[HUTTON] THUCYDIDES AND HISTORY 229 
matic element still lingers, and his history, like the history of Herodo- 
tus, seems still in part modelled on tragedy. As Herodotus, in effect, 
retains a chorus to strike the note of the impartial spectator and com- 
ment suitably on the tragic history of men, some Croesus or Artabanus 
who lingers on in the history, after his own part is over, to point the 
moral, (as Margaret of Anjou lingers on in Shakespeare’s plays) 
so even Thucydides seems to entertain the doctrine of the Divine 
Irony as set forth by the Athenian dramatists, and presents the hour 
of triumph and of paeans as the hour preceding downfall: the insolent 
exultation of Athens over Melos, the arrogance of the Athenians at 
the Melian dialogue becomes a sort of Bacchic chorus, ushering in the 
fatal Sicilian expedition with its motive of ‘“‘world empire or downfall”, 
even as the triumphant Bacchic chorus of Sophocles’ Antigone heralds 
the suicide of Antigone Haemon and Eurydice. 
And in a few other passages—notably at the end of the third book 
in the Ambraciot episode—there is a dramatic and artistic value 
wholly foreign to severely scientific history. But these poetic touches 
are the rare exceptions which relieve at long intervals, the impersonal 
and colourless narrative: scarcely even when the events narrated are 
most appalling and appealing will the writer let it be seen that the 
appeal has reached himself. When the brutal Thracian mercenaries 
of Athens—the Albanians or Bulgarians of Thucydidean Thrace— 
break into an elementary school of bucolic Boeotian children and mur- 
der all the pretty babes [or heavy babes] at one fell swoop, faint and 
far seems the echo of the humanitarian sentiment of the sentimental 
Athenians which we can catch in the comments of their very unsenti- 
mental and academic historian. It is no jest but sober truth which 
Professor Mahaffy expresses when he remarks that Thucydides’ 
emotion is discernible here only in the extra contortions and crabbed- 
ness of his syntax. (VII. 29.) 
This is a crucial instance of that mauvaise honte of the scientific 
historian which banishes emotion and indignation from his pages, 
and which regards expansiveness as the unpardonable sin in history. 
Herodotus breaks out to record his personal dissent from the mild 
and abstract proposition of some contemporary Darwin that man is 
only an animal and need not be more careful of his behaviour in temples 
and holy places than animals are seen to be. ‘The proposition is 
displeasing to me” he tells us: Thucydides will not let his personal 
disgust be seen even when infants are butchered. It seems to be beneath 
the dignity of history: to be an unworthy concession to popular feeling 
and superficial sentiment, to be a playing to the gallery and the ground- 
lings. 
