it is no paradox to say that there are cases in which the weight of internal evidence, i.e., of probabilities, will outweigh even the most direct testimony. We cannot,' he says, 'trust even for a few months or days the memory of a man living under the influence of a system so hostile to the growth of the historical faculty.' The sentiment attributed to the Persian at the banquet, 'yet a little while, and of all these but a very few shall remain alive,' he regards not only as essentially Greek, but as in effect a repetition of the sentiment attributed to Xerxes when he proudly surveyed his fleet at Abydos on the Hellespont, that at the end of a hundred years not one of all that great host would be alive.' The incident may be trifling in itself, but it becomes important from the declaration of Herodotus that he had it from so direct a source as served to convince him of its truth. We cannot follow Mr. Cox through the complicated details of the celebrated battle of Platea. We will only mention one point, which is the story in Herod. ix. 46, that Pausanias asked Aristeides to change places with him in the disposition of the troops, because no Spartan has yet been engaged with the Medes.' To which Mr. Cox well observes The heroism of Leonidas and his men had thrice made Xerxes leap from his throne in dismay; and yet this later story could assert with unblushing effrontery that no Spartan had ever yet fought with a Persian' (p. 580). The appendices to vol. i., especially that on the supposed navigation of the Phoenicians to Britain for the tin trade (E) are important essays in themselves. Mr. Cox shows with great learning, and after patient examination of all the ancient accounts, that both Greeks and Romans had such vague and false ideas of the geography of the north and north-west coasts of Europe, till at least the time of Tacitus, that their accounts, conflicting as they are, and unsupported by any known Phoenician monuments, of Phoenician traders to the British coasts, cannot be relied upon. In fact, the 'Cassiterides,' or tin islands, are perhaps as mythical as the Eridanus, or amber river, and the gardens of the Hesperides. Passing over with high commendation the two excellent chapters in vol. ii. on the transition from the simple precedence of Athens (yεuovia) to its acquired empire (apxn), and on the life and policy of Pericles, to whose great genius and admirable character Mr. Cox does the fullest justice, we come to what may be called the great event of Grecian history, the thirty years of the Peloponnesian War. One of the most striking incidents of the earlier part of the war is the celebrated escape of the Platæan and Athenian garrison from the city when closely besieged by the Spartan and Theban forces. The account given in the third book of Thucydides of their daring escape by scaling the walls in a dark and stormy night, is perhaps the most exciting and romantic episode in Greek history. It is related by Mr. Cox in pp. 171-173, and further enlarged upon in Appendix K (pp. 603 606). The account of Thucydides curiously illustrates the difficulties that beset the statements even of those who lived at the time, and may be reasonably supposed to have had an intimate personal knowledge of the scenes they are describing. But it would really seem as if Thucydides was writing a sensational adventure rather than a true story. Mr. Cox has shown that surrounding the city with a double wall of lofty masonry crowned with towers* at close intervals, and protected by a double moat, was virtually an impossibility. It is more likely that what the historian distinctly calls the enemies' circumvallation was in fact the old city wall. The double moat,' it is to be feared, was wholly an invention, for not a trace of it is now to be found, nor, indeed, of a double wall at all, though very considerable remains of the Plataan walls of various dates, some parts very ancient, still exist. A rather full account of them is given in Dodwell's Classical Tour through Greece,' vol. i. pp. 277-280. The ruins, he says, stand on a low, oblong rock, the narrow extremities of which face north and south, the longer sides east and west. How, it may be asked, was it possible to make double trenches, and fill them with water in such a situation? Or where is the clay of which Thucydides expressly says the walls were built? The circuit he gives at 3,300 yards, or a little under two miles. In some parts the walls are in high preservation, but he believes they are of the age of Alexander. Of the original walls he finds few and imperfect remains; but they are of stone, not of brick (the material spoken of by Thucydides), and have been nearly rebuilt from the foundations. They are eight feet thick, and fortified by square towers, *These towers were as large as an ordinary church tower, and occurred at intervals of miles in circuit! about 120 feet all around a wall of nearly three The investing walls of the enemy, had they existed at