BOOK  vin.

We are told by Marcefiinus, the unknown Greek writer whose
fife of Thucydides is commonly prefixed to his works, that the
genuineness of the eighth Book was denied by some ancient critics.
When they had once entertained the doubt their fertile imagina¬
tion readily invented fictions in support of their opinion : some
attributing the composition of it to his daughter, others to Xeno¬
phon, others to Theopompus. Marcefiinus is at some pains to
refute them:—' The work was not within the compass of a woman's
genius:' ' the style shows unmistakeably (pdvov ovxl ^oq) that it
could not have been Xenophon's,' and ' it could not have been
Theopompus';' 'the finer judgments rightly attributed it to Thu¬
cydides.' Such queries, and the answers to them, are valuable,
not for their own sake, but for the fight which they throw on the
manner of reasoning or thinking prevalent among ancient critics.

It is unnecessary to refute seriously an opinion which has no
serious basis. The eighth Book is quoted by ancient writers : it is
found in all MSS. except those which, like H. and Vind., are in¬
complete : it contains minute references to the previous history,
(viii. 96 and i. 70 and vfi. 55; vifi. 15 and fi. 24,) unlikely to have
been made by a forger. The love of truth, the power of thought,
the absence of moral approbation or disapprobation, the irony, the
perception of character, the moderation of statement, the general
excellence, no less than the mechanical arrangement into summers
and winters, and the minutiae of language and phraseology, * cry
aloud,' in the words of Marcellinus, that the eighth Book is the
composition of Thucydides.

It is remarked by Dionysius (De Thuc. Hist. Jud. c. xvi) that
no speeches are found in the eighth Book; and it is not unlikely
that so trifiing an accident may have given rise to the suspicion of
its genuineness. If it were worth whfie to consider such a diffi¬
culty at all, it might be remarked that in the fifth and the seventh