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The Arrangement of the Thought in the Proem and in other Parts of Thucydides I1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

N. G. L. Hammond
N. G. L. Hammond
Affiliation:
Clare CollegeCambridge
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Extract

Anyone who reads the opening chapters of Thucydides’ history consecutively will soon find it difficult to follow the thread of the argument. If he turns to a summary of the subjects chapter by chapter, he will not be greatly enlightened. In this paper the question is asked: why did Thucydides arrange his subjects as he did? In Part I the conclusion is reached that in the arrangement of his subject-matter he was following a clear-cut system. In Part II the implications of this conclusion are considered.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 2 , Issue 3-4 , December 1952 , pp. 127 - 141
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1952

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References

page 127 note 2 Compare, for intance, Wheeler, J. T., Analysis and Summary of Thucydides (1 p.Google Scholar 1: ‘Thucydides, expecting an important war, compiles materials-Proves the im portance of the war over preceding events.—Unsettled state of Greece before the Trojan war.—Origin of the names ‘Hellas’ and ‘Hellenes’.—Minos the first that formed a navy.—Armour anciently worn: Athenians discontinue it.—Sites of ancient and later cities compared.—Carians and Phoenicians especially pirates.—Greece increases in power.—Cause of the Trojan war: rise of Pelopidae.’—etc. Gomme, , A Historical Compmentary on Thucydides (1945), i. 155–7, supplies a longer analysis in which brackets and footnotes are employed; even so the argument is far from clear.Google Scholar

page 128 note 1 This may be expressed in the most con-cise form as ABCD:DCBA.

page 128 note 2 This form of arrangement is used also in I. 9. 1–3 where the opening thesis, that Agamemnon's power enabled him to muster the expedition to Troy, is substantiated and then resumed in 9. 3; and in 1.9 fin. — 10.5 where the thesis, that the ‹small› scale of previous expeditions is indicated by the ‹small› scale of the expedition to Troy, is substantiated and then resurned in 10.5, which ends with the conclusion that the numebers sent from all Greece to Troy were small In 1. 13–17, where there is more narrative, the arrangement of thought is less formal, but the general topics adhere to the same principle of sequence: thus in 13. 1 the order is tyrannies, revenues, fleets, and these topics are treated in the inverse order (fleets 15. 1; and tyrannies in 17). The passage 1. 18–19 is composed as a narrative, and therefore as an entity it lacks the formal arrangement we have noted elsewhere. But in three cases the same habit of thought appears: in 18. 1 the deposition of tyrants by Sparta is explained by a clause, and is concluded with the words in 18.2 2–3 the division of the Greek world in adherence to Athens and Sparta is stated, explained, and resumed in the sentence in 18 fin.—19 the growth of power up to 431 B.C. is stated, explained, and resumed.

page 129 note 1 De comp. verb. 12, transl. Roberts, W. R.Google Scholar,

page 129 note 2 Loc. vit.

page 131 note 1 In this sentence Thucydides strains the construction by tying both and just as he does in 1.1.2 y tying both and to This sentence also indicates the sense of by supplying the fuller phrase

page 131 note 2 The other passages which I have cited may be similarly teanslated. 1.50. 2, ‘For this naval battle occurred as the greatest indeed of all hitherto between Greek and Greek in number of vessels’; 3. 113. 6, ‘For this disaster occurred as indeed the greatest of all in this war within an equal number of days to a single Greek state’; 4. 40. I, ‘This (event) occurred as indeed the most un-expected of all in the war for the Greeks’;5. 60.3, ‘ For the force thus mustered was indeed the finest Greek force of all hitherto’; 6.31. 1, ‘For this first force was indeed the most costly and splendid of all hitherto that had sailed from a single state in ‹the history of› Greek power’. Another passage which has the same word-order and the same absence of the article is 1. 13. 4 ‘indeed the naval battle between Corinth and Corcyra is the oldest of those known to us’; cf. 8. 96. 1

page 132 note 1 Gomme, op. cit. i. 91 ‘it was the greatest disturbance, known, a breakdown of the fabric of Greek society’, and Classen ‘die gewaltigste Erschütterung’.

page 132 note 2 Cf. Iatrica Anonymi Londinensis, vi. 28

page 132 note 3 Cf. Polybius 3. 4. 8 and Thuc. 1.22. 4.

