Richard Claverhouse Jebb

“ Further, the contemporary readers of Thucydides were men habituated to a civic life in which public speech played an all-important part. Every adult citizen of a Greek democracy was a member of the assembly which debated and decided great issues. The law-courts, the festivals, the drama, the market-place itself, ministered to the Greek love of animated description. ”

“ The Homeric tale of Troy is a poetic creation, for which the poet is the sole witness. The analogy of the French legends of Charle magne warrants the supposition that an Achaean prince once held a position like that of Agamemnon. We may suppose that some memorable capture of a town in the Troad had been made by Greek warriors. But we cannot regard the Iliad in any closer or more exact sense as the historical document of a war. The geographical compact ness of the Troad is itself an argument for the truth of the Homeric statement that it was once united under a strong king. ”

“ So far as the language of the speeches is concerned, then, Thucydides plainly avows that it is mainly or wholly his own. As a general rule, there is little attempt to mark different styles. The case of Pericles, whom Thucydides must have repeatedly heard, is probably an exception; the Thucydidean speeches of Pericles offer several examples of that bold imagery which Aristotle and Plutarch agree in ascribing to him, while the Funeral Oration, especially, has a certain majesty of rhythm, a certain union of impetuous movement with lofty grandeur, which the historian has given to no other speaker. ”

“ The obscurity with which Thucydides has sometimes been reproached often arises from the very clearness with which a complex idea is present to his mind, and his strenuous effort to present it in its entirety, when the strong consciousness of logical coherence will make him heedless of grammatical regularity. He never sacrifices the thought to the language, but he will sometimes sacrifice the language to the thought. ”

“ Ida is the key to the physical geography of the whole region ; and it is the peculiar character which this mountain-system imparts to the land west of it that constitutes the real distinctness of the Troad from the rest of Mysia. Nature has here provided Asia Minor with an outwork against invaders from the north-west ; and as in the dawn of Greek legend the Troad is the scene of the struggle between Agamem non and Priam, so it was in the Troad that Alexander won the battle which opened a path for his further advance. ”

“ The Troad is, indeed, a country highly favoured by nature with its fertile plains and valleys, abundantly and continually irri gated from Ida, its numerous streams, its fine west sea board, and the beauty of its scenery. ”

“ But space precludes more names; it is enough to say that the correspondence of the Bali Dagh with the Homeric Pergamus a correspondence absolutely unique in the Trojan plain has been recognized with virtual una nimity by modern travellers who have patiently inspected the scenery of the Iliad, having competent knowledge, and being free from bias in favour of a theory formed before their visit. Partial excavations on the summit of the Bali Dagh have been more than once undertaken, with the result of discovering ancient walls. ”

“ The recent excavations at Assus, conducted by explorers repre senting the Archaeological Institute of America, have yielded results far more valuable for the history of Greek art and architecture than any excavations yet undertaken in the Troad. The sculptures form one of the most important links yet discovered between Oriental and early Greek art, especially in respect of the types of animals. ”

“ In both books, Homeric Troy was identified with the third prehistoric city from the bottom, which was supposed to have been destroyed, though not totally, by fire. Professor Jebb was the first to show (1) that the lines of demarcation between the alleged prehistoric strata, as drawn in Ilios, could not be accurate, and (2) that, if any part of the pre historic remains could be supposed to represent Homeric Troy, it must be that part which Dr Schliemann had called the second city from the bottom, and the destruction of which by fire appeared to have been total. ”

“ Homeric conception of Troy. The Iliad makes it clear that the general description of the Trojan plain was founded on accurate knowledge. At this day all the essential Homeric features can be recognized. And it is probable that the poet who created the Troy of the Iliad knew, personally or by description, a strong town on the Bali Dagh above Bunár-bashi. The legend of the siege may or may not have arisen from an older town at Hissarlik, which had then disappeared. ”

“ Under a good government, it could not fail to be exceedingly prosperous. Under Turkish rule, the natural advantages of the land suffice to mitigate the poverty of the sparse population, but have scarcely any positive result.
Early history; Priam's kingdom.In the Homeric legend, with which the story of the Troad begins, the people called the Troes are ruled by a king Priam, whose realm includes all that is bounded by "Lesbos, Phrygia, and the Hellespont" (II., xxiv. 544) , i.e., the whole " Troad," with some extension of it, beyond Ida, on the north-west. ”

“ When Herodotus made his persons hold conversations or deliver speeches, he was following the precedent of epic poetry; his tone is usually colloquial rather than rhetorical; he is merely making thought and motive vivid in the way natural to a simple a^e. Thucydides is the real founder of the tradition by which historians were so long held to be warranted in introducing set speeches of their own composition. ”

“ His father Olorus, a citizen of Athens, belonged to a family which derived wealth and influence from the possession of gold mines at Scaptesyle, on the Thracian coast opposite Thasos, and was a relative of his elder namesake, the Thracian prince whose daughter Hegesipyle married the great Miltiades, so that Cimon, son of Miltiades, was a cousin, perhaps first cousin, once removed, of Thucydides. ”

