Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 February 2009
It was at one time almost universally believed, and is still believed by some scholars, that Thucydides cannot have written his account of the Pentekontaetia (I. 89–118. 2) before his return from exile because he refers in it (97. 2) to the of Hellanicus, in which an event belonging to the year 407/6 was mentioned. This argument in favour of a late date for the composition of the excursus has been disputed and is now much less widely supported. It has been suggested that the reference to Hellanicus in 97. 2, or the whole of that section, was added by Thucydides to a part of his work written much earlier, or that an edition of the including an account of the Pentekontaetia may have been published long before 406 and the work have been subsequently continued.
page 53 note 1 Patzer, H., Das Problem der Geschicht stchreibung des Thukydides (1937), 104Google Scholar; De Romilly, J., Thucydide et l'impérialisme athénien (1947), 23–24Google Scholar; Schmid-Stählin, , Gesch. der griech. Literatur, i. 5 (1948), 131.Google Scholar
page 53 note 2 Throughout this paper the references to Thucydides by chapter and section only are to Book 1.
page 53 note 3 Ziegler, K., Rhein. Mus. Ixxviii (1929), 66, n. 2.Google Scholar
page 53 note 4 Hammond, N. G. L., C.Q. xxxiv (1940), 149–50.Google Scholar
page 53 note 5 Gomme, A. W., Historical Commentary on Thucydides, i (1945), 6, n. 3, 280, 362, n. 2. Gomme also (op. cit. 264–6) disposes of the arguments that references to the walls of Athens (93. 2) and of the Peiraeus (93. 5) were written after 404.Google Scholar
page 53 note 6 Ziegler, Ioc. cit.
page 53 note 7 J.H.S. lxxi (1951), 11.Google Scholar
page 53 note 8 de Romilly, , op. cit. 12, points out thata single phrase referring to Aegina in 7. 57. 2 is believed by Schadewaldt to date two entire looks, by Schwartz to date two chapters, and by Rehm to date only the reference to Aegina.Google Scholar
page 53 note 9 Op. cit. 103–9.
page 54 note 1 Cf. the admirable study by Finley, J. H., Harv. Stud., Suppl. Vol. i (1940), 255–97, though I do not agree with his conclusion that Thucydides wrote his history wholly after 404.Google Scholar
page 54 note 2 Cf. Grundy, G. B., Thucydides, i 2 (1948), 441–4.Google Scholar
page 54 note 3 Op. cit. 363, n. 1.
page 54 note 4 Op. cit. 113.
page 54 note 5 So Stahl, Classen, Forbes, and Maddalena.
page 54 note 6 So Gomm, e, op. cit. 256 (n. ad loc.), but it is surely preferable to regard the aorist as virtually ingressive, cf. 6. 33. 6 where is similarly used.Google Scholar
page 54 note 7 Op. cit. 363, n. 1. He also draws attention to another difficulty, namely that ‘we should expect the longer preface, with the reason given for the whole excursus (97. 2), to be the later one, or, if it had already been written for the earlier and shorter form xof the excursus, that it would have been transferred to the beginning of the later form at 89. 1’.
page 54 note 8 in 97. 1 is a convenient phrase, which is only slightly inaccurate. The first event recorded in 98. 1 occurred about two and a half years after the end of the Persian War. In 118. 2, which certainly refers to the whole excursus, the limits of time are much more accurately defined.
page 54 note 1 89–96 which cover a period of two year or a little more, amount to little less thar half the length of 98–117, which cover a period of nearly forty years.
page 55 note 1 Op. cit. 362. He evidently refers to 97–118. 2 and not to 89–96, which, as stated above, he believes to be ‘the beginning of a rewriting of the whole excursus’.
page 55 note 3 See above, p. 53 with n. 3.
page 55 note 4 Gomme, loc. cit.
page 55 note 5 ‘He gives a few figures for the duratior of events and a few others for intervals between events’ (Gomme, , op. cit. 361)Google Scholar. Some of these figures illustrate characteristics oi the Athenians which might be deemed tc have contributed to the rapid expansion oi their power: for example, that they invaded Boeotia on the sixty-second day after the battle of Tanagra (108. 2) and that they continued their campaign in Egypt for six years (110. 1). On the other hand, to have established the precise date of any given event in the Pentekontaetia could scarcely have helped Thucydides to substantiate his main thesis. He undoubtedly knew some dates which he has not chosen to mention in his excursus (Gomme, , op. cit. 362 and 389–91), and it is arguable that he omits them because in this context they did not seem to him to be important.Google Scholar
page 55 note 6 It is significant that his complaint that his predecessors had neglected the Pentekontaetia (97. 2) occurs in the preface to the second part of the excursus.
