lA LIBRARY OF THE * UNIVERSITY OF CALirdRNiA. Class .-..-. - M - - ,. ,.;=.. :.-.'- : , ; : i , 8| ' : - ' - Prolegomena to Ancient History. < ? Prolegomena to Ancient History, CONTAINING p ART I. THE INTERPRETATION OF LEGENDS AND INSCRIPTIONS. PART II. A SURVEY OF OLD EGYPTIAN LITERATURE. BY JOHN P. MAHAFFY, A.M., M.R.LA., FELLOW AND TUTOR OF TRINITY COLLEGE, AND LECTURER IN ANCIENT HISTORY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF DUBLIN, LONDON: LONGMANS, GREEN, & CO. 1871. DUBLIN: tf)e Stnibcrsitu }0res&, BY M. H. GII.L. TO WILLIAM STOKES, M.D., D.C.L., M.R.I. A., ETC., REGIUS PROFESSOR OF PHYSIC IN THE UNIVERSITY OF DUBLIN, THIS VOLUME IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED. 215215 PREFACE. THE following Essays, compiled from a course of public Lectures in the University of Dublin, con- tain the facts which the audience desired to obtain in a permanent form. The omission of local allu- sions, and of colloquial address, will, I trust, make the book of wider application and of larger use, as it is intended to expound, briefly and yet accurately, some of the great discoveries made in our day con- cerning early civilisations. The Essays are not properly History, but Prolegomena to History, being mainly concerned in discussing the nature and the value of our evidences for human culture antece- dent to that of Greece and Rome. In the present day, the ipse dixit of a Professor, even in his own subject, may command assent from the general public, but cannot claim it from the youngest earnest inquirer, if he be independent and viii Preface. desires to think for himself. It was therefore to me a real cause of satisfaction, that not merely compe- tent critics, but even the student readers of my for- mer published Lectures, complained that there were no citations of the evidence from which I drew my pictures of primitive civilisations. The same intelli- gent doubts encountered me when undertaking my present duties. If hieroglyphical inscriptions were quoted, I was asked : are they really deciphered ? If the statements of legends were received, it was ob- jected, that legends might be pure fictions. Nothing can be more encouraging to an honest teacher than to find this sound scepticism in his class. But it necessitates a prolonged and serious discussion of preliminary questions, and a complete digest of original authorities and of their evidence, before the descriptive teaching of historical facts can be approached. This thread, therefore, binds together the various subjects discussed in the vo- lume. All the following Essays supply the reader with evidence either of real results in deciphering hitherto unknown languages, or of the credit to which primitive legends are entitled. The latter question being adhuc sub jiidice, I Preface. ix cannot expect to avoid criticism, especially as the attitude assumed is polemical, and opposed to the school now most popular in England. But I ven- ture to think that the arguments brought together in the second Essay, especially the psychological points, have not yet been fully stated, and are worthy of the serious attention of Comparative Mythologers. I must record specially the assistance given me by Dr. Lottner in this part of the book. Perhaps it was unwise to put forth in the outset an adverse judgment of Thukydides without going more fully into the evidence. He has so tormented and yet interested critical scholars with his preg- nant grammatical anomalies, that they love him with that peculiar affection which a mother feels for the wayward but clever child that has cost her most trouble and anxiety. It may be necessary to state elsewhere ampler reasons for my conclusions on this point, which are no sudden thoughts, but the results of long, and I hope, mature consideration. The Essays which concern Persian, Assyrian, and Egyptian records are not subject to the same criticism. The conclusions which they assert are no longer contested by any competent judge, but x Preface. they are almost unknown to the larger part of the intelligent public. The few men who have mastered hieroglyphic or cuneiform writing are so busy with fresh discoveries, that they have neither time nor inclination to give the world any succinct general survey of the results already attained. Moreover, the discoverer is apt to lay so much stress on de- tail, and to turn aside so frequently from broad and plain arguments to special researches, that he may not be the best exponent, to the world at large, even of the discoveries to which he has himself largely contributed. The best apology to these special scholars, who despise a merely historical account of their re- searches, is, that as they have not deigned to expound them sufficiently, others must do so. Con- sidering the labour required to ascertain the sources and arrange the information on Egyptian and cunei- form writing, this short survey will be acceptable, not only to those who are entering upon such studies, but to a larger class, who desire to weigh fairly the value of recent discoveries in enlarging our know- ledge of ancient History. So scattered, so difficult of access, are the various monographs and papers Preface. xi on Egyptology and Assyriology, that without the aid of a public Library, and of a public Library specially