Note 57 — Chapter XLVII · FROM THE THIRTY YEARS’ TRUCE, FOURTEEN YEARS BEFORE THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR, DOWN TO THE BLOCKADE OF POTIDÆA, IN THE YEAR BEFORE THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR.

It appears very improbable that this Thucydidês can be the historian himself. If it be Thucydidês son of Melêsias, we must suppose him to have been restored from ostracism before the regular time,—a supposition indeed noway inadmissible in itself, but which there is nothing else to countenance. The author of the Life of Sophoklês, as well as most of the recent critics, adopt this opinion.

On the other hand, it may have been a third person named Thucydidês; for the name seems to have been common, as we might guess from the two words of which it is compounded. We find a third Thucydidês mentioned viii, 92—a native of Pharsalus: and the biographer, Marcellinus seems to have read of many persons so called (Θουκύδιδαι πολλοὶ, p. xvi, ed. Arnold). The subsequent history of Thucydidês son of Melêsias, is involved in complete obscurity. We do not know the incident to which the remarkable passage in Aristophanês (Acharn. 703) alludes,—compare Vespæ, 946: nor can we confirm the statement which the Scholiast cites from Idomeneus, to the effect that Thucydidês was banished and fled to Artaxerxes: see Bergk. Reliq. Com. Att. p. 61.