SOURCE: in Thucydides and His History, Cambridge at the University Press, 1963, pp. 27-57.

In the following excerpt, Adcock first analyses Thucydides' manner of presentation: he contends that the speeches present a dialectical movement through argument and persuasion, proceeding indirectly towards the final purpose. Adcock posits that purpose second: the history makes an ethical argument about the primacy of civic life over private life.

The Speeches

Thucydides has told his readers what they are to think about the content of the speeches either in the first part or the whole of his work. When he wrote the sentence is not known for certain, whether it was before he began to write the narrative which follows, or after he had written his account of the antecedents of the war that broke out in 431 or at some later date after he had had a quorum of experience in writing the History...