Everything about Thucydides totally explained
Thucydides (c.
460 BC – c.
395 BC) (
Greek Θουκυδίδης,
Thoukudídēs) was an ancient
Greek historian, and the author of the
History of the Peloponnesian War, which recounts the
5th century BC war between
Sparta and
Athens to the year
411 BC. Thucydides has been regarded as the father of "scientific history" because of his strict standards of gathering evidence and his analysis in terms of cause and effect without reference to intervention by the gods. He has also been considered the father of the school of political realism, which views the relations between nations as based on might rather than right. His classic text is still studied at advanced military colleges worldwide. More generally, he shows an interest in developing an understanding of human nature to explain human behavior in such crises as plague and civil war. Other scholars lay greater emphasis on the
History’s elaborate literary artistry and the powerful rhetoric of its speeches and insist that its author exploited non-"scientific" literary genres no less than newer, rationalistic modes of explanation.
Life
Considering his stature as a historian, we know comparatively little about Thucydides' life. The most reliable information comes from his own
History of the Peloponnesian War, and consists of his nationality, paternity, and native locality. Thucydides also tells us that he fought in the war, contracted the plague, and was exiled by the
democracy.
Evidence from the Classical Period
Thucydides identifies himself as an Athenian, tells us that his father's name was
Olorus and that he was from the Athenian
deme of
Halimous. Thucydides tells us that he contracted the
plague that ravaged Athens, a plague which killed
Pericles and many other Athenians. He records that he owned
gold mines at
Scapte Hyle, a district of Thrace on the
Thracian coast opposite the island of
Thasos.
Because of his influence in the Thracian region, Thucydides tells us, he was sent as a
strategos (general) to
Thasos in
424 BC. During the winter of 424-423 BC, the Spartan general
Brasidas attacked
Amphipolis, a half-day's sail west from Thasos on the Thracian coast. Eucles, the Athenian commander at Amphipolis, sent to Thucydides for help. Brasidas, aware of Thucydides' presence on Thasos and his influence with the people of Amphipolis and afraid of help arriving by sea, acted quickly to offer moderate terms to the Amphipolitans for their surrender, which they accepted. Thus when Thucydides arrived, Amphipolis was already under Spartan control (see
Battle of Amphipolis). Amphipolis was of considerable strategic importance, and news of its fall caused great consternation in Athens. The fall of Amphipolis was blamed on Thucydides, though he claimed it wasn't his fault, that he'd simply been unable to reach it in time. Because of his failure to save Amphipolis, Thucydides was sent into exile, as he wrote:
Using his status as an exile from Athens to travel freely among the Peloponnesian allies, he was able to view the war from the perspective of both sides. During this time, he conducted important research for his history.
This is all that Thucydides himself tells us about his own life. We are able to infer a few other facts from reliable contemporary sources.
Herodotus tells us that Thucydides' father's name,
Olorus, was connected with
Thrace and Thracian royalty. Thucydides was probably connected through family to the Athenian statesman and general
Miltiades, and his son
Cimon, leaders of the old
aristocracy supplanted by the Radical
Democrats.
Cimon's grandfather's name was
Olorus, making the connection exceeding likely. Another
Thucydides lived before the historian and was also linked with Thrace, making a family connection between them very likely as well. Finally,
Herodotus confirms the connection of Thucydides' family with the mines at Scapte Hyle.
Later sources
The remaining evidence for Thucydides' life comes from less-reliable later ancient sources. According to
Pausanias, someone named Oenobius was able to get a law passed allowing Thucydides to return to Athens, presumably sometime shortly after Athens' surrender and the end of the war in
404 BC. Pausanias goes on to say that Thucydides was murdered on his way back to Athens. Many doubt this account, seeing evidence to suggest he lived as late as
397 BC.
Plutarch claims that his remains were returned to Athens and placed in
Cimon's family vault.
The abrupt end of Thucydides' narrative, which breaks off in the middle of the year
411 BC, has traditionally been interpreted as indicating that he died while writing the book, though other explanations have been put forward.
Education
Although there's no certain evidence to prove it, the rhetorical character of his narrative suggests that Thucydides was at least familiar with the teachings of the
Sophists. These men were traveling lecturers, who frequented
Athens and other Greek cities.
It has also been asserted that Thucydides' strict focus on cause and effect, his fastidious devotion to observable phenomena to the exclusion of other factors and his austere prose style were influenced by the methods and thinking of early medical writers such as
Hippocrates of
Kos. Some have gone so far as to assert that Thucydides had some medical training.
Both of these theories are inferences from the perceived character of Thucydides' History. While neither can be categorically rejected, there's no firm evidence for either.
Character
Inferences about Thucydides' character can only be drawn (with due caution) from his book. Occasionally throughout
The History of the Peloponnesian War his sardonic sense of humor is evident, such as when, during the
Athenian plague, he remarks that some old Athenians seemed to remember a rhyme that said with the
Dorian War would come a "great death." Some claimed the rhyme was actually about a "great dearth" (
limos), and was only remembered as "death" (
loimos) due to the current plague. Thucydides then remarks that, should another Dorian War come, this time attended with a great dearth, the rhyme will be remembered as "dearth," and any mention of "death" forgotten.