supplied with the Transactions- and Pro- ceedings of foreign societies, it is hardly possible to ascertain where they are and to obtain them. I have to thank the Board of Trinity College for allowing me to order all the special books required, and should have been well supplied but for the late war, which prevented my obtaining several import- ant works from Paris during the siege. I trust those English discoverers, who are second to none in Europe, will not suspect me of omitting to quote them fully from any want of due apprecia- tion. It was rather because in this country their works are better known, and probably in the hands of all who are interested in such subjects, and also because the newest exposition was naturally the most complete, and therefore best suited to instruct the reader. Dr. Birch's original translations, for example, of many Egyptian documents, have been supplemented and completed in later versions by foreign scholars, who, while they followed his foot- steps, have added from their own stores. Had I been acquainted with any survey, even xii Preface. tolerably complete, of old Egyptian literature, I should hardly have ventured to discuss it ; but the sketches of Dr. Birch, of Baron Bunsen, and of M. Naville, are either so brief, or now so long pub- lished, that none of them can claim to bring the reader up to the present state of the subject. They are also unsatisfactory in not quoting extracts suffi- cient to give a distinct notion of the works de- scribed. I have therefore ventured to collect in the last and longest of these Essays most of the scattered information published up to the present time, and have sacrificed form and symmetry, in order to quote, as much as possible, from accurate transla- tions of the documents themselves. Where my defective knowledge of the language prevented my testing these translations, I have taken pains to compare independent versions, and have used them where they agree. Historical documents were in- tentionally excluded, as being best discussed in connexion with the epoch and the men to which they refer a large subject, and beyond the scope and compass of these Prolegomena. For the same reason I have marked events in Egyptian His- tory by dynasties, in order to avoid the thorny Preface. xiii subject of early Egyptian chronology. For the reader's convenience, however, I have appended to this Preface a table of approximate dates B. c. from M. Mariette's writings, which will serve as a gene- ral indication how to classify the dynasties. 1 But enough of excuses and explanations, lest the reader should compare me to the desponding Nikias, who would not commit his soldiers to the battle without delaying each of them, ^arpoOev re ical avrovs ovofULacrrl KUL (/)v\vji', a\\a re oaa ev TW TOIOVTW jfitj rov tcaipov o^re? av6pu)7roi ov Trpos TO EotfelV Tivi ap^aioXoyei^ (frvXa^ajmevoi eiTrotev i\ av. I must not, however, omit to thank my friends, Dr. Lottner, Mr. Tyrrell, and Mr. Leeper, for their valuable aid in correcting the proof sheets. The Index is in some respects more complete than the text, as several important books, which reached me too late for quotation in the footnotes, have been there cited. 1 Under the word chronology in the Index I have added the best authorities on the subject. APPROXIMATE CHRONOLOGY OF THE MOST REMARKABLE EGYPTIAN DYNASTIES. NOTE. Other chronologers lower the date of Menes considerably, but none below 3200 B.C. Later researches are distinctly tending rather to increase than diminish the antiquity of Egyptian civilisation. The differences cease about the invasion of the shepherds, from which point scholars generally keep within the same century in their dates, a limit accurate enough in such very high figures. Mr. Goodwin places Menes, circ. 4000 B.C.; the IVth dynasty, before 3200 ; the Xllth beginning with 2400 ; his conclusions agree with Lepsiusand Brugsch pretty closely. OLD EMPIRE. DYNASTY. DATE. 1st. (Menes), circ. 5000 B. c. Ilnd. (Sent), ,, 4700 ,, Illrd. ( i st part of Prisse papyrus), . . . ,, 445 IVth. (Pyramids), ,, 4200 ,, Vth. (Ptah-hotep), 3900 MIDDLE EMPIRE. Xlth. (Earliest specimen of Ritual), . . ,, ~\ Xllth. (Amenemha, &c.), f 3 XlVth. (Invasion of shepherds), .... ,, 2400 ,, NEW EMPIRE. XVIIIth. (Amenophis, Tothmes, &c.), . . 1700 ,, XlXth. (Ramses II., Menephtah, and the Exodus), , 1450 ,, XXth. 1280 XXIst. 1 1 10 XXIInd. (Shishak and Rehoboam) . . . ,, 980 ,, XXVIth. (Psamtik I.), certainly in ... 665 XXXIst. (Cambyses and Persians), . . . ,, 340 E S SAYS, &c. &c. ESSAY I. On the Methods of Writing and Teaching Ancient History Herodotus and Thukydides. " Quae priores eloquentia percoluere, haec rerum fide tradentur." TACITUS. V 1NCIENT History has ever been one of the J, m- chief objects of human curiosity and there- fore of human learning. Men have differed widely in their theories and methods of writing and of teach- ing it, but no human beings above the rank of the lowest savages are ever careless about their ancestors or the past annals of their nation. The very prin- ciple of causality, the great agent that prompts every human inquiry, forbids us to rest content with the Now and the Here, and urges us to search for the hidden and the past. Some sort of ancient his- tory therefore must exist, and has existed since