Page:History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (Müller) 2ed.djvu/501

479 LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 479 CHAPTER XXXIV. § I, The life of Thucydides: his training that of the age of Pericles. § 2. His new method of treating history. § 3. The consequent distribution and arrange- ment of his materials, as well in his whole work as, §4, in the introduction. § 5. His mode of treating these materials ; his research and criticism. & 6. Ac- curacy and, § 7, intellectual character of his history, $$ 8, 9. The speeches considered as the soul of his history. $$ 10, 11. His mode of expression and the structure of his sentences. § 1. Thucydides, an Athenian of the demus of Alimus, was born in 01. 77, 2. b.c. 471, nine years after the battle of Salamis* His father Olorus, or Orolus, has a Thracian name, although Thucydides himself was an Athenian born : his mother Hegesipyle bears the same name as the Thracian wife of the great Miltiades, the conqueror at Marathon ; and through her Thucydides was connected with the renowned family of the Philaidse. This family from the time of the older Miltiades, who left Athens during the tyranny of the Pisistratidae and founded a prin- cipality of his own in the Thracian Chersonese, had formed alliances with the people and princes of that district; the younger Miltiades, the Marathonian victor, had married the daughter of a Thracian king nana .1 Orolus ; the children of this marriage were Cimon and the younger Hegesipyle, the latter of whom married the younger Orolus, probably a grandson of the first, who had obtained the rights of citizenship at Athens through his connexions ; the son of this marriage was Thucydides. f In this way Thucydides belonged to a distinguished and powerful family, possessed of great riches, especially in Thrace. Thucydides himself owned some gold-mines in that country, namely, at Scajpte-Hyle Nero's time), cited by Oellius, N. A. XV., 23. This statement is not impugned by what Thucydides says himself (V., 26), that he was of the right age to observe the progress of the Peloponnesian war. He might well say this of the period between the 40th and ('>7th years of his life ; for though the -/iXixla in reference to military service was different, it seems that the ancients placed the age suitable to literary labours at a more advanced point than we do. f This is the best way of reconciling the statements of Marcellinus (vita Tlnicy- didls) and Suidas with the well-known historical data. The following is the whole genealogy : — Cimon Stesagoraf. Olorus, Thracum regulus. Attica uxor v— ' Miltiades Marathon, v^' Hegesipyle I. Filius. Elpinice. '"'imon Hegesipyle II. ■^ Olorus II. Thucydides.
 * According to the well known statement of Pamphila (a learned woman of