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Thucydides on Pausanias and Themistocles—A Written Source?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 February 2009

H. D. Westlake
H. D. Westlake
Affiliation:
St. John's College, Cambridge
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Extract

The excursus of Thucydides on the last years of Pausanias and Themistocles (1.128–38) is remarkable for its simple, rapid-flowing style, its storytelling tone, its wealth of personal ancedote, its marked deviation from his normally strict criteria of relevance. These characteristics, which give the excursus a Herodotean flavour, have often been noted by modern scholars, but until recently acceptance of its general credibility has been widespread, and indeed, with one important exception, which seems to have created very little impression almost unchallenged.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 27 , Issue 1 , May 1977 , pp. 95 - 110
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1977

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References

1 Hereafter references are to the first book unless otherwise stated.

3 Beloch, K.J., Gr. Gesch. 2.2 (Strasbourg, 1916), 155–7, sought to exonerate Pausanias from the charge of medism, arguing that the account of his intrigues recorded by Thucydides was based on calumnies invented after his death to justify the inhuman treatment of him by the ephors.Google Scholar Beloch, ibid. 147–8, also maintained that the anecdotes about the flight of Themistocles are apocryphal.

3 In most general histories the narrative is accepted without question, cf. Walker, E.M.CAH 5 (1927), 37–9, 61–5Google Scholar. Meyer, E., GdA 44 (1944), 489n., expresses the opinion that the section on Pausanias is authentic but has reservations about some details which may have been embroidered.Google Scholar

4 Lippold, A., Rh. Mus. 108 (1965), 320–41Google Scholar; Fornara, C.W., Historia 15 (1966), 257–71Google Scholar; Mabel Lang, L., CJ 63 (1967–1968), 79–85Google Scholar; Cawkwell, G.L. in Auckland Classical Essays presented to E.M. Blaiklock (Auckland and Oxford, 1970), pp. 39–58Google Scholar; Rhodes, P.J., Historia 19 (1970), 387–400Google Scholar. Somewhat earlier Wolski, J., Eos 47 (1954), 76–7Google Scholar, touched upon the same problem. Blamire, A., GRBS 11 (1970), 295–305, accepts the general credibility of the section on Pausanias, though he has doubts on some points (cf. 304).Google Scholar

5 Cf. the bon mot of Meiggs, R., The Athenian Empire (Oxford, 1972), p. 465, that if the excursus had ‘been written by any other Greek historian, it would not have been taken seriously’.Google Scholar

6 CQ NS 5 (1955), 53–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar = Essays on the Greek Historians and Greek History (Manchester, 1969), pp. 39–60Google Scholar (hereafter cited as Essays). For discussion of the excursus on Pausanias and Themistocles see Essays, pp. 51–5.Google Scholar

7 See above, n.4.

8 Essays, pp. 48–59.Google Scholar

9 Essays, p. 56. Such could well be the origin of the reports on the activities of Themistocles in the first section of the excursus on the Pentecontaetia (90–3). Because he was still in Athenian service, information about these activities was doubtless obtainable at Athens long afterwards, though it was not necessarily altogether reliable. The same considerations do not apply to information on the period when he had left Athens and become a fugitive.Google Scholar

10 Adcock, F.E., Thucydides and his History (Cambridge, 1963), pp. 22–3, and Rhodes (above, n.4), p. 400, believe the excursus to have been a product of his youth.Google Scholar

11 Thucydides did not share the attitude of Herodotus towards either leader (cf. Essays, p. 52).Google Scholar

12 Essays, p. 56. This attitude is also reflected in 97.2 and 6. 54. 1–2.Google Scholar

13 These methods are analysed by de Romilly, J., Histoire et raison chez Thucydide (Paris, 1956), pp. 240–73.Google Scholar

14 Cf. de Romilly, , op. cit., p. 241.Google Scholar

15 Cf. Ziegler, K., RE 20.2 (1950), 1991 (art. Plagiat).Google Scholar

16 Dover, K.J., Maia 6 (1953), 1–20Google Scholar = Wege der Forscbung 98 (Darmstadt, 1968). 344–68Google Scholar; Compernolle, R. van, Étude de chronologie et d'bistoriograpbie siciliotes (Brussels and Rome, 1960), pp. 437–500 (summary of conclusions, pp. 497–500).Google Scholar

