Page:History of the Literature of Ancient Greece (Müller) 2ed.djvu/514

492 492. HISTORY OF THE connected with the character of his history, and are so remarkable in themselves, that we cannot but make an attempt, notwithstanding the necessary brevity of this sketch, to set them before the reader in their main features. We think we have already approximated to a right conception of this peculiar style, in the remark, that in Thucydides the concise and preg- nant oratory of Pericles was combined with the antique and vigorous but artificial style of Antiphon's rhetoric. In the use of words, Thucydides is distinct and precise, and every word which he uses is significant and expressive. Even in him this degenerates, in some passages, into an attempt to make distinctions, after the manner of Prodicus, in the use of nearly synonymous words. * This definiteness of expression is aided by great copiousness of diction, and in this, Thucydides, like Antiphon, uses a great number of antique, poetical words, not for the mere purpose of ornament, as is the case with Gorgias, but because the language of the day sanctioned the use of these pithy and expressive phrases, f In his dialect, Thucy- dides kept closer to the old Attic forms than his contemporaries among the comic poets. Similarly, the constructions in Thucydides are marked by a freedom, which, on the whole, is more suitable to antique poetry than to prose ; and this has enabled him to form connexions of ideas, without an admix- ture of superfluous words, which disturb the connexion, and, conse- quently, with greater distinctness than would be possible with more limited and regular constructions. An instance of this is the liberty of construing verbal-nouns in the same way as the verbs from which they are derived. § These, and other things of the same kind, produce that rapidity of description, as the ancients call it, || which hits the mark at once. In the order of the words, too, Thucydides takes a liberty which is generally conceded to poets alone ; inasmuch as he sometimes arranges the ideas rather according to their real connexion or contrast than according to the grammatical construction. % f These expressions, which had become obsolete in the mean time, were called in later times yXuaaai ; hence, Dionysius complains of the yutnrnpa.rixov in the btylc of Thucydides. + See Chap. XXVII. at the end. § This is the origin of such expressions as the following : h oh Kioirux^'Si " the circumstance that a hostile city was not surrounded by walls of circumvallation ;" to ahro vffo a^avrav Ilia lo&e-fjM, " the case in which every individual, each for himself, entertains the same opinion ;" ii axivlvw; lovXn'a (not the same as ax.lvl'vio;), " a state of slavery in which one can live comfortably and free from all appre- hensions." II As in III. 39: pjra r«i voXtf/.turKToiv v/tag ffTay-t; lixQhl^ut, where the first words are placed together for the sake of contrast.
 * I. G9; II. 62; III. 16.39.
 * Tiip^o; ; <ryi[A<ZB 'ice;,