:''For the homonymous Athenian politician, see
Thucydides (politician).''
'Thucydides' (c.
460 BC – c.
395 BC),
Greek Θουκυδίδης, ''ThoukudÃdÄ“s'') was an ancient
Greek historian, and the author of the ''
History of the Peloponnesian War,'' which recounts the
5th century BC war between
Sparta and
Athens to the year
411 BC. Thucydides is considered by many to be a scientific historian because of his efforts in his ''History'' to describe the human world in terms of cause and effect, his strict standards of gathering evidence, and his neglect of the gods in explaining the events of the past. Other scholars lay greater emphasis on the ''History''’s elaborate literary artistry and the powerful rhetoric of its speeches and insist that its author exploited non-"scientific" literary genres no less than newer, rationalistic modes of explanation.
Life
Considering his stature as a historian, we know comparatively little about Thucydides' life. The most reliable information comes from his own ''
History of the Peloponnesian War'', and consists of his nationality, paternity, and native locality. Thucydides also tells us that he fought in the war, contracted the plague, and was exiled by the
democracy.
Evidence from the Classical Period
Thucydides identifies himself as an Athenian, tells us that his father's name was
Olorus and that he was from the Athenian
deme of
Halimous. Thucydides tells us that he contracted the
plague that ravaged Athens, a plague which also killed
Pericles and many other Athenians. He records that he owned gold mines at
Scapte Hyle, a district of Thrace on the
Thracian coast opposite the island of
Thasos.
Because of his influence in the Thracian region, Thucydides tells us, he was sent as a
strategos (general) to
Thasos in
424 BC. During the winter of 424-423 BC, the Spartan general
Brasidas attacked
Amphipolis, a half-day's sail west from Thasos on the Thracian coast. Eucles, the Athenian commander at Amphipolis, sent to Thucydides for help. Brasidas, aware of Thucydides' presence on Thasos and his influence with the people of Amphipolis and afraid of help arriving by sea, acted quickly to offer moderate terms to the Amphipolitans for their surrender, which they accepted. Thus when Thucydides arrived, Amphipolis was already under Spartan control (see
Battle of Amphipolis). Amphipolis was of considerable strategic importance, and news of its fall caused great consternation in Athens. The fall of Amphipopolis was blamed on Thucydides, though he claimed it wasn't his fault, that he had simply been unable to reach it in time. Because of his failure to save Amphipolis, Thucydides was sent into exile, as he wrote:
Using his status as an exile from Athens to travel freely among the Peloponnesian allies, he was able to view the war from the perspective of both sides. During this time, he conducted important research for his history.
This is all that Thucydides himself tells us about his own life. We are able to infer a few other facts from reliable contemporary sources.
Herodotus tells us that Thucydides' father's name,
Olorus, was connected with
Thrace and Thracian royalty. Thucydides was probably connected through family to the Athenian statesman and general
Miltiades, and his son
Cimon, leaders of the old
aristocracy supplanted by the Radical
Democrats.
Cimon's grandfather's name was
Olorus, making the connection exceeding likely. Another
Thucydides lived before the historian and was also linked with Thrace, making a family connection between them very likely as well. Finally,
Herodotus confirms the connection of Thucydides' family with the mines at
Scapte Hyle.
Later Sources
The remaining evidence for Thucydides' life comes from less-reliable later ancient sources. According to
Pausanias, someone named Oenobius was able to get a law passed allowing Thucydides to return to Athens, presumably sometime shortly after Athens' surrender and the end of the war in
404 BC. Pausanias goes on to say that Thucydides was murdered on his way back to Athens. Many doubt this account, seeing evidence to suggest he lived as late as
397 BC.
Plutarch claims that his remains were returned to Athens and placed in
Cimon's family vault.
The abrupt end of Thucydides' narrative, which breaks off in the middle of the year
411 BC, has traditionally been interpreted as indicating that he died while writing the book, though other explanations have been put forward.
Education
Although there is no certain evidence to prove it, the rhetorical character of his narrative suggests that Thucydides was at least familiar with the teachings of the
Sophists. These men were traveling lecturers, who frequented
Athens and other Greek cities.
It has also been asserted that Thucydides' strict focus on cause and effect, his fastidious devotion to observable phenomena to the exclusion of other factors and his austere prose style were influenced by the methods and thinking of early medical writers such as
Hippocrates of
Kos. Some have gone so far as to assert that Thucydides had some medical training.
