AUTHORAND AUDIENCEIN THUCYDIDES'

ARCHAEOLOGYSOME REFLECTIONS1

NINO LURAGHI

... a deeper and farther-reachingawarenessof the literaryand rhetorical

dimensions of a text can provide a more solid basis to the referential
ambitionssharedin the past by both history and anthropology.
(CarloGinzburg)

T is an easily forgotten truism that we cannot read the Archaeology,

and indeed the whole of Thucydides' work, with the eyes of a late
fifth-century Greek. Although writing for eternity, Thucydides, as every
author in every time, could not escape conceiving of his implied audi-
ence as very similar to his real audience, thus presupposing in his read-
ers a large contextual competence we fatally lack.2 This competence

1 This text is a revised and

expanded version of a paper I delivered at the Second
InternationalCongress on Thucydides at Alimos (Athens) in September 1997. I wish to
thank Hans-Joachim Gehrke, Ulrich Gotter, Christian Mann (Freiburg), Lisa Kallet
(Austin), RobertoNicolai (Roma), SusanneEbbinghaus(Los Angeles) and Eric Robinson
(Harvard)for reading and commenting upon differentversions of it. Thanks are due also
to the anonymousreaderof HSCP. No one of them is responsiblefor remainingerrorsin
form and contents. I am obviously not trying to offer here a comprehensivestudy of the
Archaeology,but ratherto make a couple of points aboutthe way how, in my opinion, this
fascinating and complex text should be read. Of the endless bibliography, I find E.
Taubler,Die Archaeologie des Thukydides(Leipzig 1927), J. de Romilly, Histoire et rai-
son chez Thucydide(Paris 1956) 240-298, V. Hunter,Past and Process in Herodotusand
Thucydides(Princeton 1982) 17-49 and H.-J. Gehrke, "Thukydidesund die Rekonstruk-
tion des Historischen,"A&A 39 (1993) 1-19 particularlyuseful. As a commentaryon the
Archaeology, S. Hornblower,A Commentaryon Thucydides1 (Oxford 1991) 4-56 does
not replace A. W. Gomme, A Historical Commentaryon Thucydides 1 (Oxford 1945)
89-157 on every detail, but it definitely replaces it for the general interpretation.A trust-
worthy and up-to-dateguide to the many problemsof Thucydides'Archaeologyis offered
by A. Tsakmakis,Thukydidesiber die Vergangenheit(Tubingen 1995) 20-63.
2 See for instanceGomme, Commentary1.1-25.
228 NinoLuraghi

would also condition the reactionof the readersto the text, and the text
itself would to a large extent be constructedin orderto produceparticu-
lar reactions. In other words, the meaning of every text is enormously
impoverishedas soon as it is extractedfrom its original communication
setting, and Thucydides is no exception. On the other hand, Thucy-
dides' work is for us a source as well as a literary achievement in its
own right, as we are compelled by the lack of primarysources to look
into it for all possible historical information,transformingevery state-
ment by him into a fact and often forgetting the role played by any
statementin Thucydides' rhetoricalstrategy.In this sense, we are two
steps removed from the ideal condition of the communicationbetween
Thucydides and his audience: we lack a significant amount of the
knowledge Thucydidestacitly assumes, and we tend to treathis text as
primaryevidence, thus misconstruingit. Such problemscome clearly to
the fore in the Archaeology.To overcome them, however partially,it is
necessary first of all to consider the rhetoricalstructureand function of
this text.
At the end of the Archaeology,a furtherassessment of the greatness
of the Peloponnesianwar, already announcedfrom the very beginning
of the proem, is introducedby the following sentence (1.23.1, transl.
Jowett): "The greatest achievement of former times was the Persian
War;yet even this was speedily decided in two battles by sea and two
by land." With these words, a true masterpiece of understatement,
Thucydides dispatches Xerxes' invasion of Greece in 480 and the sub-
sequentengagementsin Greece and Asia Minor.Then, in orderto show
that the Peloponnesian war was definitely more important,he goes on
to point out that it lasted much longer, and furthermorethat during it
Greece experienced pathemata as she never saw before in an equal
lapse of time. Now, as Luciano Canforaobserved,3the relative assess-
ment of Persian and Peloponnesianwars results here inescapablyfrom
the standardchosen: if you decide beforehand that what makes the
importanceof a war is its length, or the numberof battles which consti-
tute it, and not, for instance, the number of people involved or the
amount of the losses, then a comparison between the second Persian
war and the Peloponnesian war is bound to declare the last one to be
the greater.4We cannot be sure what an effect such a claim would have
3 L. Canfora,"La preface de Thucydideet la critiquede la raison historique,"REG 90
(1977) 459.
4 By the way, it should not be forgotten that in a sense the Peloponnesianwar itself,
 AuthorandAudiencein Thucydides'
Archaeology 229

