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The Landmark Thucydides: A Comprehensive Guide to the Peloponnesian War
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Thucydides called his account of two decades of war between Athens and Sparta "possession for all time, " and indeed it is the first and still most famous work in the Western historical tradition. Considered essential reading for generals, statesmen, and liberally educated citizens for more than 2,000 years, The Peloponnesian War is a mine of military, moral, political, and philosophical wisdom.
However, this classic book has long presented obstacles to the uninitiated reader. Written centuries before the rise of modern historiography, Thucydides' narrative is not continuous or linear. His authoritative chronicle of what he considered the greatest war of all time is rigorous and meticulous, yet omits the many aids to comprehension modern readers take for granted—such as brief biographies of the story's main characters, maps and other visual enhancements, and background on the military, cultural, and political traditions of ancient Greece.
Robert Strassler's new edition amends these omissions, and not only provides a new coherence to the narrative overall but effectively reconstructs the lost cultural context that Thucydides shared with his original audience. Based on the venerable Richard Crawley translation, updated and revised for modern readers, The Landmark Thucydides includes a vast array of superbly designed and presented maps, brief informative appendices by outstanding classical scholars on subjects of special relevance to the text, explanatory marginal notes on each page, an index of unprecedented subtlety and depth, and numerous other useful features. Readers will find that with this edition they can dip into the text at any point and be immediately oriented with regard to the geography, season, date, and stage of the conflict.
In any list of the Great Books of Western Civilization, The Peloponnesian War stands near the top. This handsome, elegant, and authoritative new edition will ensure that its greatness is appreciated by future generations.
Thucydides called his account of two decades of war between Athens and Sparta "possession for all time, " and indeed it is the first and still most famous work in the Western historical tradition. Considered essential reading for generals, statesmen, and liberally educated citizens for more than 2,000 years, The Peloponnesian War is a mine of military, moral, political, and philosophical wisdom.
However, this classic book has long presented obstacles to the uninitiated reader. Written centuries before the rise of modern historiography, Thucydides' narrative is not continuous or linear. His authoritative chronicle of what he considered the greatest war of all time is rigorous and meticulous, yet omits the many aids to comprehension modern readers take for granted—such as brief biographies of the story's main characters, maps and other visual enhancements, and background on the military, cultural, and political traditions of ancient Greece.
Robert Strassler's new edition amends these omissions, and not only provides a new coherence to the narrative overall but effectively reconstructs the lost cultural context that Thucydides shared with his original audience. Based on the venerable Richard Crawley translation, updated and revised for modern readers, The Landmark Thucydides includes a vast array of superbly designed and presented maps, brief informative appendices by outstanding classical scholars on subjects of special relevance to the text, explanatory marginal notes on each page, an index of unprecedented subtlety and depth, and numerous other useful features. Readers will find that with this edition they can dip into the text at any point and be immediately oriented with regard to the geography, season, date, and stage of the conflict.
In any list of the Great Books of Western Civilization, The Peloponnesian War stands near the top. This handsome, elegant, and authoritative new edition will ensure that its greatness is appreciated by future generations.
713 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2008
About the author
Thucydides
1,184 books457 followersThucydides (c. 460 B.C. – c. 395 B.C.) (Greek Θουκυδίδης, Thoukydídēs) was a Greek historian and author of the History of the Peloponnesian War, which recounts the 5th century B.C. war between Sparta and Athens to the year 411 B.C. Thucydides has been dubbed the father of "scientific history" due to his strict standards of evidence-gathering and analysis in terms of cause and effect without reference to intervention by the gods, as outlined in his introduction to his work.
He has also been called the father of the school of political realism, which views the relations between nations as based on might rather than right. His classical text is still studied at advanced military colleges worldwide, and the Melian dialogue remains a seminal work of international relations theory.
More generally, Thucydides showed an interest in developing an understanding of human nature to explain behaviour in such crises as plague, genocide (as practised against the Melians), and civil war.
Excerpted from Wikipedia.
He has also been called the father of the school of political realism, which views the relations between nations as based on might rather than right. His classical text is still studied at advanced military colleges worldwide, and the Melian dialogue remains a seminal work of international relations theory.
More generally, Thucydides showed an interest in developing an understanding of human nature to explain behaviour in such crises as plague, genocide (as practised against the Melians), and civil war.
Excerpted from Wikipedia.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 272 reviews
August 15, 2020
"Oh God, Not the Peloponnesian War Again", lamented an article in Foreign Policy. To be honest, I understand where the author is coming from. Besides the fact that there is so much more of history to learn from and read about, Thucydides has been excerpted and misinterpreted almost to meaninglessness. Sentences, summaries, and single anecdotes from his book have been used as the basis for predictions on great power politics and the fate of China and the United States, like white noise over an actual discussion. I don't need to go over the fine detail about how the United States is different from Athens and China is different from Sparta.
Thucydides does not always help his own case. His prose style is dense and demands close attention; he recites distant place names and generals that can bewilder a casual reader. He is often excerpted, which helps to show the points of his narrative brilliance but also begets the risk of misinterpretation. A student who only reads to the sudden end of the text and then nothing else might overthink about how Sparta overtook Athens - but not know that Thebes would soon prove that Sparta was not invincible, or that Persia loomed over them both, or that Alexander the Great would soon fall upon them all like a lightning bolt or a tornado.
For all that Thucydides was talked about and debated made me realize how much I had forgotten, and so I decided to pick up this edition to reread him and recover some of what I had lost. This edition was better than I had hoped. The text is an older translation, but really there is no effort spared to guide the reader. This massive volume has the text, but a running banner at the top with the year, margins along the side summarizing and dating the events, references to other chapters in the text, eleven appendices on everything from dialects to naval warfare, dozens of maps, and a table in the back comparing events across different theatres of the war. It is an excellent teaching aid, and the rewards of this once inaccessible book are held out for the patient reader to grasp.
Thucydides' telling of the war is filled with battles, rituals, and so many literary speeches. He is a skeptic of Athenian democracy, almost in awe of certain figures like Pericles, and his is a brutish story of power politics, fear, and suspicion. Generals mak1e ruinous mistakes, political leaders talk their way in and out of trouble. There is talk of honor amid cold self-interest. There is stunning cruelty, and it becomes almost routine. It is a small, almost familiar setting - the loss of a few hundred or a thousand is a catastrophe, and the Peloponnesus itself is just smaller than New Jersey. Other people have summarized it better here, so I won't go into the details for the sake of discovering them for yourself. This is an excellent place to do it.
Thucydides does not always help his own case. His prose style is dense and demands close attention; he recites distant place names and generals that can bewilder a casual reader. He is often excerpted, which helps to show the points of his narrative brilliance but also begets the risk of misinterpretation. A student who only reads to the sudden end of the text and then nothing else might overthink about how Sparta overtook Athens - but not know that Thebes would soon prove that Sparta was not invincible, or that Persia loomed over them both, or that Alexander the Great would soon fall upon them all like a lightning bolt or a tornado.
For all that Thucydides was talked about and debated made me realize how much I had forgotten, and so I decided to pick up this edition to reread him and recover some of what I had lost. This edition was better than I had hoped. The text is an older translation, but really there is no effort spared to guide the reader. This massive volume has the text, but a running banner at the top with the year, margins along the side summarizing and dating the events, references to other chapters in the text, eleven appendices on everything from dialects to naval warfare, dozens of maps, and a table in the back comparing events across different theatres of the war. It is an excellent teaching aid, and the rewards of this once inaccessible book are held out for the patient reader to grasp.
Thucydides' telling of the war is filled with battles, rituals, and so many literary speeches. He is a skeptic of Athenian democracy, almost in awe of certain figures like Pericles, and his is a brutish story of power politics, fear, and suspicion. Generals mak1e ruinous mistakes, political leaders talk their way in and out of trouble. There is talk of honor amid cold self-interest. There is stunning cruelty, and it becomes almost routine. It is a small, almost familiar setting - the loss of a few hundred or a thousand is a catastrophe, and the Peloponnesus itself is just smaller than New Jersey. Other people have summarized it better here, so I won't go into the details for the sake of discovering them for yourself. This is an excellent place to do it.
Currently reading
January 11, 2009Favorite quote:
"The absence of romance in my history will, I fear, detract somewhat from its interest, but if it is judged worthy by those inquirers who desire an exact knowledge of the past as an aid to the understanding of the future, which in the course of human things must resemble if it does not reflect it, I shall be content.