the dawn of civilization. But history differs from history as much as the medicine-man from the modern histologist, the amulet and charm from the B Growth of History. treatment of the enlightened physician. First come the floating legend and the simple tale, handed down by oral tradition, embellished with wonders and idealised by lofty motives. They are told by some aged crone or sightless bard, and received by simple hearers without doubt or criticism. Then there is a time when such things no longer command assent, when men want to know dates and generations and a rational sequence of events, and so there springs up beside the rich epic, which pictured human life and motives, the barren chronicle : instead of varied poetry men's minds are fed with bald and wretched prose, or prosy verse. Such, for example, was the style of the Greek historical writers who pre- ceded Herodotus, which affects indeed greater accu- racy than its beautiful predecessor, but abandons far more than it adds. Such a change can in no way be called an advance in knowledge, except in so far as it lays the foundation for better things. Then comes the day of pragmatical narrative, when not only are facts recorded, but motives and reflections added ; and this is the first record that can properly be called history. There is yet a further step, before we reach critical history, which consists in the careful weigh- ing of the evidence for our facts, and, consequently, for our theories. Thukydides, for example, who is generally thought a critical historian, is not strictly such. He submits present events, it is true, to careful sifting, Attitude of Thukydides. and rejects altogether any miraculous interference. But I believe that had Thukydides not been a scep- tic in religion he would never have had so high a reputation. To historical scepticism he can lay no claim. On the legendary history of his country he pragmatises (as the Germans say), and accommodates motives which he thinks suitable to the recorded events. But his whole criticism affects the motives of the heroes, and not the stories alleged concerning them. 1 Thukydides, in fact, and the Athenian school to which he belonged, were so engrossed with poli- tics and with political notions, that whenever they could attribute any such origin to an alleged fact, it became to them not only probable but a matter of history. There were political reasons for Minos and his naval power, political reasons for the armament under Agamemnon, and, therefore, these accounts were admitted into history. To allow any interfer- ence of the gods, to admit any chivalrous motives or any unselfish passion as an efficient cause in human affairs ; above all, to believe that any woman could influence politics or change the history of a nation, these were the ideas rejected by Thukydides and his school with scorn. It was under this theory that he reviewed the past history of his country. From Herodotus, with whom he intentionally contrasts him- 1 Thus, for example, he alludes to the story of the murder of Itys (n. c. 29) as an historical fact. B 2 Skeleton Histories. self, he really differs only in omitting from his esti- mate of causes the action of gods and of women, as well as of benevolence and of self-denial. To ignore and to neglect, along with popular superstitions, these prominent facts in human nature, is the capital defect of the history of Thukydides. Just as it is possible to write a chronological skeleton of a period of history, which gives all the events in their order, without any logical sequence or coherence, so it is equally possible to give apolitical skeleton of a period, in which the action of the great general causes at the basis of historical changes is given, but the action of individuals and their special assistance or hindrance to the general laws of history, are either omitted or undervalued. Such a political outline is, like the chronological one, im- perfect, just as a skeleton is an imperfect represen- tation of a man with flesh and blood. But the political skeleton is not only imperfect, it becomes actually false, if the writer intends it for a com- plete image of the period which he desires to repre- sent. From this point of view I consider the history of Thukydides not merely defective, but, to some extent, false, as compared with Herodotus, whose work is like a mirror, reflecting to us all that he had seen and heard. Although, therefore, Thukydides certainly sifted his materials, and may therefore in one sense be called a critical historian, from another he cannot Tkukydides and Tacitus. lay claim to the title ; for he selected his materials with a view to a foregone conclusion ; he made them fit a preconceived theory. To use the expression of Sir G. C. Lewis, he is a "complete historical sophist." 1 But it is justly to his credit that he does so merely by omission. He neither invents nor (so far as we know) distorts facts, and in this differs widely from the other great political theorist of antiquity who preached his doctrines by writing a history. Tacitus both relates unfounded gossip, which he meant his readers to believe, and assigns motives, in them- selves absurd, and often contradictory to each other, to make out a case against the Roman imperial system. 