as to the campaign at Pylos. He simply thinks that, for once, personal enmity has betrayed Thucydides into a comment which his own statement does not bear out. Thucydides says that a certain scheme was "insane," which his own narrative shows to have been quite feasible. Mr. Grote refuses to believe either the satires of Aristophanes or the invectives of Thucydides, because he holds that the facts, as reported by Thucydides himself, do not justify them. Aristophanes represents Kleon as stealing away the well-earned prize from Demosthenes. Certainly no one would find this out from the fourth book of Thucydides. Aristophanes represents Kleon as winning his influence over the people by the basest and most cringing flattery. Thucydides puts into his mouth a speech, on the affair of Mitylene, which advocates indeed a detestable line of policy, but which, of all speeches in the world, is the least like that of a flatterer of the people. In fact, it is a bitter invective against the people. Nothing that Demosthenes did say, nothing that Perikles can have said, could surpass the boldness of the censures passed on his own auditors. The exact amount of historic reality attaching to the Thucydidean orations is very doubtful, and probably differs much in individual cases. But we may be quite sure that Thucydides would not put into the mouth of Kleon a speech more austere and dignified than became his character. Colonel Mure appeals to the unanimous testimony of antiquity against Kleon. But that unanimous testimony reduces itself into the history of Thucydides and the comedy of the Knights. All that later writers can do, is to repeat the judgment of Kleon's contemporary adversaries. Now it is not, as Colonel Mure says, by a "purely speculative argument" that Mr. Grote endeavours to reverse that judgment. It is by an appeal to the facts of the case as one of his adversaries has recorded them. After all this, we are indeed surprised to find the following remarks in a later stage of Colonel Mure's work:

"The remarks suggested by the historian's character of Cleon have been partly anticipated in a previous page. It is the only one in his treatment of which he has shown a disposition to enlarge on defects. In other cases he dwells rather on the bright than the dark side of the picture. His best vindication from the charge of having in this single instance been actuated by malicious motives to swerve from the truth, is the fact already noticed, that the defects stigmatised are the same, both in kind and degree, which with singular unanimity have been ascribed to Cleon by all other authorities. Another evidence of impartiality is the circumstance, that while those authorities represent the whole career of the demagogue as one unmitigated course of folly or mischief, Thucydides gives him credit for a conduct in some of his undertakings not very easy to reconcile with the incapacity displayed in others. The apparent inconsistency implies at least a disposition

to award him such merit as he really possessed. In his campaign of Amphipolis, Cleon certainly figures in a contemptible light, both as a soldier and a general. But his other military operations are not represented as open to censure. Thucydides, indeed, withholds from him the merit of having made good his 'insane promise' to capture the Spartan garrison of Sphacteria. He describes Demosthenes as having already matured his measures for the success of that enterprise, and as the director-in-chief of their execution. But there is no hint of Cleon, as the honorary commander-in-chief on the occasion, having shown any want of capacity or courage. In the early part of his ensuing Thracian campaign, his operations are represented not only as successful, but as well planned and vigorously executed. He even, on one important occasion, outmanœuvred the formidable Brasidas, by whom he was afterwards defeated; and, by a curious coincidence, much in the mode in which Thucydides himself had been discomfited not long before by the same able adversary" (pp. 146, 7).

After reading the above, one might almost think that Colonel Mure had suddenly become a convert to the theory of Mr. Grote. Kleon has ceased to be utterly contemptible; indeed, Colonel Mure gives him credit for a much greater amount of military conduct than Mr. Grote ventures to claim for him. He has become alive to the curious fact that Kleon is the one person whom Thucydides picks out for censure. But he will not believe that the censure is ill-founded, because "all other authorities" confirm it with "singular unanimity." We do not know who the "other authorities" are, except Aristophanes. But in his very next sentence Colonel Mure practically sets aside their judgment as not borne out by the facts. What more could Mr. Grote desire?

