Note 135 — Chapter IV · THE PROBLEM OF WORLD-HISTORY

There is one famous episode in Greek history that may be thought to contradict this—the race against time of the galley sent to Mitylene to countermand the order of massacre (Thucydides, III, 49). But we observe that Thucydides gives twenty times the space to the debates at Athens that he gives to the drama of the galley-rowers pulling night and day to save life. And we are told that it was the Mitylenean ambassadors who spared no expense to make it worth the rowers’ while to win, whereupon “there arose such a zeal of rowing that....” The final comment is, strictly construing Thucydides’s own words: “Such was the magnitude of the danger that Mitylene passed by” (παρὰ τοσοῦτον μὲν ἡτοσοῦτον μὲν ἡ Μυτιλήνη ἦλθε κινδύνου), a phrase which recalls forcibly what has just been said regarding the “situation-drama.”—Tr.