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

III

THUCYDIDES

77

die before 399 B.c.; perhaps he was no longer
alive in 396 B.c.; and he left his book unfinished.'
It is evident how these biographical facts, and
they are almost all we know about the man, bear
upon his historical work. His family connexion
at Athens provided him, perhaps, with exceptional
facilities for obtaining authentic information, while
his military training and experience qualified him
to be the historian of a war. His second home in
Thrace gave him an interest independent of
Athens, and helped him to regard the Athenian
empire with a certain detachment which would
have been less easy for one who was a pureblooded citizen and had no home outside Attica.
His banishment operated in the same direction,
and afforded him opportunities for intercourse
with the antagonists of his country. The intellectual movement which invaded Athens when
he was a young man was a condition of his mental
growth; if he had belonged to an earlier generation, he could not have been Thucydides.
But if all these circumstances helped and conditioned the achievements of a profoundly original
mind, which always thought for itself, we must
seek the stimulus which aroused the historical
faculty of Thucydides in-the Athenian empire.
If it was the wonder of the Greek repulse of the
Persian hosts that inspired the epic spirit of
1 There were conflicting stories as to the manner and the place of his
death. His tomb, which may have been a cenotaph, was shown at
Athens, in the burying-place of the family of his kinsman Cimon, near
the Melitid gate.