other. Thus the normal Spartan character is exhibited in its merits and its defects[1]. The political character of the Athenians is arraigned and defended[2]; their intellectual character is illustrated in its strength and its weakness[3]. And Thucydides shows a desire to comprehend these conceptions of national character in formulas, which he gives as epigrams to his speakers. The Spartan disposition, says an Athenian, might be described as one which regards everything that is pleasant as honourable, and everything that is expedient as just[4]. The Athenians, says a Corinthian, are, in brief, men who will neither rest nor allow others to rest[5]. Athens, says Pericles, might be described as the school of Greece, and the Athenian nature as the most gracefully versatile in the world[6].
§ 9. Those cases in which Thucydides gives merely a brief summary[7] of a speech or debate suggest how slight the materials may often have
- ↑ i. 68—72, 80—85.
- ↑ i. 68—72, 73—78.
- ↑ ii. 37f.; iii. 37—40.
- ↑ v. 105.
- ↑ i. 70.
- ↑ ii. 41. I regard the Melian dialogue as neither less nor more historical than those speeches in which Thucydides had to rely on a slight knowledge of the ξύμπασα γνώμη. I cannot suppose, with Classen, that Thucydides had any written documents to go upon. The frankness of the Athenians, which Grote finds startling, is Thucydidean: his wish to portray ruling motives is stronger than his regard for dramatic nicety.
- ↑ E.g. i. 72 (where the general lines of the discourse in 73—78 are indicated); iv. 21 (the general sense of Cleon's answer to the Spartan envoys); iv. 58 and vi. 32 (debates at Gela and Syracuse); viii. 53 (debate at Athens in 411 B.C.), etc.
