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Work on Thucydides published in the last thirty years has mostly shown two tendencies, the one, to regard Thucydides as having two successive attitudes towards history; the other to revert to Eduard Meyer's view that the work as we have it, in all important points of interpretation at least, was written at one time and that time after the Fall of Athens. I should say at once that I am sceptical about both these views and also—to go rather farther back in the discussion—I would agree with Pohlenz in doubting the far-reaching activity of an ‘editor’ who left the end of the eighth book as we have it. Such unity of outlook as the whole work presents—such unity as Prof. Finley has stressed in his Thucydides—seems to me due, not to the work being written or finally shaped all at one time, but to its being written all by one man who from the first had strong and definite ideas and a clear notion of what he was trying to do. The tendencies which I have mentioned naturally lead to the conclusion that the first book has been, if not written, yet reshaped or largely added to at a later stage in Thucydides' career and may reflect a change of view about the causes or antecedents of the war. It seems worth while to examine those parts of the book in which these effects would show themselves if they exist, i.e. chiefly in the speeches and the excursus on the Pentekontaetia and its setting.
The archaeologia proper, chapters 1–19, gives reasons for Thucydides' expectation that the war would be a great one and more notable than any of its predecessors, judging this from the fact that both sides entered it at the height of their preparedness and that the whole Greek world was on one side or the other or contemplating joining one side or the other (1, 1). The Western Greeks got no further than this contemplation when the war began and it would be natural to suppose that Thucydides wrote these words when he did not yet know that they would go no further. The main argument of the archaeologia seems to show how this height of preparedness and tendency to fall into two camps was reached, and the last sentence of 19 underlines the conclusion.
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- Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1951
References
2 The excursuses on Cylon, Pausanias, and Themistocles do not effect the main issue; and the narrative of actual operations can be seen in much the same light whatever general view is accepted.
3 All references to Thucydides in which the Book is not mentioned come from Book I.
4 See Gundert, H., ‘Athen und Sparta in den Reden des Thukydides’, Die Antike, XVI (1940) 98 ff.Google Scholar (written, however, in the belief that at least the great speeches were not composed till after the fall of Athens); Herter, H. in Rh. Mus. XCIII (1950) 143.Google Scholar
5 Thus Thucydides' opinions on Athenian imperialism might develop with time and events, and on this possible development much light has been thrown by J. de Romilly, Thucydide et l'impérialisme athénien.
6 Class. Rev. L.(1936) 174, in a review of A. Grosskinsky, Das Programm des Thukydides.
7 I use this translation to indicate that I am aware that γνώμη, a chamaeleon word that takes its colour from its setting, may contain a ‘Willensmoment’. See Patzer, H., Das Problem der Geschichtsschreibung des Thukjdides und die thukydideische Frage, 44 ff.Google Scholar
8 CAH V, 191 f.; 480 ff.
9 The idea that used to be supported by the decrees about Rhegium and Leontini passed about this time, viz. that a new or more ambitious Athenian conception of western looking policy was concerned in the Athenian alliance with Corcyra lost its support when Bauer, W. (Klio, XV (1917) 188 f.)Google Scholar showed that the two decrees were nothing more than the renewal of older treaties in identical form.
10 Forschungen zur alten Geschichte, II, 380.
11 In much of what follows about this debate and that at the second conference I am in agreement with what Professor Gomme has written in the first volume of his Commentary to Thucydides. When I wrote what follows and read it at Oxford Professor Gomme's work was still unpublished, and I had no knowledge of its contents. Conversely, though Professor Gomme later read my paper, it was after his Commentary had been passed for press. Where our conclusions agree, they were arrived at independently (though I am naturally strengthened in my opinion by the agreement) and I have left my arguments as they then stood.
12 Das Geschichtswerk des Thukydides, 105.
13 See II, 12 and II, 18 and Pohlenz, M., Gött. Gel. Anz. 198 (1936) 285Google Scholar, n. 3.
14 The notion of a loan from Olympia or Delphi may have made shipwreck of Spartan scruples, but it was not, as has been suggested, something which could only have been advanced by the rationalistic Thucydides. Pericles, who after all did not rule out borrowing Athena's golden robes, is later made to use the slightly opprobrious word κινεῑν of this proposed transaction, but after all he is not made to speak impartially.
15 See Class. Rev. LXI (1947), 6.
16 Hermes LXIX (1934), 295.
17 Gött. Gel. Anz. 198 (1936) 285.
18 Die erste Periklesrede. Diss. Kiel, 1934. As is well known, this dissertation is strengthened by what it contains from the pen of Professor Jacoby.
19 E. Meyer, op. cit. II, 385; Pohlenz, M., Gött. Nachr. 1919, 121.Google Scholar
20 It is not difficult to forget that it has this double character. When Dionysius of Halicarnassus (de Thuc. iud. 10) cites 1, 23, 6 with the text of Thucydides before him, he quotes it correctly, but in another work (Ep. II ad Ammae. 6) this is what he gives us: and it may be that Dionysius was not the last writer to be unprecise in this matter.
21 I, 497.
22 Rh. Mus. LXXVIII (1929) 66, n. 2.
23 loc. cit. 62 ff.
24 Hermes LXXII (1937) 246 ff., 266.
25 Aristoteles und Athen, II, 292.
26 Das Geschichtswerk des Thukydides, 166, n. 2.
27 See Harrison, E., Proc. Camb. Phil. Soc. (1912) 9.Google Scholar
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