Читать книгу The Best of the World's Classics (All 10 Volumes) - Henry Cabot Lodge - Страница 14

[18] Jowett says Thucydides "stands absolutely alone among historians, not only of Hellas, but of the world, in his impartiality and love of truth." Macaulay's enthusiasm for him is well known. Mahaffy says his work was intended to be a military history, compiled from original documents and from personal observations made by himself and other eye-witnesses. "There can not be the smallest doubt," adds Mahaffy, "that, in the hands of Thucydides, the art of writing history made an extraordinary stride and attained a perfection which no subsequent Hellenic, and few modern writers have attained." He is praised for the "lofty dignity" which he imparts to every subject. His temper is so solemn and severe as to be "strangely un-Attic." Among his great and enduring merits is the fact that he has "taught us to know more of Greek interpolitical life than all other Greek writers put together." No historian has been greater than he, not only in dignity of language, but in calmness of judgment, in intellectual force, and in breadth and acuteness of observation.

[19] From Book I of the "History of the Peloponnesian War." Translated by Benjamin Jowett.

[20] The Peloponnesians were the people of the peninsula which forms the southern part of Greece, and which is now known as Morea. In ancient times this territory was called the Peloponnesus. Its people comprized the inhabitants of several political domains called Achaia, Sicyonia, Corinthia, Argolis, Arcadia, Laconia, Messenia, and Elis. Laconia was otherwise, and quite anciently, known as Lacedæmon, its capital being the city of Sparta.

[21] Potidæa, the modern Pinaka, had revolted from Athens in 432 b.c., but did not capitulate until the end of the second year of the Peloponnesian war. It was a rich and flourishing town, originally Dorian, but colonized later from Corinth. During one of the Eastern invasions of Greece, it fell into Persian hands.

[22] These walls connected Athens with its port, the Piræus, and were each about five miles long. They ran parallel and were separated from each other by about 500 feet of space. This intervening land was used for a carriage road, on either side of which were houses. Thus was formed a continuous walled street from Athens to the sea, so that communication in case of war was made secure.

[23] The battle of Marathon was fought in September, 490. It ended the attempts of Darius to subdue Greece.

[24] The battle of Salamis took place in September, 480, and was fought in waters lying between the Piræus and the island of Salamis. Themistocles commanded the Greeks. The Persian ships were practically annihilated. Byron's lines on this battle, in his poem "The Isles of Greece," will be recalled.