Note 158 — Chapter LXIII · THE RESTORED ATHENIAN DEMOCRACY, AFTER THE DEPOSITION OF THE FOUR HUNDRED, DOWN TO THE ARRIVAL OF CYRUS THE YOUNGER IN ASIA MINOR.

Thucyd. viii, 109. It is at this point that we have to part company with the historian Thucydidês, whose work not only closes without reaching any definite epoch or limit, but even breaks off, as we possess it, in the middle of a sentence.

The full extent of this irreparable loss can hardly be conceived, except by those who have been called upon to study his work with the profound and minute attention required from an historian of Greece. To pass from Thucydidês to the Hellenica of Xenophon, is a descent truly mournful; and yet, when we look at Grecian history as a whole, we have great reason to rejoice that even so inferior a work as the latter has reached us. The historical purposes and conceptions of Thucydidês, as set forth by himself in his preface, are exalted and philosophical to a degree altogether wonderful, when we consider that he had no preëxisting models before him from which to derive them; nor are the eight books of his work, in spite of the unfinished condition of the last, unworthy of these large promises, either in spirit or in execution. Even the peculiarity, the condensation, and the harshness, of his style, though it sometimes hides from us his full meaning, has the general effect of lending great additional force and of impressing his thoughts much more deeply upon every attentive reader.

During the course of my two last volumes, I have had frequent occasion to notice the criticisms of Dr. Arnold in his edition of Thucydidês, most generally on points where I dissented from him. I have done this, partly because I believe that Dr. Arnold’s edition is in most frequent use among all English readers of Thucydidês, partly because of the high esteem which I entertain for the liberal spirit, the erudition, and the judgment, which pervade his criticisms generally throughout the book. Dr. Arnold deserves, especially, the high commendation, not often to be bestowed even upon learned and exact commentators, of conceiving and appreciating antiquity as a living whole, and not merely as an aggregate of words and abstractions. His criticisms are continually adopted by Göller in the second edition of his Thucydidês, and to a great degree also by Poppo. Desiring, as I do sincerely, that his edition may long maintain its preëminence among English students of Thucydidês, I have thought it my duty at the same time to indicate many of the points on which his remarks either advance or imply views of Grecian history different from my own.