supreme crisis, when, as Nicias reminds the men about to embark, the fleet is all that remains of Athens and her great name[1] This, and the corresponding speech of Gylippus on the Syracusan side[2], are in a high degree powerful and pathetic; so, above all, is the last speech of Nicias before the retreat[3]. Nowhere else, perhaps, has Thucydides given so free a scope to his own rhetorical power; yet even here it is strictly subordinated to his primary purpose—that of faithfully presenting the cardinal facts of the situation as he conceived them.
§ 8. The expression of character in the Thucydidean speeches has the same kind of limitation which was generally observed in Attic tragedy. It is rather typical than individual. Thucydides seizes the broad and essential characteristics of the speaker, and is content with marking these. We are sometimes reminded of the direct simplicity with which the epic or tragic heroes introduce themselves: "I am Odysseus, the marvel of men for all wiles, and my fame goes up to heaven." "I am pious Aeneas, renowned above the stars[4]." "You voted for war," says Pericles, "and now you are angry with me,—a man who deems himself second to none in discerning
- ↑ vii. 61—64, ἡ ὑπόλοιπος πόλις καὶ τὸ μέγα ὄνομα τῶν Ἀθηνῶν
- ↑ vii. 65.
- ↑ vii. 76. The two last military speeches of Nicias take something of the political character from the fact that, as he says in both, the army is now the city: ἄνδρες γὰρ πόλις—a striking illustration of Sophocles, Oed. Tyr. 56.
- ↑ Od. ix. 19; Aen. i. 379; cf. Soph. Oed. Tyr. 8, αὐτὸς ὧδ' ἐλήλυθα, | ὁ πᾶσι κλεινὸς Οἰδίπους καλούμενος.