In fine I have written my work not as an essay with which to win the applause of the moment but as a possession for all time." -Thucydides
"The absence of romance in my history will, I fear, detract somewhat from its interest, but if it is judged worthy by those inquirers who desire an exact knowledge of the past as an aid to the understanding of the future, which in the course of human things must resemble if it does not reflect it, I shall be content.
In fine I have written my work not as an essay with which to win the applause of the moment but as a possession for all time." -Thucydides
June 6, 2017
If you ever wanted to tackle Thucydides, this is the way to do it. It's beautifully laid out, with helpful maps and other material. The reading experience is profoundly moving, not really for the style but for the sheer weight of human folly on display. This should be required reading for politicians of all stripes.
January 30, 2023
The 27-year war fought between Sparta and Athens.
I was always on Athens’ side - they had poetry, philosophy, theater, sculpture and art; Sparta just had the arts of killing and enslaving. Athens had their slaves too, though nothing like Sparta had (more slaves than citizens).
Athens also yearned to create a state with more democracy and more personal autonomy and freedoms. Sparta just wanted the freedom to enslave more.
(That was the only reason they fought at Thermopylae. Forget all the Hollywood and pop cult propaganda like 300. They weren’t fighting for the freedom of Greece. They only fought because their slave state was in jeopardy.)
Athens more than held their own in this prolonged conflict. What defeated them in the end was not Spartan military prowess. It was disease.
An awesome volume from the ancient world, a world and its consequences that remains forever with us.
I was always on Athens’ side - they had poetry, philosophy, theater, sculpture and art; Sparta just had the arts of killing and enslaving. Athens had their slaves too, though nothing like Sparta had (more slaves than citizens).
Athens also yearned to create a state with more democracy and more personal autonomy and freedoms. Sparta just wanted the freedom to enslave more.
(That was the only reason they fought at Thermopylae. Forget all the Hollywood and pop cult propaganda like 300. They weren’t fighting for the freedom of Greece. They only fought because their slave state was in jeopardy.)
Athens more than held their own in this prolonged conflict. What defeated them in the end was not Spartan military prowess. It was disease.
An awesome volume from the ancient world, a world and its consequences that remains forever with us.
June 16, 2017
Probably 4.5 stars due to Thucydides dry narrative but an awesome read. Political stupidity has not changed.
January 19, 2008
I first read Thucydides in college, using Rex Warner's translation in the Penguin edition. As a frosh with little background in ancient history and political science, I didn't have the proper perspective to realize Th.'s critical place in western historiography and political thought. As a junior, I re-read Th., this time in a course on ancient historians. At that point, having had modest exposure to Hobbes, Machiavelli, Burke, Clausewitz and the like, I was better equipped to appreciate Th.'s method--particularly his analyses in the vein of what we'd call "realism" today. Last year I tackled Th. again, this time in Strassler's amazing Landmark edition, and I am grateful that it was available for my third go at probably the most difficult classical author I've run into.
I won't go into details on Th. himself--I'm not a historian and anything I say expounding on how great he was, etc. will of course come off as amateurish and pointless. I will go into how much I admire the product of Strassler's labor of love (he's an unaffiliated scholar) in producing the Landmark edition. First of all, the translation is refreshingly readable and doesn't have the relative stuffiness of an early 20th-century Oxbridge rendering (which, er, I actually rather enjoy every now and then :-)). Second, the marginal timelines, the extensive but not suffocating footnotes, and maps (all carefully placed next to the relevant narrative) make it unnecessary for the reader to flip pages and lose the flow of the story. Furthermore, its appendices are a treasure trove of ancillary information: there is background information on the Athenian polis and imperial administration and the corresponding systems on the Peloponnesian side; discussions of the more technical aspects of ancient warfare; and pages on other topics such as the currency, religion and ethnic groups of the Greeks, each written by a specialist.
In summary, I have nothing but good things to say about this edition--I only wish I'd been able to use it as an undergraduate. I also note that Strassler has just come out with a similar edition of Herodotus. Can't wait to check that one out...
I won't go into details on Th. himself--I'm not a historian and anything I say expounding on how great he was, etc. will of course come off as amateurish and pointless. I will go into how much I admire the product of Strassler's labor of love (he's an unaffiliated scholar) in producing the Landmark edition. First of all, the translation is refreshingly readable and doesn't have the relative stuffiness of an early 20th-century Oxbridge rendering (which, er, I actually rather enjoy every now and then :-)). Second, the marginal timelines, the extensive but not suffocating footnotes, and maps (all carefully placed next to the relevant narrative) make it unnecessary for the reader to flip pages and lose the flow of the story. Furthermore, its appendices are a treasure trove of ancillary information: there is background information on the Athenian polis and imperial administration and the corresponding systems on the Peloponnesian side; discussions of the more technical aspects of ancient warfare; and pages on other topics such as the currency, religion and ethnic groups of the Greeks, each written by a specialist.
In summary, I have nothing but good things to say about this edition--I only wish I'd been able to use it as an undergraduate. I also note that Strassler has just come out with a similar edition of Herodotus. Can't wait to check that one out...
June 30, 2012
If you are going to read Thucydides, the Landmark version is the best place to start. I read this after I became a fan of Strassler's The Landmark Herodotus: The Histories. For me, there is not much better than Thucydides' speeches. "The Funeral Oration of Pericles", "Diodotus to the Athenian Ecclesia", "Demosthenes to his troops at Pylos" & "Nicias before the last sea fight" are all some of the most interesting, moving and inspiring speeches and harangues EVER written.
Thucydides' HOPW (Landmark edition) is filled with enough maps, appendices, marginal notes and summaries that Strassler well-girds the modern student of the Peloponnesian war for the challenge that is Thucydides. Strassler (and his team) has updated and improved the Crawley translation (which is a gem). This book is a must for students of the classics, politics, history and war. Hell, even if you are just interested in a good story, Thucydides tells a good one. This is an amazing and beautiful piece of history.
Thucydides' HOPW (Landmark edition) is filled with enough maps, appendices, marginal notes and summaries that Strassler well-girds the modern student of the Peloponnesian war for the challenge that is Thucydides. Strassler (and his team) has updated and improved the Crawley translation (which is a gem). This book is a must for students of the classics, politics, history and war. Hell, even if you are just interested in a good story, Thucydides tells a good one. This is an amazing and beautiful piece of history.
February 25, 2017
But none of these allowed either wealth with its prospect of future enjoyment to unnerve his spirit, or poverty with its hope of a day of freedom and riches to tempt him to shrink from danger. No, holding that vengeance upon their enemies was more to be desired than any personal blessings, and reckoning this to be the most glorious of hazards, they joyfully determined to accept the risk, to make sure of their vengeance and to let their wishes wait; and while committing to hope the uncertainty of final success, in the business before them they thought fit to act boldly and trust in themselves. Thus choosing to die resisting, rather than to live submitting, they fled only from dishonor, but met danger face to face, and after one brief moment, while at the summit of their fortune, left behind them not their fear, but their glory.
From The funeral oration of Pericles, once read by generation upon generation of European and American schoolboys who went on to become leader of their nations. No longer. As one watches the two great nations of Athens and Sparta destroy themselves fighting each other, one wishes everyone still studied Thucydides before they voted on members of Congress, or voted as Congressmen about whether to engage in squabbles around the world. This is not to say the United States should retreat to 19th century isolationism, but that it should ask hard questions before deciding whether to act, and think ahead about how to follow up victories and defeats in foreign countries.
Thucydides covers so vast a theater of war, with so many players, over twenty-six years (plus prologue) that it’s impossible to summarize it. Suffice it to say that the train-wreck spectacle is riveting, and his prose magisterial. I really wish I had read this decades ago. It makes one consider subsequent history in a whole new light. The speeches are stupendous for both eloquence and rhetoric, as you watch various populations be manipulated or ignore wise advice.
Also, I need to note that I read the Landmark Thucydides edited by Robert B. Strassler. Accept no substitutes. The notes and maps are fabulous. Strassler understands that a reader is most likely going to tackle this over several weeks, and won’t retain all the details from day to day. So he inserts very repetitive maps on almost every page so that the information you need is right in front of your face. You don’t have to flip wildly back twenty or thirty pages trying to figure out where Miletus or Abydos is. The side margins are full of helpful paragraph numbering and dates, along with a summary of every paragraph’s content/action. A running banner across the top of each page gives date, location and topic. Notes at the bottom of each page link text names to map locations and remind the reader with references to past events. Several appendices in the back describe ground and naval military procedures, governments, religious beliefs, monetary values, dates, etc.
Not a light undertaking, but well well worth the effort.
