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, 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 [Greek: ho es Sikelian plous hos ou tosoutov gnomes hamartema en pros hous epeesan]). 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.[29] 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 _Pentecontaeteris_) 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.

Diodorus.

Plutarch.

The constitutions.

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 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 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 ([Greek: psephismaton sunagoge]) 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 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.

Inscriptions.

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. 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.

Xenophon.

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 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 makes the coast of Cyprus the scene of Cimon's naval victory, and finds no difficulty in putting it on the same day as the victory on shore on the banks of the Eurymedon, in Pamphylia. Only a few fragments remain of either writer, but Theopompus (q.v.) was largely used by Plutarch in several of the _Lives_, while Ephorus continues to be the main source of Diodorus' history, as far as the outbreak of the Sacred War (Fragments of Ephorus in Muller's _Fragmenta historicorum Graecorum_, vol.i.; of Theopompus in _Hellenica Oxyrhynchia, cum Theopompi et Cratippi fragmentis_, ed. B. P. Grenfell and A. S. Hunt, 1909).

It may be at least claimed for Xenophon (q.v.) that he is free from all taint of the rhetorical spirit. It may also be claimed for him that, as a witness, he is both honest and well-informed. But, if there is no justification for the charge of deliberate falsification, it cannot be denied that he had strong political prejudices, and that his narrative has suffered from them. His historical writings are the _Anabasis_, an account of the expedition of the Ten Thousand, the _Hellenica_ and the _Agesilaus_, a eulogy of the Spartan king. Of these the _Hellenica_ is far the most important for the student of history. It consists of two distinct parts (though there is no ground for the theory that the two parts were separately written and published), books i. and ii., and books iii. to vii. The first two books are intended as a continuation of Thucydides' work. They begin, quite abruptly, in the middle of the Attic year 411/10, and they carry the history down to the fall of the Thirty, in 403. Books iii. to vii., the _Hellenica_ proper, cover the period from 401 to 362, and give the histories of the Spartan and Theban hegemonies down to the death of Epaminondas. There is thus a gap of two years between the point at which the first part ends and that at which the second part begins. The two parts differ widely, both in their aim and in the arrangement of the material. In the first part Xenophon attempts, though not with complete success, to follow the chronological method of Thucydides, and to make each successive spring, when military and naval operations were resumed after the winter's interruption, the starting-point of a fresh section. The resemblance between the two writers ends, however, with the outward form of the narrative. All that is characteristic of Thucydides is absent in Xenophon. The latter writer shows neither skill in portraiture, nor insight into motives. He is deficient in the sense of proportion and of the distinction between occasion and cause. Perhaps his worst fault is a lack of imagination. To make a story intelligible it is necessary sometimes to put oneself in the reader's place, and to appreciate his ignorance of circumstances and events which would be perfectly familiar to the actors in the scene or to contemporaries. It was not given to Xenophon, as it was to Thucydides, to discriminate between the circumstances that are essential and those that are not essential to the comprehension of the story. In spite, therefore, of its wealth of detail, his narrative is frequently obscure. It is quite clear that in the trial of the generals, e.g., something is omitted. It may be supplied as Diodorus has supplied it (xiii. 101), or it may be supplied otherwise. It is probable that, when under cross-examination before the council, the generals, or some of them, disclosed the commission given to Theramenes and Thrasybulus. The important point is that Xenophon himself has omitted to supply it. As it stands his narrative is unintelligible. In the first two books, though there are omissions (e.g. the loss of Nisaea, 409 B.C.), they are not so serious as in the last five, nor is the bias so evident. It is true that if the account of the rule of the Thirty given in Aristotle's _Constitution of Athens_ be accepted, Xenophon must have deliberately misrepresented the course of events to the prejudice of Theramenes. But it is at least doubtful whether Aristotle's version can be sustained against Xenophon's, though it may be admitted, not only that there are mistakes as to details in the latter writer's narrative, but that less than justice is done to the policy and motives of the "Buskin." The _Hellenica_ was written, it should be remembered, at Corinth, after 362. More than forty years had thus elapsed since the events recorded in the first two books, and after so long an interval accuracy of detail, even where the detail is of importance, is not always to be expected.[30] In the second part the chronological method is abandoned. A subject once begun is followed out to its natural ending, so that sections of the narrative which are consecutive in order are frequently parallel in point of date. A good example of this will be found in