all, must of course have taken a much wider external circle. prove that it really was the city wall which This fact is very significant, and goes far to Thucydides mistook for the investing lines of the enemy. with some few round ones. But no trace | 21.' Colonel Leake, in describing the existing walls of Platea,* states that the north-west wall remains, in part later than the battle of Platæa, i.e., B.C. 479. The town stands on a slope of Mount Citharon, so that there is an upper and a lower town. The former may yet be distinguished as a kind of acropolis, if an interior inclosure can so be called. He says this inclosure has 'towers so formed as to present flanks to the inner as well as to the outer face of the intermediate walls; whereas 'the town walls have towers like those of the Turks, open to the interior.' He adds, 'that there are remains of a third and more ancient inclosure still higher up.' In giving the circuit of the present walls at two and a half miles, he suggests (p. 360) that the town anciently may have been confined to the southern part of the ruins. Bishop Wordsworth, in his 'Greece,' p. 246, goes so far as to say that while scarcely a fragment remains of the city which wielded the sway of the whole province of Boeotia, the walls of Platea remain in nearly the same state as they were two thousand years ago.' camp, None of these travellers say a word about any vestiges of a trench or moat. It is well known, however, that scarcely anything is so indelible by time as a moat or a fosse.t Even when filled up there is nearly always a subsequent subsidence and depression that serves to mark the outline. This remark is verified by perhaps every Roman or British and every ruined castle in this country. Now here we have a very deep and wide double moat described, of some three miles circuit, of which no trace whatever remains. Can it ever have existed? Then, if it did exist, how was it filled with water so deep that the escaping party forded it with difficulty (uyts VπEрéXOVTES, iii. 23), up to their necks in water? These considerations appear to justify Mr. Cox in the conclusion (p. 606) that whatever may have been the way in which the Plataians made their escape, the besiegers never built the concentric walls described by Thucydides in iii. Truthful in the main as the great historian shows himself to be, there are other passages in which his fairness is impeached, if not his veracity. Thucydides speaks of Themistocles and Pericles with impartiality; of Brasidas, if not of Nicias, with the same kind of admiration which Tacitus shows for Germanicus; of Cleon, with a manifest desire to bring prominently forward 'his blunders and shortcomings, his bluster, his arrogance, his incompetence as a military leader' (p. 273). In the Melian controversy,' which preceded the too celebrated and most infamous massacre of those islanders by the Athenians, Mr. Cox does not hesitate to express his conviction (p. 315) that 'the historian has for once dropped his function of recording facts rigidly as they occurred, and that he has left us in this so-called Melian conference (Thucyd. v. 90, seqq.) an ethical picture like that which Herodotus has drawn of the Persian despot in his overweening arrogance and pride.' This judgment is greatly strengthened and confirmed by the constant effort shown by Thucydides to be thought a proficient in that kind of popular technical eloquence or word-building, which is so condemned by Plato, but was so admired by the Athenians. All the speeches of Thucydides show his extravagant fondness for pηroptкn. They may be based (as he himself says they were) on the general outline of what was really said ;* but their composition-and we must include that of the Melian controversy-is essentially that of the sophist and the rhetorician. direct impeachment of Thucydides is, we think, a new feature in the treatment which Grecian history has received. We will only here stop to remark, that the concluding chapters of the seventh book of Thucydides This if really written by him-contain certain marvellous statements of the destruction of the Athenian army in Sicily, which must at least be received with great caution. Is it conceivable that an army of 40,000 fighting men could do so little to defend themselves, that in one week only 7,000 of them remained to be marched as prisoners into Syracuse? Mr. Cox contents himself here with remarking (p. 419) on the folly of the captors, who preferred mere revenge to the large sums offered as ransom for the Athenian army. But he holds that in the enthusiasm created by their victory the Syracusans had resolved that the whole Athenian armament should be destroyed like vermin in a snare' (p. 406). It is evident that Mr. Cox has taken very * ἐχομένῳ ὅτι ἐγγυτάτω τῆς συμπάσης γνώμης τῶν ἀληθῶς λεχθέντων, i. 22. dead.' great pains with the narrative of the Sicilian | in seeking to patch up alliances with Sikel expedition, and it is certain that he has tribes, who fell away as soon as their chief was composed a most interesting account of it (Book III., chap. vii.). Commencing with the elaborate account of Sicily after the fall of the so-called tyrants, and with a description of Syracuse and Agrigentum, and the general condition of the Hellenic cities in the island, he relates somewhat briefly the first expedition against Sicily under Laches and Chorcades, B.C. 427.