows us Athens in a decline and fall from greatness, the tyrant city
betrayed by various forms of excess into overreaching itself with tragic consequences.
Beneath the surface of the narrative this undercurrent of tragic feeling gives shape to
the whole.
Xenophon
Xenophon (430–354), a friend of Socrates, and well-to-do Athenian was a military
commander whose most well-known work is the Anabasis,famous for its account of
his own successful leadership of the retreating Greek mercenaries after the defeat of
42 THE GREEKS