September 23, 2021
Anyone who believes that democracy is a good idea has not read Thucydides' Peloponnesian War. Thucydides blamed the outbreak of the war and the unnecessary prolongation to Athens' democratic system. Unlike the neighbouring states in the Peloponnesian peninsula which were oligarchies of owners of large agriculture estates the affairs of Athens were controlled by merchants who dominated the elections.
As Athens acquired more client states in the region to facilitate its commercial activities, the states run by agricultural oligarchies became more and more nervous. Athens democratic system selected leaders who talked tough on foreign policy and did not make concessions to unhappy neighbouring states. The agricultural oligarchs who were not required to make public statements were always willing to come to negotiated settlements. One has to think of George Bush loudly proclaiming that American would not cut and run in Iraq, despite the fact that it had no chance of installing a friendly regime in the territory that it had nominally conquered. Since coming to power, Obama has been very reluctant to formally concede defeat.
If Thucydides proposes a model that explains America's traditional inability to sign treaties for wars that it has either won or lost, he also he portrays the behaviour of armies in a way that conforms to the stories presented to us by Amnesty International and Doctors without Borders. Armies that win battles always commit atrocities in the opinion of Thucydides and then try to cover them up.
This great work has not aged one day in the 2500 years since it was written. Every generation of historians acknowledges its greatness.
As Athens acquired more client states in the region to facilitate its commercial activities, the states run by agricultural oligarchies became more and more nervous. Athens democratic system selected leaders who talked tough on foreign policy and did not make concessions to unhappy neighbouring states. The agricultural oligarchs who were not required to make public statements were always willing to come to negotiated settlements. One has to think of George Bush loudly proclaiming that American would not cut and run in Iraq, despite the fact that it had no chance of installing a friendly regime in the territory that it had nominally conquered. Since coming to power, Obama has been very reluctant to formally concede defeat.
If Thucydides proposes a model that explains America's traditional inability to sign treaties for wars that it has either won or lost, he also he portrays the behaviour of armies in a way that conforms to the stories presented to us by Amnesty International and Doctors without Borders. Armies that win battles always commit atrocities in the opinion of Thucydides and then try to cover them up.
This great work has not aged one day in the 2500 years since it was written. Every generation of historians acknowledges its greatness.
Shelved as 'partial'
October 6, 2021i think this should be prescribed to anyone struggling with insomnia. worst case scenario if the text doesn't put you to sleep you can bludgeon yourself with the book as it's the size of a cinderblock
August 12, 2012
Fine. I nerded out on this one too. I really liked it. Might I suggest, however, that it is exceedingly beneficial (it was to me, at least) to take a look at Donald Kagan's lectures on the same subject. You can view them or download them at http://oyc.yale.edu/classics/clcv-205.... Lectures 18-21.
Anyhow, while the detail with which Thucydides recounts some of the battles can be tedious at times(though perhaps not to a military historian), the subject matter dealt with is timeless. Pericles's funeral oration is outstanding - it could have been given by an American General during the Civil War (in fact, our instructor pointed out the parallels between it and the Gettysburg Address which, though I hadn't made the direct connection, I realized I had envisioned as I read it). Diodotus's speech about justice versus interests paints a vivid picture of the difference between justice and interests and which ought to be pursued for the "good of the nation."
Anyhow, while the detail with which Thucydides recounts some of the battles can be tedious at times(though perhaps not to a military historian), the subject matter dealt with is timeless. Pericles's funeral oration is outstanding - it could have been given by an American General during the Civil War (in fact, our instructor pointed out the parallels between it and the Gettysburg Address which, though I hadn't made the direct connection, I realized I had envisioned as I read it). Diodotus's speech about justice versus interests paints a vivid picture of the difference between justice and interests and which ought to be pursued for the "good of the nation."
March 9, 2018
(Translator: Richard Crawley. Editor: Robert B. Strassler)
Want to read
June 19, 2013AT LAST, it is MINE.
May 29, 2018
It's hard to review such a monumental work but I'll say a few words.
Thucydides is truly worthy of being called one of the greatest historians. His work is complex in narrative and profound in his insights into human and political realities. His speeches and dialogues are fantastic with the Syracusan, Mytilene, and Melisan dialogues and speeches being among my favourite.
While I loved the entire book the most spectacular for me are books 6 and 7. Thucydides treatment of the Sicilian expedition is by far the most spectacular portions of his work. These books took on a more 'emotional' feeling than the more objective telling of the other portions of this work. The triumphs and complete failures of the Syracusans and Athenians were profound and truly made me feel for the Athenians. Feeling for figures in classical history is something that is difficult for me to do, so in my opinion it speaks the the prowess of Thucydides to engage the reader.
This work is by far the most complex history I've read to date (and I've studied Tacitus' works) and I feel like I need to reread it to get a better understanding of the ways in which Thucydides jumps between events in space and time in his narrative. The same can be said about his speeches and the brief glimpses of the author that jump out throughout the narrative.
Finally, this entry into the landmark series was slightly disappointing. The footnotes were almost entirely devoted to repeating the map locations of the same cities and regions instead of focusing on more insightful ideas and points in the text. The few footnotes that do elucidate the text are very well done. Finally, the essays at the end of the book are well written and help give insight into the politics, culture and warfare of the period
Thucydides is truly worthy of being called one of the greatest historians. His work is complex in narrative and profound in his insights into human and political realities. His speeches and dialogues are fantastic with the Syracusan, Mytilene, and Melisan dialogues and speeches being among my favourite.
While I loved the entire book the most spectacular for me are books 6 and 7. Thucydides treatment of the Sicilian expedition is by far the most spectacular portions of his work. These books took on a more 'emotional' feeling than the more objective telling of the other portions of this work. The triumphs and complete failures of the Syracusans and Athenians were profound and truly made me feel for the Athenians. Feeling for figures in classical history is something that is difficult for me to do, so in my opinion it speaks the the prowess of Thucydides to engage the reader.
This work is by far the most complex history I've read to date (and I've studied Tacitus' works) and I feel like I need to reread it to get a better understanding of the ways in which Thucydides jumps between events in space and time in his narrative. The same can be said about his speeches and the brief glimpses of the author that jump out throughout the narrative.
Finally, this entry into the landmark series was slightly disappointing. The footnotes were almost entirely devoted to repeating the map locations of the same cities and regions instead of focusing on more insightful ideas and points in the text. The few footnotes that do elucidate the text are very well done. Finally, the essays at the end of the book are well written and help give insight into the politics, culture and warfare of the period
July 19, 2014
Finally finished the whole thing. It's quite a piece, and I highly recommend the Landmark edition which comes with maps and tables that greatly aid in the enormous task of parsing all of these old places and names into a coherent military campaign. While I do admire Thucydides direct, strictly empirical style, there's so much less of the kooky local flavor here which made Herodotus so rich, as a result it can be slow and ponderous at times. That being said, the speeches and dialogues Thucydides imagines between historical figures are beautiful examples of classical rhetoric, Pericles' funeral oration being the exemplar. You can see how so much of the rhythm and style of political speakers even today traces back to ideas first expressed from this era. Heck, if you go through the funeral oration and replace the word Athens with America, you actually get a fairly accurate summation of our national ideals and foreign policy ambitions from the last 60 years. I'm normally quite dubious about drawing parallels between the ancient past and the present, especially after reading Vico, but I've go to say, some parts of this book made me almost queasy with how they mirror events within the past few decades in terms of our national priorities and ideas about our place in the world. If you want to see how politics and power can utterly debase a nation from a safe distance, this is your rag.
August 10, 2022
This marvelous edition is a paramount! It was so wonderful experience to taste it. Its design and structure are remarkable well done as a whole. On the other hand, the excellent appendices are so helpful as a background of this classic of Thucydides's work. All in all, I've found balance and perspective as well as a lot of critical information that help us to grasp the grandeur of Thucydides achievement that lasts till our own days. How beneficial it seems to me this edition is to the regular student of history, and to any reader. Mt accolades to the editors for the overall result. In a way, I did enjoy a lot reading it and pondering its results, thus I do give my two thumps up for it!
En horabuena!
En horabuena!
December 2, 2009
Not an easy read, but an interesting one.
September 15, 2021
Alcibiades be straight bussin no cap
November 26, 2017
I struggled with this at first because there’s a lot of information to keep track of, and there are some very dry parts, but it won me over eventually. I deliberately didn’t take a lot of notes on the dry, tactical stuff, but there's much more than that here. I probably remember those parts as less prominent than they actually are; they don't stick in my mind because the overall effect is so devastating. For the most part, I found it absolutely captivating. I'd call it one of the most relentlessly bleak books in the western canon.
