Abstract
Thucydides is generally considered one of the greatest Greek historians from antiquity, and he envisioned his historiographical project primarily as a pedagogical act designed to teach future generations the fundamental laws that govern the affairs of states and individuals in both politics and war. At once the product of the intellectual developments in Athens during the latter half of the fifth century BCE, as well as a unique genius who combined literary greatness and a new level of accuracy and objectivity in the nascent genre of historiography, Thucydides wrote his text on the Peloponnesian War with a single educational aim in mind, that it be “a possession for all time,” and this he indeed accomplished in that it has inspired and influenced writers of history as well as political theorists and others from his own time until the present day. His philosophical insights into human nature, conduct, and language are still applicable to contemporary concerns, both societal and international, and together they earn him a place as one of the greatest teachers within the Western intellectual tradition.
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Notes
- 1.
One thinks immediately of the Roman historian Sallust (ca. 86–ca. 35 BCE) who was profoundly influenced by Thucydides and who puts this same point about language into the mouth of Cato the Younger in a speech surrounding the revolutionary activities of a group of Roman aristocrats toward the end of the Republic: “For a long time now, we have lost the true names of things: to bribe using another’s goods is called generosity, and audacity in wicked undertakings is courage. Because of this, the Republic has been placed in the most extreme peril” (Sallust ca. 42 BCE/1991: 52.11; own translation).
- 2.
Though much overused, the term “Orwellian” in common parlance relates to what in the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four is known as “Newspeak,” wherein a totalitarian government controls its population by means of creating cognitive dissonance through such slogans as “cowardice is courage,” “war is peace,” “slavery is freedom,” and “ignorance is strength.” More pointedly, Orwell describes this phenomenon as characteristic of the authoritarian regimes of his day in his essay Politics and the English Language, saying that, “When the general atmosphere is bad, language must suffer…But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought” (Orwell, 1946: 873).
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Further Reading
Balot, R. S. F., & Foster, E. (Eds.). (2017). The Oxford handbook of Thucydides. Oxford University Press.
Connor, W. R. (1984). Thucydides. Princeton University Press.
Greenwood, E. (2006). Thucydides and the shaping of history. Duckworth.
Hammond, M. (2009). The Peloponnesian War: Thucydides. Oxford University Press.
Hornblower, S. (1987). Thucydides. John’s Hopkins University Press.
Lattimore, S. (1998). The Peloponnesian War: Thucydides. Hackett.
Rengakos, A., & Tsamakis, A. (Eds.). (2006). Brill’s companion to Thucydides. Brill.
de Romilly, J. (1963). Thucydides and Athenian imperialism. (P. Tody, Trans.). Alden Press.
Rusten, J. S. (Ed.). (2009). Oxford readings in classical studies: Thucydides. Oxford University Press.
Strassler, R. B. (1996). The landmark Thucydides: A comprehensive guide to the Peloponnesian War. Free Press.
Taylor, M. C. (2010). Thucydides, Pericles, and the idea of Athens in the Peloponnesian War. Cambridge University Press.
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Keil, M. (2023). Thucydides (ca. 460 - ca. 400BCE). In: Geier, B.A. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Educational Thinkers . Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-81037-5_18-1
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