Essays and Lectures | Page 9

of Hipparchos'
attention to Harmodios, then a beautiful boy in the flower of Greek
loveliness, while the latter's indignation was aroused by an insult
offered to his sister by the prince.
Their motives, then, were personal revenge, while the result of their
conspiracy served only to rivet more tightly the chains of servitude
which bound Athens to the Peisistratid house, for Hipparchos, whom
they killed, was only the tyrant's younger brother, and not the tyrant
himself.
To prove his theory that Hippias was the elder, he appeals to the
evidence afforded by a public inscription in which his name occurs
immediately after that of his father, a point which he thinks shows that
he was the eldest, and so the heir. This view he further corroborates by
another inscription, on the altar of Apollo, which mentions the children
of Hippias and not those of his brothers; 'for it was natural for the eldest
to be married first'; and besides this, on the score of general probability
he points out that, had Hippias been the younger, he would not have so
easily obtained the tyranny on the death of Hipparchos.
Now, what is important in Thucydides, as evinced in the treatment of
legend generally, is not the results he arrived at, but the method by

which he works. The first great rationalistic historian, he may be said to
have paved the way for all those who followed after him, though it
must always be remembered that, while the total absence in his pages
of all the mystical paraphernalia of the supernatural theory of life is an
advance in the progress of rationalism, and an era in scientific history,
whose importance could never be over-estimated, yet we find along
with it a total absence of any mention of those various social and
economical forces which form such important factors in the evolution
of the world, and to which Herodotus rightly gave great prominence in
his immortal work. The history of Thucydides is essentially one-sided
and incomplete. The intricate details of sieges and battles, subjects with
which the historian proper has really nothing to do except so far as they
may throw light on the spirit of the age, we would readily exchange for
some notice of the condition of private society in Athens, or the
influence and position of women.
There is an advance in the method of historical criticism; there is an
advance in the conception and motive of history itself; for in
Thucydides we may discern that natural reaction against the intrusion
of didactic and theological considerations into the sphere of the pure
intellect, the spirit of which may be found in the Euripidean treatment
of tragedy and the later schools of art, as well as in the Platonic
conception of science.
History, no doubt, has splendid lessons for our instruction, just as all
good art comes to us as the herald of the noblest truth. But, to set
before either the painter or the historian the inculcation of moral
lessons as an aim to be consciously pursued, is to miss entirely the true
motive and characteristic both of art and history, which is in the one
case the creation of beauty, in the other the discovery of the laws of the
evolution of progress: IL NE FAUT DEMANDER DE L'ART QUE
L'ART, DU PASSE QUE LE PASSE.
Herodotus wrote to illustrate the wonderful ways of Providence and the
nemesis that falls on sin, and his work is a good example of the truth
that nothing can dispense with criticism so much as a moral aim.
Thucydides has no creed to preach, no doctrine to prove. He analyses
the results which follow inevitably from certain antecedents, in order
that on a recurrence of the same crisis men may know how to act.
His object was to discover the laws of the past so as to serve as a light

to illumine the future. We must not confuse the recognition of the
utility of history with any ideas of a didactic aim. Two points more in
Thucydides remain for our consideration: his treatment of the rise of
Greek civilisation, and of the primitive condition of Hellas, as well as
the question how far can he be said really to have recognised the
existence of laws regulating the complex phenomena of life.



CHAPTER III

THE investigation into the two great problems of the origin of society
and the philosophy of history occupies such an important position in
the evolution of Greek thought that, to obtain any clear view of the
workings of the critical spirit, it will be necessary to trace at some
length their rise and scientific development as evinced not merely in
the works of historians proper, but also in the philosophical treatises of
Plato and Aristotle. The