The ancient Greek historians (Harvard lectures) by J. B. Bury.

iv THUCYDIDES 111
-as a rough test of distinction. But on what does
this difficulty depend? It depends on stylistic
technique. There is no doubt that Thucydides
was influenced by the rhetorical school of Gorgias,
though he was not dominated by it. He modified
it by peculiarities of his own; but the affinity is
unmistakably shown in the artificial balancing of
clauses, the artificial verbal antitheses, the poetical
phrase. Generally he keeps this tendency well in
hand, but in some passages he deliberately allows
it to run riot, and then he becomes obscure because
the grammatical constructions have to be twisted
unnaturally to subserve verbal effects. Some of
these crooked passages produced upon a Greek
ear almost the effect of dithyrambs released from
the bonds of metre. Dionysius in his instructive
criticism takes two passages as conspicuous for this
fault (as he considered it),-the dialogue of the
Athenian and Melian diplomatists, and the reflexions upon the psychological and social aspects of
civil sedition. Both might be described as elaborate
studies in this kind of technique-the "obscure
and contorted style." It is unnecessary, nor have
I time, to illustrate it at length, but I will give one
brief example. It is said in the Funeral Oration
of Pericles, about soldiers who had fallen in battle:
o' "'evvaLova'O a T -e oTE /to 0o/olot) KaYt vre7Xevr7ja'L vvELECTpr7OY.1 To express the meaning in tolerable
English we have to render somewhat like this:
"Whose days were so measured that the term of
I ii. 44.