(Θουκυδίδης), the historian, belonged to the demos Halimus, and Halimus belonged to the Leontis. He simply calls himself an Athenian (Thuc. 1.1). His father's name was Olorus (4.104). Marcellinus, and some other later writers, say that the name was Orolus. The two forms are easily confounded, and we assume the true name to be Olorus. Herodotus (6.39) mentions a Thracian king called Olorus, whose daughter Hegesipyle married Miltiades, the conqueror of Marathon, by whom she became the mother of Cimon. The ancient authorities speak of consanguinity between the family of Cimon and that of Thucydides, and the name of the father of Thucydides is some presumption of a connection with this Thracian king. The mother of Thucydides was also named Hegesipyle, though Marcellinus is the only authority for his mother's name. It is conjectured that Hegesipyle may have been a granddaughter of Miltiades and Hegesipyle, but there is no evidence to show who the mother of Thucydides was, nor how his father was connected with the family of Miltiades. It is also said that there was consanguinity between the family of Thucydides and the Peisistratidae; but this also cannot be satisfactorily explained.
A statement by Pamphilus, which is preserved by Gellius (15.23), makes Thucydides forty years of age at the commencement of the Peloponnesian war or B. C. 431, and accordingly he was born in B. C. 471. The historian says that he lived to see the end of the war, and the war ended in B. C. 404. Kurüger attempts to show, on the authority of Marcellinus, that Thucydides was only about twenty-five years of age at the commencement of the war; but he relies too much on his own interpretation of certain words of Thucydides, which are by no means free from ambiguity (5.26, αἰσθανόμενος τῇ ἡλικίᾳ). There is a story in Lucian's Herodotus or Aetion of Herodotus having read his History at the Olympic games to the assembled Greeks; and Suidas (s. v. Θουκυδίδης) adds that Thucydides, then a boy, was present, and shed tears of emulation; a presage of his own future historical distinction. This story was first doubted by Bredow and has since been critically discussed by others, and most completely by Dahlman (Herodot, &c.) who rejects it as a fable. The truth of the story is maintained at great length, and with greater tediousness, by Kruger. It is of little importance what any man thinks of the story : it is enough to remark that the direct evidence in surport of it is very weak, and there are many plausible objections to be urged against it. Krüger has collected in his essay on Thucydides all that he could say in support of the story.
Antiphon of Rhamnus, the most distinguished orator of the time, is said to have been the master of Thucydides in the rhetorical art; and as Antiphon was a contemporary of Thucydides and older, there is no internal improbability in the statement. But the evidence for it, as Krüger shows, is really nothing more than this, that Caecilius in his life of Antiphon conjectures that Thucydides must have been a pupil of Antiphon's, because he praises Antiphon. Cicero, in his Brutus (100.12), speaks of the eloquence of Antiphon, and cites Thucydides as evidence, and it seems very unlikely that, if he knew Thucydides to have been a pupil of Antiphon, he would not have mentioned it. Anaxagoras also is named by Marcellinus, on the authority of Antyllus, as one of the teachers of Thucydides, as to which we may observe that it is possible that he was, for Anaxagoras was some time at Athens, and Thucydides might have had the advantage of his instruction.
That Thucydides, an Athenian, of a good family, and living in a city which was the centre of Greek civilisation, must have had the best possible education, may be assumed; that he was a man of great ability and cultivated understanding his work clearly shows. He informs us that he possessed gold mines in that part of Thrace which is opposite to the island of Thasos, and that he was a person of the greatest influence among those in that part of Thrace (4.105). This property, according to some accounts, he had from his ancestors : according to other accounts he married a rich woman of Scaptesyle, and received them as a portion with her. Krüger has a conjecture that Cimon, who took these mines from the Thasians, got an interest in them, and gave a part to that branch of his family to which Thucydides belonged.
Suidas says that Thucydides left a son, called Timotheus; and a daughter also is mentioned, who is said to have written the eighth book of the History of Thucydides. Thucydides (2.48) was one of those who suffered from the great plague of Athens, and one of the few who recovered.