Thucydides’s style is challenging; there are lots of complex sentences, and it's a little harder to follow than other ancient authors I’ve read. But after the first hundred pages or so I started to get used to it. The edition I read uses the 19th-century translation by Richard Crawley, with some revisions to make it easier to read. The Appendices were extremely helpful - so much that I photocopied parts of them before returning the book to the library.
The History of the Peloponnesian War recounts the 5th century BC war between Sparta and Athens to the year 411 BC (the war itself lasted 431 - 405 BC). The introduction in The Landmark Thucydides says the narrative was probably written and revised intermittently from 431 to the 390s. It is one of the earliest scholarly works of history, and it has had a great deal of influence on international relations theory.
Thucydides, an Athenian who served in the war, states that he began to write a history of the two decades of war between the Peloponnesians and the Athenians as soon as it broke out, believing that "it would be a great war, and more worthy of relation than any that preceded it… Indeed this was the greatest movement yet known in history, not only of the Hellenes, but of a large part of the barbarian world--I had almost said of mankind. For though the events of remote antiquity, and even those that more immediately preceded the war, could not from lapse of time be clearly ascertained, yet the evidences which an inquiry carried as far back as was practicable leads me to trust, all point to the conclusion."
His claim that he began writing during the events themselves ("I lived through the whole of it, being of an age to comprehend events, and giving my attention to them in order to know the exact truth about them") set him apart from earlier historians.
He explains his purpose in writing:
"The absence of romance in my history will, I fear, detract somewhat from its interest; but if it be judged useful by those inquirers who desire an exact knowledge of the past as an aid to the interpretation of the future, which in the course of human things must resemble if it does not reflect it, I shall be content. In fine, I have written my work, not as an essay which is to win the applause of the moment, but as a possession for all time."
The speeches that he included are mostly reconstructions, but he says that tried to give "the general sense of what they really said." This approach preserved his mostly oral sources from oblivion; otherwise they probably would not be known at all. Thucydides says that the evidence for his narrative "rests partly on what I saw for myself, partly on what others saw for me, the accuracy of the report being always tried by the most severe and detailed tests possible." He adds that he has attempted to reconcile inconsistent accounts of the same events from different witnesses, "sometimes from imperfect memory, sometimes from undue partiality for one side or the other."
Thucydides Herodotus described two goals of his history: to record events so that the heroic deeds of the Persian Wars will be remembered, and to explain the causes of the conflict. He didn’t an objective account in the sense modern historians think of it - he’s often not very careful about the reliability of his sources. Herodotus says he has two aims in his history: to record events so that the heroic deeds of the Persian Wars will be remembered, and to explain the causes of the conflict. He isn’t writing an objective account in the sense modern historians think of it - he’s often not very careful about the reliability of his sources.
Thucydides presents his narrative as simply a factual account. Unlike Herodotus, he rarely goes off on tangents that have little connection to the war - there is no ethnography, and almost no personal stories about the individuals in his history. His account is almost entirely naturalistic and he is much more careful about chronology. (In fact, he rejected the dating methods of earlier writers, saying that the passage of time “must be calculated by the seasons rather than by trusting to the enumeration of the names of the several magistrates or offices of honor that are used to mark past events. Accuracy is impossible where an event may have occurred in the beginning, or middle, or at any period in their tenure of office…”) Herodotus includes some pretty fantastical stories (sea monsters, cyclops…) and takes many of them at face value. To be fair, though, it’s common for Herodotus to include stories that he is skeptical of but that he believes are worth recording anyway.
There’s a broad spectrum of human behavior in the stories Herodotus tells, and certainly there are some horrifying moments, but ultimately Herodotus is a moralist and shows history as having a moral direction. The shape of the overall narrative in his history shows how "the god with his lightning smites always the bigger animals, and will not suffer them to wax insolent… likewise his bolts fall ever on the highest houses and the tallest trees." Solon’s observation about the temporary nature of wealth and power (in Book I, in one of the obviously non-historical stories, the parable of Croesus & Solon) is vindicated by the outcome of events. There’s at least a plausible reading of Thucydides in which the same kind of moral forces are ultimately at work (I’ll come back to this), but it seems to me that the appalling suffering that occurs along the way has a much more central place in Thucydides.
Thucydides’s description of the causes of the war between Athens and Sparta distinguishes between immediate causes - the issues that led to the breakdown of negotiations - and what he views as the fundamental cause of the war.
Sparta invaded Athens in response to Athens’s refusal to meet its demands for the independence of the Greek city-states: to raise the siege of the Corinthian colony of Potidaea, restore independence to the island of Aegina, and revoke the Megarian decree (a set of economic sanctions levied upon Megara, excluding the Megarians from Athenian harbors and markets. Athens offered to submit these issues to arbitration by a third party, but Sparta refused. Thucydides goes on to say:
"The real cause, however, I consider to be the one which was formally most kept out of sight. The growth of the power of Athens, and the alarm which this inspired in Sparta, made war inevitable” (16). He then gives an account of the growth of Athenian power during the 50 years after the defeat of Xerxes in the second Persian invasion of Greece (479-431 BCE). Scholars call this period the Penteconteia (“period of fifty years”).
During this time the Athenians captured the city of Eion from the Persians, and forced the city-state of Carystus, which had previously been conquered by the Persians, to join the Delian League. Athens also suppressed a rebellion by the island of Naxos. Thucydides says that the rebellion of Naxos, and several other members of the Delian League that followed its example, was a reaction to Athens’s strict demands from members of the League. The Athenians, he says, went too far, and “made themselves offensive by applying the screw of necessity to men who were not used to and in fact not disposed for any continuous labor.” (This is a rare example of him openly offering his own opinions; he often goes out of his way to avoid explicitly saying what he thinks.) Thucydides says that while Athens extracted tribute from her allies, Sparta usually ensured that her allies were subservient to Spartan interests by establishing loyal oligarchies among them. (Sparta didn't have the administrative organization to maintain an an extensive empire.)
(In Book VII of The Histories, Herodotus says that he must give an opinion that he knows will be unpopular: that Greece’s independence was saved by the Athenians during the Persian Wars. Had the Athenians submitted to Xerxes, or fled their country, there would have been no attempt to resist the Persians by sea, and Xerxes’s army could have easily been ferried to every part of Greece, including Sparta. Herodotus was probably writing during the 420s-430s; he doesn’t say why his view will be unpopular but presumably it’s because many of the Greeks resent the actions of Athens after the Persian Wars.)
Thucydides has been called the father of the realist school in international relations, which views the political behavior of individuals and the subsequent outcomes of relations between states as driven by the emotions of fear and self-interest. His influence became increasingly important during the Cold War. David Welch ("Why IR Theorists Should Stop Reading Thucydides," Review of International Studies, 2003) describes how the reception of Thucydides has changed over time: "In recent years, identifying realist 'misreadings' of Thucydides has become something of a cottage industry. Some critics are broadly sympathetic to the realist take; others are openly hostile. They all agree, however, that realists commonly overlook the importance in Thucydides of such things as passion, morality, justice, legitimacy, piety, individual character, rhetoric, norms, institutions, and chance." Welch’s paper examines how these factors play out in the central events of the text, and concludes that "the most we can say is that Thucydides paints a picture of a lot of loose-cannon realist Athenians taking realpolitik much too far, temporarily disrupting a fairly well-functioning society of city-states, and at the end of the day reaping as they sowed."
A New Yorker article by Daniel Mendelssohn makes a similar argument, examining the tragic elements in Thucydides.
_______________________________________________________
Some of the specific moments that stuck with me:
- One of the most memorable scenes is the description of civil war in Corcyra (Book III). In 427 BCE, civil war broke out between the democrats, who wanted remain in an alliance with Athens, and the aristocrats, who wished to form an alliance with Corinth. Thucydides says that it was the first of many civil conflicts provoked by the war between Athens and Sparta. This is just an amazing passage:
"Death thus raged in every shape; and, as usually happens at such times, there was no length to which violence did not go; sons were killed by their fathers, and suppliants dragged from the altar or slain upon it; while some were even walled up in the temple of Dionysus and died there.
So bloody was the march of the revolution, and the impression which it made was the greater as it was one of the first to occur. Later on, one may say, the whole Hellenic world was convulsed; struggles being everywhere made by the popular chiefs to bring in the Athenians, and by the oligarchs to introduce the Spartans. In peace there would have been neither the pretext nor the wish to make such an invitation; but in war, with an alliance always at the command of either faction for the hurt of their adversaries and their own corresponding advantage, opportunities for bringing in the foreigner were never wanting to the revolutionary parties.
