[HUTTON] THUCYDIDES AND HISTORY 239 
Rather he covertly suggests—he throws it out as a natural hypothesis 
—that the prevalence of Natural calamities, of earthquakes, eclipses, 
tidal waves and plagues, drought and famine, concurrently with the 
Peloponnesian war was not a mere coincidence. He will not pledge 
himself to the proposition that these things were the Divine penalties 
for an unnecessary, degrading, unnatural and impious war, for this 
would be going perhaps beyond the province of history. But he will 
at least support this proposition of the conscientious and God-fearing 
people of the day, to the extent of adding his testimony to the alleged 
synchronism: there was a synchronism. There actually were more 
cataclysms of Nature during the Peloponnesian war than during any 
other period of similar extent (1. 23). When a historian goes out of his 
way to call attention to this synchronism, it can hardly be doubted 
that he would have liked to go further, had the spirit of his circle and 
the growing science of the day permitted him to do so. 
I will dwell yet a little longer on his sense of the “‘frightfulness”’ 
of the Peloponnesian war, and of the shock which it gave to God- 
fearing people. Thucydides seems very full of that sense of horror. 
Modern historians like Mahaffy sometimes claim credit for deprecating 
and depreciating the eternal and internecine feuds of the Greeks. 
They even extend their indifference and contempt to Athens’ battle 
for freedom against Philip, as if Athens ought to have despaired of 
herself, like Phocion, or ought to have sacrificed herself on the altar 
of futurity and humanity, in order that Alexander might the sooner 
over-run the East, and spread Hellenism and civilisation over Egypt 
and Asia Minor: whence, vid Rome, it would reach the whole world, 
East and West alike, and go down to all ages. But whatever be 
thought of Demosthenes and Philip, and even though it be prepos- 
terous to expect of Demosthenes that sacrifice of Athens for Europe’s 
sake which the modern reader of Demosthenes may to-day accept 
with resignation and even with satisfaction, there will be a general 
tendency among the modern readers of Thucydides to accept his 
reprobation of the civil wars of the Greeks, and of the Peloponnesian 
war in particular. 
His reprobation of the Peloponnesian war has two aspects one of 
which at least will commend itself. Thucydides, like Plato, if not like 
Aristotle, has no sympathy with or enthusiasm for Imperialism: 
for an Empire to be built up by Athens or any other Greek State 
over other nations, including in these other nations, many Greek 
States; he no doubt followed the policy of Pericles, who advocated 
the maintenance of the then Empire and the then sea power of Athens 
by means of a strong fleet but not the extension of the Empire.  Peri- 
cles seems to have assumed that it was hopeless to unite Greece and 
