BOOK   VI.

Thucydides, fike Herodotus, retains the spirit of the older l.
geographers and logographers, and at the beginning of his narrative
of the Sicilian expedition describes Sicily as if it were an un¬
known country. That he may have borrowed from Antiochus of
Syracuse is possible, but it is equally possible that his description
is the result of his own travels or inquiries. The slight coincidences
of language (see note on c. 3. i infra) or statement which are
found in the fragments of Antiochus (Muller, i. p. 181), when com¬
pared with Thucydides, are by no means sufficient to support the
hypothesis first suggested by Niebuhr, and confidently maintained
by later writers, that the account of Sicily in Thucydides is derived
from his contemporary.

The great apparent antiquity of these Sicilian colonies, and the
precision with which the dates are given are remarkable. Yet we
must consider that Thucydides is speaking of times which, in
his own language (i. 21), have ' passed into the region of romance.'
We know nothing of the source whence he obtained his chronology,
and cannot therefore determine whether it was the invention of a
later age, or whether it had some real foundation in ancient and
contemporary inscriptions, whether fists of magistrates, or docu¬
ments of any other kind. In Thucydides, as in Herodotus, we must
distinguish between the record of events which occurred in his
own or in the preceding generation, and of those which he re¬
ceived by tradition from a distant antiquity.

^iKeXias ydp nepinXovs piv ianv oXKafit ov noXXh nvi eXaaaov fj oKrh 1. 2.
qpephv, Kal roaavTf]  ovaa iv e'iKoai arabicov pdXiara perpco rfjs BaXdaaqs
bieipyerai rd pq qneipos elvai.

Thucydides seems to think that there is a geographical incon¬
gruity in so large an island being separated from the mainland by
so narrow a channel.