17 Cf. my review of Compernolle, van, op. cit., CR N.S. 12 (1962), 266–8.Google Scholar

18 Pearson, L., CQ 33 (1939), 48–54Google Scholar, maintains only that these notes may come from a Periegesis, since they are written in style found in the fragments of Hecataeus and probably created by him. Ham–mond, N.G.L., Epirus (Oxford, 1967), pp. 446–51 goes further, showing that Thucydides almost certainly derived 46.3–4 (on Cheimerium) and 2.68.3 (on Amphilochian Argos) from Hecataeus, also probably 24 (on the Taulantii).Google Scholar

19 Cf. Lendle, O., Hermes 92 (1964), 129–43Google Scholar = Wege der Forscbung 98 (Darmstadt, 1968), 661–82.Google Scholar

20 So far as I am aware, the only reference to the possibility of a written source occurs in a note by Rhodes (above, n.4), p. 389 n.11, who mentions that it was suggested to him by Dr. D.M. Lewis. Rhodes himself is inclined to believe that ‘Thucydides is publishing the results of his own enquiries’. I am much indebted to Dr. Lewis for encouragement to pursue my investigation and for some valuable advice. It should not be assumed that he agrees with any of my arguments.

21 Only the use of the term by Thucydides will be considered here; the historical problem of determining precisely what it did or did not mean is irrelevant to the present investigation.

22 2.12.1, Melesippus, ; 2.25.2Google Scholar, Brasidas, ; 2.66.2Google Scholar, Cnemus, ; 3.100.2Google Scholar, Eurylochus, and two subordinates; 4.11.2Google Scholar, Thrasymelidas, ; 7.19.2Google Scholar, Eccritus, ; 8.11.2Google Scholar, Thermon, ; 8.22.1Google Scholar, Eualas, ; 8.39.1Google Scholar, Antisthenes, ; 8.61.1Google Scholar, Dercylidas, ; 8.61.2Google Scholar, Leon, ; 8.91.2Google Scholar, Agesandridas, ; 8.99.1Google Scholar, Hippocrates. Exceptionally Phrynis, 8.6.4, and Deiniadas, , 8.22.1, are described as perioikoi.Google Scholar

23 Other relevant passages are: 5.9.9, where Brasidas reminds his subordinate Clearidas of his duty as a Spartiate, and 6.91.4, where Alcibiades urges the Spartan assembly to send a Spartiate to take command in Sicily (cf. 7.58.3).

24 Here Thucydides foreshadows the ultimate consequences of the episode by stressing the extent to which Spartiates were involved in it.

25 That this is the official term may be seen from the texts of treaties quoted verbatim by Thucydides (cf. 4.119.1; 5.18.1 and 23.1; 8.58.1) and in extant inscriptions belonging to the same period, cf. Meiggs, R. and Lewis, D.M., Greek Historical Inscriptions (Oxford, 1969), No. 67, where all the contributions to the Spartan war-fund are givenGoogle Scholar

26 The phrase is also found in the text of a treaty between Sparta and Argos (5.77.1).

27 Xenophon and other historians of the fourth century habitually use the term Spartiate in accordance with the normal practice of Thucydides. It occurs some sixteen times in the Hellenica. Named individuals are designated as Spartiates (5.4.39:7.1.25 and 4.19, ci.Anab. 4.8.25; 6.6.30; also Hell. Ox. 11.4 (Bartoletti), and Theop. FGrHist 115Google Scholar F 323); commissions of Spartiates are sent with Agesilaus to Asia (Hell. 3.4Google Scholar.2–3; Ages. 1.7Google Scholar) and with Agesipolis to Olynthus (Hell. 5.3.8)Google Scholar; attention is drawn to the heavy casualties suffered by the Spartiates at Leuctra (Hell. 6.4Google Scholar.15; Ages. 2.24Google Scholar). When Xenophon implies, in connection with both occasions on which Sparta was threatened by Epaminondas, that the city was defended only by Spartiates (Hell. 6.5.28Google Scholar; 7.5.10), he seems to be using the term rather loosely, since they must have been supported by many ‘inferiors’.

28 Similarly in the excursus on the Pentecontaetia, where the same events are reported more fully, recall Pausanias (95.3).

