teer returned, let us say, from Jack's Shop or some
such homely locality, and opened his Thucydides, the old charm came
back with the studious surroundings, and the familiar first words
renewed the spell.

"Thucydides of Athens wrote up the war of the Peloponnesians and
Athenians." "The war of the Peloponnesians and Athenians" is a somewhat
lumbering way of saying "the Peloponnesian war." But Thucydides never
says "the Peloponnesian war." Why not? Perhaps his course in this matter
was determined by a spirit of judicial fairness. However that may be,
either he employs some phrase like the one cited, or he says "this war"
as we say "the war," as if there were no other war on record.
"Revolutionary war," "war of 1812," "Seminole war," "Mexican war,"--all
these run glibly from our tongues, but we also lumber when we wish to be
accurate. The names of wars, like the names of diseases, are generally
put off on the party of the other part. We say "French and Indian war"
without troubling ourselves to ask what the French and Indians called
it, but "Northern war" and "Southern war" were never popular
designations. "The war between the States," which a good many
Southerners prefer, is both bookish and inexact. "Civil war" is an utter
misnomer. It was used and is still used by courteous people, the same
people who are careful to say "Federal" and "Confederate." "War of the
rebellion," which begs the very question at issue, has become the
official designation of the struggle, but has found no acceptance with
the vanquished. To this day no Southerner uses it except by way of
quotation, as in Rebellion Record, and even in the North it was only by
degrees that "reb" replaced "secesh." "Secession" was not a word with
which to charm the "old-line Whigs" of the South. They would fight the
battles of the secessionists, but they would not bear their name. "The
war of secession" is still used a good deal in foreign books, but it has
no popular hold. "The war," without any further qualification, served
the turn of Thucydides and Aristophanes for the Peloponnesian war. It
will serve ours, let it be hoped, for some time to come.

VI

A Confederate commentary on Thucydides, on the scale of the remarks just
made on the name of the war, would outrun the lines of this study. Let
us pass from Thucydides to the other contemporary chronicler who turns
out some sides of the "Doric war" about which Thucydides is silent. The
antique Clio gathers up