CHARACTERISTICS OF THUCYDIDES 199 in a reader not to feel the implication of a very earnest moral standard all through. It has been said that he attributes only selfish motives even to his best actors, a wish for glory to Brasidas, a desire to escape punish- ment to Demosthenes. But he seldom mentions per- sonal motives at all, and when such motives do force their way into history they are not generally unselfish. He certainly takes a high standard of patriotism for granted. One would not be surprised, however, to find that Thucydides's speculative ethics found a dif- ficulty in the conception of a strictly * unselfish ' action. Of course Thucydides is human ; he need not always be right. For instance, the * Archaeologia,' or introduc- tion to ancient history in Book I., is one of the most striking parts of his whole work. For historical imagi- nation, for breadth of insight, it is probably without a parallel in literature before the time of the Encyclop6- distes ; and in method it is superior even to them. Nevertheless it is clear that Thucydides does not really understand Myth. He treats it merely as distorted history, when it often has no relation to history. Given Pelops and Ion and Hellen, his account is luminous ; but he is still in the stage of treating these conceptions as real men. Of course in the * Archa;ologia' there is no room for party spirit ; but even where there is, the essential fairness and coolness of the writer's mind remain un- broken. He is often attacked at the present day. But the main facts — that niost antiquity took him as a type of fair-mindedness, while some thought him philo-Spartan and some philo-Athenian ; that Plato and Aristotle cen- sured him for being too democratic, while his modern opponents complain that he is not democratic enough —
