238 THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 
to show that Heaven, if it is not careful for our peace of mind, is careful 
at least to punish our offences (Hist. 1. 3). That seems to be the 
conclusion very tentatively put forward by Thucydides in book I 
(1; 23). 
The point is important because it is customary to say that Thu- 
cydides derided oracles and portents and was purely negative, scien- 
tifically negative on the question of religion. 
It is scarcely so. If he does not propound a definitely religious 
reason for the calamities of Nature, earthquake, pestilence and famine, 
he comes as near to it as a man so sceptical can come. He sympathizes 
with the religious point of view, if he does not exactly endorse it, 
just as he sympathizes with Nicias, whose religious extravagances 
nevertheless he has had occasion to deplore. 
There are some three passages on this subject and they are fairly 
consistent. There was an old oracle that a Dorian war would come 
and with it jocudés pestilence or ly16s famine. (The passage of course 
is of prime interest to the students of pronunciation; it seems to estab- 
lish almost beyond demur the proposition that the classical pronuncia- 
tion of ‘oi’ and was identical, or nearly so, as it is identical in 
modern Greek: both “oi” and “‘i’’ are the French long “1” and the 
English long ‘‘e’’). When the Peloponnesian war came and pestilence 
with it but not famine, people quoted the line with Zlo:6s. If there 
had been a famine—remarks Thucydides, they would have quoted it 
with A¢uds. Some readers read a scoff at oracles here: there is no scoff 
at oracles, only a mild reference to the weakness of human nature, 
which adjusts its memory and its evidences to the accomplished facts. 
Still less can hostility to the oracles of Greece be found in his 
comment on another oracle. This oracle said ‘ro reNacy.Kov apyov 
auewov (2,17).’’ Accordingly people argued that when the plague 
broke out in Athens after the occupation of this forbidden district the 
plague was Heaven’s punishment for a violation of Divine Law. 
Thucydides interposes a mild protest, which certainly does not scoff 
at oracles. Rather he commits himself to the somewhat hazardous 
proposition that the prophet foresaw that when the days should come 
for the occupation of the Pelasgic district they would be days of 
mourning. The prophet foresaw that it would never be occupied to 
advantage: and that is all (Thucydides says) his oracle meant. That 
is to say, Thucydides has rationalised away the theory of Divine 
Vengeance as expressed in the special locality of the plague, but he has 
contrived to do so without disputing at all, rather while accepting, 
the authenticity and the historical accuracy of the ancient oracle. 
And in the last and crucial passage of book I (1. 23) he will not 
even consent to rationalise away the theory of Divine Vengeance. 
TE 
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