After all, what is the accusation against Thucydides? Simply, as we have already said, that, though he has nowhere misstated facts, he has in one instance allowed political or personal pique to warp his judgment. All honour to the contemporary historian against whom this is the heaviest charge! Think of the temptations, not merely to a single false judgment, but to constant misrepresentation of fact, which beset every political chronicler; above all, those which beset a Greek of the Peloponnesian War. Think, in a word, what Xenophon was-what Thucydides might have been, and was not. We may well admit that Thucydides was prejudiced against Kleon, and that he himself failed of his duty at Amphipolis, without derogating one jot from the value and impartiality of his immortal history.

We have now to make some farther comments on Colonel Mure's treatment of Thucydides, and especially to point out some respects in which he seems to us to have unduly derogated from his merits.

We think that Colonel Mure has, in the first chapter of his present volume, made out a good case in favour of his position, that Thucydides was not only well acquainted with the history of Herodotus, but that he also took for granted a similar acquaintance with it on the part of his readers. He not only, in some places, seems directly to aim at real or supposed inaccuracies on the part of the earlier writer, but he seems in others silently to make his own work a complement to that of his predecessor. Where the two narratives coincide, Colonel Mure has shown that Thucydides passes by those parts of the tale which had been fully narrated by Herodotus, and confines his own functions to continuing or to filling up deficiencies. This seems to us to militate very strongly against the late date which Colonel Mure, in opposition to Mr. Grote, is disposed to assign to the composition of the history of Herodotus. It really seems to us to tell far more strongly one way than any difficulties about the Egyptian king Amyrtaios tell the other. According to Colonel Mure, Herodotus wrote his history so late as to allude therein to events which took place so near the close of the Peloponnesian War as 408 B.C. Had so short an interval elapsed between the composition of the two histories, that of Herodotus could hardly have become so generally known to the Greek public at large, that Thucydides could safely assume a familiarity with it on the part of his readers. In those days of uncial manuscripts, without publishers, circulating-libraries, or reviews, a book could not make its way in the world quite so fast as the writings of Lord Macaulay or Dr. Livingstone. Colonel Mure himself has argued that the work of Herodotus was especially slow in obtaining popularity. This might indeed agree with Colonel Mure's view as to what he looks upon as one or two ill-natured allusions on the part of Thucydides; but it seems quite inconsistent with the idea that he silently adapted his work to act as a continuation to that of Herodotus. Colonel Mure has, in his former volume, very powerfully attacked, perhaps he has altogether upset, the common legend of Herodotus' recitation of his history at the Olympic Games; but we do not think that he has upset, but rather that he has powerfully confirmed, the opinion that Herodotus published his history by some process or other, at any rate during an early stage of the Peloponnesian War.

Colonel Mure attacks Thucydides, we think with some injustice, on the ground of his episode about the Peisistratidai in the sixth book. We can easily agree with him that the Thucydidean episodes are not very happily brought in. The fact is, that in a discursive composition like that of Herodotus, all sorts of episodes, and any number of them, are perfectly appropriate. But in the more formal production of Thucydides, the few which

occur are certainly felt to be excrescences. We may also allow that Thucydides had some special weakness, whether personal, political, or literary, for dealing with this special subject and with the popular errors relating to it. But Colonel Mure's particular objections to the matter and argument of this particular episode seem to us quite wanting in force. His remarks are as follows:

