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

262 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS

the first Book which must be judged a subsequent insertion:
the historical sketch of the growth of Athens from the year
478 to 435 B.C. The purpose of this sketch is to exhibit the
growth of the Athenian hegemony, and its justification is
that the true cause of the war, so far as the Spartans were
concerned, was to prevent Athens from increasing that
hegemony still more. Now if Thucydides had grasped this
idea from the first, the appropriate place for his historical
sketch, both logically and chronologically, was at the
beginning of his work, in the Introduction. It would have
formed a natural continuation of the still earlier history
which he had sketched there. Instead, it comes in after
the account of the First Assembly of allies at Sparta,
strangely interrupting the narrative. It serves perhaps an
artistic purpose; for it affords a not unwelcome pause after
the strain of the four speeches in the First Assembly, before
we pass to the immediately following speech of the Corinthians in the Second Assembly. But while this consideration
may have determined the place chosen for its insertion, it
was, I believe, an afterthought. There is internal evidence
that it was not originally part of the worlk. For the Introduction, where, as I said, we might have expected to find
such a sketch, actually contains a brief summary of the
relevant features of the period.2 Further, Thucydides had
before him, as he tells us, the Attic chronicle of Hellanicus;
the defects of that work supplied him with a special motive
for writing a more adequate and accurate narrative; and
this work of Hellanicus was not published in its earlier form
till 411 B.C., in its later till 404 B.c. And may we not fairly
say that these prolegomena had a fuller justification in a
history of a war ending in the catastrophe of the Athenian
empire than in the narrative of a war ending with the
1 The allusion to the destruction of the long walls (c. 93. 5) cannot be
pressed, as it might have been introduced alone. But it is to be noted
that the Pentekontaeteris is ignored in i. 146; while i. 23. 6 seems to be a
later insertion.
2 Cc. 18, 19. The Introduction (i. 1-23) was evidently written before
414 B.C. as a Preface to the history of the Ten Years' War. A few phrases
may have been changed or added, but not so much as an allusion to the
fall of Athens was introduced.

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