BOOKS OF THE DAY
The Greece of Thucydides
Thucydides and the History of His Age. By G. B. Grundy. (Black- well. 2 vols., 25s. each.) THE recent death of G. B. Grundy a few months after the welcome reappearance of his big book on Thucydides (now reprinted as volume I of the complete work), together with a second volume written mainly, it appears, in 1944-45, is an invitation not only to regret his passing but also to remember his services to the interpreta- tion of ancient Greece in this century. Grundy belonged to the Oxford of Pelham and Greenidge, Munro, Macan and E. M. Walker, to say nothing of others who are with us still—an Oxford which took the study of ancient history (as it still takes it) very seriously, and which expected (and I hope still expects) that every man reading " Greats " should at least know his Thucydides pretty well. To the study of Thucydides Grundy contributed (as it seems to one who never knew him personally but only from his writings) a certain persistent unorthodoxy of mind which occasionally led him into positions apparently untenable, but which always originated in a genuine attempt to " think himself back " into the age which he was seeking to interpret. He added to his study of texts and documents a personal experience of the material conditions in which Greeks lived some forty or fifty years ago, for he believed, no doubt rightly, that they approximated in many ways to those of the fifth century B.c. The climate, the soil, the food, the bodily fatigues of even simple journeys in that country—these and similar experiences, one feels, went to sharpen his appreciation of that material in the history of Thucydides (and in other ancient writers) the exposition and inter- pretation of which have proved the moss valuable part of the book which was published in 1910 (vol. I of the present publication) ; namely, the chapters which dealt with the economic background of Greek history, especially with population and food-supply, and with the technique of Greek warfare influenced by those very things.
In the same way in volume II the most valuable sections are the series of topographical studies based upon the notes made by Grundy on his travels in Greece in the first decade of this century or even a year or two earlier. Plataea, Olpae, Pylos and Sphacteria, Delium, Syracuse—they take you back ; or if you have never been there before in the flesh or in spirit, under Grundy's guidance they take you there. In general, however, it would perhaps be too much to expect that the second volume should not be thinner (in both senses) than the robust volume of 191o. It is now that the writer really comes to grips with the mind of Thucydides himself, and there are at least two reasons (apart from the passage of thirty-five years or so) why he was less likely to be out- standingly successful here than previously. The first is that he was less interested in the intellectual than in the material as a problem for study: "I am convinced, whether rightly or wrongly, that history is made in the life of peoples rather than of individuals, and that, in the life of peoples, it is the material rather than the intellectual
interest which makes contemporary history." The quotation admittedly is from the preface of 191o, and Grundy may perhaps have retreated somewhat from this position later in life ; though I doubt whether he was the man to retreat very far. The second reason is that the opportunity in this field was far more restricted than that which he took when he did his earlier work on the economic back- ground. The mind of Thucydides is not, even today, an open book with which " every schoolboy " may be expected to be familiar ; but it does happen to have been the subject of an uncommonly good study in recent years by Professor Finley of Harvard. Grundy's main conclusions on this subject, whether reached independently or by conviction from reading Finley (whose name I think he never mentions), do not differ substantially from his, though they are far less persuasively set out. This kind of role, one suspects, may not have been altogether congenial. The old warhorse does not always take kindly to the mere ceremonial parade, with the banners there, the drums, the uniforms, the cannon there too—but where is the enemy ?
Today men of sense do not need to be told that Thucydides is a writer worth reading. If our fathers and grandfathers in the unexampled security of the Victorian era could appreciate that here was a historian of war and politics who was unusually acute and profound, how much more do we, accustomed to living on a razor's edge, recognise as authentic a voice which speaks direct from his experience to our own ? When we read that " war is a rough teacher, and brings most men's characters to a level with their fortunes " ; or that "if you appease them in this, you will merely be convicted in their minds of cowardice and will instantly have to meet some greater demand " ; or that small States would all prefer to be free under either form of government rather than enjoy the government of their preference as satellites or subjects of a Great Power—when we read these things we do not merely suspect, we know, that they were true then, are true now, and will remain true (in his own phrase) " while human nature remains what it is."
Thucydides deserves the devotion which he inspires in a number of his readers, and the size of the number might perhaps surprise the devotees themselves if it could be ascertained. For my part, if I should ever find myself a second time on the island of Sphacteria, I shall think of Thucydides of course, and of Demosthenes and Cleon and the Spartans who were blockaded and outfought into surrender there, but I shall think also of G. B. Grundy who once spent six weeks on the uninhabited island, encamped beside the only well, the water from which is " decidedly brackish, so that I had my drinking water brought every day from Navarino " ; and I shall probably still wonder whether he was alone for those six weeks, or whether he had some-
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