Kitap 7
comment
[4]There is, it is true, occasional roughness and inaccuracy of expression to a greater extent than in the other books; but one who may have read criticisms before reading the book itself is sure to be astonished to find comparatively so few traces of the unfinished, either in style or content. The argument against the genuineness on the score of alleged “un-Thucydidean” words, phrases, or constructions falls to the ground on close examination. When the number of ἅπαξ λεγόμενα, of unusual adverbs and of new-coined verbal substantives found in Book VIII is compared with similar forms in the other books, as for example Goodhart has done in his Introduction, the conclusion in favour of genuineness is unavoidable. Even the suggestion that the book was edited and revised by Xenophon rests on no better basis than the fact that his Hellenica is a continuation of it. The most striking thing about the book is the omission of direct speeches, so marked a feature of all the preceding books (except V). The statement attributed to Cratippus, a contemporary of Thucydides (Dionysius, de Thuc. Id. p. 847), that speeches were omitted in Book VIII because the author realized that they interfered with the narrative and bored the reader, is so absurd as to be amusing. It has been plausibly argued that the omission does not necessarily imply either a deliberate change of practice on the part of the historian or even lack of revision.
