| Research Abstract |
The assupmtion that Thucydides' style is very close to Antiphon's leads us necessarily to another assumption that Thucydides was understood, by the contemporary Greeks, at the first hearing. My own view is that it couldn't be, and that, if we are to take that hearing was the only method of the first reading of every publication in Thucydides' days, his audience (and the readers) must have been rather small in number.
As a practical method, I made researches on the frequency of use, and the way of the use, of (1) nouns in -sis, (2) abstract nouns formed by adjectives with articles, (3) those formed by participles with articles, and (4) those formed by infinitives with articles. The frequency of Antiphon's use of them is found much less than that of Thucydides', but much more than other contemporary writers' : in this respect Antiphon's sytle is, though not very close to, but rather similar to Thucydides'. But the way of use of them is found quite different from each other : Antiphon's is very simple and transparent, while Thucydides' is often extremely complicated and at times unintelligible unless explained by Thucydides himself. Particularly intersting is that Thucydides' peculiar feature observed here is much more conspicuous in those passages which we can safely assume that he wrote especially carefully than others.
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