Thucydides admired
Pericles, approving of his power over the people, and shows a palpable distaste for the more pandering demagogues who followed him. Thucydides didn't approve of the democratic mob or the radical democracy Pericles ushered in but thought that it was acceptable when in the hands of a good leader. Generally, Thucydides exhibited a lack of bias in his presentation of events, refusing, for example, to minimize the negative effect of his own failure at
Amphipolis. Occasionally, however, strong passions break through in his writing, such as in his scathing appraisals of the demagogues
Cleon and
Hyperbolus.
Cleon has sometimes been connected with Thucydides' exile, which would suggest some bias in his presentation of him: it should, however, be noted that this connection is first made in a (not entirely reliable) biography written centuries after Thucydides' death, and may equally be no more than a backwards inference from Thucydides' evident disapproval of Cleon.
Also, Thucydides was clearly moved by the suffering inherent in war, and concerned about the excesses to which human nature is apt to resort in such circumstances. This is evident in his analysis of the atrocities committed during civil conflict on
Corcyra, which includes the memorable phrase "War is a violent teacher".
The History of the Peloponnesian War
Thucydides wrote only one book; its modern title is the
History of the Peloponnesian War. His entire contribution to history and historiography is contained in this one dense history of the
twenty-seven year war between
Athens and its allies and
Sparta and its allies. The history breaks off near the end of the 21st year. Thucydides wanted to create an epic that would depict an event of greater importance than previous wars the Greeks had fought.
Thucydides is generally regarded as one of the first true historians. Like his predecessor
Herodotus (often called "the father of history"), Thucydides placed a high value on autopsy, or eye-witness testimony to events, and writes about many episodes in which he himself probably took part. He also assiduously consulted written documents and interviewed participants in the events that he records. Unlike Herodotus, he didn't recognize divine interventions in human affairs. Certainly he held unconscious biases — for example, to modern eyes he seems to underestimate the importance of Persian intervention — but Thucydides was the first historian who attempted something like modern historical objectivity.
One major difference between Thucydides' history and modern historical writing is that Thucydides' history includes lengthy speeches which, as he himself states, were as best as could be remembered of what was said (or, perhaps, what he thought ought to have been said). These speeches are composed in a literary manner. For example,
Pericles' funeral oration, which includes an impassioned moral defence of democracy, heaps honour on the dead:
Although attributed to Pericles, this passage appears to have been written by Thucydides for deliberate contrast with the account of the plague in
Athens which immediately follows it:
Classical scholar
Jacqueline de Romilly first pointed out, just after the
second world war, that one of Thucydides' central themes was the ethic of Athenian imperialism. Her analysis put his History in the context of Greek thought on the topic of international politics. Since her fundamental study, many scholars have studied the theme of power politics, for example
realpolitik, in Thucydides' history.
On the other hand, some authors, including
Richard Ned Lebow, reject the common perception of Thucydides as a historian of naked
real-politik. They argue that actors on the world stage who had read his work would all have been put on notice that someone would be scrutinizing their actions with a reporter's dispassion, rather than the mythmaker's and poet's compassion and thus consciously or unconsciously participating in the writing of it. Thucydides'
Melian dialogue is a lesson to reporters and to those who believe one's leaders are always acting with perfect integrity on the world stage. It can also be interpreted as evidence of the moral decay of Athens from the shining city on the hill Pericles described in the
Funeral Oration to a power-mad tyrant over other cities.
Thucydides doesn't take the time to discuss the arts, literature or society in which the book is set and in which Thucydides himself grew up. Thucydides was writing about an event and not a period and as such took lengths not to discuss anything which he considered unrelated.
Leo Strauss, in his classic study
The City and Man (see esp. pp. 230–31) argued that Thucydides had a deeply ambivalent understanding of Athenian democracy: on the one hand, "his wisdom was made possible" by the Periclean democracy, on account of its liberation of individual daring and enterprise and questioning; but this same liberation spurred the immoderation of limitless political ambition and thus imperialism, and eventually civic strife. This is the essence of the tragedy of Athens or of democracy — this is the tragic wisdom that Thucydides conveys, which he learned in a sense from Athenian democracy. More conventional scholars view him as recognizing and teaching the lesson that democracies do need leadership — and that leadership can be dangerous to democracy.
