chronology. In place of historical criticism we find a crude rationalism (e.g. ii. 45, vii. 129, viii. 8). Having no conception of the distinction between occasion and cause, he is content to find the explanation of great historical movements in trivial incidents or personal motives. An example of this is furnished by his account of the Ionian revolt, in which he fails to discover the real causes either of the movement or of its result. Indeed, it is clear that he regarded criticism as no part of his task as an historian. In vii. 152 he states the principles which have guided him—ἐγὼ δὲ ὀφείλω λέγειν τὰ λεγόμενα, πείθεσθαί γε μὲν οὐ παντάπασι ὀφείλω, καί μοι τοῦτο τὸ ἔπος ἐχέτω ἐς πάντα λόγον. In obedience to this principle he again and again gives two or more versions of a story. We are thus frequently enabled to arrive at the truth by a comparison of the discrepant traditions. It would have been fortunate if all ancient writers who lacked the critical genius of Thucydides had been content to adopt the practice of Herodotus. His accounts of battles are always unsatisfactory. The great battles, Marathon, Thermopylae, Salamis and Plataea, present a series of problems. This result is partly due to the character of the traditions which he follows—traditions which were to some extent inconsistent or contradictory, and were derived from different sources; it is, however, in great measure due to his inability to think out a strategical combination or a tactical movement. It is not too much to say that the battle of Plataea, as described by Herodotus, is wholly unintelligible. Most serious of all his deficiencies is his careless chronology. Even in the case of the 5th century, the data which he affords are inadequate or ambiguous. The interval between the Scythian expedition and the Ionian revolt is described by so vague an expression as μετὰ δὲ οὐ πολλὸν χρόνον ἄνεσις κακῶν ἦν (v. 28). In the history of the revolt itself, though he gives us the interval between its outbreak and the fall of Miletus (ἔκτῳ ἔτεῒ, vi. 18), he does not give us the interval between this and the battle of Ladē, nor does he indicate with sufficient precision the years to which the successive phases of the movement belong. Throughout the work professed synchronisms too often prove to be mere literary devices for facilitating a transition from one subject to another (cf. e.g. v. 81 with 89, 90; or vi. 51 with 87 and 94). In the 6th century, as Grote pointed out, a whole generation, or more, disappears in his historical perspective (cf. i. 30, vi. 125, v. 94, iii. 47, 48, v. 113 contrasted with v. 104 and iv. 162). The attempts to reconstruct the chronology of this century upon the basis of the data afforded by Herodotus (e.g. by Beloch, Rheinisches Museum, xlv., 1890, pp. 465-473) have completely failed.
In spite of all such defects Herodotus is an author, not only of unrivalled literary charm, but of the utmost value to the historian. If much remains uncertain or obscure, even in the history of the Persian Wars, it is chiefly to motives or policy, to topography or strategy, to dates or numbers, that uncertainty attaches. It is to these that a sober criticism will confine itself.
Thucydides is at once the father of contemporary history and the father of historical criticism. From a comparison of i. 1, i. 22 and v. 26, we may gather both the principles to which he adhered in the composition of his work and the conditions under which it was composed. It is Thucydides. seldom that the circumstances of an historical writer have been so favourable for the accomplishment of his task. Thucydides was a contemporary of the Twenty-Seven Years’ War in the fullest sense of the term. He had reached manhood at its outbreak, and he survived its close by at least half-a-dozen years. And he was more than a mere contemporary. As a man of high birth, a member of the Periclean circle, and the holder of the chief political office in the Athenian state, the strategia, he was not only familiar with the business of administration and the conduct of military operations, but he possessed in addition a personal knowledge of those who played the principal part in the political life of the age. His exile in the year 424 afforded him opportunities of visiting the scenes of distant operations (e.g. Sicily) and of coming in contact with the actors on the other side. He himself tells us that he spared no pains to obtain the best information available in each case. He also tells us that he began collecting materials for his work from the very beginning of the war. Indeed, it is probable that much of books i.-v. 24 was written soon after the Peace of Nicias (421), just as it is possible that the history of the Sicilian Expedition (books vi. and vii.) was originally intended to form a separate work. To the view, however, which has obtained wide support in recent years, that books i.-v. 22 and books vi. and vii. were separately published, the rest of book v. and book viii. being little more than a rough draught, composed after the author had adopted the theory of a single war of twenty-seven years’ duration, of which the Sicilian Expedition and the operations of the years 431–421 formed integral parts, there seem to the present writer to be insuperable objections. The work, as a whole, appears to have been composed in the first years of the 4th century, after his return from exile in 404, when the material already in existence must have been revised and largely recast. There are exceedingly few passages, such as iv. 48. 5, which appear to have been overlooked in the process of revision. It can hardly be questioned that the impression left upon the reader’s mind is that the point of view of the author, in all the books alike, is that of one writing after the fall of Athens.
The task of historical criticism in the case of the Peloponnesian War is widely different from its task in the case of the Persian Wars. It has to deal, not with facts as they appear in the traditions of an imaginative race, but with facts as they appeared to a scientific observer. Facts, indeed, are seldom in dispute. The question is rather whether facts of importance are omitted, whether the explanation of causes is correct, or whether the judgment of men and measures is just. Such inaccuracies as have been brought home to Thucydides on the strength, e.g. of epigraphic evidence, are, as a rule, trivial. His most serious errors relate to topographical details, in cases where he was dependent on the information of others. Sphacteria (see Pylos) (see G. B. Grundy, Journal of Hellenic Studies, xvi., 1896, p. 1) is a case in point. Nor have the difficulties connected with the siege of Plataea been cleared up either by Grundy or by others (see Grundy, Topography of the Battle of Plataea, &c., 1894). Where, on the contrary, he is writing at first hand his descriptions of sites are surprisingly correct. The most serious charge as yet brought against his authority as to matters of fact relates to his account of the Revolution of the Four Hundred, which appears, at first sight, to be inconsistent with the documentary evidence supplied by Aristotle’s Constitution of Athens (q.v.). It may be questioned, however, whether the documents have been correctly interpreted by Aristotle. On the whole, it is probable that the general course of events was such as Thucydides describes (see E. Meyer, Forschungen, ii. 406-436), though he failed to appreciate the position of Theramenes and the Moderate party, and was clearly misinformed on some important points of detail. With regard to the omission of facts, it is unquestionable that much is omitted that would not be omitted by a modern writer. Such omissions are generally due to the author’s conception of his task. Thus the internal history of Athens is passed over as forming no part of the history of the war. It is only where the course of the war is directly affected by the course of political events (e.g. by the Revolution of the Four Hundred) that the internal history is referred to. However much it may be regretted that the relations of political parties are not more fully described, especially in book v., it cannot be denied that from his standpoint there is logical justification even for the omission of the ostracism of Hyperbolus. There are omissions, however, which are not so easily explained. Perhaps the most notable instance is that of the raising of the tribute in 425 B.C. (see Delian League).
Nowhere is the contrast between the historical methods of Herodotus and Thucydides more apparent than in the treatment of the causes of events. The distinction between the occasion and the cause is constantly present to the mind of Thucydides, and it is his tendency to make too little rather than too much of the personal factor. Sometimes, however, it may be doubted whether his explanation of the causes of an event is adequate or correct. In tracing the causes of the Peloponnesian War itself,
