One may see still better the fluctu

One may see still better the fluctuations of the writer in his method of elaboration when one reflects that though he has omitted many important events he stretches out the proem of his history to a length of five hundred lines, simply because he wants to show that the acts that were done by the Greeks before this war were slight and not worthy of comparison with this war. For neither was this the truth, as it is possible to show by many examples, nor do technical considerations suggest such a manner of amplification (for it does not follow that if a thing is larger than small things, it is therefore actually large, but this is only so if it exceeds large things)". The criticism of the Archaeology by Dionysius is very helpful in showing us the reactions of an ancient reader who on the one hand does not accept the premises of Thucydides' work, on the other is already far enough removed from the age of Thucydides not to understand some of his tenets.