Quote Originally Posted by Alexanderofmacedon
Of course speeches these days are not always written by the speaker.
And this differs from what occurred in the past how?

I recall reading a bit about battle speeches in Graves' roman novel (for the life of me I can't recall if it was I Clavdivs or Clavdivs the God) wherein Claudius is trying to decide if generals really gave inspired poetic speeches or speeches more akin to a locker-room half-time speech. Graves pointed out that historians wrote down those inspiring speeches well after the fact, and any "blue language" etc. was completely left out. In fact, he suggests, the poets may have felt the need to add a suitably stirring speech regardless of what -- if anything -- was said.

Obviously, as we approach the modern world and have the more contemporaneous diaries of the 17th and 18th centuries and modern recordings, we have a much greater sense of how recent speeches tend to go.

All-in-all, I enjoy Thucydides, but I take his quoted speeches with a few grains of salt.