* The parts taken in the later expedition, в.c. 415, by Alcibiades and Nicias, are very well explained. Mr. Cox shares in Mr. Grote's estimate of both Cleon and Nicias; the latter certainly, though no coward, and an honest man as honesty went at Athens, was feeble as a general and wanting alike in talent, promptitude, and that successful daring of which both Demosthenes and Brasidas were the representatives. Of Alcibiades Mr. Cox entertains the very worst opinion. 'Without a conscience, without a heart, caring for nothing but his own grandeur, as ready to make oligarchs his tools as to cheat and dupe a demos, taking no thought for the disasters or miseries which his schemes might involve, defying the magistrates, insulting the law, Alkibiades presents an image of violent selfishness and ingrained treachery, standing very near the pinnacle of human wickedness (p. 287). It has not, we think, been generally remarked, that the character of this man for reckless expenditure and what we call * debts of honour” (ὑπ' ἐράνων καὶ χρεῶν), had been notorious, and that he had been advised by his friends to retire from Athens for a time (oтao0ai), as much as ten years before. Thucydides expressly says that he hoped to repair his broken fortunes, by holding the office of general in this illfated expedition (vi. 18). The generalship of Nicias is throughout impeached as hesitating and weak. He was unable to draw a line between the functions of the general and those of the politician : Without making any allowance for the serious bodily ailments of the unfortunate general, who was afflicted with gravel, Mr. Cox adds, 'We almost blush for the determined sluggishness which insists on remaining idle in the luxurious temperature of a Sicilian winter, when Brasidas could work hard through the frosts and icy winds of the Thraceward Chalkidike.' In this view of the character of Nicias, Mr. Grote, as is well-known, agrees, against the estimate of Thucydides, who everywhere speaks of him as a far-seeing, cautious and prudent, if not a fortunate, general. Aristophanes more than once satirizes his religious scruples,* and calls him μeλλovikías, i.e., cunctator. Mr. Cox thinks that prompt action on his part in completely investing Syracuse before the arrival of Gylippos, must certainly have been followed by success. 'But instead of urging on this work with the utmost speed, he wasted time in building the southward wall double from the first, while much of the ground which should have been guarded by the eastern wall was left open. The Syracusans were therefore able still to bring in supplies by the road which passed under the rock of Euryelos; but even thus their prospects were sufficiently gloomy' (p. 379). Still more strong is his condemnation of Nicias, in p. 385 'It would have been well for him, and happy for themselves, had the Athenians long since put him aside as a thoroughly worthless general, and had they insisted long ago on some small performance in place of vague and delusive promises. To their misfortune they believed him when he extended the scale of the armament intended for the expedition to Sicily; to their utter ruin they believed him now, and took his letter' (that sent soon after the arrival of Gylippos) as a picture not of things. as Nikias saw them, but of things as they were in themselves.' Again Demosthenes to withdraw the troops from 'The reply of Nikias' (to the proposal of Syracuse and to give up the expedition as an acknowledged failure) betrays an imbecility, dom been equalled, perhaps never surpassed; an infatuation, or a depravity which has seland we have to remember that it is given to us by an historian who reviews his career with singular indulgence, and who cherished his memory with affectionate but melancholy veneration' (p. 399). It must be said, that in refusing to move, Nicias was hoping against hope. He may * Equit. 