Page:History of Greece Vol I.djvu/437

 THUCYDIDES OS IBS WAR OF TROY. 405 with an undivided force, Troy would have been taken both earlier and at smaller cost. 1 Such is the general sketch of the war of Troy, as given by Thucydides. So diffeient is it from the genuine epical narrative, that we seem hardly to be reading a description of the same event ; still less should we imagine that the event was known, to him as well as to us, only through the epic poets themselves. The men, the numbers, and the duration of the siege, do indeed remain the same ; but the cast and juncture of events, the deter- mining forces, and the characteristic features, are altogether het- erogeneous. But, like Herodotus, and still more than Herodotus, Thucydides was under the pressure of two conflicting impulses he shared the general faith in the mythical antiquity, but at the same time he could not believe in any facts which contradict- ed the laws of historical credibility or probability. He was thus under the necessity of torturing the matter of the old mythes into conformity with the subjective exigencies of his own mind : he left out, altered, recombined, and supplied new connecting principles and supposed purposes, until the story became such as no one could have any positive reason for calling in question : though it lost the impressive mixture of religion, romance, and individual adventure, which constituted its original charm, it ac- quired a smoothness and plausibility, and a poetical ensemble, which the critics were satisfied to accept as historical truth. And historical truth it would doubtless have been, if any independent evidence could have been found to sustain it. Had Thucydides been able to produce such new testimony, we should have been pleased to satisfy ourselves that the war of Troy, as he recounted it, was the real event ; of which the war of Troy, as sung by the epic poets, was a misreported, exaggerated, and ornamented re- cital. But in this case the poets are the only real witnesses, and the narrative of Thucydides is a mere extract and distillation from their incredibilities. A few other instances may be mentioned to illustrate the views of Thucydides respecting various mythical incidents. 1. He treats the residence of the Homeric Phaeakians at Corkyra as an undisputed fact, and employs it partly to explain the efficiency of 1 Thucyd. i. 9-12.