Both of these theories are inferences from the perceived character of Thucydides' History. While neither can be categorically rejected, there is no firm evidence for either.
Character
Inferences about Thucydides' character can only be drawn (with due caution) from his book. Occasionally throughout ''
The History of the Peloponnesian War'' his sardonic sense of humor is evident, such as when, during the
Athenian plague, he remarks that some old Athenians seemed to remember a rhyme that said with the
Dorian War would come a "great death." Some claimed the rhyme was actually about a "great dearth" (''limos''), and was only remembered as "death" (''loimos'') due to the current plague. Thucydides then remarks that, should another Dorian War come, this time attended with a great dearth, the rhyme will be remembered as "dearth," and any mention of "death" forgotten.
Thucydides admired
Pericles, approving of his power over the people, and shows a palpable distaste for the more pandering demagogues who followed him. Thucydides did not approve of the democratic mob or the radical democracy Pericles ushered in but thought that it was acceptable when in the hands of a good leader. Generally, Thucydides exhibited a lack of bias in his presentation of events, refusing, for example, to minimize the negative effect of his own failure at
Amphipolis. Occasionally, however, strong passions break through in his writing, such as in his scathing appraisals of the demagogues
Cleon and
Hyperbolus.
Cleon has sometimes been connected with Thucydides' exile, which would suggest some bias in his presentation of him: it should, however, be noted that this connection is first made in a (not entirely reliable) biography written centuries after Thucydides' death, and may equally be no more than a backwards inference from Thucydides' evident disapproval of Cleon.
Also, Thucydides was clearly moved by the suffering inherent in war, and concerned about the excesses to which human nature is apt to resort in such circumstances. This is evident in his analysis of the atrocities committed during civil conflict on
Corcyra, which includes the memorable phrase "War is a violent teacher".
The History of the Peloponnesian War
Thucydides wrote only one book; its modern title is the ''
History of the Peloponnesian War''. All his legacy to history and historiography is contained in this one dense history of the
twenty-seven year war between
Athens and its allies and
Sparta and its allies. The history breaks off near the end of the 21st year.
Thucydides is generally regarded as one of the first true historians. Like his predecessor
Herodotus (often called "the father of history"), Thucydides placed a high-value on autopsy, or eye-witness testimony to events, and writes about many episodes in which he himself probably took part. He also assiduously consulted written documents and interviewed participants in the events that he records. Unlike Herodotus, he did not recognize divine interventions in human affairs. Certainly he held unconscious biases — for example, to modern eyes he seems to underestimate the importance of Persian intervention — but Thucydides was the first historian who attempted something like modern historical objectivity.
One major difference between Thucydides' history and modern historical writing is that Thucydides' history includes lengthy speeches which, as he himself states, were as best as could be remembered of what was said (or, perhaps, what he thought ought to have been said). These speeches are composed in a literary manner. For example,
Pericles' funeral oration, which includes an impassioned moral defence of democracy, heaps honour on the dead:
Although attributed to Pericles, this passage appears to have been written by Thucydides for deliberate contrast with the account of the plague in
Athens which immediately follows it:
Classical scholar
Jacqueline de Romilly first pointed out, just after the second world war, that one of Thucydides' central themes was the ethic of Athenian imperialism. Her analysis put his History in the context of Greek thought on the topic of international politics. Since her fundamental study, many scholars have studied the theme of power politics, i.e.
realpolitik, in Thucydides' history.
On the other hand, some authors, including
Richard Ned Lebow, reject the common perception of Thucydides as a historian of naked
real-politik. They argue that actors on the world stage who had read his work would all have been put on notice that someone would be scrutinizing their actions with a reporter's dispassion, rather than the mythmaker's and poet's compassion and thus consciously or unconsciously participating in the writing of it. Thucydides'
Melian dialogue is a lesson to reporters and to those who believe one's leaders are always acting with perfect integrity on the world stage. It can also be interpreted as evidence of the moral decay of Athens from the shining city on the hill Pericles described in the
Funeral Oration to a power-mad tyrant over other cities.
Thucydides does not take the time to discuss the arts, literature or society in which the book is set and in which Thucydides himself grew up. Thucydides was writing about an event and not a period and as such took lengths not to discuss anything which he considered unrelated.
