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

86 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS LECT.

We have then to take the finished product,
which Thucydides furnishes, on trust. We have
not any considerable body of independent evidence
for testing his accuracy, but so far as we can test
it by the chance testimonies of original documents,
he comes out triumphantly (in those parts which
he completed), and there can be no question that
the stress which he laid on accuracy was not a
phrase.' The serious criticisms which can be
brought against him in regard to facts concern
not what he states but what he omits to state.
For instance, the important measure which Athens
adopted in 424 B.C. of raising the tribute of the
subject states is passed over entirely, though it is
a pertinent fact in the story of the war; we have
learned it in recent years by the discovery of parts
of the stone decree. We cannot discern his reasons
for recounting some passages of military history at
great length and passing over others (such as the
Some errors are due not to the author but to very early scribes. For
instance, Andocides in i. 51, Methone for Methana in iv. 45 (cp. Wilamowitz-Mollendorff, op. cit.). It is unquestionable that he makes grave
topographical mistakes in his account of the episode of Pylos-Sphacteria.
He has completely misconceived the size of the entrances to the bay, and
he gives the length of Sphacteria as 15 stades, whereas it is really 24.
These errors have led Grundy to deny that Thucydides had ever visited
the spot; while R. M. Burrows (who has shown that the whole narrative
is otherwise in accordance with the topography) thinks that his measurements were wrong. My view is that he first wrote the story from information supplied by eye-witnesses who gave him a general, though partly
inaccurate, idea of the place, and that he afterwards tested it on the spot
and probably added local touches, but omitted to revise the errors of
distance. We have a somewhat similar case in the description of New Carthage by Polybius (see below, p. 194). It is indeed possible that the blunder
in the length of the island may have been exaggerated by a scribe's pen.
For K was exposed to confusion with (ts or) Le.-The topography of the
siege of Plataea has been elucidated by Grundy.