Page:History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (Müller) 2ed.djvu/502

480 480 HISTORY OF THE (or Wald-rode, as it would have been called in the Harz), in the same district from which Philip of Macedon afterwards derived those resources by which he established his power in Greece. This property had great influence on the destiny of Thucydides, especially in regard to his banishment from Athens, the chief particulars of which we learn from himself.* In the eighth year of the Peloponnesian war (01. 89, 1. b.c. 423) the Spartan general, Brasidas, was desirous of taking Amphipolis on the Strymon. Thucydides, the son of Olorus, lay off Thasos with a small fleet of seven ships, probably on his first command, which he had merited by his services in some subordinate military capacity. Brasidas feared even this small fleet, because he knew that the admiral possessed gold-mines in the district and had great influence with the most powerful inhabitants of the country, so that he would have no difficulty in getting together a body of native troops to reinforce the garrison of Amphipolis. Accordingly, Brasidas granted the Amphipolitans a better capitulation than they expected, in order to gain possession of the place speedily, and Thucydides, having come too late to raise the siege, was obliged to con- tent himself with the defence of Eion, a fortified city near the coast. The Athenians, who were in the habit of judging their generals and statesmen according to the success of their plans, condemned him for neglect of duty ; t an d he was compelled to go into exile, in which state he con- tinued for twenty years, living principally at Scapte-Hyle. He was not permitted to return after the peace between Sparta and Athens, but was only recalled by a special decree when Thrasybulus had restored the democracy. After this he must have lived some years at Athens, as his history clearly evinces ; but not so long as nature would have permitted : and there is much probability in the statement that he lost his life by the hand of an assassin. % i From this account of the career of Thucydides it appears that he spent only the first part of his life, up to his forty-eighth year, in intercourse with his countrymen of Athens. After this period he was indeed in communication with all parts of Greece, and he tells us that his exile had enabled him to mix wit'h Peloponnesians, and to gain accurate information from them : § but he was out of the way of the intellectual revolution which took place at Athens between the middle and end of the Peloponnesian war : and when he returned home he found himself in the midst of a new generation, with novel ideas and an essentially altered taste, with which he could hardly have amalgamated so tho- f The charge against him was probably a <ygu<ph *£i3o<rias. + We have passed over in silence unimportant and doubtful points, as well as manifest errors, especially those introduced into the old biographies ot the historian by the confusion between him and the more celebrated statesman, Thucydides, the son of Melesias. § Thucyd. V., 26.
 * Thucyd. IV., 104, seqq.