page 55 note 7 Grundy, , op. cit. i.2 479–83.Google Scholar
page 55 note 8 His statement that he began his work on the war as soon as it broke out (1. 1), which must refer to the compilation of notes, applies only to the events of the war itself and its immediate antecedents. A point to be remembered is that during the years of uneasy peace between 421 and 413 he could, and doubtless did, consult Athenians travelling abroad, but they did not necessarily include any whose knowledge of the Pentekontaetia was greater than his.
page 56 note 1 The possibility that he wrote the excursus during the period of his command in Thrace is perhaps sufficiently remote to be discounted. This period was probably not a long one, and he can scarcely have imposed upon himself the handicap involved by absence from Athens when there was every reason to expect that he would soon return.
page 56 note 2 With where they are Athenians (98. 1; 100. 1; 102. 1; 105. 2 and 4; 108. 2 and 5; in. 2; 112. 2; 113. 1; 114. 3; 116. 1) and where they are Spartans (107. 2; 114. 2). In 117. 2 a different formula is adopted in listing Athenian commanders of fleets sent to Samos. In 112. 3 and 4 and 114. 1 individuals are mentioned in genitive absolutes but not as commanders.
page 56 note 3 Some of the same persons appear in other cases (cf. 104. 1; 109. 2 and 3; 110. 2; in. 1), also Amyrtaeus (no. 2) and Pisuthnes (115. 4 and 5).
page 56 note 4 Lys. 801–4; Eccles. 303–5.
page 56 note 5 Diod. 11. 81–84. I’ is possible that Diodorus may himself be partly responsible for these eulogies and their extravagance.
page 57 note 1 Gomme, , op. cit. 363.Google Scholar
page 57 note 2 That he used Peloponnesian sources during his exile is attested by his own statement in 5. 26. 5, though it refers only to evidence on the events of the Peloponnesian War.
page 57 note 3 In 58. 1 he asserts almost as positively that the Spartan magistrates promised an invasion of Attica if Potidaea were attacked; but this information was probably communicated to him by the Corinthian Aristeus (cf. my paper in C.Q. xli (1947), 25–30), who may well have been among the Corinthians sent with the Potidaean envoys to Sparta.Google Scholar
page 57 note 4 Cf. Maddalena, n. ad loc.
page 57 note 5 Reece, D W., J.H.S. lxx (1950), 75–76.Google Scholar
page 58 note 1 I have discussed this point, and others in which I believe his narrative to be defective, in C.P. xlv (1950), 209–16.Google Scholar
page 58 note 2 Gomme, , op. cit. 309–10, argues that ‘the activities of this year, culminating in the victory of the Athenian reserves over the Corinthians, were memorable—hence the much greater detail with which Thucydides narrates the campaign in the Megarid’. This view is not wholly convincing: it is surely more natural to expect Thucydides to enlarge upon the most important event of a memorable year than upon the last.Google Scholar
page 59 note 1 Gomme, , op. cit. 366–9.Google Scholar
page 59 note 2 Cf. Adcock, , op. cit. 12.Google Scholar
page 59 note 3 His brevity is doubtless influenced by the fact that Herodotus (9. 114–18) had given a full account of these events.
page 59 note 4 According to the confused narrative of Diodorus the work was speedily done (11. 43. 2). He records the building operations at Athens under 478/7, those at the Piraeus under 477/6, and his chronology may be correct (Gomme, , op. cit. 262).Google Scholar
page 59 note 5 Plutarch (Them. 19) in fact follows a different tradition.
page 59 note 6 Meyer, E., Hermes, xl (1905), 561–9.Google Scholar
page 59 note 7 Cf. 20. 2. Characteristically, however, he confirms that the wall was hastily built by reference to its appearance in his own day (93. a).
page 60 note 1 Cf. 14. 3.
page 60 note 2 See below, p. 65.
page 61 note 1 It is clear from 128. 3–135. I that he was in fact equally well informed about Pausanias.