"In noticing the charge against Alcibiades, of being concerned in the mutilation of the Hermæ, Thucydides accounts in the following terms for the intense excitement which prevailed in Athens on that occasion: For the Athenians, knowing by tradition the harshness which had marked the tyranny of Pisistratus and his sons towards its close, and also that its abolition was not the act of the people or of Harmodius, but of the Lacedæmonians, had been ever since, on occasions of this kind, peculiarly open to suspicion and alarm.' Then follows, in closer illustration of the cause of this feeling, the episode in question, narrating the transactions preceding the extinction of the Pisistratian dynasty; and in particular, how the murder of Hipparchus by the hand of Harmodius had been committed during the Panathenaic festival, the ceremonies of which had been turned to account by the conspirators in disarming suspicion and effecting their purpose. After following out the results of their act of tyrannicide to the deposition of Hippias, the historian resumes his former narrative, by the subjoined application of the case of Harmodius and the Panathenaica to that of Alcibiades and the Hermæ: The remembrance of which things having been deeply imprinted at the time, and constantly renewed by tradition in the minds of the Athenians, rendered them keenly alive to any tampering with their sacred ceremonial, and rigorous in calling to account those suspected of such practices, which were inseparably associated in their thoughts with plots to establish oligarchal or tyrannical governments ""(p. 131).

As usual-we are sorry to say it, but truth will out-Colonel Mure cannot, or will not, translate his Greek. He here, as it seems to us, first misconceives the general bearing of the whole passage, and then mistranslates particular clauses into agreement with the general misconception. Colonel Mure supposes Thucydides to be talking of the special fear of the Athenians of any tampering with their religious ceremonial. What he is really speaking of is the general dread of tyranny which they felt or were said to feel, and which is keenly satirised by Aristophanes. With this feeling a strong sensitiveness about their religious ceremonial was united by a connection of ideas strange to us, but which Mr. Grote has fully explained. In the Attic mind any thing savouring of false doctrine, heresy, and schism, was held to be quite sufficient evidence of sedition, privy conspiracy, and rebellion. The blasphemer or profane person would alienate

the favour of the gods, and so jeopard the prosperity of the state. Hence the inference that men who overthrew Hermai and polluted mysteries were going about to establish oligarchy or despotism. But Thucydides is not commenting on this peculiar vein of combined religious and political sentiment; he assumes it, while enlarging on the general dread of tyranny. Hence Colonel Mure's question, "what analogy is there between the case of the tyrannicides and that of Alkibiades?" falls to the ground. Thucydides, or the Demos of whom he speaks, was not trying to set up any analogy between Alkibiades (if it was Alkibiades) and the tyrannicides, but between Alkibiades and the tyrants. And the reference to the fact that the tyrants were really expelled by the Lacedæmonians is very far from having, as Colonel Mure implies, nothing to do with the matter. The general line of argument in the popular mind is this: "These men commit sacrilege; therefore (by the process of reasoning explained above) they want to set up a tyranny. But we will have no tyranny. Tyrants are very terrible persons, and very hard to get rid of. The Peisistratidai were very oppressive, and we could not get rid of them without Lacedæmonian help. What will happen, if we have a tyranny now, when the Lacedæmonians are against us?" This is the general argument; only Thucydides confuses it by going out of his way to correct certain errors of detail in the popular conception of the event. A modern writer would have thrown such a digression into a note or an appendix. Thucydides was obliged either to leave it alone or to intrude it upon his text. In the text it is certainly very much out of its place; but it produces no such "palpable inconsistency" as Colonel Mure supposes. There is not even that previous inconsistency which he is half disposed to "allow to pass." "The popular Athenian public" supposed that Hipparchos was actually in possession of the tyranny, and that Harmodios and Aristogeiton were actuated by patriotic motives. "More critical inquirers" believed that Hipparchos was only brother to the reigning tyrant, and that his death was owing to private enmity. But Thucydides does not represent the "popular Athenian public" as ignorant of the fact that the tyranny was ultimately suppressed by Lacedæmonian agency. His argument is perfectly sound and consistent, only he has unluckily confused it by an irrelevant digression. If he is in any way blameworthy, it is for the palpably inconclusive argument by which he attempts to establish the seniority of Hippias over Hipparchos.* The probability is, that Thucydides, from family connection or some other cause, had preserved a more accurate tradition of these events than that generally current at

* vi. 55.