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 1 82 LITERATaRE OE ANCIENT GREECE Who can possibly tell the rights of the case ? ^ We know only that Athens was a rude taskmaster to her generals. We cannot even say what the sentence was. He may have been banished ; he may have been con- demned to death, and fled ; he may have fled for fear of the trial. We do not know where he lived. The ancient Life says, at his estate at Scapte Hyle in Thrace ; but that was in Athenian territory, and no place for an exile. It is certain that he returned to Athens after the end of the war. He says himself that he was often with the Lacedaemonian authorities. He seems to have been at the battle of Mantinea, and possibly in Syracuse. We know nothing even of his death, which probably occurred before the eruption of Etna in 396. His grave was in Athens among those of Kimon's family; but 'Zopyrus,' confirmed by 'Cra- tippus' — whoever they are— say that it had an 'ikrion' — whatever that is — upon it, which was a sign that the grave did not contain the body. If we knew more of Cratippus we should be able to add much to our life of Thucydides. The traditional lives, one by Marcellinus (5th cent. A.D.), one anonymous, are a mass of conflicting legends, conjectures, and de- ductions. He wept at hearing Herodotus read, and received the old man's blessing ; he married a Thracian heiress ; he was exiled by Cleon ; he sat under a plane- tree writing his histories ; he drove all the ^ginetans out of their island by his usury ; he was murdered in three places, and died by disease in another. Dionysius of Halicarnassus says in so many words (pp. 143, 144) that Cratippus was Thucydides's contemporary. If that were ^ The case against Thucydides is well given by Grote (vi. 191 ff. )» who accepts Marcellinus's story that Cleon was his accuser.