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I began this translation when I was still almost a schoolboy, very much in love with my author, and sufficiently simple to think that all the world must be eager to read Thucydides/ The publication of the first book very quickly convinced me of my error; nobody took the least notice of my labours, and I had not even the satisfaction of hearing them abused. Although not a little discouraged by this indifference, I nevertheless translated the second book some time afterwards, being now actuated, not by any idea of fame or usefulness, but merely by an instinctive wish to finish what I had once begun. In the course of the year 1873 I completed the remaining six books, and now offer the whole work to the public in the hope that it may meet with the attention which a fragment failed to obtain. It is not for me to say how it is executed; but I think I have bestowed more care on my work than is often given by labourers in so unprofitable a field, and if I have failed in doing justice to my original, it is from the innate difficulty of the task, or my own want of the proper ability, and not from any lack of diligence. I have throughout attempted to convey the meaning of my author, not only as faithfully but as clearly as possible, and to avoid the intrusion of the Greek idioms which so often disfigure translations, rendering them only fit for pedants or schoolboys. If I have not completely succeeded in this last endeavour, I hope the reader will consider the nature of the undertaking, and hold me absolved for my good intention. I have also adopted a new arrangement of chapters, to provide the breaks to which use has accustomed us, and without which the most determined attention flags; though for convenience of reference I have retained at the top of each page the numbers of the original divisions.

Since the time when Thucydides’ was first read in England, the number of good histories has so much increased, and the domain of history itself has been so much enlarged, that it would be vain to claim for his work the importance which it once possessed. The days are past in which the translation of a Greek author could attain to the proportions of a national event. The modern world has now teachers of its own; and classical literature, which might formerly have been called the Bible of all men, is rapidly becoming the book of a learned class. If Mr. Cobden really said that a file of the Times newspaper is worth all the works of Thucydides, he after all only expressed openly an opinion which a great number of educated men unconsciously assent to. There is, however, perhaps more resemblance between the newspaper and the historian than has been generally perceived. They both treat of contemporary events and of states of society, politically, very like each other. A lamented historian was able to fight the battle of English party politics under the names of ‘Nicias’ and ‘Cleon,’ and there are probably few books that have so much contributed to the spread of liberal opinions in modern England as Mr. Grote’s reflections upon the affairs of ancient Greece. Indeed, as Arnold remarked, the portion of history dealt with by Thucydides is only ancient in the sense that the events related happened a long while ago; in all other respects it is more modern than the history of our own countrymen in the Middle Ages. If the reader of the newspaper will condescend to cast an eye on my translation, he will find the prototypes of many of the figures to which he is accustomed in his favourite journal. He will discover the political freedom which he glories in, and the social liberty which he sometimes sighs for, in full operation at Athens; factions as fierce as those of the Versaillais and Communists at Corcyra; and in the ‘best men’ of the Four Hundred oligarchs as self-seeking and unpatriotic as the gens du bien of the Figaro. He will see the doctrine of arbitration, welcomed as a newly-discovered panacea by our amiable enthusiasts, more firmly established in theory than it is yet likely to be in modern Europe, and as impotent to avert the evils of war from the communities who provided for it in every treaty, and invoked it whenever it seemed their interest to do so. In short, besides the practical lessons to be drawn for his own conduct, he will enjoy the philosophic pleasure of observing how the nature of man, in spite of all changes of time and circumstance, remains essentially the same, and how short is the distance from the civilised inhabitant of Athens or Corinth to the dweller in London or Vienna. The reader will also see that nature painted in its true colours, free from the varnish with which it is often decorated. The actors in our author’s pages avow their motives with a plainness sometimes shocking to modern feeling; whether it be that we have an improved standard of right, to which even the most determined offenders must do homage, or that hypocrisy is more congenial to our artificial civilisation, and less difficult than it must have been in the intense political life of the small Greek communities. Finally, there are certain qualities in which the historian of the Peloponnesian war has never been surpassed. Apart from his profound knowledge of human nature, and the passion and dramatic interest which he infuses into the events which he relates, if brevity, impartiality, and a sparing use of the imagination are still regarded as merits in an historian, more than one eminent writer might well take a lesson from Thucydides. I may point, as an example, to his celebrated account of the Plague of Athens. In five short pages he has set forth the symptoms of the disorder with a precision which a physician might envy, and the suffering and moral anarchy which it produced with a vividness which may teach the lover of picturesque description how much force there lies in truth and simplicity. The troubles at Corcyra are related at not much greater length, with a few masterly touches that appeal to the imagination more powerfully than the most detailed history, and a fulness of philosophic reflection that has left little to be said by his successors on the evils of a time of revolution. Among the number of English men and women who, without being Greek scholars, take an interest in Grecian history, there may perhaps be some enough in earnest not to be deterred from testing the truth of these assertions by the unavoidable dulness of a translation.

1876. R. CRAWLEY.