had on Thucydides' audience, but it seems extremely probablethat he

was here consciously using a rhetoricaldevice, the aprosdoketon,caus-
ing surpriseby a statementthat seems paradoxicalat first sight, but is
then shown to be sound through further argument. As some further
observations may show, this device is fundamental to the rhetorical
strategyof the Archaeology.
To be sure, in the ArchaeologyThucydidesdoes not consistently use
the same standardto assess the importance of a war. The arguments
employed to belittle the Trojanwar are different, if no less rhetorical.
Here (1.10.3-5) Thucydides uses Homer against Homer, so to speak,5
in orderto show that, as a whole, not many people had takenpartin the
expedition against Troy: if you take the fifty men per ship of
Philoctetes' contingent and the one hundredand twenty Boeotians per
ship, then make an average and multiply for the total number of the
ships, you are supposed to see that the total of the warriorswas fairly
low, for an expeditionary corps coming from all of Greece. On this
point Gomme, after calculating the sum which Thucydides does not
give, and which actually turns out to be quite high, observes: "Thucy-
dides cannot in fact be acquittedof a certaininconsequence;this excur-
sus, like most of the others, has not been fully thought out."6I have to
confess that the Archaeology does not seem to me to be less than com-

conceived of as a single war stretchingwith a pause from 431 to 404, is a Thucydidean

invention;see now B. Strauss, "The Problem of Periodization:The Case of the Pelopon-
nesian War,"in M. Golden and P. Toohey eds., InventingAncient Culture:Historicism,
Periodization,and the Ancient World(London-NewYork 1997) 165-175.
5 On
Thucydides and Homer, see the brilliant formulationof de Romilly, Histoire et
raison 247: "Thucydideraisonne sur les donn6es de l'6popee afin d'en tirer des ren-
seignements qu'elle ne fournissaitpas et auxquels le poete ne pouvait songer."
6Gomme, Commentary 1.114; however, it should not be forgotten that Gomme's
observationwas promptedby a problem, the numberof the Greeks at Troy according to
Thucydides' reckoning, which most scholars have simply left aside. The most convinc-
ing, although only half-way convinced, attemptat saving Thucydides' coherence here is
the one by de Romilly, Histoire et raison 247 f.; she does not consider, though, that the
greatness of the Trojanwar, if evaluatedon the basis of the number of people involved,
should have resultedfrom the sum of the Greeks and the Trojanswith their allies. For the
importanceof the implication of non-Greeks for the definition of the 'greatness' of an
event in Thucydides, see Tsakmakis, Thukydidesuber die Vergangenheit158. It is per-
haps a sign of the Zeitgeist if both Jeffrey Rusten and I singled out this sentence by
Gomme and quoted it at the Alimos conference (see above, n. 1); neitherof us, I suppose,
underestimatesGomme's enormous contributionto Thucydideanstudies, but the passage
is indeed symptomaticof the problems producedby a 'realistic' readingof the Archaeol-
ogy.
230 Nino Luraghi

