Theopompos on Thucydides the Son of Melesias

THE historian was not the only distinguished man of this name in Periclean Athens. In fact, he was probably less well known in his own day than three other men named Thucydides, a poet, a Thessalian who became an honorary citizen of Athens, and the famous opponent of Perikles.1 Only one of these three men continued to be remembered, mainly in connection with his great adversary, Perikles; this was the son of Melesias from the deme Alopeke.2 It appears that was Perikles' opponent from the time of Kimon's death (see below, 4A) until his own ostracism in 443 B.C., which marks the beginning of Perikles' undisputed rule. During this period, Athens gained and lost a land empire, and moved the seat of the Confederacy from Delos to Athens, thus establishing the Athenian Empire. We do not know what part played in the deliberations which preceded these actions but he must have been very active since he is singled out in our literary tradition as the adversary of Perikles. H. T. Wade-Gery has already given us a fine historical and critical monograph on Thucydides the son of Melesias,3 but he refrained from examining carefully the literary sources on which our knowledge of Thucydides' activity is based. It is the purpose of this paper to re-examine these sources and to reconstruct one of them, the account given by Theopompos in the tenth book of his History of Philip. Such an examination is especially justified because neither the historian nor Ephoros (to judge from Diodoros) even mentions the son of Melesias, and most of our knowledge of this man comes from later sources.4

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