A source-book of ancient history - The Search For Mecca

Thucydides 71
While Herodotus was putting the last touches to his His- Thucydides,
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about 4651,?)-
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tory, and the Peloponnesian War was in its earliest stage, 400.
Thucydides in the prime of life was engaged in writing an lb. 241 f.
account of the latter conflict. "Thucydides, an Athenian,"
he tells us, "wrote the history of the war in which
the Peloponnesians and the Athenians fought against
one another. He began to write when they first took up
arms, believing that it would be great and memorable
above any previous war." "Of the events of the war I
have not ventured to speak from any chance information,
nor according to any notion of my own; I have described
nothing but what I either saw myself or learned from others
of whom I made the most careful and particular inquiry.
The task was a laborious one because eye-witnesses of the
same occurrences gave different accounts of them, as they
remembered or were interested in the actions of one side
or the other. And very likely the strictly historical character
of my narrative may be disappointing to
the ear.
But if he who desires to have before his eyes a true picture
of the events which have happened, and of the like events
which may be expected to happen hereafter in the order
of human things, shall pronounce what I have written
to be useful, then I shall be satisfied. My history is an
everlasting possession, not a prize composition which is
heard and forgotten."
In contrast with the popular history
of Herodotus, this work was composed for the general
and statesman; hence though narrow and special, it is far
deeper and more philosophic.
As we pass from the fifth to the fourth century—from Fourth Cen-
Thucydides to Xenophon—we perceive within the his- phon, about
torical field a marked decline in style and in intellectual
430-354 B.C.
power. Yet Xenophon, as a soldier of fortune and a man Ancient
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of wide experience, gives us mvaluable information con-
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