SOURCE: "Mythistoria and the Drama," in Thucydides Mythistoricus, 1907. Reprint by Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1965, pp. 129-52.

Cornford was an English classicist whose books include From Religion to Philosophy (1912), Greek Religious Thought (1923), and Before and after Socrates (1932). In the following excerpt from a work originally published in 1907, Cornford argues that— despite the historian's intentions to "exclude the mythical"—Thucydides "unconciously" fitted his History to the structure of Greek drama.

Mythistoria and the Drama

The epithet 'dramatic' has often been applied to Thucydides' work; but usually nothing more is meant than that he allows his persons to speak for themselves, and presents their character with vividness. The dramatization which we have pointed out in the treatment of Cleon is a very different thing; it is a principle of construction which, wherever it operates, determines the selection of incidents to be recorded, and the proportions and perspective assigned them. In this...