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

110 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS LECT.

Aeschylean; and the naivete of the policeman in
Sophocles is sufficiently revealed though he does
not speak a policeman's language.
But though Thucydides is always Thucydides,
yet within the compass of his style there are
remarkable variations. It is outside my scope to
enter upon this subject in any detail; to do justice
to the styles of the writers who come before us
would require another set of lectures. But in the
case of Thucydides, I suspect that his different
styles have a certain meaning for the treatment of
his subject. It is patent to any reader that there
is a difference between the narrative and the
speeches, and that there are marked differences in
the speeches themselves. Obscurity is a reproach
which has constantly been brought against him
and of which he cannot be acquitted. But it is
not true of his work as a whole. The narrative is
generally clear and straightforward. If it stood
alone, we should never dream of describing him
as obscure. Nor is this description true of the
speeches indiscriminately. Some are lucid and
simple; others excessively obscure; in others again
we have perfectly simple passages beside sections
which, with Dionysius, we may designate as
conundrums or as darker than dark sayings of
Heracleitus.1 I have taken obscurity and difficulty
-difficulty which the Greeks felt no less than we
It has been rightly pointed out by Mahaffy that it is a misapprehension to explain the obscurities of Thucydides as due to condensation of
thought. He is "condensed in expression but not in thought" (Greek
Literature, ii. 1. 112).