He refers with reverence to established ordinance and fixed
religion. Still, in his travels through Greece, he must have heard
endless political arguments; and accordingly you can find in his
book many incipient traces of abstract political disquisition. The
discourses on democracy, aristocracy, and monarchy, which he puts
into the mouth of the Persian conspirators when the monarchy was
vacant, have justly been called absurd, as speeches supposed to have
been spoken by those persons. No Asiatic ever thought of such
things. You might as well imagine Saul or David speaking them, as
those to whom Herodotus attributes them. They are Greek speeches,
full of free Greek discussion, and suggested by the experience,
already considerable, of the Greeks in the results of discussion.
The age of debate is beginning, and even Herodotus, the least of a
wrangler of any man, and the most of a sweet and simple narrator,
felt the effect. When we come to Thucydides, the results of
discussion are as full as they have ever been; his light is pure,
'dry light,' free from the 'humours' of habit, and purged from
consecrated usage. As Grote's history often reads like a report to
Parliament, so half Thucydides reads like a speech, or materials for
a speech, in the Athenian Assembly.
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