The sufferings which revolution entailed upon the cities were many and terrible, such as have occurred and always will occur, as long as the nature of mankind remains the same; though in a severer or milder form, and varying in their symptoms, according to the variety of the particular cases. In peace and prosperity, states and individuals have better sentiments, because they do not find themselves suddenly confronted with imperious necessities; but 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.
Revolution thus ran its course from city to city, and the places which it arrived at last, from having heard what had been done before, carried to a still greater excess the refinement of their inventions, as manifested in the cunning of their enterprises and the atrocity of their reprisals. Words had to change their ordinary meaning and to take that which was now given them. Reckless audacity came to be considered the courage of a loyal ally; prudent hesitation, specious cowardice; moderation was held to be a cloak for unmanliness; ability to see all sides of a question, inaptness to act on any. Frantic violence became the attribute of manliness; cautious plotting, a justifiable means of self-defence. The advocate of extreme measures was always trustworthy; his opponent a man to be suspected. To succeed in a plot was to have a shrewd head, to divine a plot a still shrewder; but to try to provide against having to do either was to break up your party and to be afraid of your adversaries.
In fine, to forestall an intending criminal, or to suggest the idea of a crime where it was wanting, was equally commended until even blood became a weaker tie than [political] party, from the superior readiness of those united by the latter to dare everything without reserve... Revenge also was held of more account than self-preservation. Oaths of reconciliation, being only proffered on either side to meet an immediate difficulty, only held good so long as no other weapon was at hand; but when opportunity offered, he who first ventured to seize it and to take his enemy off his guard, thought this perfidious vengeance sweeter than an open one, since, considerations of safety apart, success by treachery won him the palm of superior intelligence. Indeed it is generally the case that men are readier to call rogues clever than simpletons honest, and are as ashamed of being the second as they are proud of being the first.
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... Meanwhile the moderate part of the citizens perished between the two, either for not joining in the quarrel, or because envy would not suffer them to escape."
This passage is one of the highlights of Book III. The two other events that stand out in this section are the destruction of Plataea and the debate over the fate of Mytilene. The Spartans' destruction of Plataea, the city that the Spartans themselves had previously declared holy ground because of its pivotal role in the Persian Wars, is one of the more cynical episodes of an already ruthless war (the Plataeans surrendered, but the city was destroyed anyway, because the Thebans - allies of Sparta - would not accept their surrender). The third major event of Book III is the debate in the Athenian assembly over what to do with the population of Mytilene, a rebellious colony. The assembly initially sentences the entire male population to death, then changes its mind the next morning, just in time to reverse the verdict. The arguments from this section tie into political & ethical issues that are revisited in the second half of the narrative (the destruction of Melos at the end of Book V, and the Sicilian Expedition in Books VI-VII).
- After the Spartans capture Amphipolis (Book IV), many cities allied with Athens switch sides because Sparta offers to support their independence, but they overestimate the odds of success.
Thucydides writes:
"...their judgment was based more upon blind wishing than upon any sound prevision; for it is a habit of mankind to entrust to careless hope what they long for, and to use sovereign reason to thrust aside what they do not desire."
- If you’ve heard of exactly one thing from Thucydides’s History, it’s probably the Melian Dialogue (Book V). Melos was an island in the Cyclades, which Herodotus says was one of the few Greek islands to resist the second Persian invasion (the one led by Xerxes), and which maintained neutrality when Athens and Sparta went to war. (This wasn’t a public discussion, so it is one of the pieces of rhetoric that Thucydides would have had to entirely invent.) The arguments that Thucydides assigns to the Melians hint at what happens in Book VIII after the Athenian defeat at Syracuse. (Neutral states decided to join the Spartans, on the grounds that Athens would probably have tried to conquer them if the Sicilian campaign had succeeded.)
"…For ourselves, we shall not trouble you with specious pretenses--either of how we have a right to our empire because we overthrew the Mede, or are now attacking you because of wrong that you have done us--and make a long speech which would not be believed; and in return we hope that you, instead of thinking to influence us by saying that you did not join the Spartans, although their colonists, or that you have done us no wrong, will aim at what is feasible, holding in view the real sentiments of us both; since you know as well as we do that right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer* what they must."
"As we think, at any rate, it is expedient--we speak as we are obliged, since you enjoin us to let right alone and talk only of interest--that you should not destroy what is our common protection, the privilege of being allowed in danger to invoke what is fair and right, and even to profit by arguments not strictly valid if they can be persuasive. And you are as much interested in this as any, as your fall would be a signal for the heaviest vengeance and an example for the world to meditate upon."
(*"suffer" here = "allow" so it's not entirely passive in the sense of "enduring" something. Maybe this is nitpicking but I think it makes some difference to the meaning)
and a bit later:
"How can you avoid making enemies of all existing neutrals who shall look at the case and conclude from it that one day or another you will attack them? And what is this but to make greater the enemies that you have already, and to force others to become so who would otherwise have never thought of it?"
- from the aftermath of the Athenian defeat at Syracuse (Book VI): "The dead lay unburied, and each man as he recognized a friend among them shuddered with grief and horror; while the living whom they were leaving behind, wounded or sick, were to the living far more shocking than the dead, and more to be pitied than those who had perished…"
"This was the greatest Hellenic achievement of any in this war, or, in my opinion, in Hellenic history; at once most glorious to the victors, and most calamitous to the conquered. They were beaten at all points and altogether; all that they suffered was great; they were destroyed, as the saying is, with a total destruction, their fleet, their army, everything was destroyed, and few out of many returned home. Such were the events in Sicily."
Thucydides’s style is challenging; there are lots of complex sentences, and it's a little harder to follow than other ancient authors I’ve read. But after the first hundred pages or so I started to get used to it. The edition I read uses the 19th-century translation by Richard Crawley, with some revisions to make it easier to read. The Appendices were extremely helpful - so much that I photocopied parts of them before returning the book to the library.
The History of the Peloponnesian War recounts the 5th century BC war between Sparta and Athens to the year 411 BC (the war itself lasted 431 - 405 BC). The introduction in The Landmark Thucydides says the narrative was probably written and revised intermittently from 431 to the 390s. It is one of the earliest scholarly works of history, and it has had a great deal of influence on international relations theory.
Thucydides, an Athenian who served in the war, states that he began to write a history of the two decades of war between the Peloponnesians and the Athenians as soon as it broke out, believing that "it would be a great war, and more worthy of relation than any that preceded it… Indeed this was the greatest movement yet known in history, not only of the Hellenes, but of a large part of the barbarian world--I had almost said of mankind. For though the events of remote antiquity, and even those that more immediately preceded the war, could not from lapse of time be clearly ascertained, yet the evidences which an inquiry carried as far back as was practicable leads me to trust, all point to the conclusion."
His claim that he began writing during the events themselves ("I lived through the whole of it, being of an age to comprehend events, and giving my attention to them in order to know the exact truth about them") set him apart from earlier historians.
He explains his purpose in writing:
"The absence of romance in my history will, I fear, detract somewhat from its interest; but if it be judged useful by those inquirers who desire an exact knowledge of the past as an aid to the interpretation of the future, which in the course of human things must resemble if it does not reflect it, I shall be content. In fine, I have written my work, not as an essay which is to win the applause of the moment, but as a possession for all time."
The speeches that he included are mostly reconstructions, but he says that tried to give "the general sense of what they really said." This approach preserved his mostly oral sources from oblivion; otherwise they probably would not be known at all. Thucydides says that the evidence for his narrative "rests partly on what I saw for myself, partly on what others saw for me, the accuracy of the report being always tried by the most severe and detailed tests possible." He adds that he has attempted to reconcile inconsistent accounts of the same events from different witnesses, "sometimes from imperfect memory, sometimes from undue partiality for one side or the other."
Thucydides Herodotus described two goals of his history: to record events so that the heroic deeds of the Persian Wars will be remembered, and to explain the causes of the conflict. He didn’t an objective account in the sense modern historians think of it - he’s often not very careful about the reliability of his sources. Herodotus says he has two aims in his history: to record events so that the heroic deeds of the Persian Wars will be remembered, and to explain the causes of the conflict. He isn’t writing an objective account in the sense modern historians think of it - he’s often not very careful about the reliability of his sources.
Thucydides presents his narrative as simply a factual account. Unlike Herodotus, he rarely goes off on tangents that have little connection to the war - there is no ethnography, and almost no personal stories about the individuals in his history. His account is almost entirely naturalistic and he is much more careful about chronology. (In fact, he rejected the dating methods of earlier writers, saying that the passage of time “must be calculated by the seasons rather than by trusting to the enumeration of the names of the several magistrates or offices of honor that are used to mark past events. Accuracy is impossible where an event may have occurred in the beginning, or middle, or at any period in their tenure of office…”) Herodotus includes some pretty fantastical stories (sea monsters, cyclops…) and takes many of them at face value. To be fair, though, it’s common for Herodotus to include stories that he is skeptical of but that he believes are worth recording anyway.
