[5] Any view on these points will doubtless always remain a matter of private judgment. My own view is that, if the historian had not been suddenly cut down, either by assassination at the hands of a robber, as one tradition has it, or by disease, the book would have received fuller revision, and the indirect speeches at several important points would have been turned into direct discourse. Professor Goodhart well expresses the feeling of the reader in turning the pages of Book viii.: “The war enters upon a new phase after the defeat of the Sicilian expedition. The scene changes from Greece to Asia. But there is something more than a mere change of scene. Athens herself appears under new conditions, fallen greatly from her high estate, but appealing more than ever to our interest and sympathy. We have seen her before in the full blaze of Periclean splendour. But perhaps our admiration has been qualified by some feeling of aloofness.
