Problems in Greek history

by J. P. Mahaffy

Enthusiastic study of any subject is always praiseworthy; the insistence upon minute accuracy, and contempt for slovenliness in writing, are always to be admired and encouraged, for it is to these qualities in the minute scholars that we owe much of our precision in thinking, and still more the sense of clearness and correctness in style. To this class, therefore, let Thucydides remain forever the foremost of books; but let them not bully us into the belief that because they have studied his grammar more carefully than any other, they are therefore to decide that he is absolutely faultless as a narrator, and absolutely trustworthy as a historian.

Herodotus underrated in comparison.

I have already dealt with this latter point[103:1]; what I am here concerned with is the exaggerated place given in our modern histories to the petty feuds and border-raids of his often tedious chronicle,—tedious only because the events he describes are completely trivial. Herodotus, on the other hand, is apt to be underrated in these modern days. The field he covers is so wide, and the chances of error in observation so great, that it is impossible he should not often be found wrong. But what would our notions of earlier Greece or Asia Minor be without his marvellous prose epic?

The critics of Thucydides.

The reader will pardon me for expressing my satisfaction, that this comparative estimate of the two great historians which I published some twenty years ago, and which is still regarded by many of my English critics as a mere paradox, has now become a widely and solidly defined belief among the best German critics. Of course they began by exaggerating the new view. Müller-Strübing especially, as has been freely exposed by his opponents, has advanced from criticism to censure, from censure to contempt of Thucydides. This is of course silly pedantry. Thucydides was a very great historian, and whoever cannot recognize it, shows that he has no proper appreciation for this kind of genius. But let the reader consult the passages in which the newest, and perhaps the best, of Greek histories, Holm's, gives a summary of the researches on the contrasted masters of historiography, and he will see

that the result is much the same as that which I have long advocated. Holm argues (ii. pp. 346 sq.) that Herodotus has been underrated; he argues (ibid. pp. 369 sq.) that Thucydides has been overrated. Let me call particular attention to the details of the latter estimate, as one to which I thoroughly subscribe. But let no one charge me with despising the great Athenian; I believe I appreciate his greatness far better than do his random panegyrists.

§ 43. Let us pass by anticipation to another remarkable case of distorted perspective, likewise due to transcendent literary ability.

The Anabasis of Xenophon.

The next great author who has fascinated the world by the grace and vividness of his style is the Athenian Xenophon. In his famous Anabasis, or Expedition of the Ten Thousand to assist the insurgent Cyrus, he has told us the story of what must have happened (on a smaller scale) many times before, of Greek mercenaries being induced by large pay to serve in the quarrels of remote Asiatic sovrans, and finding their patron assassinated or defeated. They had then their choice of taking service under his rival (with the chance of being massacred), or of cutting their way out of the country to some Hellenic colony. It seems to have been mainly due to the ability and eloquence of Xenophon that the present very large and formidable body of mercenaries chose and carried out the latter course. His narrative of this Retreat, in which he claims to have played the leading part, is one of the most delightful chapters of Greek history.