There’s a broad spectrum of human behavior in the stories Herodotus tells, and certainly there are some horrifying moments, but ultimately Herodotus is a moralist and shows history as having a moral direction. The shape of the overall narrative in his history shows how "the god with his lightning smites always the bigger animals, and will not suffer them to wax insolent… likewise his bolts fall ever on the highest houses and the tallest trees." Solon’s observation about the temporary nature of wealth and power (in Book I, in one of the obviously non-historical stories, the parable of Croesus & Solon) is vindicated by the outcome of events. There’s at least a plausible reading of Thucydides in which the same kind of moral forces are ultimately at work (I’ll come back to this), but it seems to me that the appalling suffering that occurs along the way has a much more central place in Thucydides.
Thucydides’s description of the causes of the war between Athens and Sparta distinguishes between immediate causes - the issues that led to the breakdown of negotiations - and what he views as the fundamental cause of the war.
Sparta invaded Athens in response to Athens’s refusal to meet its demands for the independence of the Greek city-states: to raise the siege of the Corinthian colony of Potidaea, restore independence to the island of Aegina, and revoke the Megarian decree (a set of economic sanctions levied upon Megara, excluding the Megarians from Athenian harbors and markets. Athens offered to submit these issues to arbitration by a third party, but Sparta refused. Thucydides goes on to say:
"The real cause, however, I consider to be the one which was formally most kept out of sight. The growth of the power of Athens, and the alarm which this inspired in Sparta, made war inevitable” (16). He then gives an account of the growth of Athenian power during the 50 years after the defeat of Xerxes in the second Persian invasion of Greece (479-431 BCE). Scholars call this period the Penteconteia (“period of fifty years”).
During this time the Athenians captured the city of Eion from the Persians, and forced the city-state of Carystus, which had previously been conquered by the Persians, to join the Delian League. Athens also suppressed a rebellion by the island of Naxos. Thucydides says that the rebellion of Naxos, and several other members of the Delian League that followed its example, was a reaction to Athens’s strict demands from members of the League. The Athenians, he says, went too far, and “made themselves offensive by applying the screw of necessity to men who were not used to and in fact not disposed for any continuous labor.” (This is a rare example of him openly offering his own opinions; he often goes out of his way to avoid explicitly saying what he thinks.) Thucydides says that while Athens extracted tribute from her allies, Sparta usually ensured that her allies were subservient to Spartan interests by establishing loyal oligarchies among them. (Sparta didn't have the administrative organization to maintain an an extensive empire.)
(In Book VII of The Histories, Herodotus says that he must give an opinion that he knows will be unpopular: that Greece’s independence was saved by the Athenians during the Persian Wars. Had the Athenians submitted to Xerxes, or fled their country, there would have been no attempt to resist the Persians by sea, and Xerxes’s army could have easily been ferried to every part of Greece, including Sparta. Herodotus was probably writing during the 420s-430s; he doesn’t say why his view will be unpopular but presumably it’s because many of the Greeks resent the actions of Athens after the Persian Wars.)
Thucydides has been called the father of the realist school in international relations, which views the political behavior of individuals and the subsequent outcomes of relations between states as driven by the emotions of fear and self-interest. His influence became increasingly important during the Cold War. David Welch ("Why IR Theorists Should Stop Reading Thucydides," Review of International Studies, 2003) describes how the reception of Thucydides has changed over time: "In recent years, identifying realist 'misreadings' of Thucydides has become something of a cottage industry. Some critics are broadly sympathetic to the realist take; others are openly hostile. They all agree, however, that realists commonly overlook the importance in Thucydides of such things as passion, morality, justice, legitimacy, piety, individual character, rhetoric, norms, institutions, and chance." Welch’s paper examines how these factors play out in the central events of the text, and concludes that "the most we can say is that Thucydides paints a picture of a lot of loose-cannon realist Athenians taking realpolitik much too far, temporarily disrupting a fairly well-functioning society of city-states, and at the end of the day reaping as they sowed."
A New Yorker article by Daniel Mendelssohn makes a similar argument, examining the tragic elements in Thucydides.
_______________________________________________________
Some of the specific moments that stuck with me:
- One of the most memorable scenes is the description of civil war in Corcyra (Book III). In 427 BCE, civil war broke out between the democrats, who wanted remain in an alliance with Athens, and the aristocrats, who wished to form an alliance with Corinth. Thucydides says that it was the first of many civil conflicts provoked by the war between Athens and Sparta. This is just an amazing passage:
"Death thus raged in every shape; and, as usually happens at such times, there was no length to which violence did not go; sons were killed by their fathers, and suppliants dragged from the altar or slain upon it; while some were even walled up in the temple of Dionysus and died there.
So bloody was the march of the revolution, and the impression which it made was the greater as it was one of the first to occur. Later on, one may say, the whole Hellenic world was convulsed; struggles being everywhere made by the popular chiefs to bring in the Athenians, and by the oligarchs to introduce the Spartans. In peace there would have been neither the pretext nor the wish to make such an invitation; but in war, with an alliance always at the command of either faction for the hurt of their adversaries and their own corresponding advantage, opportunities for bringing in the foreigner were never wanting to the revolutionary parties.
The sufferings which revolution entailed upon the cities were many and terrible, such as have occurred and always will occur, as long as the nature of mankind remains the same; though in a severer or milder form, and varying in their symptoms, according to the variety of the particular cases. In peace and prosperity, states and individuals have better sentiments, because they do not find themselves suddenly confronted with imperious necessities; but 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.
Revolution thus ran its course from city to city, and the places which it arrived at last, from having heard what had been done before, carried to a still greater excess the refinement of their inventions, as manifested in the cunning of their enterprises and the atrocity of their reprisals. Words had to change their ordinary meaning and to take that which was now given them. Reckless audacity came to be considered the courage of a loyal ally; prudent hesitation, specious cowardice; moderation was held to be a cloak for unmanliness; ability to see all sides of a question, inaptness to act on any. Frantic violence became the attribute of manliness; cautious plotting, a justifiable means of self-defence. The advocate of extreme measures was always trustworthy; his opponent a man to be suspected. To succeed in a plot was to have a shrewd head, to divine a plot a still shrewder; but to try to provide against having to do either was to break up your party and to be afraid of your adversaries.
In fine, to forestall an intending criminal, or to suggest the idea of a crime where it was wanting, was equally commended until even blood became a weaker tie than [political] party, from the superior readiness of those united by the latter to dare everything without reserve... Revenge also was held of more account than self-preservation. Oaths of reconciliation, being only proffered on either side to meet an immediate difficulty, only held good so long as no other weapon was at hand; but when opportunity offered, he who first ventured to seize it and to take his enemy off his guard, thought this perfidious vengeance sweeter than an open one, since, considerations of safety apart, success by treachery won him the palm of superior intelligence. Indeed it is generally the case that men are readier to call rogues clever than simpletons honest, and are as ashamed of being the second as they are proud of being the first.
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... Meanwhile the moderate part of the citizens perished between the two, either for not joining in the quarrel, or because envy would not suffer them to escape."
This passage is one of the highlights of Book III. The two other events that stand out in this section are the destruction of Plataea and the debate over the fate of Mytilene. The Spartans' destruction of Plataea, the city that the Spartans themselves had previously declared holy ground because of its pivotal role in the Persian Wars, is one of the more cynical episodes of an already ruthless war (the Plataeans surrendered, but the city was destroyed anyway, because the Thebans - allies of Sparta - would not accept their surrender). The third major event of Book III is the debate in the Athenian assembly over what to do with the population of Mytilene, a rebellious colony. The assembly initially sentences the entire male population to death, then changes its mind the next morning, just in time to reverse the verdict. The arguments from this section tie into political & ethical issues that are revisited in the second half of the narrative (the destruction of Melos at the end of Book V, and the Sicilian Expedition in Books VI-VII).
- After the Spartans capture Amphipolis (Book IV), many cities allied with Athens switch sides because Sparta offers to support their independence, but they overestimate the odds of success.
Thucydides writes:
"...their judgment was based more upon blind wishing than upon any sound prevision; for it is a habit of mankind to entrust to careless hope what they long for, and to use sovereign reason to thrust aside what they do not desire."