29 Macan, n. ad loc, is surely right in maintaining that these terms are ‘hardly used in deliberate contrast’, but ‘merely as a literary variation’.

30 In 9.33.5 and 35.1, where Herodotus refers to the enrolment of Teisamenus and his brother as Spartiates, the term is undoubtedly a definition of status; from the context it is clear that only this highest status would have been acceptable.

31 See above, p. 96.

32 The emendation for which some editors have adopted, is a desperate and unacceptable expedient.

33 Cf. (5.28.2; 31.3 and 5), which is synonymous with (5.29.1). Elsewhere phrases with define an area of hostilities (5.26.2, 8.11.3, but this sense is clearly inapplic- able to the passage under discussion, since the war was being fought in Asia.

34 Cawkwell, (above, n.4), p. 53Google Scholar, suggests this interpretation, cf. de Ste Croix, G.E.M., Origins of the Peloponnesian War (London, 1972), pp. 171–2, who, however, concludes by regarding it as unlikely because of ‘the casual way in which Thucydides uses the expression “for the Hellenic war”, and the employment of the definite article, without any elucidation’.Google Scholar

35 Three interpretations seem to be possible: (a) ‘war in Greece’, contrasted with the expedition to Cyprus reported in the same sentence.

The translations of Jowett, de Romiliy, and Landmann adopt this interpretation. Cf. above, n.33, for instances of this local sense. (b) ‘war between Greeks’, namely the Athenians and the Peloponnesians. This seems to be the meaning in a passage of Lysias (2.48), who uses the phrase when referring to the same war (perhaps following Thucydides), cf. Isocr. 12.1 and Dem. 9.22 (both plural and with the definite article). See Meiggs, (above, n.5), p. 72, n.l. (c) ‘war against Greeks’ (the Athenians, who are the subject of the sentence, against other Greeks, namely the Peloponnesians), cf. in the passages cited above. Steup, n. ad loc, favours this interpretation.Google Scholar

36 IG ii 2.448Google Scholar.44 505.17; 506.9; Plut, . Phoc. 23Google Scholar.1. The part played by the Athenians in launching the crusade for Greek freedom is stressed by all the sources, cf. Hypereid. 6 (Epitaphios) 16, 24, 34, 40; Diod. 18.9.1 and 5, 10.2–3; Dexippus, , FGrHist 100 F 33 f.Google Scholar

37 A similar phenomenon, though in the reverse direction, may be seen in the phrase at the end of the same sentence. The context requires that the meaning must be ‘rule over the Greeks’, which has no parallel elsewhere in the History. A more natural translation would be ‘rule by the Greeks’, as in 8.43.3, (cf. Hdt. 1.72.2); see also 8.96.4, and similar expressions in 2.97.1; 6.82.3; 6.90.2). The earliest parallel for the sense required by the context seems to be Arist, . Pol. 2.1271b33Google Scholar

38 Vogt, J., Satura Otto Weinreich dargebracht (Baden-Baden, 1952), pp. 169–72Google Scholar, and Historia 18 (1969), 300–1Google Scholar; Rohrer, K., Wien. Stud. 72 (1959), 52Google Scholar; Blamire, (above n.4), 301–2.Google Scholar

39 Beloch, (above, n.2), p. 155Google Scholar; Sykutri, J., RE Suppl. 5.209–10Google Scholar; Münch, H., Studien za den Exkursen des Thukydides (Heidelberg, 1935), pp. 23–4. A point made by Sykutris and Münch, that the original letters would not have been written in Attic, does not strengthen the case for rejecting the authenticity of the Thucydidean texts.Google Scholar

Greeks did not insist that documents must always be reproduced in the dialect in which they were originally written. The three treaties between Sparta and Persia in 412/11, which somehow became known to Thucydides (8.18, 37, and 58), cannot have been originally written in Attic.

