Some Habits of Thucydides when introducing Persons

Abstract

Altogether in his History Thucydides finds occasion to mention about 530 persons, of whom 496 are men, twenty-two are heroes, seven are gods and six are women. Most of these people are never introduced or described in any way, so that the mere presence of an introductory phrase or description in itself may be thought to have some significance. Especially, Thucydides is notoriously reticent about the private and personal affairs of his public characters; so that any exceptions to that rule ought to be interesting. Especially interesting, as I see it, is anything that he may see fit to tell us, that he evidently judges to be something we need to know about a man before he makes his first appearance, or before he begins the particular course of action that is just about to be described. That is the point of using the phrase ‘when introducing persons’ in the title of this paper.