2 1 Applied, in his Letters, p. 348, to a well-known living his- torian. s This habit is by no means extinct. Even the most bril- liant German historians seem tainted with the impropriety of displaying their political opinions through a thin veil of history. Of course, the French anti-Imperialists afford the most obtrusive example of the same defect. The infamous injustice of Tacitus has been exposed with extraordinary care by L. Freitag, in his essay entitled " Tiberius und Tacitus T A careful perusal of this book will fill the reader with wonder at the cleverness, and indig- nation at the grossness, of the libel. According to Tacitus' own statements thirty-nine persons were executed during the twenty-three years of Tiberius' s reign. Of these only seventeen were executed for treason. Twelve of them are conceded guilty by Tacitus. The remaining five were put to death against the Emperor's will by the Senate. Almost all the other twenty-two persons executed were themselves delatores. Critical Historians. What, then, is a critical historian ? He is a man who not only acts with perfect honesty and impar- tiality, in stating all the evidence which can be pro- cured, but who is competent to weigh the exact value of the evidence of every witness produced. He must take nothing on trust, but must show accu- rately the source not only of his own, but of his witnesses' information. From such a point of view we can hardly point out a really critical historian before the present century. But among our own writers Mr. Hallam is a critical historian, and Sir G. C. Lewis and Bishop Thirlwall ; so also is M. Al- bert Rillier. 1 The reader will observe with surprise that I have not mentioned the names of the greatest modern historians in this list. The omission was made ad- visedly. For though an historian is bound to do all that these men have done in sifting the evidence for their evidence, and weighing it critically though he is also bound not to do what Tacitus and the modern quasi-historians in France have done, who make history a mere arena for supporting a pre-con- ceived political theory after all these conditions are fulfilled, there yet remains the distinctive quality of a great historian the formation of an historical theory based upon his facts, and the sober balancing of probable evidence, and of uncontradicted though 1 Author of the " Origines de la Confederation Suisse" Great Historians. unsubstantiated tradition. History is not a mere Report upon evidence, nor a mere judicial inquiry, as the lawyers would have us believe. Blue Books, such as the works of G. C. Lewis, and of many of the Germans, are the materials for history, and not history itself. After all the materials are collected, there remains the appreciation of them, a far more sub- tile process, and beyond the scope of ordinary in- quirers. This appreciation, or historic sense, is a quality inborn in some men, just as a faculty of diagnosis is natural to a great physician. It is of course trained, improved, and corrected by study and experience, but no ordinary man will ever create it within himself by such means ; and as the faculty is a sort of instinct, so the conclusions to which it leads cannot always be explained to the ordinary juryman or lawyer, who cross-examines the historian from his lower standpoint. This is always the diffi- culty of the expert, when brought into contact with the vulgar. The most ordinary example is that of a physician in a court of law, where the common nisi prius devices are often sufficient to overthrow all his authority. How can he transfer his power of dia- gnosis to the judge and jury ? How can he give a reason for his instinct ? And yet, if he cannot explain himself, how is his evidence to be of value in a court of law, where everything is to be explained ? The appreciation, therefore, of delicate evidence 8 Historical Theorists. is one of the distinctive features of a great historian as such. By this faculty conclusions are felt long before the evidence for them is such as can be de- finitely stated ; and it is by keeping such a goal before our eyes, that the greatest discoveries will ever be accomplished. The very setting up however of such a mental goal implies more than the mere sifting of evi- dence ; it implies a definite theory formed upon that evidence, a theory which underlies all the details, and gives consistency to the huge mass of otherwise unconnected particulars. Without some such theory that enlists his sympathies, that adds passion to his judgment, and unity to his researches, the most acute and painstaking inquirer will only be a Commissioner, and not an Historian. Such have been two of the patient writers to whom I have al- ready alluded. They had every quality save what is vaguely called genius. In history, genius appears to me to mean this strong stamp with which the writer's mind marks all his materials this frame into which he is able to fit all his figures. If the frame be formed, and inadequate to include all the facts, he is a doctrinaire, whose work will be inte- resting and often very suggestive ; but yet he will not be a great historian. A remarkable specimen of such a mind is Bishop Warburton, whose Divine Legation of Moses is probably the most remarkable attempt in our language to bring myriad facts with- Herodotus. in the compass of an inadequate and irrelevant theory. The highly interesting Histoire des Perses, lately published by the Comte de Gobineau, is another less extreme specimen, full of genius and eminently suggestive ; yet from an historical point of view exceedingly unsound. 