In the Shadow of Pericles: Athens’ Samian Victory and the Organisation of the Pentekontaetia in Thucydides (original) (raw)

or he mentioned this [namely the period we call Pentekontaetia, or the Fifty Years] in a cursory manner and inaccurately as far as its chronology is concerned" (1.97.2: bqaw]yr te ja· to?r wq|moir oqj !jqib_r 1pelm^shg). Thucydides is speaking here, but this is not his well-deserved self-criticism. Far from that -what he is doing is bitterly censuring one of his predecessors, Hellanikos of Mytilene, the first historian of Athens. Yet, famously, this is exactly what modern scholars would say of Thucydides himself. 1