Book 7
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[5] Any view on these points will doubtless always remain a matter of private judgment. My own view is that, if the historian had not been suddenly cut down, either by assassination at the hands of a robber, as one tradition has it, or by disease, the book would have received fuller revision, and the indirect speeches at several important points would have been turned into direct discourse. Professor Goodhart well expresses the feeling of the reader in turning the pages of Book viii.: “The war enters upon a new phase after the defeat of the Sicilian expedition. The scene changes from Greece to Asia. But there is something more than a mere change of scene. Athens herself appears under new conditions, fallen greatly from her high estate, but appealing more than ever to our interest and sympathy. We have seen her before in the full blaze of Periclean splendour. But perhaps our admiration has been qualified by some feeling of aloofness.
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[6] The people of Pallas Athene seem to dwell upon sunlit heights too far removed from the darkling ways of humanity. The picture of their life is like the fabric of a vision, and they themselves partake of its unreality. But the feeling vanishes when we see them in the grip of fate. Pity, akin to love, takes the place of admiration, and we follow their fortunes with sympathy as keen and active as that which swayed the spectators of the final battle in the great harbour of Syracuse. So it may be that we get nearer to them in the closing scene than we have ever been before."