pletely thoughtout. In this case I strongly suspect that Thucydidessim-

ply expected his audience to be impressedby his argument,and not to
reckonprecisely how many people would have takenpartin the expedi-
tion accordingto his own calculation. Otherwise I can hardly figure an
army of more than one hundredthousand men being defined as "not
very numerous."7We should not forget that Thucydides' text would
most probablybe heardratherthan read, and the audiencewould not be
in the condition to stop, do the sum and check the accuracyof Thucy-
dides' statement.8But be this as it may, and leaving aside the fact that
Thucydides does not touch on the problem of how many people were
fightingagainst the Greeks at Troy,if he had evaluatedthe Persianwars
according to the same standard,using for instance Herodotus' figures
for the strengthof the armies involved, it would have been much more
difficultto belittle them.
These two examples clarify an important aspect of Thucydides'
Archaeology. Its primary concern is not to convey rare information
about the ancient history of Greece, but to show that Thucydides is
right in maintainingthat 'his' war, the Peloponnesianwar, is the great-
est of all, definitely greaterthan any war of the past. In orderto do this,
Thucydides chooses a rhetoricalstrategywhich was clearly identified,
with disappointment,by Dionysius of Halicarnassus:instead of claim-
ing the Peloponnesianwar to have been greaterthan the greatest deeds
of the past, Thucydides-says Dionysius-tries to belittle those deeds.9
Such a strategy implies that Thucydides has to argue that common
7 The alternative
argued by H. Verdin, "Les remarquescritiques d'Herodote et de
Thucydide sur la poesie en tant que source historique,"in Historiographiaantiqua. Com-
mentationes Lovanienses in honorem W. Peremans septuagenarii editae (Leuven 1977)
74 f. does not seem convincing to me; according to Verdin,Thucydides would not give
the result of his calculationbecause he takes Homer's figures to be the productof poetic
exaggeration. It is certainly true that Thucydides envisages poetic exaggeration on the
part of Homer. It should however be pointed out that Thucydides, after having stated
(1.10.1-2) that the dimension of Mycenae in his own time cannot be used as an argument
to doubt the dimension of the expedition as describedby Homer, says explicitly (1.10.3)
that, even if Homer'sfigures are to be taken literally, nonetheless the expedition against
Troyturnsout to have been inferiorto the Peloponnesianwar.
8 I decidedly agree with R. Thomas, Literacy and Orality in Ancient Greece (Cam-
bridge 1992) 103 f. against overemphasizingthe 'written' natureof Thucydides' prose in
contrastto Herodotus.See also S. Hornblower,A Commentaryon Thucydides2 (Oxford
1996) 26 f.
9 Dion. Hal. de Thuc. 19: "One may see still betterthe fluctuationsof the writerin his
method of elaboration when one reflects that though he has omitted many important
events he stretchesout the proem of his history to a length of five hundredlines, simply
 Authorand Audience in Thucydides'Archaeology 231

opinions even on the cornerstonesof past history, the Trojanwar and

the Persian wars, are fundamentallywrong. The taste for aprosdoketon
and paradox he shows in doing this reminds us to which generation
Thucydidesbelonged.10Of course, to be convincing in arguingfor the
paramountimportanceof the Peloponnesianwar he has to show that he
has carefully searched out all possible sources and evidence which
might cast even a shade of doubt on his own contention,but the struc-
ture of his argument rather prevents him from making reference to
never-heard-ofepisodes and digging out things supposedlyunknownto
his audience;on the contrary,he tends to build on what he holds to be
fairly common knowledge among them, and to arguewith a real tour de
force that, comparedto the Peloponnesianwar, the 'great deeds of the
past' were actually not as great as they were generally thought to have
been.
The implicit communicationbetween Thucydides and his audience
does not facilitate comprehensionof the Archaeology to modern read-
ers. In fact, the Archaeology is rather concise and allusive, and it is
allusive exactly because Thucydides' audience is supposed to be
sufficiently familiar with the facts he alludes to, albeit holding wrong
opinions about them. Such an implicit communication,which inter alia
must make a fairly extensive use of intertextualreferences, is quite
obvious where Thucydides alludes to epic tales, and has been clearly
recognized by Simon Hornblower in relation to Thucydides' use of
Herodotus: "There are occasions, in narrative and speeches, when
Thucydides would be barely intelligible, or actually unintelligible,to a
readerwho did not know Herodotusvery well."'l Unintelligiblemay be

because he wants to show that the acts that were done by the Greeks before this war were
slight and not worthy of comparisonwith this war. For neither was this the truth,as it is
possible to show by many examples, nor do technical considerationssuggest such a man-
ner of amplification(for it does not follow that if a thing is largerthan small things, it is
thereforeactuallylarge, but this is only so if it exceeds large things)"(transl.from Diony-
sius of Halicarnassus, On Thucydides, English translation and commentary by W.K.
Pritchett [Berkeley-Los Angeles-London 1975]). The criticism of the Archaeology by
Dionysius is very helpful in showing us the reactionsof an ancientreaderwho on the one
hand does not accept the premises of Thucydides' work, on the other is already far
enough removedfrom the age of Thucydidesnot to understandsome of his tenets.
10On rhetoric in the
Archaeology see Tsakmakis, Thukydidesund die Vergangenheit
50 f. and R. Nicolai, "Thucydides'Archaeology Between Epic and Oral Traditions,"in
N. Luraghied., TheHistorian's Craftin the Age of Herodotus(Oxford2001) 263-285.
11S. Hornblower,A
Commentary2.123 (from the reprintof S. Hornblower,"Thucy-
232 Nino Luraghi