“ Thucydides stands alone among the men of his own days, and has no superior of any age, in the width of mental grasp which could seize the general significance of particular events, The political education of mankind began in Greece, and in the time of Thucydides their political life was still young. ”

“ Assus affords the only harbour on the 50 miles of coast between Cape Lectum and the east end of the Adramyttian Gulf; hence it must always have been the chief shipping-place for the exports of the southern Troad. Too much off the highways to become a centre of import trade, it was thus destined to be a commercial town, content with a modest provincial prosperity. The great natural strength of the site protected it against petty assailants ”

“ He was one of two generals entrusted with the command of the regions towards Thrace (TO. cirl pa.Krfi) , a phrase which denotes the whole Thracian seaboard from Macedonia east ward to the vicinity of the Thracian Chersonese, though often used with more special reference to the Chalcidic peninsula. One reason why Thucydides had been chosen for the post was the local influence which he possessed among the people of the Thracian seaboard, through his family connexions and his ownership of the gold mines. ”

“ It is to such writers as these that Strabo refers when he indicates the general consent of his authorities. In favour of the claim of the Greek Ilium, on the other hand, there are only two literary witnesses, and these, as we have seen, are alike worthless. Equally valueless from a critical point of view is the fact that the Ilian claim was sometimes allowed by soldiers or statesmen who wished to utilize Trojan memories. ”

“ Troy was decisively rejected by the general consent of those ancient writers who had any claim to critical authority. The orator Lycurgus (c. 332 B.C.) speaks of the site of Troy as desolate, and this at a moment when the recent visit of Alexander the Great to the Greek Ilium (334 B.C.) had drawn attention to the claim made by its inhabitants. Demetrius, a native of Scepsis in the Troad, who flourished about 160 B.C., wrote a book entitled T/MIHKOS ZiaKocr/xos ("The Marshalling of the Trojans") , an exhaustive commentary on the catalogue of the Trojan forces in the second book of the Iliad. ”

“ The only definite testimony on the subject is contained in a passage of Aulus Gellius, who says that in 431 Hellanicus "seems to have been " sixty-five years of age, Herodotus fifty-three, and Thucydides forty (Noct. Att., 15, 23) . The authority for this statement was Pamphila, a compiler of biographical and historical notices, who lived in the reign of Nero. She must have had access to Greek sources of the 4th century B.C.; and her precision though qualified, in the version of Gellius, by the word " seems " would warrant the supposition that she had taken some pains to secure accuracy. ”

“ Colonae was also on the west coast, opposite Tenedos. Scamandria occupied the site of Eneh, in the middle of the plain of Bairamitch, and Cenchreae was probably some distance north of it. The shrine of Palamedes, mentioned by ancient writers as existing at a town called Poly medium, has been discovered by Mr J. T. Clarke on a site hitherto unvisited by any modern traveller, between Assus and Cape Lectum. It proves to have been a sacred enclosure (temenos) on the acropolis of the town ”

“ He offered sacrifice to the Ilian Athene; and after the peace with Antiochus (189 B.C.) the Romans annexed Rhoeteum and Gergis to Ilium, " not so much in reward of recent services, as in memory of the source from which their nation sprang." The later history of Ilium is little more than that of Roman benefits. ”

“ Such statements were often founded on nothing more than a desire to associate distinguished names, and to represent an eminent man as having profited by the best instruction in each kind which his contemporaries could afford. In this case there is no evidence to confirm the tradition. But it may be observed that Thucydides and Antiphon at least belong to the same rhetorical school, and represent the same early stage of Attic prose. ”

“ Finding that the rule of the oligarchy was becoming more and more violent, Thucydides again left Athens, and retired to his property in Thrace, where he lived till his death, working at his History. The preponderance of testimony certainly goes to show that he died in Thrace, and by violence. It would seem that, when he wrote chapter 116 of his third book, he was ignorant of an eruption of Etna which took place in 396. Death: before 396 B.C. (?) ”

“ And the eight books of his work (in spite of the unfinished condition of the last) are not unworthy of these large promises, either in spirit or in execution."
Origin of that division.The principal reason against believing that the division into eight books was made by Thucydides himself is the fact that a different division, into thirteen books, was also current in antiquity, as appears from Marcellinus (§ 58) . It is very improbable indeed hardly conceivable that this should have been the case if the eight-book division had come down from the hand of the author. ”

“ Beyond a passing reference to public " festivals," and to " beautiful surroundings in private life," he makes no attempt to define those " recreations for the spirit " which the Athenian genius had provided in such abundance. No writer of any age, perhaps, has rendered a more impressive tribute to the power of the best art than is implied in the terse phrase of Thucydides, when, speaking of the works which the Athenian daily saw around him, he declares that " the daily delight of them banishes gloom " (S) v Ka$ -fjfjifpav -rj repi/a? ”

“ Of recent editions, the most generally useful is Classen's, in the Weidmann series (Berlin, 1862-78) ; each book can be obtained separately. Arnold's edition (1848-51) contains much that is still valuable. ”