Page:History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (Müller) 2ed.djvu/513

491 LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE. 491 by the historian in this dialogue, he has delivered them so calmly and dispassionately, so absolutely without any expression of his own opinion to the contrary, that we are almost led to believe that Thucydides recognized the right of the strongest as the only rule of politics. But there is clearly a wide difference between the modes of thinking and acting which Thucydides describes with such indifference as pre- valent in Athens, and his own convictions as to what was for the advantage of mankind in general and of his own countrymen in par- ticular. How little Thucydides, as an honest man, approved of the maxims of Athenian policy established in his own time, is clear from his striking and instructive picture of the changes which took place in the political conduct of the different states after the first years of the war, in consequence chiefly of the domestic strife of factions — changes which Thucydides never intended to represent as beneficial, for he says of them, that " simplicity of character, which is the principal ingredient in a noble nature, was in those days ridiculed and banished from the world." * The panegyric on the Athenian democracy and on their mode of living, which occurs chiefly in the funeral oration of Pericles, is modified consi- derably by the assertion of Thucydides, that the government of the Five- thousand was the best administered constitution which the Athenians had enjoyed in his time ;t and also by the incidental remark that the Lace- daemonians and Chians alone, so far as he knew, were the only people who had been able to unite moderation and discretion with their good fortune. And thus, in general, we must draw a distinction between the sound and serious morality of Thucydides and the impartial love of truth, which led him to paint the world as it was ; and we must not deny him a deep religious feeling, because his plan was to describe human affairs according to their relation of cause and effect ; and because, while he took account of the belief of others as a motive of their actions, he does not obtrude his own belief on the subject. Religion, mythology, and poetry, are subjects which Thucydides, with a somewhat partial view of the matter, § sets aside as foreign to the business of a historian ; and we may justly regard him as the Anaxagoras of history, for he has detached the workings of Providence from the chain of causes which influence the life of man as distinctly and decidedly as the Ionian philosopher separat< d the I'oDe from the powers which operate on the material world. || § 10. The style and peculiar diction of Thucydides are so closely f Thucyd. VIII. 97. % Thucyd. VIII. 24. § It would bo easy to show that Thucydides sots too low a value on the old civilization of Greece; and, in general, the first part of the first book, the introduc- tion properly so called, as it is written to establish a general proposition for which Thucydides pleads as an advocate, does not exhibit those unprejudiced views for which the main part of the work is so peculiarly distinguished. U See Vol. I., p. 247.
 * III. 83 : ro tyyjt;, oZ to yiwciiov tXChttm <mt£*££I, KarctytXairvi)/ ritparicrfa.