too extreme,but a very strong intertextualitywith Herodotusis difficult

to deny in Thucydides:his implied audience is clearly expected to be
familiarwith the fatherof history.12
The allusiveness of the Archaeologyoften escapes notice by modem
readersand thereforedeserves to be stressed more explicitly than it has
been done up to now. The perspectiveof an ancientreadercan be help-
ful in this connection. As we have seen, Dionysius of Halicarnassusdid
not like Thucydidesin general, and least of all the Archaeology.Thucy-
dides' provocative understatementof Greece's glorious past was too
much for him. Furthermore,he could not see the point of the many
small details recorded by Thucydides: "What necessity was there of
speaking about the luxurious mode of life in which the Athenians of
olden times indulged, statingthatthey plaited theirhair into buns on the
nape of the neck and wore golden cicadas on their heads and that the
Lacedaemonianswere the first to stripthemselves and openly removing
their clothes anointed themselves with oil as they exercised?"13Now,

dides' use of Herodotus,"first published in J. M. Sanders [ed.], lIAOAAKON:Lakonian

Studies in Honor of Hector Catling [Athens 1992] 141-154 and then in A Commentary
2.122-137). However,Hornblower'sargumenttends to point to a kind of strictintertextu-
ality, in which the allusions presupposea very precise knowledge of the texts alluded to.
The phenomenonI am trying to call attentionto is a rathermore diffuse form of allusion,
implying a certainfamiliarityon the partof the audience,but not necessarilythe ability to
cross-check. On intertextualityin Thucydides,see now the extremely balanced treatment
of the conclusion of the Sicilian expedition by T. Rood, "Thucydidesand His Predeces-
sors," Histos 3 (1999), meeting in my opinion the caveats formulatedby P. J. Rhodes,
"'Epidamnusis a City': On not OverinterpretingThucydides,"Histos 2 (1998). On inter-
textuality in general see D. P. Fowler, "On the Shoulders of Giants: Intertextualityand
Classical Studies,"MD 39 (1997) 13-34 and S. Hinds, "'Proemio al mezzo': Allusion
and the Limits of Interpretability,"ibid. 113-117. It will be clear that I use here 'allude,'
'allusive,' 'allusion' and 'allusiveness' to indicate phenomena which belong under the
heading 'intertextuality'in Fowler's checklist (page 15), providedthat a broad definition
of text is adopted;see e.g., W. F. Hanks, "Textand Textuality,"Annual Review of Anthro-
pology 18 (1989) 95-97.
12The intertextualitybetween Thucydidesand Herodotushas surprisinglyreceived the
attention it deserves only in recent years; see especially Hornblower,A Commentary
2.19-38 and 122-145, and, in a differentline of thought,A. Tsakmakis"Thucydidesand
Herodotus: Remarks on the Attitude of the Historian Regarding Literature,"SCI 14
(1995) 17-32 and "ThukydidesVI 54,1 und Herodot,"Philologus 140 (1996) 201-213. I
have touched on a particularaspect of this problemin N. Luraghi,"La tirannidesiceliota
nell'Archaiologiadi Tucidide,"QS 42 (1995) 48-55.
13Dion. Hal. de Thuc. 19 (transl. Pritchett),alluding to and partly quoting verbatim
from Thuc. 1.6.
 AuthorandAudiencein Thucydides'
Archaeology 233

