Essays and Lectures | Page 8

While, however, we can discern in Herodotus the rise of an historic
sense, we must not blind ourselves to the large amount of instances
where he receives supernatural influences as part of the ordinary forces
of life. Compared to Thucydides, who succeeded him in the
development of history, he appears almost like a mediaeval writer
matched with a modern rationalist. For, contemporary though they
were, between these two authors there is an infinite chasm of thought.
The essential difference of their methods may be best illustrated from
those passages where they treat of the same subject. The execution of
the Spartan heralds, Nicolaos and Aneristos, during the Peloponnesian
War is regarded by Herodotus as one of the most supernatural instances
of the workings of nemesis and the wrath of an outraged hero; while the
lengthened siege and ultimate fall of Troy was brought about by the
avenging hand of God desiring to manifest unto men the mighty
penalties which always follow upon mighty sins. But Thucydides either
sees not, or desires not to see, in either of these events the finger of

Providence, or the punishment of wicked doers. The death of the
heralds is merely an Athenian retaliation for similar outrages
committed by the opposite side; the long agony of the ten years' siege is
due merely to the want of a good commissariat in the Greek army;
while the fall of the city is the result of a united military attack
consequent on a good supply of provisions.
Now, it is to be observed that in this latter passage, as well as elsewhere,
Thucydides is in no sense of the word a sceptic as regards his attitude
towards the truth of these ancient legends.
Agamemnon and Atreus, Theseus and Eurystheus, even Minos, about
whom Herodotus has some doubts, are to him as real personages as
Alcibiades or Gylippus. The points in his historical criticism of the past
are, first, his rejection of all extra-natural interference, and, secondly,
the attributing to these ancient heroes the motives and modes of
thought of his own day. The present was to him the key to the
explanation of the past, as it was to the prediction of the future.
Now, as regards his attitude towards the supernatural he is at one with
modern science. We too know that, just as the primeval coal- beds
reveal to us the traces of rain-drops and other atmospheric phenomena
similar to those of our own day, so, in estimating the history of the past,
the introduction of no force must be allowed whose workings we
cannot observe among the phenomena around us. To lay down canons
of ultra-historical credibility for the explanation of events which
happen to have preceded us by a few thousand years, is as thoroughly
unscientific as it is to intermingle preternatural in geological theories.
Whatever the canons of art may be, no difficulty in history is so great
as to warrant the introduction of a spirit of spirit [Greek text which
cannot be reproduced], in the sense of a violation of the laws of nature.
Upon the other point, however, Thucydides falls into an anachronism.
To refuse to allow the workings of chivalrous and self-denying motives
among the knights of the Trojan crusade, because he saw none in the
faction-loving Athenian of his own day, is to show an entire ignorance
of the various characteristics of human nature developing under
different circumstances, and to deny to a primitive chieftain like
Agamemnon that authority founded on opinion, to which we give the
name of divine right, is to fall into an historical error quite as gross as
attributing to Atreus the courting of the populace ([Greek text which

cannot be reproduced]) with a view to the Mycenean throne.
The general method of historical criticism pursued by Thucydides
having been thus indicated, it remains to proceed more into detail as
regards those particular points where he claims for himself a more
rational method of estimating evidence than either the public or his
predecessors possessed.
'So little pains,' he remarks, 'do the vulgar take in the investigation of
truth, satisfied with their preconceived opinions,' that the majority of
the Greeks believe in a Pitanate cohort of the Spartan army and in a
double vote being the prerogative of the Spartan kings, neither of which
opinions has any foundation in fact. But the chief point on which he
lays stress as evincing the 'uncritical way with which men receive
legends, even the legends of their own country,' is the entire
baselessness of the common Athenian tradition in which Harmodios
and Aristogeiton were represented as the patriotic liberators of Athens
from the Peisistratid tyranny. So far, he points out, from the love of
freedom being their motive, both of them were influenced by merely
personal considerations, Aristogeiton being jealous