Tragedy at Syracuse

Extract

Mr. chips, one might imagine, would be likely to associate bombs with Caesar for the rest of his quiet days. One Latin lesson tied the two together. A young officer in a New Zealand regiment had that thought in mind when he wrote his belated New Year greetings. ‘You will always think of us’, he said, ‘when you open Thucydides VII. Aren't we vain, Mr. Chips?’ There is no vanity about it. It is not only the memory of a very able Greek class which will entangle for ever the Sicilian Expedition with the events of 1941. There are grimmer reasons. Rommel arrived ominously at Tripoli on the day we read of Gylippus’ coming to Syracuse. We backed to Egypt step by step with the first Athenian disasters. The same moon shone on the Athenian attempt on Epipolae and on the opening of the German Balkan drive. Larissa, Athens, Corinth, Argos! The Anzacs retreated through Greece as the Athenians fought their last fight at Syracuse. They struggled back across the hills of Crete as Demosthenes and Nicias began the disastrous retreat. And then the Navy broke the spell. No ships filled the southern bays of Sicily to take Athenians home on the moonless nights. There was no Dunkirk, no evacuation. Misfortune was complete. Ours might have been. There will be no forgetting those months when another class reads Macaulay's favourite book again.

Macaulay was quite strikingly correct. Thucydides’ seventh book passes all the tests of classic excellence. Its narrative, like a Greek tragedy, is interwoven with the universal of human experience.