the rhetorical triumph of an hour[1]." That the intention of Thucydides has been fulfilled in his own sense is due largely to the speeches which form between a fourth and fifth of the whole work. It is chiefly by these that the facts of the Peloponnesian war are transformed into typical examples of universal laws and illuminated with a practical significance for the students of politics in every age and country. The scope of the speeches is seen best if we consider what the History would be without them. The narrative would remain, with a few brief comments on great characters or events, and those two passages in which Thucydides describes the moral effects of pestilence and of party-strife. But there would be little or no light on the inner workings of the Greek political mind, on the courses of reasoning which determined the action, on the whole play of feeling and opinion which lay behind the facts.
§ 2. The introduction of speeches became a regular part of ancient historiography, and came in again at the revival of literature, not quite going out, in Italy and France at least, till the end of the last century. But the followers of Thucydides were obeying an established tradition; he was the writer who had done most to establish it; indeed, he might properly be called its founder. The place of the
- ↑ i. 22. The τε after κτῆμα in the original marks the connection of the thought: "and so." Cp. i. 4, Μίνως . . . ἐκράτησε . . . τό τε λῃστικόν, ὡς εἰκός, καθῄρει: so 5, τό τε σιδηροφορεῖσθαι: 6, ἐγυμνώθησάν τε: 9, Ἀγαμέμνων τε.
