ABSTRACT
The difference of the work of Thucydides from that of Herodotus may serve, as it has often done, to measure the degree in which the former belongs to us. Herodotus has been called the “Father of History”; in truth, he is only the father of story-telling: the first and most lively of our special correspondents. Everyone knows Herodotus’ childlike weakness for portents and prodigies, dreams, miracles and oracles, his naive acceptance of the divine as a factor in human affairs. Thucydides is the very antithesis of all this. He admits religion into his scheme—the scheme would not be complete without it. There were many other intellectual influences which Thucydides can hardly have escaped—which, it is to be presumed, helped to stimulate, to evoke and strengthen, his genius. The old views Thucydides condemns mostly by implication: perhaps he felt that by so doing he had done enough to cast the light of sense upon popular superstition.
