Thucydides and Sphacteria

Professor V. Wilamowitz-Moellendorf has recently published a paper in which he argues, firstly, that the very remarkable topographical errors in Thucydides' account of the Pylos and Sphacteria campaign, shown so clearly in Grundy's and Burrows' articles in the Hellenic Journal , can only be accounted for on the supposition that he had none but Athenian sources of information, and secondly, that as later— after 421—; he had access to Peloponnesian sources, his account of this campaign was written before 421; we have, therefore, an early example of Attic prose comparable with the oligarchic Constitution of Athens . Now seeing that the incident of the campaign which interested the contemporary Greeks most was the surrender of the Spartans, and that Thucydides goes out of his way, more Herodoteo rather, to give an anecdote (with explanation) to illustrate this interest, it would be sufficiently remarkable if he had not been to the trouble of getting the Spartan version of the affair; the more especially as Spartan sources were easily available in the prisoners themselves, who seem to have received at Athens the common treatment of that time, compounded of cruelty and freedom, which is so foreign to our own method, and to whom Thucydides could have had ready access. It is therefore worth while seeing if there is any reason for supposing Wilamowitz' view to be true

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• Thucydides and the History of His Age

  Mabel Lang, G B Grundy•The American Historical Review•1949

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