these sparse details that disturbedDionysius can only be understoodas

a part of the communication between Thucydides and his audience,
allusions, as it were, used by the historian to recall knowledge which
his audience is supposed to possess, and which allows them to follow
his argument without more extensive references, and to see that his
contentions are sound. To Dionysius, much closer than we are to
Thucydides, they are futile. There can hardly be a better illustration
thanthis of the problemof the competence of the implied audience.
But let us go one step back. Thucydides' rhetoricalstrategy in the
Archaeology is in a sense paradoxical:on the one hand, he has to pre-
vent all possible objections to his argument,and therefore to mention
all the episodes his audience would know and consider relevant;on the
other, making reference to far-fetched informationwould weaken his
argument.If this point is accepted as correct, then it may be used as a
principle in interpretingthe Archaeology.To show in practicewhat this
means, a good example is offered by the sea-powers listed by Thucy-
dides (1.13-14). As Momigliano has shown, sea-power was clearly an
issue in late-fifth century Athens.14Herodotusalready stated who had
been the first Greek of the humanrace to plan to dominate the sea, the
Samian tyrant Polycrates (3.122.2). Thucydides takes a different
approach.He has to consider all of the most famous fleets of the past
because he wants to demonstratethat they had all been inferior to the
Athenian fleet at the time of the Peloponnesianwar. In other words, the
need to draw up a full list of sea-powers is strictly connected with the
logical structure of the Archaeology: completeness is required if
Thucydides' argumentis to be accepted as sound by his audience. The
necessity to prevent any possible objection may help explain why
Thucydides is here so generous in the treatmentof the more distant
past. If he feels the need to show that also mythical thalassocratslike
Minos had been less powerful than fifth-centuryAthens, the reason is
not necessarily that he believes in what we would call their historicity,
but ratherthat he takes for a moment the standpointof someone who
does believe in it, in order to argue that also from that standpointthe
sea-powers of the past had been inferior to those of the present times.
14 A.
Momigliano, "Sea-Power in Greek Thought,"first published in CR 58 (1944)
1-7, reprinted in A. Momigliano, Secondo contributo alla storia degli studi classici
(Roma 1960) 57-68. For a very interesting discussion of sea-power and economic
resourcesin the Archaeologysee now L. Kallet-Marx,Money,Expense, and Naval Power
in Thucydides'History 1-5.24 (Berkeley-LosAngeles-Oxford 1993) 21-35, esp. 30-31.
234 Nino Luraghi

As a result, quite paradoxically,Thucydides seems to handle mythic

materialwith less scepticism thanHerodotususually does.15
If the rationale behind a complete list of sea-powers is to be
explained in this way, then there is no real need to speculate about
Thucydides' use of a pre-existing list,16the more so because most of
what he tells on the post-Trojanwar era may be construedas a series of
allusions to a source we already know, i.e., Herodotus.17In this con-
nection, one should note first of all the use of the kings of Persia as
chronological backbone of the second part of the list. Furthermore,
informationabout the fleets of Corcyraand Gelo of Syracuse is to be
found in Herodotus (7.168.4 and 7.158.4),18 and the same is true of
Polycrates. Here Thucydides adds the dedication of Rheneia, an inter-
nal allusion but at the same time pointing to an event that probably
regained interest in connection with the purificationof Delos by the
Atheniansin 426/5 (3.104), and could thereforebe held to be known to
the audience.19Kohler was almost certainly right in arguing that also
Thucydides' Ionian thalassocracy at the time of the war with Cyrus
(1.13.6) may easily have been deduced from Herodotus:from the fact
that during Harpagus' campaign Phocaeans and Teians, according to
Herodotus(1.164.3 and 168), were able to sail away undisturbedfrom
their cities it could be inferredthat the Ionians held the superiorityat
sea.20In this connection one should also notice the relevance that both
15 This
paradox is well pointed out by D. Marcozzi, M. Sinatra, P. Vannicelli, "Tra
epica e storiografia:il 'Catalogodelle navi,"'SMEA33 (1994) 168-169.
16The thesis that Thucydides was using a fifth-centurylist of thalassocracies was
argued by J. L. Myres, "On the 'List of Thalassocracies' in Eusebius,"JHS 26 (1906)
85-89; I sympathizewith his observation(at 86) about "the allusive characterof Thucy-
dides' survey", but, given inter alia the relative heterogeneity of the entries, prefer to
think that the allusions point to different sources and diffused notions, all of them suffi-
ciently well-known to be recalledby a few words.
17 Hornblower,A Commentary2.137-145 gives a very convenient list of possible (not
all acceptedby Hornblowerhimself; cf. A Commentary1 [1991] 47 on Thuc. 1.13.6 and
Massalia) parallel passages from Herodotusand Thucydides (138-139 for the Archaeol-
ogy). At least some small additionsto the list might probablybe made, cf. below.
18See
my "Latirannidesiceliota nell'Archaiologiadi Tucidide"48-50, where it is also
pointed out (54-62) that some general notion of the power of the Deinomenids must any-
way have been diffused in Athens from the late twenties at the latest.
19On Thuc. 3.104 see Hornblower,A Commentary1.516-531.
20U. Kohler, "Uber die Archaologie des Thukydides,"in Commentationesphilologae
in honoremTheodoriMommseni(Berlin 1877) 373 f. Some of the parallels between the
Archaeologyand Herodotuspointed out by Kohlerare absentfrom the list of Hornblower,
A Commentary2.138-139, who does not quote Kohlerat all.
 Authorand Audience in Thucydides'Archaeology 235