1 But when the theory is really adequate to the facts, then there results one of the great books that mould the thoughts of many generations. Consider the history of Herodotus. He wrote on one definite theory, perhaps on more than one. But the effects of the Divine Nemesis on the empires of men gave him a fixed principle from which he viewed the history of the world before his time. Many and various as are his digressions and anec- dotes, this one great idea raises them from an in- vertebrate, so to speak, to a vertebrate organism ; and although the conception is in itself objection- able, and even slightly Swinburnian, and prompts him to give an excessive attention to tales of wonder and of superstition, yet it has also undeniable ad- vantages. Being an essentially theological, and not 1 His idea is the glorification of the Iranian race, as compared not only with the Semites but also with the Greeks. From this point of view, he rewrites the history of Esther and Xerxes with the most delicate appreciation of the conditions and circum- stances (vol. ii. pp. 1 59-74). He also boldly attacks the history of the Persian wars with Greece from the Iranian side, and presents the facts for the first time, so far as I know, in this light. io Thukydides. a political, dogma, it did not tempt him to mis- represent the opinions or the conduct of men and of parties. The honest facts of the great war illus- trated his theory with all the meanness and the jea- lousy of the actors, and still more with the accidents that so often turn the balance in human affairs. He seems bound by no political theory, prejudiced by no special form of government, and his historical vision was far too wide and clear to permit of hero- worship in the modern sense. For these reasons Herodotus, with all his imperfections, his childish- nesses, and his superstitions, has left us a more interesting, a more important, and, I think, a more instructive work than his rival, Thukydides. This latter was an Athenian, in all the narrow- ness of the word a quality which it seems strange to assert of the best educated people in the world. But the expression can be amply justified. No men ever had narrower sympathies than the Athenian despot-democrats. They despised all nations except their own. They despised all divisions of that na- tion except themselves. They even despised all those among themselves who were not strictly politicians. They looked with contempt upon all foreign history and civilization ; on all simpler or more primitive Greeks ; on all their own women, servants, and old men, because sickness or war had excluded them from the fever of public life. This, was the atti- tude of Thukydides. His plan is very shrunken Thukydides. 1 1 and small when compared to that of Herodotus. It excludes the collisions and the contrasts of races, the ornaments of anecdote and digressive description, above all, the analysis of any rational motives or springs of action, save those of cold calculation and political expediency. Two passions only suffice in his estimate of human character : ambition and revenge. With them, indeed, his cold narrative is often dyed deeply enough. But all the more trivial and uncer- tain, and therefore more deeply interesting causes of great effects in history the action of caprice in the despot, of love and partiality in the statesman, above all, the influence of women transgressing the time of leisure or the day of pleasure these he not only neglects, but deliberately excludes from serious life. Amestris and Gorgo, Demokedes and Xerxes, as personalities, are to him nonexistent in sober history. His genius applied itself to show that all the events of a great war could be explained apart from these unworthy trifles. His work is a great history, because it was written with passion to support a theory, and his positive theory was a vindication of the policy of the great Perikles, as being such as would have saved both Athens and Greece, had it been carried out consistently. But this was not enough. He must not only explain and develope the policy of Perikles ; he must exclude those to him unworthy and in- credible influences, which all the Athenian public 1 2 Contrast of other Evidence. persisted in attributing to the great statesman. Cold and distant as Perikles was avoiding society, and keeping aloof from the perpetual talking of his countrymen, never smiling, rarely lamenting the theory of Thukydides, that his whole life was one of pure and earnest politics was natural enough, and had doubtless many adherents. But the weight of contemporary evidence does not support it. The his- torians and philosophers of his own and the succeed- ing generation, the comic poets, and their highly competent scholiasts, who lived near enough to catch the echo of the time in fact all our authorities, save Thukydides, believed that behind the mask of cold earnestness was a warm and passionate nature, revelling in pleasure, and led by the ministers to that pleasure. 