Page:A History of Ancient Greek Literature.djvu/204

 i8o LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE goras, Protagoras, and Hippocrates, differed largely in beliefs, in aims, in interests ; but they had the all- important common principle, that thought must be clear, and that Reason holds the real keys of the world. Among the generation influenced by these teachers was a young man of anti-Periclean family, who never- theless profoundly admired Pericles and had assimilated much of his spirit ; who was perhaps conscious of a commanding intellect, who had few illusions, who hated haziness, who was also one of the band of Lovers. He compared his Athens with Homer's Mycenae or Troy ; he compared her with the old rude Athens which had beaten the Persians. He threw the whole spirit of the stripped the shimmer from the old greatnesses, and found that in hard daylight his own mistress was the grandest and fairest. He saw — doubtless all the Periclean circle saw — that war was coming, a bigger war perhaps than any upon record, a war all but certain to estab- lish on the rock the permanent supremacy of Athens. Thucydides determined to watch that war from the start, mark every step, trace every cause, hide nothing and exaggerate nothing — do all that Herodotus had not done or tried to do. But he meant to do more than study it : he would help to win it. He was a man of position and a distinguished soldier. He had Thracian blood, a nor- thern fighting strain, in his veins, as well as some kinship with the great Kimon and Miltiades. The plague of 430 came near to crushing his ambitions once for all, but he was one of the few who were sick and recovered. The war had lasted eight years before he got his real oppor- tunity. He was elected general in 423 B.C., second in command, and sent to Chalcidice. It was close to his
 * Enlightenment ' into his study of ancient history. He