Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War 1.1.3 · 1.1.3
The earlier past cannot be known
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τὰ γὰρ πρὸ αὐτῶν καὶ τὰ ἔτι παλαίτερα σαφῶς μὲν εὑρεῖν διὰ χρόνου πλῆθος ἀδύνατα ἦν, ἐκ δὲ τεκμηρίων ὧν ἐπὶ μακρότατον σκοποῦντί μοι πιστεῦσαι ξυμβαίνει οὐ μεγάλα νομίζω γενέσθαι οὔτε κατὰ τοὺς πολέμους οὔτε ἐς τὰ ἄλλα.
For what came before the war, and what is older still, could not be found out clearly, because so much time has passed. But from the evidence I find reliable when I look back as far as I can, I do not think those times were great, either in their wars or in other things.
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The setting
He explains why he starts with his own war: older events cannot be found out clearly, and the best evidence he has says they were not great.
A note on this passage
The sentence turns on a contrast of men and de. On one side stands saphōs, "clearly," which the distant past does not allow, and on the other stands tekmēria, "evidence," from which he can still reason. The verb xymbainei is old Attic for symbainei, "it comes about," and the phrase says that belief comes about for him as he looks. He does not claim certainty, only that the proofs lead him to a view.
The negation is carried by ou megala nomizō genesthai, literally "I do not think great things happened." Then two oute clauses name the fields he has tested: kata tous polemous, in wars, and es ta alla, in everything else. The odd phrase is dia chronou plēthos, "through the multitude of time," where time is counted like a crowd.
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