Hobbes, In search of the truth

Excerpts from Hobbes' Thucydides 

Page 14

Other cavils he hath touching the matter and order of this history, but not needful to be answered.Then for his phrase, he carpeth at it in infinite places, both for obscure and licentious. He that will see the particular piaces he reprehendeth, let him read Dionysius himself, if he will: for the matter is too tedious for this place. It is true, that there be some sentences in him somewhat long: not obscure to one that is attentive: and besides that, they are but few. Yet is this the most important fault he findeth.

For the rest, the obscurity that is, proceedeth from the profoundness of the sentences; containing contemplations of those human passions, which either dissembled or not commonly discoursed of, do yet carry the greatest sway with men in their public conversation. If then one cannot penetrate into them without much meditation, we are not to expect a man should understand them at the first speaking.

Marcellinus saith, he was obscure on purpose; that the common people might not understand him. And not unlikely: for a wise man should so write, (though in words understood by all men), that wise men only should be able to commend him. But this obscurity is not to be in the narrations of things done, nor in the descriptions of places or of battles, in all which Thucydides is most perspicuous: as Plutarch in the words before cited hath testified of him.

But in the characters of men's humours and manners, and applying them to affairs of consequence: it is impossible not to be obscure to ordinary capacities, in what words soever a man deliver his mind.

If therefore Thucydides in his orations, or in the description of a sedition, or other thing of that kind, be not easily understood; it is of those only that cannot penetrate into the nature of such things, and proceedeth not from any intricacy of expression. Dionysius further findeth fault with his using to set word against word: which the rhetoricians call antitheta. Which, as it is in some kind of speech a very great vice, so is it not improper in characters: and of comparative discourses, it is almost the only style.

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Cf. Thucydides: Democracy of the Best & A history of Ideas   Papacy

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Reference address : https://ellopos.net/elpenor/greeks-us/hobbes-thucydides.asp?pg=14