198 LITERATURE OF ANCIENT GREECE in his reckoning, but he could not foresee the plague, nor be responsible for the ab;indonment of his policy after his death. It is very remarkable, indeed, how Thucydides never expresses a personal judgment which could be de- duced from the facts he has given. He only speaks when he thinks the facts likely to be misinterpreted. Cleon's undertaking (iv. 28) to capture Sphacteria in less than twenty days was fulfilled. It was nevertheless an insane boast, says Thucydides. At the end of the Sicilian Ex- pedition, we are full of admiration for Demosthenes ; our pity for Nikias is mingled with irritation, and even contempt. Thucydides sobers us : "(9/" all the Greeks of my time, he least deserved so miserable an end, for he lived in the performance of all that was counted virtue" (vii. 86). Generous praise ; but the man's limitations are given — " all that was counted virtue." We should never have discovered this about Nikias from the mere history. But Thucydides knew the man ; is perfectly, almost cruelly, frank about him ; and that is Thucy- dides's final judgment. It is the same with Antiphon. He is a sinister figure : he was responsible for a reign of terror. But Thucydides, who knew him, admired him, while he deliberately recorded the full measure of his offences. Macchiavelli's praise of Caesar Borgia suggests itself. Antiphon's dperr] was perhaps rather like Borgia's Virtii, and Macchiavelli had a great ideal for Italy, something like that of Thucydides for Athens. Or one might think of Philippe de Commines' praise of Louis XI. But Thucydides, though in intellect not unlike these two, is a much bigger man than De Com- mines, a much saner and fuller man than Macchiavelli, and a much nobler man than either. He is very chary of moral judgments, but surely it needs some blindness
