ABSTRACT
In another Festschrift due to appear at about the same time as this one, Christopher PelIing, in a paper on Thucydides' Archidamus and Herodotus ' Artabanus, examines an aspect of Thucydides' relation to Herodotus.i I wish to look at another, more strictly factual, aspect of that relationship. Many texts I shall be considering have a Spartan aspect, and this , I hope, makes it appropriate to explore the topic in a collection of Lacon ian studies in honour of Hector Catl ing .a
It is not in dispute that Thucydides in some sense reacted against Herodotus (whom however he never names; it is Hellanicus who enjoys the doubtful privilege of being the only prose writer whom he names, in the partly polemical 1. 97 ; the poets Homer and Hesiod are also named, the latter not as an authority, but merely for the manner of his death) . Indeed it is usually thought that the first lengthy piece of polemic in Thucydides • which , appropriately enough in the context of the present volume, concerns Sparta · is directed against Herodotus. I refer to the well-known loss of temper in 1. 20 about the Pitanate lochos and the votes of the Spartan kings. I have no space to go into the composition question • how big an interval of time separated the ' publication ' of Herodotus' Histories from Thucydides' own literary act ivity . It is even poss ible that the two men were in a real sense contemporaries and rivals, I do think , however, that Thucydides ' Pentekontaetia took its present form pretty late, as a riposte to the appearance of Hellanicus ' work in or soon after 404 .
