Hobbes, In search of the truth

Excerpts from Hobbes' Thucydides 

Page 8

There is for his perspicuity. Cicero in his book entitled Orator, speaking of the affection of divers Greek rhetoricians, saith thus: 'And therefore Herodotus and Thucydides are the more admirable. For though they lived in the same age with those I have before named,' (meaning Thrasymachus, Gorgias, and Theodorus), 'yet were they far from this kind of delicacy, or rather indeed foolery.
For the one without rub, gently glideth like a still river; and the other' (meaning Thucydides) 'runs stronglier, and in matter of war, as it were, bloweth a trumpet of war. And in these two (as saith Theophrastus) history hath roused herself, and adventured to speak, but more copiously, and with more ornament than in those that were before them.' This commends the gravity and the dignity of his language. Again in his second book, De Oratore, thus: 'Thucydides, in the art of speaking, hath in my opinion far exceeded them all. For he is so full of matter, that the number of his sentences doth almost reach to the number of his words; and in his words he is so apt and so close, that it is hard to say whether his words do more illustrate his sentences, or his sentences his words.' There is for the pithiness and strength of his style.

Lastly, for the purity and propriety, I cite Dionysius Halicarnassius: whose testimony is the stronger in this point, because he was a Greek rhetorician for his faculty, and for his affection, one that would no further commend him than of necessity he must. His words are these: 'There is one virtue in eloquence, the chiefest of all the rest, and without which there is no other goodness in speech. What is that? That the language be pure, and retain the propriety of the Greek tongue. This they both observe diligently. For Herodotus is the best rule of the Ionic, and Thucydides of the Attic dialect.'

These testimonies are not needful to him that hath read the history itself; nor at all, but that this same Dionysius hath taken so much pains, and applied so much of his faculty in rhetoric, to the extenuating of the worth thereof. Moreover, I have thought it necessary to take out the principal objections he maketh against him; and without many words of mine own to leave them to the consideration of the reader.

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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=8