page 61 note 2 It is true that 128. 3 takes up the story of Pausanias at the point where 95. 5 left it, but 128. 5–130. 2 deals wiht his behaviour in the course of his first visit to the Hellespont and therefore covers the same period as 95. 1–5, though in greater detail and from a more exclusively personal angle.
page 61 note 3 Das Geschichtswerk des Thukydides (1919), 155–6. His whole chapter (154–67) is instructive, though his late dating of these excursuses is based on the view, no longer widely accepted, that Thucydides embarked upon a fundamental revision of his work after the fall of Athens. Münch, H., Studien zu den Exkursen des Thukydides (1935), 16–17, points out that the first excursus deals with political, the second with personal, activities of the two leaders, but this fact does not destroy the unity to which Schwartz draws attention.Google Scholar
page 61 note 4 Grundy, , op. cit. i.2451Google Scholar; de Romilly, Thucydide i (Budé, which has been published since this article was written), Notice, xliv, n. 3. Among his objects in inserting the excursus here was doubtless to contrast the two leaders as representatives of Sparta and Athens (Schwartz, , op. cit. 158–61).Google Scholar
page 62 note 1 Méautis, G., Ant. Class. xx (1951), 297–304CrossRefGoogle Scholar, has recently discussed the general character of the narrative describing the flight of Themistocles, cf. Flacelière, R., R.É.A. lv (1953), 14Google Scholar. Cornford, F. M., Thucydid Mythistoricu (1907), 137 with n. 2, goes toe far in asserting that ‘what he has left is dramatized legend, not the historical facts out of which it was worked up’ (on Pausanias) and that the chapters on Themistocles are ‘rationalized Saga-history influenced by drama’.Google Scholar
page 62 note 2 Only in 132. 5 and 138. I and in 134. 1 suggest uncertainty.
page 62 note 3 C.Q. xli (1947), 28, where I did not refei to these two passages because they do nol belong to the period of the Peloponnesian War or its immediate antecedents.Google Scholar
page 62 note 4 138. 4,
page 62 note 5 Schwartz, , op. cit. 30Google Scholar, n. 1; Münch, , op. cit. 23–24Google Scholar; and Méautis, , op. cit. 298, n. 2, believe that Thucydides wrote them himself. M. van den Hout, Mnemos, ii (4th series, 1949), 34–36 and 144, maintains that they are authentic, though somewhat altered by Thucydides.Google Scholar
page 62 note 6 Schaefer, H., R.E. xviii. 4 (1949), 2577, seeks to defend the authenticity of the letters by referring to the treaties between Sparta and Persia of which the texts are reproduced in Book 8. The analogy is, however, misleading: copies of contemporary official documents are far more likely to have been accessible to Thucydides than copies of personal letters written many years ago.Google Scholar
page 62 note 7 Olmstead, A. T., Amer. Journ. of Semitic Languages, xlix (1932–1933), 156–61.Google Scholar
page 62 note 8 Cf. the parallels cited by Gomme, , op. cit. 432 (note on 129. 3).Google Scholar
page 62 note 9 4. 50. 1–2, where he records the substance of a letter from Artaxerxes to the Spartans intercepted by the Athenians.
page 63 note 1 Op. cit. 162, ‘sie (sc. the accounts o: Pausanias and Themistocles) sind ein Experiment des greisen Schriftstellers’, cf Münch, , op. cit. 28Google Scholar. Grundy, , op. cit. i.2 450–1 (cf. 489), does not consider that the dat at which the chapters on Pausanias wen written is determinable, but he is inclined tc assign the chapters on Themistocles to wha he believes to have been the first draft.Google Scholar
page 63 note 2 See above, p. 61, n. 3.
page 63 note 3 The further contention of Schwartz, , op cit. 161–2, that Thucydides, when writing about the treatment of Pausanias anc Themistocles by Sparta and Athens respectively, must have had in mind the treatmen of Lysander and Alcibiades is over-subtle. I is not the practice of Thucydides to draw parallels, directly or by implication, between the events of different periods. There were instances of injustice and ingratitude on the part of the Athenian democracy during the Archidamian War, cf. 2. 65. 3 and 4. 65. 3–4.Google Scholar
page 63 note 4 Op. cit. 58–67.
