§ 41. This is, I think, the most signal instance on record of the falsification of the proper perspective of history by individual literary genius. It was a commonplace in old days that Achilles and Agamemnon, Ulysses and Diomede, all the famous heroes of the Trojan war, would have died in obscurity and passed out of sight but for the voice of the inspired poet. How much truer is it that Phormion and Brasidas, Gylippus and Lamachus would have virtually disappeared from history but for the eloquence of the Attic historian! Pericles would have remained an historic figure, and so does Lysander (who is almost beyond the period), whether any single historian intended it or not. The rest were important in their day and to their city, not beyond these limits. The really great spirits from whom the Athens of that day derives her eternal supremacy, which no Lysander could take away, are, except Pericles, never mentioned in all his
work. No one could ever suspect, from this severe and business-like narrative, that the most splendid architects, sculptors, and dramatic poets the world has yet seen were then jostling each other in the streets of Athens.
His calmness assumed.
It seems thankless to complain of what Thucydides has not done, instead of acknowledging what he undertook to do and has performed with extraordinary ability. Never was the history of a long war written with more power, judgment, and, I was going to say, impartiality. But I honestly believe that his book would have been far inferior had it indeed been coldly impartial; and I think Grote has shown, what I have supplemented in my Greek Literature, that strong personal feelings underlie the apparent calmness of his decisions[101:1].
He is backed by the scholastic interest,
§ 42. This estimate of Thucydides is, however, one which will make its way but slowly in the English classical world,—by which I mean that large and important body who teach classics to schoolboys and college students,—and the schoolmaster interest so completely commands our literary journals that any opinion which runs counter to scholastic traditions is sure to be set down there also as the outcome of rashness or of ignorance. For Thucydides, in addition to his just influence as a great writer, has enlisted in his favour all those to whom Greek grammar with its intricacies is the most divine of all pursuits.
on account of his grammatical difficulties.
If his speakers, as one of them tells us, strove hard to conceal what they had to say under new and startling forms, in order to outrun in smartness the cleverness of their audience, and play a sort of intellectual hide-and-seek with their critics, so Thucydides himself plays hide-and-seek with the grammarians, both ancient and modern. To make out exactly what he means his speakers to say, and to render it with every shade of nicety into modern English, is a task to which many acute men have devoted years, and upon its success very considerable reputations depend. It is but natural that this school, or these schoolmen, should become so enamoured of his intricacies as to love them with a love passing the love of women, and consequently to resent bitterly any word of depreciation which affects the importance of their idol.
He remains the special property of critical scholars.