31, Av. 639. have been deficient in judgment, but his pluck and bravery in holding his ground amidst such terrible disasters, and while afflicted, like the late French Emperor at Sedan, with a painful bodily disease, may at least claim our respect. But Mr. Cox · affirins that Nicias was afraid to go home, and he was a coward where Demosthenes, in spite of his failure, was honest, straightforward, and brave. Nay, more, he was ungenerous as well as cowardly. He had no right whatever to slander his soldiers who had patiently submitted to his mischievous inaction, and had done their duty admirably under Lamachos: least of all was he justified in ascribing an exacting severity to a people, whose crying sin it had been to place unbounded confidence in his mere respectability' (p.400). In saying this, Mr. Cox quotes the opinion of Mr. Grote, to which we ourselves incline, that Nicias was a perfectly brave man.' He was brave, perhaps, rather as a soldier than a man. The concluding narrative of the expedition (pp. 409-424) is most brilliantly written. Mr. Cox throws no doubt whatever on the facts, but fully accepts the statement of Thucydides, that the vast armament and fleet which had left the Peiræus the year before came to utter destruction. In our view, it is a suspicious circumstance that he says nothing of any prisoners having in the end escaped; for the concluding words of Book VII. are somewhat ambiguous: Tavoλεθρίᾳ δή, τὸ λεγόμενον, καὶ πεζὺς καὶ νῆες καὶ οὐδὲν ὅτι οὐκ ἀπώλετο, καὶ ὀλίγοι ἀπὸ πολλῶν ἐπ ̓ οἴκου ἀπενόστησαν. In strict grammatical rendering, these last words mean 'few out of many left the camp to return homewards.' If he had intended to say that few ultimately returned home, he ought to have said ei oikov čowonoav. It is to be observed (in connection with an opinion entertained by some of the ancients, that the eighth book of Thucydides' history was not really the work of the author), that the concluding chapters of Book VII. (from chap. lxxi. to the end) contain many remarkable forms and expressions, suggesting to a critic of the Greek language that it may have been left unfinished-possibly from want of information as to what really did become of the survivors of the Athenian army at the last-and was supplemented by a later hand, and in the 'sensational' rather than in the calm * Marcellinus, Vit. Thuc., λέγουσι δέ τινες τὴν ὀγδόην ἱστορίαν νοθεύεσθαι καὶ μὴ εἶναι Θουκυδίδου, ἀλλ' οἱ μέν φασιν εἶναι τῆς θυγατρὸς αὐτοῦ, οἱ δὲ Ξενοφῶντος. Others attributed the completion of the work to Theopompus, a contemporary of Xenophon. style of strict truth.* If Mr. Cox's words are not too strong, so ended an expedition which changed the current of Athenian history and therefore, in more or less degree, of the history of the world' (p. 422), it would be hard to overrate the importance of these chapters being found, on close verbal inquiry, to be of doubtful authenticity. On the whole,-especially considering that the war with Sparta was vigorously continued even after the Sicilian disaster, found their way back than history records. one cannot help suspecting that many more It seems quite incredible that so vast a force should have been so helpless in their retreat, in the midst too, not of a Scythian wilderness, but of a fertile country, teeming with flocks and provisions of every kind. Above all, why is there not the remotest allusion to this wholesale destruction either in the tragic poets, Sophocles and Euripides, or in Aristophanes, though they continued to write, and are full of political allusions, for many years afterwards? And if both fleets and armies were wholly destroyed, how can we account for so large a fleet as 150 triremes at Arginusæ only eight years afterwards? If all this is strictly fact, Mr. Cox may well say (p. 548) that, so far as the general conduct of the war was concerned, Athens since her overwhelming losses at Syracuse had maintained the struggle with a spirit and success as astonishing as any of which history gives a record.' It is remarkable that though Thucydides, in describing this memorable siege of Syracuse, must have either personally visited the ground, or have received the most accurate plans and description of it from some of those present, yet the operations he describes are so complex that different interpretations have been put upon them. Mr. Cox gives three plans of the Athenian works (pp. 375, 377, 383), which agree in the main details with that of Dr. Arnold (Thuc. vol. iii. p. 268), and Mr. Long's in Plate XII. of his Classical Atlas. A favourite was cross-walling (doTeixiouòs), or intercepting by a diagonal or rectangular work the wall of the enemy. It was thus that the causeway between Megara and its harbour Nisma was cut (Thuc. iii. 51). We think Mr. Cox is right in placing the two intercepting walls of the Syracusans, the eyкápotov Teixos and the third counter Greek manœuvre * Such words as καταδαμασάμενοι (71), πρῶτον μὲν, answered by ἔπειτα δ' ὕστερον (72), παραδε δώκοιεν (73), ἐμπαλασσάμενοι (74), διακλαπέν (75), τοὺς πρώτους χρόνος, οἱ ἥλιοι, δίψει (77), seem more characteristic of the later Attic. The style, too, of these chapters seems artificial and imitative. * (p. work, one to the right, the other to the left | ed to the duty. He felt that he could of the central Athenian fort, the Kúkλog. save his own life only by sacrificing theirs. The Athenian plan was to block off the Mr. Cox says 'the whole career of Therawhole peninsula of the Epipolæ from sea to menes absolutely reeked of villainy sea, to prevent attack from the highland 556). Through his agency the six generals above by way of Euryelus. The Syra- were, in defiance of all proper processes of cusans desired to leave one side or the other the law, condemned and executed. Mr. Cox open, so as to get round to and assail the holds them to have been entirely innocent, KUKλog in which the Athenian munitions and expresses his horror of the debasement were in part deposited. of the Athenian demos who could thus requite brave and honourable men, one of whom was the son of their greatest statesman and general, Pericles. 