- If you’ve heard of exactly one thing from Thucydides’s History, it’s probably the Melian Dialogue (Book V). Melos was an island in the Cyclades, which Herodotus says was one of the few Greek islands to resist the second Persian invasion (the one led by Xerxes), and which maintained neutrality when Athens and Sparta went to war. (This wasn’t a public discussion, so it is one of the pieces of rhetoric that Thucydides would have had to entirely invent.) The arguments that Thucydides assigns to the Melians hint at what happens in Book VIII after the Athenian defeat at Syracuse. (Neutral states decided to join the Spartans, on the grounds that Athens would probably have tried to conquer them if the Sicilian campaign had succeeded.)
"…For ourselves, we shall not trouble you with specious pretenses--either of how we have a right to our empire because we overthrew the Mede, or are now attacking you because of wrong that you have done us--and make a long speech which would not be believed; and in return we hope that you, instead of thinking to influence us by saying that you did not join the Spartans, although their colonists, or that you have done us no wrong, will aim at what is feasible, holding in view the real sentiments of us both; since you know as well as we do that right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer* what they must."
"As we think, at any rate, it is expedient--we speak as we are obliged, since you enjoin us to let right alone and talk only of interest--that you should not destroy what is our common protection, the privilege of being allowed in danger to invoke what is fair and right, and even to profit by arguments not strictly valid if they can be persuasive. And you are as much interested in this as any, as your fall would be a signal for the heaviest vengeance and an example for the world to meditate upon."
(*"suffer" here = "allow" so it's not entirely passive in the sense of "enduring" something. Maybe this is nitpicking but I think it makes some difference to the meaning)
and a bit later:
"How can you avoid making enemies of all existing neutrals who shall look at the case and conclude from it that one day or another you will attack them? And what is this but to make greater the enemies that you have already, and to force others to become so who would otherwise have never thought of it?"
- from the aftermath of the Athenian defeat at Syracuse (Book VI): "The dead lay unburied, and each man as he recognized a friend among them shuddered with grief and horror; while the living whom they were leaving behind, wounded or sick, were to the living far more shocking than the dead, and more to be pitied than those who had perished…"
"This was the greatest Hellenic achievement of any in this war, or, in my opinion, in Hellenic history; at once most glorious to the victors, and most calamitous to the conquered. They were beaten at all points and altogether; all that they suffered was great; they were destroyed, as the saying is, with a total destruction, their fleet, their army, everything was destroyed, and few out of many returned home. Such were the events in Sicily."
July 8, 2009
Most of what I liked about The Landmark Herodotus applies to the The Landmark Thucydides as well. The maps and format of this earlier edition are not quite as smoothly drafted as the The Landmark Herodotus, but the editors earn boundless praise for their efforts at making these classical works comprehensible for modern readers.
Thucydides presents a stark contrast to his near contemporary Herodotus. He avoids the narrative wandering and anthropological surveys which fill The Histories. Instead, Thucydides' focused factual conveyance seems fitting given the martial subject. Unfortunately, it also becomes rather dull at times. Thucydides appears to be self-aware, but unconcerned, regarding his own dry style:
His diligence is clear as he proceeds through approximately 21 years of the 27 year Pelopennesian War (for an unknown reason, he stops in 411 B.C.) Battles, participants and maneuvers are detailed with surprising precision given the imagined difficulties in obtaining information in various theaters of war in pre-Hellenistic Greece.
For me, without question, the best moments in Thucydides were reading the 141 speeches scattered throughout. the reader is given fair warning as to their accuracy:
Even knowing full well that each of these speeches have been filtered and altered to fit Thucydides' narrative purpose, they still contain a level rhetorical character that transports you back to the agoras of Athens, Sparta, Corinth and other poleis of classical Greece. The political discussions at times exhibited a level of sincerity and savvy wisdom that demonstrate why the Greeks (most of them) were jealously protective of their democratic states. At times, I felt somewhat embarrassed that, now 2500 years later, our political discourse seems so very empty and cheap in comparison.
Thucydides presents a stark contrast to his near contemporary Herodotus. He avoids the narrative wandering and anthropological surveys which fill The Histories. Instead, Thucydides' focused factual conveyance seems fitting given the martial subject. Unfortunately, it also becomes rather dull at times. Thucydides appears to be self-aware, but unconcerned, regarding his own dry style:
The absence of romance in my history will, I fear, detract somewhat from its interest, but if it be judged useful by those inquirers who desire an exact knowledge of the past as an aid to the understanding of the future, which in the course of human things must resemble if it does not reflect it, I shall be content. In fine, I have written my work, not as an essay which is to win applause of the moment, but as a possession for all time. pg. 16
His diligence is clear as he proceeds through approximately 21 years of the 27 year Pelopennesian War (for an unknown reason, he stops in 411 B.C.) Battles, participants and maneuvers are detailed with surprising precision given the imagined difficulties in obtaining information in various theaters of war in pre-Hellenistic Greece.
For me, without question, the best moments in Thucydides were reading the 141 speeches scattered throughout. the reader is given fair warning as to their accuracy:
With reference to the speeches in this history, some were delivered before the war began, others while it was going on; some I heard myself, others I got from various quarters; it was in all cases difficult to carry them word for word on one's memory, so my habit has been to make the speakers say what was in my opinion demanded of them by the various occasions, of course adhering as closely as possible to the general sense of what they really said. pg. 15
Even knowing full well that each of these speeches have been filtered and altered to fit Thucydides' narrative purpose, they still contain a level rhetorical character that transports you back to the agoras of Athens, Sparta, Corinth and other poleis of classical Greece. The political discussions at times exhibited a level of sincerity and savvy wisdom that demonstrate why the Greeks (most of them) were jealously protective of their democratic states. At times, I felt somewhat embarrassed that, now 2500 years later, our political discourse seems so very empty and cheap in comparison.
February 28, 2022
The Landmark Thucydides
Please give my Amazon review a helpful vote - https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-re...
This is my second read of The Peloponnesian War the "PW") by Thucydides. The PW is a book that bears fruit on each re-reading. Thucydides lays down a fire hose of information. Names of characters, locations, dates, background information come pouring out of the text. The first time around you may not be able to pick out the chaff from the wheat. This time around I started noticing foreshadowing, such as the mention of Brasidas as a trireme commander a book or so before he explodes on the scene to turn things around for Sparta. Likewise, I particularly noted the spot where Pericles is shuffled off stage with a casual mention.
One of the big epiphanies I had this time involved the Sicilian Expedition. It has always seemed so strange that Athens would try to defeat Sparta by getting "bogged down in a land war" on Sicily (to paraphrase Gen. MacArthur.) This read I picked up on the fact that Athens launched the Sicilian Expedition during year seven of its thirty-year (but actually nine-year) truce with Sparta. Athens had, apparently, gotten hooked on foreign adventures and figured if it wasn't fighting Sparta, it might as well expand the empire, despite Pericles' strict instruction to focus on Sparta alone.
In addition, I read this book during the run-up to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. When Biden said he was going to send 8,000 American troops to Ukraine - too few to deter, just right to start a broader war - I identified it as a blunder modeled on the Athenian decision to send twenty triremes to aid Corcyra (Corfu), again, not enough to deter the Corinthians but more than enough to trigger Corinth into demanding that Sparta declare war. In 2022, Biden's decision was clearly not a deterrent; it is still too early to tell if the second half of the model will be triggered. (Perhaps not because Sparta was the dominant power fearful of Athenian ambition; in this case America/NATO are dominant and Russia is ambitious.)
Time will tell.
This is the value of reading history. I suspect that Biden has not read Thucydides, and I question whether his military advisors have.
I recommend the Landmark Thucydides for its footnotes and maps. There are maps every third page. I can't imagine how someone not educated in Hellenic geography could keep track of the world-spanning narrative in Thucydides' book without them. (And the narrative does span the ancient Greek world as Thucydides skips from Ionia to Sicily to Hellespont and places in between.)
Please give my Amazon review a helpful vote - https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-re...
This is my second read of The Peloponnesian War the "PW") by Thucydides. The PW is a book that bears fruit on each re-reading. Thucydides lays down a fire hose of information. Names of characters, locations, dates, background information come pouring out of the text. The first time around you may not be able to pick out the chaff from the wheat. This time around I started noticing foreshadowing, such as the mention of Brasidas as a trireme commander a book or so before he explodes on the scene to turn things around for Sparta. Likewise, I particularly noted the spot where Pericles is shuffled off stage with a casual mention.