Herodotus(1.143.1) and Thucydides(1.16.1) assign to the Persiancon-

quest of Phoenicia as a necessary preconditionfor the enslavement of
the Ionians of the isles. In this case, failure to appreciatethe allusive
style of the Archaeology has promptedancient and modem readers of
Thucydidesto imagine sea battles that occurredbetween Cyrus and the
Ionians,21 while Thucydides probably implies almost the opposite,
namely that under Cyrus the Persians were not able to contest the
Ionians' control of the sea.
Otherminor parallelswith Herodotus,such as the respectiveroles of
triremes and pentekontersin ancient fleets, might be pointed out and
have actually been pointed out by other scholars. I would ratherlike to
stress that what is true of the Herodoteanallusions must hold true also
of the other pieces of informationreportedby Thucydides,because he
is clearly no less allusive when reportingnon-Herodoteanmaterial,and
this means that he presupposeshis audience to be no less familiarwith
such material. For instance, without disputing Ronald Stroud's con-
tention that some Corinthianmaterialin the Archaeology should be the
result of Thucydides' enquiriesin Corinth,22I would resist the idea that
Thucydidesis here concisely quoting facts his audienceis supposednot
to know. In other words, I assume that when Thucydides says (1.13.4,
transl.Jowett) "the earliest naval engagementon recordis that between
the Corinthiansand Corcyraeans"his audienceis probablynot expected
to know the exact date of that battle, but at least to understandwhat
battle Thucydidesis speakingabout.Ourknowledge of fifth-centurylit-
erature is clearly insufficient to allow speculation about the other
sources Thucydidesis alludingto besides Herodotus,not to mentionthe
knowledge he could suppose his audience to possess without the medi-
ation of a written source. Nevertheless, there is no a priori reason to
doubt that the familiarity with the past required from Thucydides'
implied audiencein the Archaeologyis not limited to Herodotusand the
epos.23
This might also be taken as a warningagainstthe temptationto force
21
E.g., J. Labarbe, "Un putsch dans la Grece antique: Polycrate et ses freres a la
conquete du pouvoir,"Ancient society 5 (1974) 33-35. I also wonder if what we read in
Malalas, Chron.6.12 (158) is not in some way the result of a misinterpretationof Thucy-
dides.
22R. S. Stroud,
"Thucydidesand Corinth,"Chiron24 (1994) 267-304, esp. 274-275.
23 This
point is made, with reference to the conclusion of Thucydides' narrativeof the
Sicilian expedition,by Rood, "Thucydidesand His Predecessors."
236 Nino Luraghi

too many elements from the Archaeologyinto a HerodoteanProcrustes'

bed. To take just one example, the attempt to reconcile Thucydides'
entry about the Phocaeans of Massalia (1.13.6) with Herodotus' Pho-
caean logos (1.165-166), eventually correcting Massalia to Alalia in
Thucydides' text,24 has very little to commend itself. The notion of
naval victories of Massalia againstthe Carthaginiansis presentin other
sources as well.25 True, Thucydides' text, "the Phocaeans, when they
were colonising Massalia, defeated the Carthaginiansin a sea-fight"
(transl. Jowett; the imperfect tense used by Thucydides might as well
refer to more then one battle), remains somewhat difficult to under-
stand, because he seems to follow a chronological sequence in his enu-
merationof sea-powers, and the foundationof Massalia may hardlybe
dated after Polycrates.26This problemhas not yet been solved satisfac-
torily. A solution which may not be too unsatisfactory,and is certainly
more economical than correctingthe place-name, would be to correct
the present participle oiKirov-et into an aorist one, oiKioavrs;: this
would separatethe chronology of the foundationof Massalia from that
of the victory (or victories) mentioned by Thucydides and thereby
allow one to see a chronological sequence in Thucydides' list without
attributingto him an extravagantdate for the foundationof Massalia.
This emendationdoes not come out of the blue: in fact, Dionysius
quotes this phrase almost literally from the Archaeology, but all
manuscriptsof his text read the verb as an aorist.27It is a bit surprising
that no edition of Thucydides refers here to Dionysius, or for that
matter that no edition of Dionysius signals the divergence from our
Thucydideanparadosis.28 It is true that Dionysius' quotations from
24As
proposedby Gomme, A Historical Commentary1.124.
25See Paus. 10.8.6-7 and Iust. 43.5.2, and the extensive discussion of F. Raviola, "La
tradizioneletterariasulla fondazione di Massalia,"in L. Braccesi ed., Hesperia 10. Studi
sulla grecita d'Occidente (Roma 2000) 74-82.
26On the chronology of the foundationof Massalia see now Raviola "Latradizionelet-
terariasulla fondazione di Massalia,"57-71. A very precise analysis of the Thucydidean
text is to be found in L. Woodbury,"Apollodorus,Xenophanes, and the Foundationof
Massilia,"Phoenix 15 (1961) 142-147.
27Dion. Hal. de Thuc. 19, page 354 lines 15-17 Usener-Radermacher.Dionysius adds
the articlebefore Maoxaakiav;thereforehis cannotbe taken as a verbatimquotationany-
way (the whole paragraphis a mixture of verbatim quotations and slight paraphrases),
and this is probablythe reason (no good reason) why this passage has not been consid-
ered as a possible testimoniumfor Thucydides'text.
28On the value of Dionysius as a testimoniumfor the text of Thucydidessee Pritchett's
introductionto his commentedtranslation,xvi-xvii with furtherbibliography.
 AuthorandAudiencein Thucydides'
Archaeology 237

