Such being the spirit in which he approached his task, it is in teresting to enquire what were the points which he himself con sidered to be distinctive in his method of executing it. His Greek predecessors in the recording of events had been, he conceived, of two classes. First, there were the epic poets, with Homer at their head, whose characteristic tendency, in the eyes of Thucyd ides, is to exaggerate the greatness or splendour of things past. Secondly, there were the Ionian prose writers whom he calls "chroniclers" (see LOGOGRAPHO whose general object was to diffuse a knowledge of legends, preserved by oral tradition, and of written documents (usually lists of officials or genealogies) pre served in public archives; and they published their materials as they found them, without criticism. Thucydides describes their work by the word EvvrcKvat but his own by Evrypiort•etv—the difference between the terms answering to that between compila tion of a somewhat mechanical kind and historical composition, in a higher sense. The vice of the "chroniclers," in his view, is that they cared only for popularity, and took no pains to make their narratives trustworthy. Herodotus was presumably re garded by him as in the same general category.
In contrast with these predecessors Thucydides has subjected his materials to the most searching scrutiny. The ruling principle of his work has been strict adherence to carefully verified facts. "As to the deeds done in the war, I have not thought myself at liberty to record them on hearsay from the first informant or on arbitrary conjecture. My account rests either on personal knowl edge or on the closest possible scrutiny of each statement made by others. The process of research was laborious, because con flicting accounts were given by those who had witnessed the several events, as partiality swayed or memory served them." The Speeches.—It might be supposed that the speeches which Thucydides has introduced into his History conflict with this standard of scientific accuracy; it is, therefore, well to consider their nature and purpose rather closely. The speeches constitute between a fourth and a fifth part of the History. If they were eliminated, an admirable narrative would indeed remain, with a few comments, usually brief, on the more striking characters and events. But we should lose all the most vivid light on the inner workings of the Greek political mind, on the motives of the actors and the arguments which they used—in a word, on the whole play of contemporary feeling and opinion. To the speeches is due in no small measure the imperishable intellectual interest of the History, since it is chiefly by the speeches that the facts of the Peloponnesian War are so lit up with keen thought as to become illustrations of general laws, and to acquire a permanent sugges tiveness for the student of politics. When Herodotus made his persons hold conversations or deliver speeches, he was following the precedent of epic poetry; his tone is usually colloquial rather than rhetorical ; he is merely making thought and motive vivid in the way natural to a simple age. Thucydides is the real founder
of the tradition by which historians were so long held to be war ranted in introducing set speeches of their own composition. His own account of his practice is given in the following words : "As to the speeches made on the eve of the war, or in its course, I have found it difficult to retain a memory of the precise words which I had heard spoken; and so it was with those who brought me reports. But I have made the persons say what it seemed to me most opportune for them to say in view of each situation ; at the same time I have adhered as closely as possible to the general sense of what was actually said." So far as the language of the speeches is concerned, then, Thucydides plainly avows that it is mainly or wholly his own. As a general rule, there is little at tempt to mark different styles. The case of Pericles, whom Thucyd ides must have repeatedly heard, is probably an exception: the Thucydidean speeches of Pericles offer several examples of that bold imagery which Aristotle and Plutarch agree in ascribing to him, while the "Funeral Oration," especially, has a certain majesty of rhythm, a certain union of impetuous movement with lofty grandeur, which the historian has given to no other speaker. Such strongly marked characteristics as the curt bluntness of the Spar tan ephor Sthenelaidas, or the insolent vehemence of Alcibiades, are also indicated. But the dramatic truth of the speeches gen erally resides in the matter, not in the form. In regard to those speeches which were delivered at Athens before his banishment in (and seven such speeches are contained in the History) Thucydides could rely either on his own recollection or on the sources accessible to a resident citizen. In these cases there is good reason to believe that he has reproduced the substance of what was actually said. In other cases he had to trust to more or less imperfect reports of the "general sense"; and in some in stances, no doubt, the speech represents simply his own conception of what it would have been "most opportune" to say. The most evident of such instances occur in the addresses of leaders to their troops. The historian's aim in these military harangues (which are usually short) is to bring out the points of a strategical situa tion; a modern writer would have attained the object by com ments prefixed or subjoined to his account of the battle. The comparative indifference of Thucydides to dramatic verisimilitude in these military orations is curiously shown by the fact that the speech of the general on the one side is sometimes as distinctly a reply to the speech of the general on the other as if they had been delivered in debate. We may be sure, however, that, wher ever Thucydides had any authentic clue to the actual tenor of a speech, he preferred to follow that clue rather than to draw on his own invention. Why, however, did he not content himself with simply stating in his own person, the arguments and opinions which he conceived to have been prevalent? The question must be viewed from the standpoint of a Greek in the 5th century B.C. Epic poetry had then for many generations exercised a powerful influence over the Greek mind. Homer had accustomed Greeks to look for two elements in any complete expression of human energy—first, an account of a man's deeds, then an image of his mind in the report of his words. The Homeric heroes are ex hibited both in action and in speech. Further, the contemporary readers of Thucydides were men habituated to a civic life in which public speech played an all-important part. Every adult citizen of a Greek democracy was a member of the assembly which de bated and decided great issues. The law courts, the festivals, the drama, the market-place itself, ministered to the Greek love of animated description. To a Greek of that age a written history of political events would have seemed strangely insipid if speech "in the first person," had been absent from it, especially if it did not offer some mirror of those debates which were inseparably as sociated with the central interests and the decisive moments of political life. In making historical persons say what they might have said, Thucydides confined that oratorical licence to the pur pose which is its best justification; with him it is strictly dra matic, an aid to the complete presentment of action, by the vivid expression of ideas and arguments which were really current at the time. Among later historians who continued the practice, Polybius, Sallust and Tacitus most resemble Thucydides in this particular.