40 Above, n.4; on the letters see Lippold, passim, but especially 334; Fornara, , p. 265Google Scholar; Lang, , p. 80Google Scholar; Cawkwell, , pp. 49–50.Google Scholar

41 Essays, pp. 43–4.Google Scholar

42 This parenthesis contains a striking idiom, which is thoroughly Thucydidean, cf. 3.95.2; 5.35.2 and 50.4; 7.34.6. Thus, unless Thucydides composed the letter himself, it is very probable that he had before him a complete text, whether genuine or not, and that he was himself responsible for abbreviating it by summarizing part of it. In the version of the letter given by Nepos, , Them. 9, the gap is filled, but there is no reason to believe that Nepos or his authority used a text older than that of Thucydides.Google Scholar

43 Cf. my Individuals in Thucydides (Cambridge, 1968), p. 190.Google Scholar

44 Vogt, Historia, loc. cit., bases his belief in the authenticity of the letters partly on the argument that Thucydides would not have stooped to falsification of this kind.

45 Münch, loc. cit., followed by Lippold, , (above, n.4), p. 334 n.59, is mistaken in referring to 3.40 as the only letter of which Herodotus gives what purports to be the text. 1.124 certainly ranks as a letter, even though the method of transmission (in the belly of a hare) is unorthodox.Google Scholar

46 Cf. the general criticisms of their methods by Thucydides (21.1).

47 See ahove p. 96 with n.4.

48 Examples are: 1.118.3; 2.98.3; 3.79.3.

49 Gomme, A.W., Historical Commentary on Thucydides 1 (Oxford, 1945), 435Google Scholar and 441; Wolski, (above n.4), p. 77; de Ste Croix (above, n.34), p. 8 n.9.Google Scholar

50 Scholars have tended to assume that passages in which Thucydides uses are uniform and merely suggest uncertainty. I hope to show elsewhere that they are diverse and may have other implications.

51 Essays, pp. 157–8.Google Scholar

52 See above, p. 97 with n.16.

53 It might be argued that in each of the three passages is merely copied from his source, since he seems to have followed this source closely enough to have reproduced some of its vocabulary which is not found elsewhere in his History (see below, pp. 105–6. This explanation, is however, not very cogent, because, when writing about the past, he himself occasionally uses in the sense commonly found in Herodotus, as has been shown above.

54 This story must have been well known at Athens before Thucydides became an exile: Aristophanes, Knights 83–4, expects his audience to be familiar with it.Google Scholar

55 Cf. Momigiiano, A., Studies in Historiography (London, 1966), p. 214: ‘he assumes the responsibility for what he says, and feels no need to leave a choice to the reader’.Google Scholar

56 Cf. 3.88.3:6.2.2 (which, as noted above, belongs to the excursus on Sicily).

57 Cf. 2.65.5–13, on Pericles; 6.72.2, on Hermocrates; 8.68.1–2, on Antiphon.

58 The scholiast on 138.4, displaying an acuteness unusual in Thucydidean scholia, asks how it was that, if Themistocles possessed the ability to foresee the future attributed to him in 138.3, he can have made promises to Artaxerxes which he could not fulfil.

59 Huart, P., Le Vocabulaire de I'analyse psychologique dans I'oeuvre de Thucydide (Paris, 1968), pp. 282–90 and 311, points out that and key words in the vocabulary of Thucydides.Google Scholar

60 Cf. also phrases such as (130.1), which is found in Democritus (D.-K. 68 B 210) as well as in Herodotus (6.139.3;both use the active), and (138.4; elsewhere Thucydides uses the verb absolutely).

61 For see Hecataeus, , FGrHist 1Google Scholar F 15; Pherecydes, FGrHist 3 F 64a; Antiphon 3.2.10 and 3.3.12.Google Scholar

62 e.g. (130.1; Hippocr. Aer. 22 and Insomn. 91); (132.5; Hippocr, . Praec. 4)Google Scholar; (134.3; Hippocr, . Morb. 1.19).Google Scholar

63 For probable exceptions in the Sicilian excursus (6.3.1–2) see Dover, (above, n.16), Wege der Forschung, pp. 351–2.Google Scholar

64 Momigliano, A., The Development of Greek Biography (Harvard, 1971), p. 64.Google Scholar

65 See above p. 96 with n.4. The traditic about Pausanias could well have been distorted by the Spartan authorities soon after his death when their treatment of him was criticized by the Delphic oracle (134.4).

66 Herodotus, 5.32, may be referring to oral tradition rather than a written source when he mentions with some scepticism a report that Pausanias intrigued with the Persians.

