PART    II

THE    GENERAL    RELIABILITY    OF    THE
RECEIVED  TEXT  OF  THUCYDIDES

CHAPTER  II

Classical  learning  in  the  eighteenth  and  early  nineteenth
centuries  was  largely  devoted  to  the  textual  criticism  of
ancient  authors  ;  and  it  is  to  the  labours  of  scholars  of  that
age  that  the  satisfactory  state  of  many  of  the  most  im-
portant texts  is  largely  due.  On  the  general  question  of
the  reliability  of  the  extant  text  of  Thucydides  there  is  but
little  that  need  be  said.  It  was  the  fashion  some  years
ago  to  ascribe  the  obscurities  of  Thucydides'  more  involved
sentences  to  textual  corruption,  and  one  well-known
English  scholar  went  so  far  as  to  rewrite  the  Fourth  Book
in  what  he  believed  to  be  the  original  Thucydidean  Greek.^
The  essay  was  peculiarly  unfortunate  :  the  more  so  as  the
textual  corruption  was  ascribed  in  the  main  to  copyists  of
the  second  and  later  centuries  A.D.  A  manuscript  of  the
first  century  which  contains  a  certain  number  of  chapters
of  this  very  Fourth  Book  has  been  discovered  among
the  papyri  found  at  Oxyrhynchus.^  Except  in  com-
paratively few  particulars  this  first-century  text  agrees
closely  with  the  received  text  of  the  present  day.  If  then
there  be  corruption  in  Thucydides'  text,  it  would  seem,
judging  from  the  evidence  of  this  important  fragment  of
MS.,  that  it  took  place  before  the  first  century.     It  is,  of

1  Thucydides,  Bk.  iv.,  W.  G.  Rutherford.
2  Vide   publications   of  the   Egyptian   Exploration    Fund,   by   Drs.
Grenfell  and  Hunt.     Oxyrhynchus  Papyri,  Part  I.,  1898.