page 132 note 4 The word is used in a techinical sense in Iatrica Anonymi Londinensis, i 10 f. and i 36, where physical ailments are classi-fied as and The examples cited for the two classes are paralysis or coma, and fever or madness. Here the pharase seems to define a progressive disease rising to an acme.

page 133 note 1 As my interpretation of 1. 1. 2–3 is not orthodox, it seems wise to add one point of warning and to mention other interpretations briefly. The point of warning is that Thucy-dides is dealing with the broad development of power in terms of ideas and not, like a modern historian, in precisely dated periods. Thus he is concerned with unsettled conditions in Greece as an obstacle to the development of greatness, and he is not concerned with a precise date for the end of unsettled conditions in each Greek state; consequently in the sentence at 1. 12. 4 he is not dating the expansion overseas by the Athenians to Ionia and by the Peloponnesians to Italy and Sicily to the same century or even centuries. So too in 1. 16–17 when he refers to Darius and (by way of an exception) to the Sicilian tyrants, he is not dating them to the period before Sparta's deposition of tyrants on the mainland in 1. 18. 1, but he is adducing instances of obstacles which on all sides prevented Greece from becoming great. These examples warn us against the danger of assuming that Thucydides was arranging his subject-matter in a strict chronological sequence.

The usual interpretation of the opening chapters is that, in 1. 1.2, the (supplied) subject is means ‘proved later to be’, that is the predicate, and that reinforces the datives and means ‘affected the majority of mankind’. Cf. Classen; Kr7uuml;ger; Poppo-Stahl; Schadewaldt, Die Geschichts-schreibung des Thukydides, 45 f.; Patzer, Das Problem der Geschichtsschreibung des Thukydides und die Thukydideische Frage, 113; Delachaux, Notes Critiques sur Thucydide, 10 f.; Gomme, , loc. cit.Google Scholar Even when is taken as subject, it is often thought to be a synonym for (e.g. by Herbst, , Zu Thukydides (1892), 5).Google Scholar

According to this interpretation Thucydides justifies his belief formed at the beginning of die war that it would be a great war by stating that in fact it proved so—which reduces the opening sentence to a puerile vaticinium post eventum. As critics were quick to note, Thucydides was then guilty of an absurd exaggeration in claiming that the Peloponnesian War affected the majority of mankind. Moreover, when this interpretation of 1. 1. 2 is taken, it follows that in 1. 1. 3 Thucydides claims that that is ‘the events before the Peloponnesian War’, could not be clearly ascertained and were not ‘great’ in respect to war or anything else. As critics have pointed out, this claim is little short of ridiculous; for Thucydides himself narrates the events of the Pentekontaetia without any obvious qualms about die clarity of his knowledge, while no fifth-century Athenian and few modern scholars could swallow the statement that the Persian War was ‘not great’. These difficulties were observed by Schwartz, , Das Geschichtswerk des Thukydides, 178Google Scholar f., and by others; they therefore assumed Thucydides’ text to be unsound and proposed to postulate a lacuna between 1. 1 and 1. 2 or to athetize (cf. Schwartz, , 178; Steup, Delachaux; Pohlenz, G.G.N. (1920), 68 f.).Google Scholar This seems to be a counsel of despair. For it is improbable that the opening sentences of so famous a work suffered corruption even shortly after its publication. Even if one thinks that die opening chapters were published posthumously by a literary editor, it is unlikely that he was guilty of leaving out a sentence at this point. And, if the opening chapters belong to the history of the Archidamian War and were published before 414 B.C. as I believe (cf. C.Q. xxxiv (1940), 150), it is even harder to postulate the dropping out of a sentence subsequently. Nor can the sentence be expunged as a gloss by a later hand; for in form and in thought it is typical of Thucydides himself.Google Scholar

page 134 note 1 For the meaning ‘action’ cf. 2. 7. 1 and 2. 36. 4 If the orthodox view that at 1. 1. 2 refers to the course of the Peloponnesian War were correct, then the chapters 1. 21. 2–23. 3 would provide the proof of the contention at 1. 1. 2; but, if so, their late position is difficult to explain.