Thucydides versus Herodotus
Thucydides and his immediate predecessor
Herodotus both exerted a significant influence on Western history writing. Thucydides doesn't mention Herodotus by name but his famous introductory statement
is thought to refer to him (translation by
Thomas Hobbes). Herodotus records in his
Histories not only the events of the
Persian Wars but also geographical and ethnographical information, as well as miraculous and mythical stories ("fables") related to him during his extensive travels. If confronted with conflicting or unlikely accounts he leaves it to the reader to decide what to believe. The work of Herodotus is reported to have been read ("rehearsed") at festivals where prizes were awarded, such as the one at
Olympia. Herodotus views history as a source of moral lessons, with conflicts and wars flowing from initial acts of injustice that propagate through cycles of revenge. In contrast, Thucydides claims to confine himself to factual reports of contemporary political and military events, based on unambiguous, first-hand, eye-witness accounts, though - unlike Herodotus - he actually doesn't reveal his sources. Thucydides views life exclusively as
political life and history in terms of
political history. Morality plays no role in the analysis of political events while geographic and ethnographic aspects are, at best, of secondary importance.
Thucydides was held up as the model of a truthful historian by subsequent Greek historians like
Ctesias,
Diodorus,
Strabo,
Polybius, and
Plutarch.
Lucian refers to Thucydides as having given Greek historians their
law, requiring them to say
what had been done (ὡς ἐπράχθη). Greek historians of the
4th century BC accepted that history was political history and that contemporary history was the proper domain of a historian though, unlike Thucydides, they continued to view history as a source of moral lessons. Some of them wrote pamphlets denigrating Herodotus, known to them as the 'father of lies', though the Roman politician and writer
Cicero does call Herodotus the "father of history."
Thucydides and Herodotus were largely forgotten during the Middle Ages but Herodotus became a very respected author in the 16th and 17th century, in part because of the discovery of America, where customs and animals were encountered even more surprising than those related by Herodotus, and in part because of the
Reformation when the
Histories provided a basis for establishing a biblical chronology, as advocated by
Isaac Newton. Even during the Renaissance, Thucydides attracted less interest among historians than his successor Polybius. However, though
Niccolò Machiavelli, the 16th century Florentine political philosopher who wrote
Il Principe (
The Prince), in which he held that the sole aim of a prince (politician) was to seek power regardless of religious or ethical considerations, doesn't mention Thucydides very much, later authors have noted a close affinity between them. In the 17th century, the English political philosopher
Thomas Hobbes, the author of an influential book,
Leviathan, that advocated highly authoritarian systems of government, was an admirer of Thucydides and wrote an important translation of Thucydides in
1628. Thucydides, Hobbes, and Machiavelli are together considered as founding fathers of the school of
political realism, according to which states are primarily motivated by the desire for military and economic
power or security, rather than ideals or ethics.
The reputation of Thucydides greatly revived in the 19th century. A Thucydides cult developed among German philosophers such as
Friedrich Schelling,
Friedrich Schlegel, and
Friedrich Nietzsche who stated: "in him [Thucydides], the portrayer of man, that culture of the most impartial knowledge of the world finds its last glorious flower." Among leading historians, such as
Eduard Meyer,
Macaulay, and
Leopold von Ranke who developed modern source-based history writing, Thucydides was again the model historian. They valued in particular the philosophical and artistic component of his work.. However, the reputation of Herodotus was high as well among German historians: the history of civilization was increasingly viewed as complementary to political history.
In the 20th century, a different mode of
historiography was pioneered by
Johan Huizinga,
Marc Bloch, and
Braudel that was no longer inspired by Thucydides. Instead, it emphasized the study of long term cultural and economic developments, and the patterns of everyday life, over that of political history. The
Annales School, which represents this direction, has been viewed as extending the tradition of Herodotus . At the same time, the influence of Thucydides became increasingly prominent in the area of
international relations through the work of
Hans Morgenthau,
Leo Strauss and
Edward Carr . The tension between the Thucydidean and Herodotean traditions extends beyond historical research. According to
Irving Kristol, considered to be the founder of American
Neoconservatism, Thucydides wrote "the favorite neoconservative text on foreign affairs," and Thucydides is a required text at the
Naval War College. On the other hand, author and labor lawyer
Thomas Geoghegan recommends Herodotus as a better source than Thucydides for drawing historical lessons relevant for the present.
Thucydides in popular culture
In 1991, the BBC broadcast a new version of John Barton's 'The War that Never Ends', which had first been performed on stage in the 1960s. This adapts Thucydides' text, together with short sections from Plato's dialogues. More information about it can be found on the
Internet Movie Database
.
Quotations
- "But, the bravest are surely those who have the clearest vision of what is before them, glory and danger alike, and yet notwithstanding, go out to meet it."
- "The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must."
- "It is a general rule of human nature that people despise those who treat them well, and look up to those who make no concessions."
- "War takes away the easy supply of daily wants, and so proves a rough master, that brings most men's characters to a level with their fortunes."
- "The cause of all these evils was the lust for power arising from greed and ambition; and from these passions proceeded the violence of parties once engaged in contention."
Quotations about Thucydides
... the first page of Thucydides is, in my opinion, the commencement of real history. All preceding narrations are so intermixed with fable, that philosophers ought to abandon them, to the embellishments of poets and orators. (David Hume, „Of the Populousness of Ancient Nations“)Further Information
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