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 speeches would be in some sense "deliberative ." But such a classification, besides being rather forced, does not correspond to any real differences of structure or form. If the speeches are to be viewed in their literary relation to the History, it is enough to observe that the addresses of leaders to their troops may be regarded as practically forming a class apart.

The right of an adult citizen to attend the debates of the Ecclesia must have been acquired by Thucydides many years before the war began. From its very commencement, as he says, he had formed the purpose of writing its history. There is every probability that he had heard most or all of the important discussions which took place in the Ecclesia between 433 and 424 B.C. It was in 423 B.C., or at the end of the year before, that his exile of twenty years from Athens began. Thence we can name some at least of the speeches to which he probably refers as heard by himself, and not merely reported to him. Such would be the addresses of the Corcyrean and Corinthian envoys, when they were rival suitors for the Athenian alliance in 433 B.C.; the speeches of Pericles; the debate on Mitylene in 427 B.C.; and