One of the big epiphanies I had this time involved the Sicilian Expedition. It has always seemed so strange that Athens would try to defeat Sparta by getting "bogged down in a land war" on Sicily (to paraphrase Gen. MacArthur.) This read I picked up on the fact that Athens launched the Sicilian Expedition during year seven of its thirty-year (but actually nine-year) truce with Sparta. Athens had, apparently, gotten hooked on foreign adventures and figured if it wasn't fighting Sparta, it might as well expand the empire, despite Pericles' strict instruction to focus on Sparta alone.
In addition, I read this book during the run-up to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. When Biden said he was going to send 8,000 American troops to Ukraine - too few to deter, just right to start a broader war - I identified it as a blunder modeled on the Athenian decision to send twenty triremes to aid Corcyra (Corfu), again, not enough to deter the Corinthians but more than enough to trigger Corinth into demanding that Sparta declare war. In 2022, Biden's decision was clearly not a deterrent; it is still too early to tell if the second half of the model will be triggered. (Perhaps not because Sparta was the dominant power fearful of Athenian ambition; in this case America/NATO are dominant and Russia is ambitious.)
Time will tell.
This is the value of reading history. I suspect that Biden has not read Thucydides, and I question whether his military advisors have.
I recommend the Landmark Thucydides for its footnotes and maps. There are maps every third page. I can't imagine how someone not educated in Hellenic geography could keep track of the world-spanning narrative in Thucydides' book without them. (And the narrative does span the ancient Greek world as Thucydides skips from Ionia to Sicily to Hellespont and places in between.)
May 23, 2008
I bought this handsome edition when it was first published in 1996, dutifully slogged through the first book, then staggered across the room and put it back on the shelf. This spring, encouraged by a group of similarly eccentric aspirants, I read the whole thing. It's magnificent – a founding work of "historical consciousness" (a nod here to the neglected classic by John Lukacs) that is also, astonishingly, one of the best.
This is not easy reading by any means, but the maps and footnotes in Strassler's edition keep it comprehensible. And once you're into it, it feels absolutely contemporary, a compendium of political wisdom and abject folly that repeatedly, hauntingly, echoes the current neo-conservative debacle in Iraq — so much so that my reading group made an informal rule not to draw the obvious, disheartening parallels.
Thucydides rewards all the effort required to read him, several times over. Even so, if you decide to tackle him, I'd recommend reading Donald Kagan's Peloponnesian War alongside. I also appreciated Victor Hanson's A War Like No Other . Despite Hanson's overwrought, occasionally insane cheerleading for the Iraq invasion, he's good on the Greeks.
This is not easy reading by any means, but the maps and footnotes in Strassler's edition keep it comprehensible. And once you're into it, it feels absolutely contemporary, a compendium of political wisdom and abject folly that repeatedly, hauntingly, echoes the current neo-conservative debacle in Iraq — so much so that my reading group made an informal rule not to draw the obvious, disheartening parallels.
Thucydides rewards all the effort required to read him, several times over. Even so, if you decide to tackle him, I'd recommend reading Donald Kagan's Peloponnesian War alongside. I also appreciated Victor Hanson's A War Like No Other . Despite Hanson's overwrought, occasionally insane cheerleading for the Iraq invasion, he's good on the Greeks.
October 16, 2013
Well, that was a behemoth.
It took 2 months of 5 a.m. study sessions to put this one to bed, but, I have no regrets. In a lot of ways it reminded me of Churchill's memoirs of WW2 with the detailed inventories of soldiers and arms. I have no doubt that Churchill was familiar with this work. I'm not the most devoted follower of military history but I did find myself getting caught up in the stories. The Athenian attempt on Sicily was particularly fraught.
I don't want to give anything away but, well, everyone in the book eventually dies.
In regards to this particular edition of the book, I have nothing but the highest praise. The footnotes and maps and brief summaries of each paragraph (yes!) and actually useful appendices were tremendously helpful. Kudos to the publishers. I've purchased two more Landmark books and will always buy a Landmark edition when presented with that option.
I don't know if I can recommend the book itself. I mean, it isn't the sort of thing you just pick up on a whim. If you're interested in a history of the Peloponnesian War then by all means start here. If you're interested in historiology this is going to be a must read. If you're just looking for something to kill a few hours on a Saturday, this won't be your best bet.
Finally, WTH Athens? Are you kidding me?
It took 2 months of 5 a.m. study sessions to put this one to bed, but, I have no regrets. In a lot of ways it reminded me of Churchill's memoirs of WW2 with the detailed inventories of soldiers and arms. I have no doubt that Churchill was familiar with this work. I'm not the most devoted follower of military history but I did find myself getting caught up in the stories. The Athenian attempt on Sicily was particularly fraught.
I don't want to give anything away but, well, everyone in the book eventually dies.
In regards to this particular edition of the book, I have nothing but the highest praise. The footnotes and maps and brief summaries of each paragraph (yes!) and actually useful appendices were tremendously helpful. Kudos to the publishers. I've purchased two more Landmark books and will always buy a Landmark edition when presented with that option.
I don't know if I can recommend the book itself. I mean, it isn't the sort of thing you just pick up on a whim. If you're interested in a history of the Peloponnesian War then by all means start here. If you're interested in historiology this is going to be a must read. If you're just looking for something to kill a few hours on a Saturday, this won't be your best bet.
Finally, WTH Athens? Are you kidding me?
December 7, 2017
This book is powerful. Thucydides writes a mournful account of Athen's fall from grace. When societies are given over to the mentality that the strong rule by virtue of their own strength, it will ultimately lead to chaos and despair. This point is made powerfully in the Melian Dialogue and is constant throughout the narrative.
This period of Greece's history was dark and this is the first account that I know of (other than Ecclesiastes) to explicitly declare the vanity of pursuing man's glory. As Thucydides points out, this history of vainglory will repeat as long as human nature remains the same. Without any redemption we would be left to accept the despair as Thucydides does.
Read again in fall 2017. Still very good. Something to add to the "might makes right" mentality addressed above is that Thucydides clearly seems to think that it is inescapable.
This period of Greece's history was dark and this is the first account that I know of (other than Ecclesiastes) to explicitly declare the vanity of pursuing man's glory. As Thucydides points out, this history of vainglory will repeat as long as human nature remains the same. Without any redemption we would be left to accept the despair as Thucydides does.
Read again in fall 2017. Still very good. Something to add to the "might makes right" mentality addressed above is that Thucydides clearly seems to think that it is inescapable.
January 5, 2022
This is a lightly revised edition of Richard Crawley's old 19th-century translation; reasonably accurate, readable if not particularly inspiring. The maps, notes, and appendices (standard features of the Landmark series) make it much easier to follow the events and keep track of people and places.
As for the actual history, Thucydides does seem to try to be objective. He was an Athenian and a general during the earlier part of the war, then exiled and resident in the Peloponnesus for the later part. He was an eyewitness to much and knew many of the players. He does not hide his admiration for Pericles, or his contempt for Cleon and Alcibiades. Nor does he whitewash the Athenians' hubris and overreach, which led to their downfall. His enumeration of the evils of political factions (stasis) is a cautionary tale for contemporary America.
As for the actual history, Thucydides does seem to try to be objective. He was an Athenian and a general during the earlier part of the war, then exiled and resident in the Peloponnesus for the later part. He was an eyewitness to much and knew many of the players. He does not hide his admiration for Pericles, or his contempt for Cleon and Alcibiades. Nor does he whitewash the Athenians' hubris and overreach, which led to their downfall. His enumeration of the evils of political factions (stasis) is a cautionary tale for contemporary America.
October 15, 2023
There is no greater book for studying politics! After reading and teaching large selections of this classic, I finally read the whole thing. With its many maps and footnotes, this Landmark edition makes the geography intelligible.
April 30, 2021
My first foray into ancient history. It's dry at times, but there are moments when Thucydides as an author and historian really shine through. I especially love the way he frames Athens and their greed in terms of hubris... even the Greek historians were somewhat philosophers. Overall, about half the book was was palatable and the other half page-turning (as far as history goes). I feel capable of reading historians now.
June 30, 2022
Quite simply the best book ever written due to it's descriptions of human nature, conflicts arisen due to different cultures (Athens & Sparta), and the speeches given during the course of the war. I've learned more from this book about life and truth than any other book I've ever read. Readers, philosophers and statesmen owe it to themselves to read this book. Simply incredible and I need to re read soon.
June 8, 2016
What an interesting book! I liked it very much. It was hard to follow at times, but this edition helps a lot. The many appendices at the end are well worth reading, and as pithy as the main work.
Want to read
October 17, 2015(A good annotated edition of a classic work is always an excellent find; the Landmark edition's reviews indicate this one is a winner.)
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