We have no trustworthy evidence of Thucydides having distinguished himself as an orator, though it is not unlikely that he did, for his oratorical talent is shown by the speeches that he has inserted in his history. He was, however, employed in a military capacity, and he was in command of an Athenian squadron of seven ships, at Thasus, B. C. 424, when Eucles, who commanded in Amphipolis, sent for his assistance against Brasidas, who was before that town with an army. Brasidas, fearing the arrival of a superior force, offered favourable terms to Amphipolis, which were readily accepted, for there were few Athenians in the place, and the rest did not wish to make resistance. Thucydides arrived at Eion, at the mouth of the Strymon, on the evening of the same day on which Amphipolis surrendered; and though he was too late to save Amphipolis, he prevented Eion from failing into the hand of the enemy (4.102, &c.).
In consequence of this failure, Thucydides became an exile, probably to avoid a severer punishment, that of death, for such appears to have been the penalty of such a failure as his, though he may have done the best that he could. According to Marcellinus, Cleon, who was at this time in great favour with the Athenians, excited popular suspicion against the unfortunate commander. Thucydides (5.26) simply says that he lived in exile twenty years after the affair of Amphipolis, but he does not say whether it was a voluntary exile or a punishment. If it was voluntary, we may assume that he did not return to Athens, because he knew what fate awaited him. There are various untrustworthy
Thucydides says that he lived twenty years in exile (5.26), and as his exile commenced in the beginning of B. C. 423, he may have returned to Athens in the beginning of B. C. 403, and therefore at or about the time when Thrasybulus liberated Athens. (Xen. Hell. 2.4. §§ 22-38.) It may accordingly be conjectured that Thucydides joined Thrasybulus, and in company with him effected his return to his native country. Pausanias indeed (1.23.9) states that Thucydides was recalled by a psephisma proposed by Oenobius, but this account creates some difficulty, because it appeared from a critical enumeration of the authorities cited by Marcellinus, that there was a general permission for all the exiles to return after the conclusion of peace with the Laedaemonians, B. C. 404. Thucydides himself says that he was twenty years in exile, and therefore he did not return till B. C. 403, unless we assume that his " twenty years " was merely a round number used to signify nineteen years and somewhat more; or unless we assure that he did not return as soon as he might have done, but a few months later, so that the full term of twenty years was completed.
There is a general agreement among the ancient authorities that Thucydides came to a violent end ; Zopyrus and Didymus, quoted by Marcellinus, affirm this; and Plutarch (Cimon 4), and Pausanias (1.23.9) tell the same story. But there is a great diversity of evidence as to the place where be died; and it is doubtful whether it was Thrace or Athens. Plutarch says, it is reported that he was killed in Scaptesyle in Thrace, but that his remains were carried to Athens. and his tomb is pointed out in the burial-place of Cimon. by the side of the tomb of Elpinice, the sister of Cimon. Pausanias, who was well acquainted with Athens, says that his tomb was then not far front the Pylae Melitides; and that he was assassinated after his return (ὡς κατἥει), words which seem to imply that he did not long survive his restoration. Marcellinus, on the authority of Antyllus, quotes the inscription on his tomb at Athens :
Θουκυδίδης Ὀλόρου (Ὀρόλου) Ἁλιμούσιος (ἔνθασε κεῖται).
We cannot doubt that there was a tomb of Thucydides at Athens, and he probably died there the testimony of Timaeus that he died in Italy, is of little value.
The question as to the time of the return of Thucydides to Athens, and of the place of his death and interment, is discussed by Krüger with a wearisome minuteness, and with uncertain results. As to the time of the death of Thucydides, he concludes that it could not be later than the end or about the middle of the 94th Olympiad, that is, in any event not later than B. C. 401. His own direct testimony (5.26) simply shows that he was living after the war was ended (B. C. 404). Dodwell argues that the third eruption of Aetna, which Thucydides (3.116) alludes to was tire eruption of B. C. 399 or the 95th Olympiad; but Thucydides means to say that the eruption, of which he does not fix the date, was prior to the two eruptions (B. C. 425 and 475) of which he does fix the dates. There is no doubt about the true interpretation of this passage.
