This history brings together, from

This history brings together, from the point of view of objectivity, unusually favorable conditions. Thucydides is relating contemporary events, minute details of which were readily available to him; and as it happens, he researched these with a care and an impartiality that are universally acknowledge. He chose a limited subject—the history of a war—enabling him to do exhaustive research. In addition, in the presentation of his history, he so assiduously sought objectivity that he shunned almost all personal analysis, consistently allowing his characters uncompromising severity in speech and action. This objectivity is not surprising when we remember that, while he had himself been involved in the invents he is reporting, he refers to himself in the third person, without explanation or commentary of any kind, doing what amounts to the opposite of Xenophon’s practice. As for his interpretation, his montage (to return to the example of the photographer), it is so difficult to see in the reflection of either personal taste or a priori ideas that different critics have reproached him for favoring one side or else the other, judging him as too severe or too indulgent.