MR. CRAWLEY'S TEIUCYDIDES.*
THERE are many men, we should think, who in their school and college days have imbibed for Thucydides a love and admiration equal to that felt by so many scholars for the poems of Homer, and who would read his pages over and over again with delight in the intervals of business, if it were not for the difficulties of his lan- guage and the " rustiness " of their own scholarship. Such men as these will sympathise heartily with Mr. Crawley, who began the translation now before us "when still almost a schoolboy, very much in love with his author, and sufficiently simple to be- lieve that all the world must be eager to read Thucydides ;" and since they will not be over-critical as to minute fidelity to the original, we may expect them to welcome gladly the "spirited but truant paraphrase" (to use the term applied to the first two books of this translation by Mr. Wilkins, author of the excellent Speeches from Thucydides) which is the result of Mr. Crawley's labours. "That there will always from time to time be room for new trans- lations of Thucydides can no more be doubted than that he him- self was right in calling his work a possession for all time. For, as Dr. Arnold showed, he is in the best sense a modern historian (modern in the sense in which Sophocles is a modern poet), and many of the topics he touches upon are among the questions of the present day. As our translator remarks, the reader of the newspaper "will find in these pages the prototypes of many
figures that he is accustomed to in his favourite journal. He will see the doctrine of arbitration, welcomed as a newly discovered panacea by our amiable enthusiasts, more Vrmly established in theory than it is yet likely to be in modern Europe, and as impotent to avert the evils of war from the communities who provided for it in every treaty, and invoked it whenever it seemed their interest tp do so." It
* The History of the Peloponnesian War. By Thucydides. Translated by Richard Crawley. London: Longmans, Green, and Co. is evident, then, that a work of this sort, in which incidents and problems of constant recurrence in the history of all peoples are described and discussed, should be accessible to the general reader in the current language of the day. We need only turn to the pages of Hobbes to see how completely out of date the expressions used in that "grotesque likeness" have become, though no doubt it was an excellent translation in its day, especially when we consider the corrupt state of the Greek text at that time, and the progress of English scholarship since. What, for in- stance, could be quainter or more antiquated in the way of lan- guage than this sentence, taken from his translation of the almost .Lancet-like account of the plague in the second book ?—" Upon this followed a sneezing and hoarseness, and not long after, the pain, together With a mighty cough, came down into the breast. And when once it was settled in the stomach it caused vomit, and with great torment came up all manner of bilious purgation that physicians ever named. Most of them had also the hickyexe, {did Hobbes mean hiccough?] which brought with it a strong convulsion, and in some ceased quickly, but in others was long before it gave over."
We must remark, however, that Mr. Crawley has sometimes allowed himself the use of very curious English, as, for instance, when he says (p. 129) that the physicians "died themselves the most thickly, as they visited the sick most often ;" and indeed he is frequently open to the charge of incorrectness in minor things, such as the use of "the first and the last," instead of "the former and the latter," when there are only two alternatives. Then, again, he mixes up dif- ferent tenses in the same sentence in a most extraordinary manner, 48 in the opening chapter of the funeral oration, "I could have wished that the reputation of many brave men were not to be imperilled in the mouth of a single individual, to stand or fall, according as he spoke ill or well." Is that English at all ? Nor is -" our immediate fathers" an improvement on "our own fathers' as a translation of "of irevripec 9." But all these are com- paratively minor points ; we must test Mr. Crawley's trans- lation by his management of some of the more celebrated speeches and difficult passages which abound in his author. Now, as to the former, Mr. Crawley's version is always distinctly in- ferior to that of Mr. Wilkins, both in spiritedness and accuracy, while it is not generally quite so close a rendering of the text as Mr. Dale's. To the non-classical reader, however, it will cer- tainly be a great improvement on the latter, from the easier flow of the language and the less apparent character of a " crib ;" and as Mr. Wilkins has not given us the benefit of a translation of the narrative chapters, Mr. Crawley's is, so far as we know, the only readable modern translation of the complete work of Thucy- dides. To justify our remarks on the inferiority of his rendering of the speeches to that of Mr. Wilkins, let us turn to the oration of Pericles already referred to, and in the thirty-sixth chapter we find "ref ai 7rTtral civric cirsroi i:rnsEticractim" translated by "there are few parts of our