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

78 ANCIENT GREEK HISTORIANS LECT.

Herodotus, it was the phenomenon of the Empire
of Athens, a new thing in the history of Hellas,an empire governed by a democracy, a new thing
in the history of the world —that captured the
cooler but intense interest of Thucydides. He
did not take up his pen to celebrate; his aim was
to understand, -to observe critically how that
empire behaved in the struggle which was to test
its powers. It has not, I think, been sufficiently
realised what an original stroke of genius it was
to form the idea of recording the history of the
war at the very moment of its outbreak. Contemporary history in the strictest meaning of the
term was thus initiated. Thucydides watched
the events for the purpose of recording them;
he collected the material while it was fresh from
the making. Further, he designed a history which
should be simply a history of the war and of the
relations of the militant states, which should confine itself to its theme, and not deviate into
geography or anthropology or other things. Thus
he was the founder of "political" history in the
special sense in which we are accustomed to use
the term.
Widely divergent views are held as to the way
in which the work of Thucydides was constructed
and the stages by which it reached its final though
incomplete state. This question is not one of
merely meritorious curiosity which may be left
to the commentator as his exclusive concern; it
affects our general conception of the historian's