metaphors rather bolder than Greek prose easily tolerated in its riper age[1]. On the other hand, there are three respects in which the composition of Thucydides may be contrasted with that of Antiphon. First, Thucydides has a pregnant brevity which would not have been possible in such measure for a practical orator, since no ordinary hearer could have followed his meaning with full comprehension[2]. Secondly, Thucydides often departs not only from the natural but from the rhetorical order of words, in
- ↑ E.g. Antiphon: τὰ ἴχνη τῆς ὑποψίας εἰς τοῦτον φέροντα (ii. γ. 10): ἰατροὺς τῆς ἀτυχίας (ii. β. 13); cf. i. γ. 1 and ii. β. 10. Thucydides: ἡ ἐπιστήμη ἐγγηράσεται (vi. 18)—ἰατρὸς τῆς πόλεως (vi. 14)—δουλοῖ τὸ φρόνημα τὸ αἰφνίδιον (ii. 61)—πόλεμος βίαιος διδάσκαλος (iii. 82)—ἐπικλασθῆναι (iii. 59), etc.
- ↑ This brevity appears (1) in such constructions as γυναικείας ἀρετῆς, ὅσαι . . . ἔσονται (ii. 45), or τῶν μὲν ἄρχειν τῶν δὲ διανοεῖσθαι (sc. ἄρχειν, i. 124); (2) in the suppression of a clause which can be supplied mentally, as often before a sentence introduced by γάρ (cf i. 120 ad init.): (3) in the pregnant use of words, as vi. 11, ὅπερ ἡμᾶς ἐκφοβοῦσι (= ἐκφοβοῦντες λέγουσι). Cic. de Orat. ii. 22, sententiis magis abundat quam verbis . . . ; 13, ita verbis aptus et pressus est, etc. Quint. x. i, densus et brevis et semper sibi instans. Dionys., p. 792, says that it belongs to Thucydides περιᾶσθαι δ' ἐλαχίστων πλεῖστα σημαίνειν, and Marcellinus, § 50, speaks of his θαυμασταὶ βραχύτητες.
