Thucydides

I really liked Thucydides as a historian. He seems to make a good effort to be accurate and he's open about where he takes artistic liberty ("reconstructing" the speeches of various leaders). It seems like quite a sophisticated approach for someone writing 2000+ years ago. "Sophisticated" seems to be a word I keep using when it comes to ancient Greek writings, so maybe that says more about my preconceptions than it does about the works themselves.

The most difficult aspect of this book is the show more sheer complexity of the war. It's not just a simple matter of Athens vs Sparta, it's Athens vs Sparta vs Corinth vs Macedonia vs Persia vs Siracuse vs Lesbos etc etc etc. It's tough to keep everything straight, and it reminds me of an article I saw on the Syrian war once, stating that there were at least 300 factions. It really exemplifies how much chaos war can bring.

One thing I can appreciate, whether it's a cultural difference or a device of Thucydides, is the "honesty" of the conquering factions. It's refreshing to hear "hey, we're hear to conquer you because we have more ships than you, and it's natural for the powerful to subjugate the weak. You'd do the same in our shoes", instead of our modern conceit of framing aggression as a service to some greater ideal.

In fact, one of the larger themes of the work seems to be the conflict between righteousness and practicality. Is it better to fight nobly and lose, or act with discretion and perhaps survive? I was really invested in the fate of the Plataeans, who defended their city in so many brave and ingenious ways, and the injustice of their eventual fate was heartbreaking.

Another great theme is the capriciousness of fortune, and the danger of mistaking good fortune for superiority. Many times the narrative emphasizes that victory should never be taken for granted, and sudden reversals can occur at any time.

Thucydides also has an art for human feeling. In his description of the retreat of the defeated Athenians from Syracuse, he paints a poignant picture of misery - of those who have to leave their wounded companions behind, of the suffering of the fleeing soldiers.

Sadly, the book ends abruptly. Mid-sentence even. How I wish the rest had been preserved! show less

Thucydides is known as the great-grandaddy of history, sharing that title with Herodotus but generally accepted as being the more objective of the two. And while Herodotus keeps us entertained with beguiling if largely unbelievable tales of lands he probably never saw, Thucydides renders a cold, calculated, intensely detailed snapshot of events in which he was a minor player. Thus 'The History of the Peloponnesian Wars' is at once, very believable and very dry. If you are interested in a show more good story about the fall of the Athenian empire you've come to the wrong place (albeit perhaps the only good source). If you are an archaeologist or historian trying to determine the number of Carmarinaean hoplites at the siege of Syracuse, Thucydides is a treasure trove.

Thucydides, covers the approximately thirty years of the Pelopponesian wars. The wars, which effectively pitted the Athenian empire, formed of Athens and its mostly Ionian 'involuntary' allies, against the Spartan's and their more voluntary, if less democratically governed allies. The war grinds on for years without major event until the Athenians try to conquer Syracuse and Sicily. They ultimately fail, and, when the Persian empire intervenes on the side of Sparta, are stripped of their empire and ultimately defeated. The resulting book is full of details - not of character or daily life but of places and people. It's not an easy read.

That's not to say there aren't a few moving tales amongst the vast welter of place names, personal names, ship lists and roll calls. The story of the Mytilenian debate, in which the conquered Mytilene population is nearly massacred by a decree rescinded at the last second is definitely worth a read. The sad fate of the Athenian army after the long siege of Syracuse is also gripping, as is the escape from the siege of Plataea of two hundred men.

If you are an academic, this book is full of a lot of useful material on the Athenian empire, Sicily, Persia and Greece in the 4th century B.C. I imagine you could spend a lifetime cross-correlating names and places with other early documents and inscriptions. This edition is not particularly well stocked with scholarly resources, coming as it does with a brief introduction, four short appendices, few footnotes, and only a brief bibliography and index. You might be better off with the four volumes of the Loeb Classical Library's Thucydides. If you are taking a course in classical Greek history this might suffice.

Since I am not an academic but read history for interest's sake only, I found the book slow, pedantic and over-absorbed with details. If you are very interested in this time period but not willing to slog through a lot of factual detail I would suggest you read a modern book on Greek history. If, like me, you feel the need to read the source material, I would suggest you get a really good atlas of classical history, familiarize yourself with the history of the time period fully and only then attempt Thucydides. show less

Cobbled together from musty scraps of parchment, scribbled marginalia and fragments of wax tablets, Thucydides’ account of a war among ancient Greek city-states is historical fiction of profound political insight and psychological acumen. In order to tell his story, he invents characters and scenes for which we have no corroborating sources, and fabricates dialogue and ceremonial oration that encapsulate his own biased perceptions. He provides no bibliography or notes to support his show more “history,” but Thucydides gets credit for formulating a conceptual scheme that has been deployed by the chroniclers of war ever since. show less

I'm rating this at 5***** primarily for the quality of this "Landmark" edition edited by Robert B. Strassler. Personally, I find most of Thucydides a very tedious read because of the "chronicle" style in which he writes, which follows the history of the Peloponnesian War in strict chronological order and fails to give a good presentation of the overall strategy of individual land and naval campaigns. (Book VI, the history of the Sicilian Campaign, is an exception, probably because not much show more else occurred in other combat theaters during that period so that the Sicilian events proceed largely uninterruptedly.) My own particular interest was the "treason of Alcibiades," considering his involvement with Socrates and his presence in Plato's dialogues.

What makes it possible to get through this lengthy history is the high quality of annotations and the numerous maps included in this edition (which seems typical of "Landmark" editions). If you read straight through, you'll find much of the footnoting repetitive, as are the numerous maps, but the editor's goal is to protect the reader from the need to flip back and forth to a "maps section" by providing a new map, however repetitive, within a couple of pages of the referring text. Also, the repetitiveness of the annotations (I don't know how many times the terms "hoplite" and "pelast" are footnote-defined) makes the text readable for someone who is not going through sequentially from start to finish, which makes this a useful edition for classroom use. The excellent maps are particularly helpful in a text that concentrates so much on military history, both land and naval warfare.

This "Landmark" edition also includes eleven appendices on such subjects as Athenian and Spartan society, military and naval warfare, religion, coinage, and other topics.

I'm not at all urging the reading of Thucydides, but if you're going to read him, use this "Landmark" edition (ISBN 978-0684827902). show less