modern writers are disposed to allow more weight to the commercial rivalry of Corinth; while in the case of the Sicilian expedition, they would actually reverse his judgment (ii. 65 ὁ ἐς Σικελίαν πλοῦς ὃς οὐ τοσοῦτον γνώμης ἁμάρτημα ἦν πρὸς οὓς ἐπῄεσαν). To us it seems that the very idea of the expedition implied a gigantic miscalculation of the resources of Athens and of the difficulty of the task. His judgments of men and of measures have been criticized by writers of different schools and from different points of view. Grote criticized his verdict upon Cleon, while he accepted his estimate of the policy of Pericles. More recent writers, on the other hand, have accepted his view of Cleon, while they have selected for attack his appreciation alike of the policy and the strategy of Pericles. He has been charged, too, with failure to do justice to the statesmanship of Alcibiades.[1] There are cases, undoubtedly, in which the balance of recent opinion will be adverse to the view of Thucydides. There are many more in which the result of criticism has been to establish his view. That he should occasionally have been mistaken in his judgment and his views is certainly no detraction from his claim to greatness.
On the whole, it may be said that while the criticism of Herodotus, since Grote wrote, has tended seriously to modify our view of the Persian Wars, as well as of the earlier history, the criticism of Thucydides, in spite of its imposing bulk, has affected but slightly our view of the course of the Peloponnesian War. The labours of recent workers in this field have borne most fruit where they have been directed to subjects neglected by Thucydides, such as the history of political parties, or the organization of the empire (G. Gilbert’s Innere Geschichte Athens im Zeitalter des pel. Krieges is a good example of such work).
In regard to Thucydides’ treatment of the period between the Persian and Peloponnesian Wars (the so-called Pentecontaëteris) it should be remembered that he does not profess to give, even in outline, the history of this period as a whole. The period is regarded simply as a prelude to the Peloponnesian War. There is no attempt to sketch the history of the Greek world or of Greece proper during this period. There is, indeed, no attempt to give a complete sketch of Athenian history. His object is to trace the growth of the Athenian Empire, and the causes that made the war inevitable. Much is therefore omitted not only in the history of the other Greek states, especially the Peloponnesian, but even in the history of Athens. Nor does Thucydides attempt an exact chronology. He gives us a few dates (e.g. surrender of Ithome, in the tenth year, i. 103; of Thasos, in the third year, i. 101; duration of the Egyptian expedition six years, i. 110; interval between Tanagra and Oenophyta 61 days, i. 108; revolt of Samos, in the sixth year after the Thirty Years’ Truce, i. 115), but from these data alone it would be impossible to reconstruct the chronology of the period. In spite of all that can be gleaned from our other authorities, our knowledge of this, the true period of Athenian greatness, must remain slight and imperfect as compared with our knowledge of the next thirty years.
Of the secondary authorities for this period the two principal ones are Diodorus (xi. 38 to xii. 37) and Plutarch. Diodorus is of value chiefly in relation to Sicilian affairs, to which he devotes about a third of this section of his work and for which he is almost our sole authority. His source for Diodorus. Sicilian history is the Sicilian writer Timaeus (q.v.), an author of the 3rd century B.C. For the history of Greece Proper during the Pentecontaetia Diodorus contributes comparatively little of importance. Isolated notices of particular events (e.g. the Synoecism of Elis, 471 B.C., or the foundation of Amphipolis, 437 B.C.), which appear to be derived from a chronological writer, may generally be trusted. The greater part of his narrative is, however, derived from Ephorus, who appears to have had before him little authentic information for this period of Greek history other than that afforded by Thucydides’ work. Four of Plutarch’s Lives are concerned with this period, viz. Themistocles, Aristides, Cimon and Pericles. From the Aristides little can be gained. Plutarch, in this biography, appears to be mainly dependent upon Idomeneus of Lampsacus, an excessively untrustworthy Plutarch. writer of the 3rd century B.C., who is probably to be credited with the invention of the oligarchical conspiracy at the time of the battle of Plataea (ch. 13), and of the decree of Aristides, rendering all four classes of citizens eligible for the archonship (ch. 22). The Cimon, on the other hand, contains much that is valuable; such as, e.g. the account of the battle of the Eurymedon (chs. 12 and 13). To the Pericles we owe several quotations from the Old Comedy. Two other of the Lives, Lycurgus and Solon, are amongst our most important sources for the early history of Sparta and Athens respectively. Of the two (besides Pericles) which relate to the Peloponnesian War, Alcibiades adds little to what can be gained from Thucydides and Xenophon; the Nicias, on the other hand, supplements Thucydides’ narrative of the Sicilian expedition with many valuable details, which, it may safely be assumed, are derived from the contemporary historian, Philistus of Syracuse. Amongst the most valuable material afforded by Plutarch are the quotations, which occur in almost all the Lives, from the collection of Athenian decrees (ψηφισμάτων συναγωγή) formed by the Macedonian writer Craterus, in the 3rd century B.C. Two other works may be mentioned in connexion with the history of Athens. For the history of the Athenian Constitution The constitutions. down to the end of the 5th century B.C. Aristotle’s Constitution of Athens (q.v.) is our chief authority. The other Constitution of Athens, erroneously attributed to Xenophon, a tract of singular interest both on literary and historical grounds, throws a good deal of light on the internal condition of Athens, and on the system of government, both of the state and of the empire, in the age of the Peloponnesian War, during the earlier years of which it was composed.
To the literary sources for the history of Greece, especially of Athens, in the 5th century B.C. must be added the epigraphic. Few inscriptions have been discovered which date back beyond the Persian Wars. For the latter half of the 5th century they are both numerous and important. Inscriptions. Of especial value are the series of Quota-lists, from which can be calculated the amount of tribute paid by the subject-allies of Athens from the year 454 B.C. onwards. The great majority of the inscriptions of this period are of Athenian origin. Their value is enhanced by the fact that they relate, as a rule, to questions of organization, finance and administration, as to which little information is to be gained from the literary sources.
For the period between the Persian and Peloponnesian Wars Busolt, Griechische Geschichte, iii. 1, is indispensable. Hill’s Sources of Greek History, B.C. 478–431 (Oxford, 1897) is excellent. It gives the most important inscriptions in a convenient form.
III. The 4th Century to the Death of Alexander.—Of the historians who flourished in the 4th century the sole writer whose works have come down to us is Xenophon. It is a singular accident of fortune that neither of the two authors, who at once were most representative of their age and did most Xenophon. to determine the views of Greek history current in subsequent generations, Ephorus (q.v.) and Theopompus (q.v.), should be extant. It was from them, rather than from Herodotus, Thucydides or Xenophon that the Roman world obtained its knowledge of the history of Greece in the past, and its conception of its significance. Both were pupils of Isocrates, and both, therefore, bred up in an atmosphere of rhetoric. Hence their popularity and their influence. The scientific spirit of Thucydides was alien to the temper of the 4th century, and hardly more congenial to the age of Cicero or Tacitus. To the rhetorical spirit, which is common to both, each added defects peculiar to himself. Theopompus is a strong partisan, a sworn foe to Athens and to Democracy. Ephorus, though a military historian, is ignorant of the art of war. He is also incredibly careless and uncritical. It is enough to point to his description of the battle of the Eurymedon (Diodorus xi. 60-62), in which, misled by an epigram, which he supposed to relate to this engagement (it really refers to the Athenian victory off Salamis in Cyprus, 449 B.C.), he
- ↑ For a defence of Thucydides’ judgment on all three statesmen, see E. Meyer, Forschungen, ii. 296-379.