67 Schachermeyr, F., Sitzb. Oest. Akad. 247.5 (1965), 9–11Google Scholar. The whole paper (1–23) is valuable.

68 Cf. Schachermeyr, op. cit., who persuasively disputes the widely accepted view–still favoured by Meiggs, (above, n.5), pp. 15–16–that the pamphlet was a tirade against Athenian imperialism by an embittered ally.Google Scholar

69 Thucydides notes only that money which he had deposited at Athens and Argos was sent to him (137.3).

70 Meiggs, (above, n.5), p. 81. Thucydides can scarcely have obtained his material about Pausanias from the pamphlet by Stesimbrotus, though the section on Themistocles could have included some account of his relations with Pausanias.Google Scholar

71 For a commentary on this important chapter see Pritchett, W.K., Dionysius of Halicamassus, On Thucydides (Berkeley, 1975), pp. 50–7.Google Scholar

72 Hellanicus can almost certainly be eliminated as a source possibly used by Thucydides for his excursus. The experiences of Pausanias and Themistocles in their last years were presumably mentioned by Hellanicus in his Attbis, which contained an account of the Pentecontaetia, but Thucydides comments adversely upon the brevity of this account (97.2, ), so that it could hardly have provided him with sufficient detail to meet his needs. It is also improbable that the Atthis was published when he wrote about Pausanias and Themistocles; his reference to it is almost certainly a late insertion–see Ziegler, K., Rh.Mus. 78 (1929), 66Google Scholar n.2), whose conclusion has been widely accepted, cf. Luschnat, O., RE Suppl. 12 (1971), 1145.Google Scholar

73 Dionysius does not necessarily mean that all the works of Charon were published before the single work of Herodotus. He does not specify which work or works of Charon he has in mind. Drews, R., Greek Accounts of Eastern History (Harvard, 1973), pp. 25–6, assumes that it was the Persica, but it could have been the totally unknown Hellenica or some other work.Google Scholar

74 Jacoby, F., Abbandl. zurgr. Geschichts-schreibung (Leyden, 1956), pp. 178–206Google Scholar (originally published in Stud. ital. 15, 1938)Google Scholar, cf. FGrHist 3a Kom. (1943), 1–2Google Scholar, has challenged the generally accepted dating of Charon, maintaining that he belongs to the end of the fifth century. The principal conclusion of that paper is, in my opinion, unacceptable and some of its arguments uncharacteristically weak. Two of them may be noted. According to Jacoby, , Abbandl., pp. 182–3Google Scholar, the statement of Thucydides (97.2) that only Hellanicus had written about the Pentecontaetia shows that Charon had not yet published an account of this period. There is, however, no evidence that Charon ever wrote any work covering the whole of the Pentecontaetia or even a substantial part of it, cf. von Fritz, K., Gr. Geschichtsschreibung la (Berlin, 1967), 520Google Scholar, and Drews, , op. cit., p. 25Google Scholar. Another point made by Jacoby, ibid., pp. 187–8, is equally unconvincing, namely that the work of Charon on Spartan magistrates, together with his Cretica, should be assigned to the period after 405, when Lampsacus was under Spartan control, rather than to an earlier era. There seems to be no reason whatever why he could not have visited Sparta (see below) before the Peloponnesian war began and have then collected material for his work on Spartan magistrates. He was doubtless younger than most of the other historians named by Dionysius in the group of those who wrote before the war, but there is no justification for believing Dionysius to be mistaken in including him in this earlier group. In Atthis (Oxford, 1949), pp. 164 and 335 n.26, Jacoby is confident that Thucydides obtained information about the tyrants of Lampsacus, reported in 6.59. 3–4, from the Chronicles of Charon.Google Scholar

75 Drews, , op. cit., p. 26.Google Scholar

76 The links between Themistocles and Lampsacus, which are rather obscure, are discussed by Meiggs, (above, n.5), p. 53.Google Scholar

77 See above, n.65.

78 Fränkel, H., Gött. Nachr. y, pp. 92–3, infers from an examination of this fragment that the style of Charon was much inferior to that of Herodotus.Google Scholar

79 I am deeply indebted to Professor A. Andrewes, who has read a draft of this paper and made some most valuable comments. He has independently noticed the abnormal use of the term Spartiate in the excursus on Pausanias and Themistocles discussed above, pp. 97–102. He has kindly shown to me an extract from the final volume of Historical Commentary on Thucydides (note on 8.22.1) which mentions this point.