The Classical Historian

Similarities appear from the beginning of the 2 books in opening sections in which the two state their reasons for penning and establish the grounds of their reliability. At the same time, of course, they ascribe superior import to the events about which they spell and, by extension, to the political entities and star figures involved in these events. Thucydides announced that he had decided to write about the war from its very beginning beca intent, with the two nations at the height of their powers, it was likely to be "the salientest disturbance in the level of the Hellenes" (Greece), affecting, perhaps, "the whole of mankind" (13). Though it was difficult to " presume a really precise knowledge" of ancient and new-fangled invoice, based on the evidence he could assemble Thucydides did non believe that there had been an earlier war that could equal the cooking stove of this one (13). Thucydides summarized the history of the Hellenes and, referring to the authority of Homer, "if we can believe [his] evidence," estimated the size of the conflict between the Greeks and Troy recounted in the Iliad. He reason that the fifth-century war was the greater conflict and used this as an congressman of the manner in which he drew conclusions from the available evidence. He outlined his method and asserted that he had either witnessed the events he reported or had carefully sifted the accounts of other eyewitnesses. Thucydides claimed to stick to the facts and to withdraw from out "the roman

Procopius followed Thucydides on every point. He says that, having been an adviser to the general Belisarius, he was "an eyewitness of a good deal all the events" he describes (5). Procopius argues that his account of the empire's wars bequeath be " some helpful to work force of the present time, and to future generations as well, in case time should ever again place men under a similar stress" (3). But he also states that his answer in writing is to avoid having these great events obliterated by the passage of time since, echoing Thucydides again, "it will be evident that no more important or mightier deeds are to be found in history than those which have been enacted in these wars" (5). Procopius even echoes Thucydides' reference to Homer.

But where Thucydides touch himself with the relative sizes of the armies in the Homeric and contemporary conflicts, Procopius is concerned to read that the fighters of his day were every bit as heroic as those described by the ancient poet.

In both cases the authors use the continuation of the state as anchors in the crisis. Procopius says that "it fell to the emperor, as was natural, to make provision for the trouble" (467). At the emperor's command Theodorus made, in Procopius' account, the only substantive effort at maintaining some burnish of order by using the emperor's funds to see to the burial, or at least the disposal, of the unclaimed bodies in the city. In the yearn run, however, even the emperor became ill and the most striking return of the plague, "to put it all in a word," was that officials ceased to operate on behalf of the empire whose might was stalled by the plague (473). Thucydides reported that patch the plague went on "Pericles was still general" and continued his history by returning to the persistence of the Athenian state despite the plague (128). In both cases the historians' assertions of the endurance of the state in the most adverse circumstances provides a clue to the purpose of their obj
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