Thucydides, in de Thucydideand elsewhere, are often from memory,

and do not always reflect the text of his own copy of Thucydides, and
the substitutionof Thucydideanverbal tenses by Dionysius is attested
in other cases.29 On the other hand, Dionysius in no case radically
subverts the meaning of the text of Thucydides, for instance altering
the logical or temporal relation between two verbs. The way he
rendersThuc. 1.13.6 implies that, in his memory or in his manuscriptof
Thucydides, the foundation of Massalia and the victory against the
Carthaginianswere not contemporary.
Correctedin this way Thucydides' text makes perfect sense. To say
something like "the Phocaeans, after they had founded Massalia", or
"the Phocaeans who had founded Massalia" would then be simply a
way to identify them, to indicate of which Phocaeans Thucydides is
speaking;30this specification might also have been felt necessary by
Thucydidesbecause his audience would know from Herodotus(1.166)
that the last decades of the sixth century had not been a very good
period for Phocaean sea-powerin general. Such a solution would spare
us the problem of either attributingto Thucydides an impossibly low31
chronology for the foundationof Massalia or being compelled to main-
tain that the referenceto Massalia breaksthe chronologicalsequence of
the sea-powersin 1.13.5.
As for the source to which Thucydides alludes here, once more we
should perhapsnot think exclusively of a literarywork: the offerings of
the Massalians at Delphi for their victory (or victories) over the
Carthaginians,including perhapstheir thesaurosin the Marmaria,were
possibly familiar enough to his audience.32Be this as it may, Thucy-
29On all this, see L. Sadde, De
Dionysii Halicarnassensis scriptis rhetoricis quaes-
tiones criticae, Diss. (Strasburg 1878) 140-149 and M. Pehle, Thucydidis exemplar
Dionysianumcum nostrorumcodicum memoriaconfertur,Diss. (Berlin, 1907) 8-20. Par-
ticularlyrelevantis the renderingof the firstverbs of Thuc. 2.72.1 in de Thuc.36.
30On the meaning of this participalclause see now C. M. J. Sicking, in C. M. J. Sick-
ing and P. Stork, Two Studies in the Semantics of the Verbin Classical Greek (Leiden-
New York-Koln1996) 17-19 and 42-43, esp. the example 17 at 17.
31Lower indeed than the 'low chronology' of some sources, which date the foundation
of Massalia in connection with the migration of the Phocaeans to Corsica; see Raviola
"Latradizioneletterariasulla fondazione di Massalia,"63-67.
32 On the offerings from Massalia at Delphi Paus. 10.8.6-7 and 18.7 (only the second
offering is explicitly connected by Pausanias to sea-fighting against the Carthaginians).
The aeolic thesaurosin the Marmariaat Delphi, currentlyidentifiedwith that of Massalia
mentionedin the sources (Diod. 14.93.4), is to be dated in the late sixth-century,possibly
about 510; so E. Langlotz, Studien zur nordostgriechischenKunst (Mainz 1974) 47-48
238 NinoLuraghi