Leo Strauss, in his classic study ''The City and Man'' (see esp. pp. 230-31) argued that Thucydides had a deeply ambivalent understanding of Athenian democracy: on the one hand, "his wisdom was made possible" by the Periclean democracy, on account of its liberation of individual daring and enterprise and questioning; but this same liberation spurred the immoderation of limitless political ambition and thus imperialism, and eventually civic strife. This is the essence of the tragedy of Athens or of democracy -- this is the tragic wisdom that Thucydides conveys, which he learned in a sense from Athenian democracy. More conventional scholars view him as recognizing and teaching the lesson that democracies do need leadership -- and that leadership can be dangerous to democracy.
Thucydides in Popular Culture
In 1991, the BBC broadcast a new version of John Barton's 'The War that Never Ends', which had first been performed on stage in the 1960s. This adapts Thucydides' text, together with short sections from Plato's dialogues. More information about it can be found on the Internet Movie Data Base at http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103235/.
Quotes
★ "But, the bravest are surely those who have the clearest vision of what is before them, glory and danger alike, and yet notwithstanding, go out to meet it."
★ "The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must."
★ "It is a general rule of human nature that people despise those who treat them well, and look up to those who make no concessions."
★ "War takes away the easy supply of daily wants, and so proves a rough master, that brings most men's characters to a level with their fortunes."
★ "The cause of all these evils was the lust for power arising from greed and ambition; and from these passions proceeded the violence of parties once engaged in contention."
See also
★
Pericles' Funeral Oration
★
Melian dialogue
★
History of the Peloponnesian War
★
Speech of Hermocrates at Gela
Notes
References and further reading
Primary sources
★
Herodotus,
''Histories'',
A. D. Godley (translator), Cambridge: Harvard University Press (1920). ISBN 0-674-99133-8
.
★
Pausanias, ''Description of Greece'', Books I-II, (
Loeb Classical Library) translated by W. H. S. Jones; Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. (1918). ISBN 0-674-99104-4.
.
★
Plutarch,
''Lives'', Bernadotte Perrin (translator), Cambridge, MA. Harvard University Press. London. William Heinemann Ltd. (1914). ISBN 0-674-99053-6
.
★ Thucydides, ''The Peloponnesian War''. London, J. M. Dent; New York, E. P. Dutton (1910).
.
Secondary sources
★ Connor, W. Robert, ''Thucydides''. Princeton: Princeton University Press (1984). ISBN 0-691-03569-5.
★ Dewald, Carolyn. ''Thucydides' War Narrative: A Structural Study''. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2006 (hardcover, ISBN 0520241274).
★ Forde, Steven, ''The ambition to rule : Alcibiades and the politics of imperialism in Thucydides''. Ithaca : Cornell University Press (1989). ISBN 0-8014-2138-1.
★ Hanson, Victor Davis, ''A War Like No Other: How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War''. New York: Random House (2005). ISBN 1-4000-6095-8.
★ Hornblower, Simon, ''A Commentary on Thucydides''. 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon (1991-1996). ISBN 0-19-815099-7 (vol. 1), ISBN 0-19-927625-0 (vol. 2).
★ Hornblower, Simon, ''Thucydides''. London: Duckworth (1987). ISBN 0-7156-2156-4.
★ Luce, T.J., ''The Greek Historians''. London: Routledge (1997). ISBN 0-415-10593-5.
★
Orwin, Clifford, ''The Humanity of Thucydides''. Princeton: Princeton University Press (1994).
★ Romilly, Jacqueline de, ''Thucydides and Athenian Imperialism''. Oxford: Basil Blackwell (1963). ISBN 0-88143-072-2.
★ Rood, Tim, ''Thucydides: Narrative and Explanation''. Oxford: Oxford University Press (1998). ISBN 0-19-927585-8.
★
Grasping the Democratic Peace, Russett, Bruce, , , Princeton University Press, 1993, ISBN 0-691-03346-3
★ Strassler, Robert B, ed. ''The Landmark Thucydides: A Comprehensive Guide to the Peloponnesian War''. New York: Free Press (1996). ISBN 0-684-82815-4.
★
Strauss, Leo, ''The City and Man'' Chicago: Rand McNally, 1964.
External links
★
★
Short Bibliography on Thucydides Lowell Edmunds,
Rutgers University
★
Perseus Project Thucydides, Table of Contents
★
Thomas Hobbes' Translation of Thucydides
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