dominions that have not been augmented by those of us here," whereas Mr. Wilkins is evidently right in fol- lowing Poppo, who takes Tei n-Teter as equivalent to magis, and trans- lating the passage by "that dominion, however, has been largely aggrandised by our own efforts." We could point out many little inaccuracies of the same sort. For instance, in the opening words of Cleon's speech in favour of executing the harsh sentence against the Mytilermans, Mr. Crawley does not bring out the point of the speaker's words when he makes Cleon say, "I have often before now been convinced that a democracy is incapable of empire," nearly as well as Mr. Wilkins, who has, "I have frequently ere now and at various times felt convinced of the in- capacity of a popular goverlment to rule dependencies." Then take the speech of Demosthenes to his men at Pylos (book iv., 10),—" Soldiers and comrades in this adventure !" is not nearly so spirited as Mr. Wilkins's version, "Soldiers, my com- rades in this adventurous enterprise." Again, a little farther on in the same speech, in the passage beginning, "Kai rem Trsx.4,1clos iiirs67-spos iiilt419," Mr. Crawley leaves the meaning a little vague by following too closely the extreme condensation of the original. And in the much-disputed passage in the Melian. dialogue (book iv., chap. 103) he follows Poppo and Goller in taking a round-about course in order to avoid having to give an active sense to the verb bodir...-sim, thus render- ing it necessary to make is iirer) signify time, of which Poppo admits that he knows no other instance in Thucydides; and the translation of the whole passage, while greatly inferior in spirit, seems to us not to make such clear sense in English as that of Mr. Wilkins. But of course, in such a doubtful passage, every one is at liberty to take his choice of evils. On the whole, however, Mr. Crawley has been pretty successful in giving a very fair idea of the spirit of Thucydides, and the narra- tive part is always good, and in some cases really excellent. The long and involved sentences are perhaps not so well split up as they might be, in order to bring out the sense and suit the genius of the English language ; but the difficulties caused by the strained antitheses are managed as well as can be expected, where the peculiarity of the original renders it necessary either to ignore the point made by the author, or to enfeeble it by an in- adequate translation into a language wholly unsuited to such tricks of style. In fact, this is a sort of book which is excellent reading as the best English history of the Peloponnesian War, and also one which it would be very good policy to teach to the middle forms of classical schools, instead of the dreadfully condensed and indigestible text-books with which they are expected to cram their brains, so that when they are promoted to the study of Thucydides himself, they may have a pleasant familiarity with the subject, which will give them a real interest in, and make their way easier through, one of the most difficult authors and greatest historians whom they will ever have the pleasure (and in after-life they will really acknowledge it to have been a pleasure) of reading. But we must not leave Mr. Crawley's book without giving our readers an opportunity of judging for themselves of his style, and the following passage, from the estimate of the character of Pericles in the second book, seems to be a very favourable specimen of the manner in which he has done his work :— " For as long as he was at the head of the State during the peace, he pursued a moderate and conservative policy ; and in his time its great- ness was at its height. When the war broke out, here also he seems to have rightly gauged the power of his country. He outlived its commencement two years and six months, and the correctness of his previsions respecting it became better known by his death. He told them to wait quietly, to pay attention to their marine, to attempt no new conquests, and to expose the city to no hazards during the war, and doing this, promised them a favourable result. What they did was the very contrary, allowing private ambitions and private interests, in matters apparently quite foreign to the war, to lead them into projects unjust both to themselves and to their allies—projects whose success would only conduce to the honour and advantage of private persons, and whose failure entailed certain disaster on the country in the war. The causes of this are not far to seek. Pericles indeed, by his rank, ability, and known integrity, was enabled to exercise an independent control over the multitude—in short, to lead them instead of being led by them, for as he never sought power by improper means, he was never compelled to flatter them, but, on the contrary, enjoyed so high an estimation that ho could afford to anger them by contradiction. Whenever he saw them unseasonably and insolently elated, he would with a word reduce them to alarm ; on the other hand, if they fell victims to a panic, he could at once restore them to confidence. In short, what was nominally a democracy became in his hands govern- ment by the first citizen."
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