dides here is not alluding to Herodotus,unless in the form of integrat-

ing him (another typical aspect of their relationship pointed out by
Simon Horblower). Nevertheless, I suppose that his audience was
expected to recognize in these short phrases something which they
alreadyknew, albeit vaguely.
Let us sum up. The points I have tried to make do not pretend to
exhaustthe interpretationof a rich and complex text as the Archaeology
undoubtedlyis. Provided that they are sound, my observationsshould
ratherhelp put this text into a correctperspective.I have tried to argue
that interpretationsof the Archaeologyshould take into accountthe fact
that here Thucydides was trying to confute some of his implied audi-
ence's central notions on the past. This aim put obvious constraintson
the text, most visible in the structureof the argumentand in the selec-
tion of evidence, while at the same time making of the Archaeology a
complex weave of intertextualreferences.
AlthoughThucydides,judging from his own general statements(e.g.
1.1.2), was probably quite sceptical as to the value of poetry as evi-
dence for the distantpast, neverthelesshe tends to avoid a frontalattack
on Homer's authority:ratherthan simply saying that the Trojanexpedi-
tion had been much smallerthan the poet had implied, he ostentatiously
takes the Catalogue of ships at face value and tries to arguethat even on
the basis of those figures the Trojanwar had not been that big an enter-
prise. Apparently,Thucydidesthoughtthat the possibility that the audi-
ence would reckon the number of ships and men taking part in the
expedition was less dangerousfor his argumentthan putting into ques-
tion the credibility of the Catalogue would have been. Like Plato's
Socrates, Thucydides defends his truthusing the argumenthe thinks is
going to convince his audience rather than the argumenthe himself
considersdecisive.
Since he was challenging his audience's notions on the past, Thucy-
dides in the Archaeology was bound to have an idiosyncraticrelation-
ship with evidence. He had to show himself well informed, and at the
same time, making reference to facts his audience had never heard

and J.-F. Bommelaer,Guide de Delphes. Le site (Paris 1991) 62-64 and id. in J.-F. Bom-
melaered., Marmaria.Le sanctuaired'Athdnaa Delphes (Paris 1997) 57, pace F. Salviat,
"Le tresordes Marseillais a Delphes et sa dedicace,"Archdologiedu Midi mediterranden
3 (1981) 7-16 and M. Gras, "Marseille,la bataille d'Alalia et Delphes,"DHA 13 (1987)
166-171; thereforeit might well have been dedicatedin connection with the victory men-
tioned by Thucydides.
 Authorand Audience in Thucydides'Archaeology 239

about would have been superfluous,and might potentially have been

suspect. Thereforethe Archaeology makes a strong appeal to the audi-
ence's competence, and intertextualreferences are extremely frequent
and perhapsalso more visible than in other parts of Thucydides' work.
More than ever, they are an integralpartof the meaning of this text.
It is no new discovery that what mattersin the Archaeologyis not so
much the informationas the way it is processed by Thucydides.33The
chronic scarcity of sources on the archaic age has often brought schol-
ars to forget this simple truth,overinterpretingThucydides' statements
on archaicGreece. Of course, the claim that the Archaeologycomprises
more rhetoricalargumentthan historical data should not be understood
as a reason to belittle Thucydides' historical achievement. After all,
Thucydides was no positivist historian, trying to collect facts and
putting them together, assuming they might speak by themselves.
Instead, today a new awareness of the importanceof rhetoric for the
writing of history34should allow a correctevaluationof such aspects of
Thucydides' work.

HARVARD UNIVERSITY

33This
point has often been made, but is equally often forgotten; see the still useful
article of K6hler,"Uberdie Archaologie des Thukydides,"377: "Wederdie Zahl noch die
Wahl der Quellen ist es, was die Archaologie zu einer fir ihre Zeit staunenswerthen,nur
einem iiberlegenen Geiste wie Thukydides moglichen Leistung macht, sonder die Art
und Weise der Verwerthung",and U. von Wilamowitz-M6llendorff,Greek Historical
Writing(Oxford 1908) 8: ". .. his Archaeologia does not give an impressionof personal
research;it gives only a rationalcriticism of acceptedtradition.We may not ask for more;
but also we should not discover more in it".
34I am thinking of the lively debate triggeredby Roland Barthes and Hayden White,
on which see now C. Ginzburg,History, Rhetoric, and Proof (Hanover,NH 1999), esp.
38-70. The quotationat the beginning of the presentcontributioncomes from page 71.