Page:Essays and Addresses.djvu/378

 of the speeches in Herodotus is sometimes distinctly Homeric—illustrating his nearer affinity to epos than to rhetoric. Thus the Corinthian Sosicles, in the debate at Sparta, begins with truly epic force: "Verily now the sky shall be under the earth, and the earth shall hang above the sky, men shall have their pastures in the sea, and fish upon land," if Spartans become the friends of tyranny.

§ 3. Thucydides has stated the general principles on which he composed the speeches in his History. The precise interpretation of that statement depends, however, partly on the question—How far is it probable that Thucydides is there instituting a tacit comparison between his own method and that of Herodotus? So far as we know, the work of Herodotus was the only prose work in which Thucydides could have found a precedent for dramatic treatment applied to history. If Thucydides knew that work, it would naturally be present to his mind at the moment when he was stating the rules of his own practice. It can be shown almost certainly that a period of at least twenty years must have elapsed between the time at which Herodotus ceased to write and the time at which the History of