Pathos in Thucydides

Abstract

Dionysius asserts more than once that Thucydides is superior to all other historians and poets in delineating , in vividly portraying disaster and arousing the reader’s feelings. For Dionysius and other Greek critics, a capacity to evoke ‘pathos’ (emotion) was a requirement for the orator and the historian. The rhetorician ranked Thucydides far above Herodotus in ‘dramatic’ ability, and ‘pathos’ was central to that judgment. He never comments on Thucydides’ rare use of moral and ethical judgments, although such judgments were the Hellenistic historian’s goal, for which ‘dramatic effect’ was but a tool.

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