Page:Selections. Translated by H. St. J. Thackeray (1919).djvu/32

 *ties, Josephus, who devoted much attention to style, made a special study of the great masters. The use which he has made of his chief model forms an interesting study. Was it Dionysius of Halicarnassus (to whom, as we saw, he owed the title and arrangement of his Ant.) and his essays on the style of Thucydides that first introduced him to the historian of the Peloponnesian War? Or did he trace a likeness to himself in the great Athenian? Widely different as were the characters of the two men, there were points of similarity in their careers. Like Josephus, Thucydides combined the duties of general and historian of the great war; like him he failed as a military commander (IV. 104 ff.), and through his consequent exile was enabled to associate with the enemy and to view the war from the standpoint of both belligerents (V. 26). However that may be (and it is to the credit of our author that he does not suggest the comparison), there is a marked imitation of the style of Thucydides in portions of the Antiquities, especially in Books XVII-XIX, which possess peculiarities of their own. The imitation is seen in the recurrent use of some striking phrase, and occasionally in the bold attempt to reproduce the difficult and involved style characteristic of parts of Thucydides. One instance of a borrowed phrase must suffice. In his account of the plague of Athens, Thucydides writes, "When they were afraid to visit one another, the sufferers died in their solitude or if they ventured they perished, especially those who aspired to heroism." The phrase in italics has taken the fancy of Josephus, who employs it repeatedly. But imitation did not stop at the diction. The narrative, II. 51 (Jowett's translation).]