1 The Peloponnesian war, for example, had its deep causes in the jealousy of race and the collision of large interests, according to both these authors and Thukydides, yet they asserted the flame to have been kindled, not by the Korkyraean dispute, but by a much smaller and meaner one, nearer home, and affecting the interests not of nations, but of one in- dividual, Aspasia. They persisted in asserting that the great man was led against his better reason by the charms of this able and fascinating woman. They regarded her as a power in the State. When iv Sarupwv, rt TTOT' OVK i9i\sic Sopv (SaaTaZtiv, K, T, \. says the comic poet Hermippus of him. Object of Thukydides. 13 Perikles defended her, he was moved, as he was moved but once again in his life. When she allied herself to a low fellow after his death, she at once made him one of the leaders in the State. 1 It has always appeared to me that Thukydides is covertly combating this belief about Perikles all through his history. His positive theory was, as I have said, that the cold, clear policy of his ideal statesman would have been the real salvation of his country. Its negative side was this: that human affairs, depending on computations of commercial interest and of political expediency, are not swayed by the interference of any such capricious agents as gods or women. The religious scepticism of his 1 Dr. Sauppe, in his article (Gottingen Transactions, vol. xiii.) on Plutarch's Sources for the Life of Perikles, from which I have taken these details, disbelieves the last story on very German grounds. Lysikles is known to have been a political leader one year after the death of Perikles ; Dr. Sauppe there- fore argues, first, that Aspasia must have been in too much grief to have thought of a new liaison ; and, secondly, that were it so, there was no time left for her education to produce its effects. On the former point I speak hesitatingly, not being thoroughly informed as to the amount of grief usual in such characters upon such occasions. But, if the German professor has made it his special study, in order to arrive at the truth in the case of As- pasia, he ought to give us his evidence, which appears flatly to contradict popular notions. As to his second point, the sudden- ness of Lysikles' rise appears to me the strongest argument for, and not against, the story. 14 His Controversial Attitude. day made it easy for him to get rid of the theory of Providential interposition ; the question of female influence was much more serious. His work was indeed too great and dignified to admit of direct controversy, and his open allusions to these influences are very few indeed. He speaks once pointedly concerning the elasticity of inter- pretation necessary to the credit of oracles. He speaks once contemptuously, in the person of Peri- kles, of the interference of women in public affairs. 1 But I think we can see an indirect refutation of the latter underlying his argument in many places. Not merely is his absolute silence concerning Aspasia remarkable and intentional, but his reflections on the Trojan War seem to insinuate how previous writers, especially including Herodotus, had as it were tri- fled with the serious conflicts of nations, and ac- 1 ii. 54 and 45. Though I consider Thukydides quite capable of interpolating with this sentiment the real speech ofPerikles, whose connexion with Aspasia gave room for an obvious retort, there are, nevertheless, historical grounds for his having really uttered it, which are worth mentioning, as they have hitherto escaped the historians of the period. When Perikles had, on a previous occasion, delivered a funeral oration, the women, who seem at Athens to have had no other opportunity of hearing an orator, were so transported with admiration, that they overwhelmed him with garlands and with acclamations, a proceeding exceed- ingly disagreeable to his distant and dignified composure. It is the repetition of this unpleasant enthusiasm that he apparently guards against by his cold and contemptuous advice. His Definite Theory. 15 counted for them by an absurdly inadequate cause. To talk of Helen as the origin of the Trojan War was exactly as absurd as to refer the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War to Aspasia and her girls. And as the latter war could be accounted for by purely political considerations, so the mythical conflict around Troy had no other origin. 1 As men would ever remain the same, and be able to refer to his analysis of the Peloponnesian War as a permanent lesson in politics, so the olden time only differed from his own in possessing less money and fewer ships, not according to the visionary fancies of poets and old women. With this supreme contempt of trifles, with this deep enthusiasm for the policy and intellect of Perikles, he wrote his great defective history. The most remarkable portion of it is that which is the least historical. For the speeches which he composed, and put into the mouths of his various characters on suitable occasions, were no mere ornaments, but dramatic representations of the motives underlying his facts. They contain most of his conclusions and convictions. They 1 He does not positively deny that Helen may have served as an excuse, Cf. I, C. 9. 'Aya//ii>wv rl /*oi Soictl T&V TOTS SvvctfJiti 7TpOVX