'
And this, too, was the opinion of Thucydides, whose ARCHAEOLOGIA as
it is contains a most valuable disquisition on the early condition
of Hellas, which it will be necessary to examine at some length.
Now, as regards the means employed generally by Thucydides for the
elucidation of ancient history, I have already pointed out how
that, while acknowledging that 'it is the tendency of every poet to
exaggerate, as it is of every chronicler to seek to be attractive
at the expense of truth; he yet assumes in the thoroughly
euhemeristic way, that under the veil of myth and legend there does
yet exist a rational basis of fact discoverable by the method of
rejecting all supernatural interference as well as any
extraordinary motives influencing the actors. It is in complete
accordance with this spirit that he appeals, for instance, to the
Homeric epithet of [Greek text which cannot be reproduced], as
applied to Corinth, as a proof of the early commercial prosperity
of that city; to the fact of the generic name HELLENES not
occurring in the ILIAD as a corroboration of his theory of the
essentially disunited character of the primitive Greek tribes; and
he argues from the line 'O'er many islands and all Argos ruled,' as
applied to Agamemnon, that his forces must have been partially
naval, 'for Agamemnon's was a continental power, and he could not
have been master of any but the adjacent islands, and these would
not be many but through the possession of a fleet.
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