page 134 note 2 I translate both and ‘cause’ because the words themselves are synonymous and interchangeable in Thucy-dides, as in the treatise It has been maintained that atria means the ‘alleged reason’ and the ‘true reason’ in Thucydides' diction; this is disproved by 1. 146 where the events, constituting the are described as the So too at 1. 118. 1 and 126. 1 cannot mean ‘true cause’, nor can at 99. 1 mean ‘alleged cause’. The fact is that either word can be given a further meaning by the context in which it is set or by the epithets attached to it, as is the case at 1. 23. 6. Gomme, , op. cit. 153, gives further reasons for regarding the two words as synonymous.Google Scholar

page 136 note 1 Owing to the fact that Thucydides has kept the exposition of these two main conten tions separate, he has had to refer twice to the period of the Pentekontaetia. For that period is both a part of the and the substance of the he has therefore dealt rather briefly with the matter in the first instance (i. 18. 3–19) and given the full description in the second (1. 89–118).

page 136 note 2 The history of this problem is well sum marized by Romilly, J. de, Thucydide et l'impérialisme Athénien (1947), 9–15.Google Scholar

page 136 note 3 For example Grundy, , Thucydides and the History of his Age (1948), 407: ‘it is most probable that the arrangement was not deliberate in the sense that it was not the order which the historian would have finally given to it, had he lived to make a full revision and elaboration of his work’.Google Scholar

page 136 note 4 Cf. the summary and references in Patzer, , Das Problem der Geschichtsschreibung des Thukydides und die Thukydideische Frage (1937), 24 f.Google Scholar

page 137 note 1 Das Geschichtswerk des Thukydides (1919), 246.Google Scholar

page 137 note 2 e.g. by Patzer, , op. cit. 112 f.Google Scholar

page 137 note 3 As Schwartz, , op. cit. 249, noted, the words at I. 23. 5 may refer back to at 1. 1.Google Scholar

page 137 note 4 The first draft of the present article was written in 1940 to form the first part of the article in C.Q., but, owing to my departure on war service, was not published at that time.

page 137 note 5 Cf. 2. 14. 2

page 137 note 6 Cf. Webster, T. B. L., Sophocles (1936), 128 f.Google Scholar

page 138 note 1 Thucydides of course, like the tragedians, has more than one method of arranging his thought. Most of the speeches in the history are built round a series of salient points (which are not resumed after proof), and where a pair of speeches balance the same points are taken up by the second speaker; the analogies of these speeches with those in Sophocles' plays and with the tetralogies of Antiphon are obvious. A borderline position between this arrangement of thought and the arrangement I have illustrated in the opening paragraphs of the Funeral Speech is occupied by the speech of the Corcy-raeans (i. 32 f.).

page 138 note 2 Webster, , op. cit. 148 f.Google Scholar

page 139 note 1 Diels, H., Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker (1934). i. 273.Google Scholar

page 139 note 2 e.g. Elements i. 47 and ii. 5. Here the general proposition is stated at the beginning and at the end of the chapter. The proof, introduced by , begins with the assertion in the first person that the general proposition is true in a particular case; the actual proof of the particular case, itself introduced by then follows and is concluded by the statement that the particular case is so and that therefore the general proposition is true. If Eudemus' account of Hippocrates of Chios (Thomas, I., Greek Mathematics, i. 235 f.) can be taken literally, Hippocrates' form of exposition was similar to that later used by Euclid.Google Scholar

page 140 note 1 In 1. 1–19 the latest datable event is the purification of Delos (1.8. 1), which occurred in the winter of 426/5 B.C. The chapters 1. a 1. 2–23. 3, which in the arrangement of thought are not integral to the preceding and succeeding passages, were probably composed after 421 B.C. In Patzer's summary of ‘Spätindizien’ (op. cit. 103 f.) the only passage in Book t which was composed after 407/6 B.C. is that referring to Hellanicus at 1. 97. 2. This passage I have discussed in C.Q. xxxiv (1940), 150.Google Scholar It should be noted that the present article modifies my statement in C.Q. xxxiv. 148 that 1. 1–23. 3 is constructed throughout on a system of ‘circular thought’; this term, which is used by Webster, has not been employed in the present article because it is too broad in meaning for my argument, and I do not now consider 1. 21. 2–23. 3 to be closely integrated to 1. 1–19.Google Scholar