6 'One thing only,' Mr. Cox adds, p. 567, we have to remember throughout this terrible history. The execution of these ill-used men was not the work of demagogues; and the assertions of Diodorus, that they alone brought about these judicial murders, is a libel. The excitement was stirred up and the flames fanned by subverted the constitution once, who were men who were oligarchs at heart, who had going to subvert it again, and who in the mean season found it convenient to use the demos, as an instrument for attaining their own ends.' In the terrible scenes which followed the victory of the Athenians at Argennoussai we cannot but feel the greatness of the loss which has deprived us of the guidance of Thucydides.' Thus Mr. Cox commences his concluding chapter, in which he gives us the last scenes of the Peloponnesian War, the condemnation and execution of six of the generals at Argennoussai, and the capture of the Athenian fleet at Egos Potami by Lysander. The whole of this chapter is of special interest; and though Xenophon and Diodorus are but poor substitutes for Thucydides, the later period at which they wrote at least brings us to the time when The demoralization of the Athenians, and contemporary written history was fully es- their growing contempt for law and justice, tablished, and therefore the details of these was the real cause, as Mr. Cox well shows, events may be taken as authentic. The of their final overthrow. Bad and cruel, great sea-fight between Athens and Sparta selfish and avaricious as the Spartans were, off Chios (Argennusæa Islands) had taken their courage and their dogged endurance place in stormy weather; and there seems to have been some dispute among the Athe- and the most brutal cruelties were common Wholesale massacres prevailed in the end. nian generals, whether they should pick up to both sides during the protracted strugthe crews of the disabled vessels, or sail at gle. The adverse judgment of Plato, only once to join Conon's smaller fleet at Chios. a few years later, on the morals of his counSome of the Athenian ships, it appears, trymen, and the morbid despair which he were water-logged and sinking; and when shows of their justice under the demagogy an order was, too late, given for rescuing of rhetoricians and pseudo-politicians, is the crews, the violence of the storm pre- well known from his "Gorgias,' 'Republic,' vented its being carried out; and the large Politicus,' and other dialogues. On the number of about 1,500 sailors perished.* much-disputed subject of the Sophists, and . For this remissness of duty, as it was consi-the influence of the philosophical schools on dered, (the real culprits apparently being the age, Mr. Cox has said next to nothing in Theramenes and Thrasy bulus), the generals the present volumes. This subject stands were impeached on their return to Athens. The generals pleaded the storm, which made action impossible; their enemies denied the fact of the storm, and attributed it to their want of promptitude. Among these accusers, evidently to screen himself, was Theramenes, who had been expressly commission * Mr. Cox expresses a doubt (p. 551) if the recovery of the floating bodies was an express point in the order, as Mr. Grote thinks. He says he can find no statement about floating bodies, and he doubts if they would float at all. Such, however, is the interpretation commonly put, after the scholiast, on a verse of Aristophanes, Ran. 192, ei μì vevavμáxŋkɛ tηv nepì túv kpewv. The battle for the carrion' must mean the dead bodies: and кpɛv is substituted for the similar word veкp☎v, after a favourite fashion of the poet. *Aristophanes, Ran. 918, calls him Onpapévns ỏ Koos, the man of clever eloquence; and he alludes to his escape in this verse, πέπτωκεν ἔξω τῶν κακῶν οὐ Χίος, ἀλλὰ Κείος. He was one of those men who will swear black is white or white is black with equal indifference, if it suits their purpose (See Ran. 540). Yet there were not wanting among the ancients high eulogists of Theramenes; among them Cicero, Tusc. i. ch. 40: Quam me delectat Theramenes! quam elato animo est! etsi enim flemus cum legimus, tamen non miserabiliter vir clarus emoriturlusit vir egregius extremo spiritu, quum iam praecordiis conceptam mortem contineret.' Mr. Cox thinks that, of the two sides, the Spartan was the worst. No crimes committed by Athenians in their worst moods approached in intensity of horror the enormities perpetrated both by the government and the citizens of Sparta' (p. 576, note). |