page 63 note 5 Ziegler, , op. cit. 63Google Scholar. The view of Jaeger, W., Paideia (Eng. trans., 1939), i. 382, that ‘it was the war that made Thucydides a historian’ seems to me to overestimate the dependence of Thucydides the historian upon Thucydides the statesman and admiral, though it was probably the war that caused him to create a new kind of historical writing.Google Scholar
page 63 note 6 Op. cit. 11 (cf. Grundy, , op. cit. i.2 442, ‘it does not deal with a single incident which is unconnected with Attic history).Google Scholar
page 64 note 1 See above, pp. 59–61.
page 64 note 2 It is immaterial whether this source consisted of a single work or of two separate works, the one devoted to Pausanias and the other to Themistocles.
page 64 note 3 Cf. 20. 3–21. 1.
page 64 note 4 It cannot be legitimately argued that if Thucydides had studied the career of Themistocles he would have been better informed about Athenian activities between 477 and 470 (which seems to be the most probable date for the ostracism of Themistocles). It does not appear that Themistocles played any part in the foreign relations of Athens in these years, and Thucydides is not concerned with the internal history of the period (cf. 97. 1, and Gomme, , op. cit. 385–7).Google Scholar
page 64 note 5 Jacoby, F., F. Gr. Hist. 107 F 1–11 (ii. B. 516–19).Google Scholar
page 65 note 1 Laqueur, R., R.E. iii A (1929), 2466–7Google Scholar; Jacoby, , op. cit. ii D 343–4Google Scholar; Schmid-Stahlin, , op. cit. i. 2 (1934), 676–7.Google Scholar
page 65 note 1 Ion of Chios also seems to have been unsympathetic towards Themistocles, but Jacoby, , C.Q. xli (1947), 12, concludes that his Epidemiai cannot have dealt with Themistocles in any great detail. Nothing is known of the work in which Charon of Lampsacus (F. Gr. Hist. 262 F 11) referred to the relations of Themistocles with Artaxerxes after his flight to Asia.Google Scholar
page 65 note 3 In 138. 3, Thucydides seems to be contesting the view that Themistocles was deeply indebted to the teaching of others, as Kerferd, G. B., C.R. lxiv (1950), 9Google Scholar, maintains. Stesimbrotus referred to the teachers of Themistocles (F 2) and, because he depreciated him, is likely to have been among the advocates of this view and perhaps was its originator. Gomme, , op. cit. 442Google Scholar (n. ad loc), denies that these words refer to what Themistocles was said to have learned from others, and Wade-Gery, H. T., J.H.S. lxix (1949), 84, seems inclined to agree. There is, however, evidence that the question whether Themistocles owed his success to his teachers or to natural ability was much debated (Xen. Mem. 4. 2. 2, cited by Kerferd, loc. cit.), and contemporary readers of Thucydides, being familiar with this controversy, would probably have no hesitation in interpreting these somewhat obscure words as a contribution to it.Google Scholar
page 65 note 4 See above, p. 60; cf. Aristoph. Eq. 813–19, 884–5.
page 65 note 5 Arist. 24. 1–2, cited by Gomme, , op. cit. 262Google Scholar, cf. Hignett, C., History of the Athenian Constitution (1952), 184.Google Scholar
page 66 note 1 Cf. 23. 6 with 118. 2 (and the last sentence of 97. 2).
page 66 note 2 Cf. Romilly, de, Thucydide et l'impérialisme athénien 23–28, who dates the excursus late but maintains (23) that ‘rien ne permet de supposer que l'idée de I' en ait jamais été absente’.Google Scholar
page 66 note 3 The brief account of the Pentekontaetia in 18. 2–19 perhaps suggests that when he wrote it Thucydides did not contemplate his excursus (Grundy, , op. cit. i.2422–3)Google Scholar; but the two accounts were written to support different theses. They have no real point of contact unless die disputed in the last sentence of 19 refers to die Athenians alone, and Delachaux, A., Notes critiques sur Thucydide (1925), 29–30, seems to me to have shown conclusively that it refers to both the Athenians and the Spartans.Google Scholar
page 66 note 4 C.Q. ii (new series, 1952), 140 with n. 1.
page 66 note 5 It seems improbable that for some of the speeches in Book 1, notably that of Archidamus (80–85) which was delivered at a meeting attended only by Spartans (79. 1, cf. 87. 4), Thucydides can have obtained knowledge even (22. 1) before his exile. It is much easier to believe that he obtained reports of them when he was in exile from Peloponnesian informants.