The time when he composed his work is another matter of critical inquiry. He was busy in collecting materials all through the war from the beginning to the end (1.22); but we do not know from his own evidence whether he wrote any portion of the work, as we now have it, during the continuance of the war, though he would certainly have plenty of time during his exile to compose the earlier part of his history. Plutarch says that he wrote the work in Thrace; and his words mean the whole work, as he does not qualify them (τὸν πόλεμον τῶν Πελοποννησίων καὶ Ἀθηναίων ἐν Θράκῃ περὶ τὴν Σκαπτὴν ὕλην, and this is consistent with Plutarch's statement that he died in Thrace. Marcellinus says that he gave the work its last polish in Thrace; and that he wrote it under a plane tree : this is very particular, and it is not improbable that he might write under a shady tree in fine weather, but such particularities are very suspicious. The most probable opinion is that he was engaged on the work till the time of his death. In the very beginning of his history (1.18) he mentions the end of the war in a passage which must have been written after B. C. 404. A passage in the first book (1.93), when rightly interpreted, shows that it was written after the wall round the Peiraeeus was pulled down (Xen. Hell. 2.2). In the second book (2.65) he speaks of the Sicilian expedition, and the support which Cyrus gave to the Lacedaemonians, and of the final defeat of the Athenians in this war; all which passages consequently were written after the events to which they refer. A passage in the fifth book also (5.26), mentions the end of the war, the duration of which, he says, was twenty-seven years. Thucydides undoubtedly was collecting his materials all through the war, and of course he would register them as he got them; but the work in the shape in which
A question has been raised as to the authorship of the eighth and last book of Thucydides, which breaks off in the middle of the twenty-first year of the war (B. C. 411); and with the remark that, " when the winter which follows this summer shall have ended, the one and twentieth year of the war is completed." It differs from all the other books in containing no speeches, a cirenmstance which Dionysius remarked, and it has also been supposed to be inferior to the rest as a piece of composition. Accordingly several ancient critics supposed that the eighth book was not by Thucydides : some attributed it to his daughter, and some to Xenophon or Theopompus, because both of them continued the history. The words with which Xenophon's Hellenica commence (μετὰ δὲ ταῦτα) may chiefly have led to the supposition that he was the author, for his work is made to appear as a continuation of that of Thucydides : but this argument is in itself of little weight; and besides, both the style of the eighth book is different from that of Xenophon. and the manner of treating the subject, for the division of the year into summers and winters, which Thulcydides has observed in his first seven books, is continued in the eighth, but is not observed by Xenophon. The rhetorical style of Theopompus, which was the characteristic of his writing, renders it also improbable that he was the author of the eighth book. It seems the simplest supposition to consider Thucydides himself as the author of this book, since he names himself as the author twice (8.6, 60). Cratippus, a contemporary of Thucydides, who also collected what Thucydides had omitted, ascribes this book to Thucydides, remarking at the same time that he has introduced no speeches in it. (Dionys. De Thuc. 100.16, ed. Hudson.) Marcellinus and the anonymous author of the life of Thucydides also attribute the last book to him. The statement of Cratippus, that Thucydides omitted the speeches in the last book because they impeded the narrative and were wearisolme to his readers, is probably merely a conjecture. If Thucydides, after writing speeches in the first seven books, discovered that this was a bad historical method, we must assume that if he had lived long enough, he would have struck the speeches out of the first seven books. But this is very improbable a man of his character and judgment would hardly begin his work without a settled plan; and if the speeches were struck out, the work would certainly be defective, and would not present that aspect of political affairs, and that judgment upon then, which undoubtedly it was the design of the author to present. Some reasons why there should be no speeches in the eighth book, in accordance with the general plan of Thucydides, are alleged by Krüger; and the main reason is that they are not wanted. Whatever may be the reason, the only conclusion that a sound critic can come to is, that the eighth book is by Thucydides, but that he may not have had the opportunity of revising it with the same care as the first seven books.
A saying (λέγεται) is preserved by Diogenes that Xenophon made the work of Thucydides known (εἰς δόξαν ἤγαγεν), which may be true, as he wrote the first two books of his Hellenica, or the part which now ends with the second book. for the purpose of completing the history. The statement in Diogenes implies that the work of Thucydides might have been lost or forgotten but for Xenophon's care; and if the statement is true, we may conclude that the manuscript of Thucydides in some way came into his possession, and probably the materials which the author had collected for the completion of his history.
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