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"From the eighteenth century onwards, the ancient Greek writer Thucydides (c.460 c.395 bc) was viewed as the most important classical historian. He was acclaimed not only as a vital source for reconstructing antiquity but as a purveyor of timeless political wisdom. His name is almost inescapable in nineteenth-century discussions of history's nature and purpose. And his spirit, or the image of him constructed by German historicists, remains a significant presence in more recent debates about historical method. It is remarkable, then, that the trajectory of Thucydides' modern reception has never been properly studied. Neville Morley here sets right that neglect. He examines different aspects of the reception of Thucydides within modern western historiography, casting fresh light on ideas about history and the historian in the contemporary world. His nuanced readings illuminate changing notions of the nature and purpose of history and of the historian's proper task. This latest volume in the I.B.Tauris 'New Directions in Classics' series makes a bold and significant contribution to understandings of how to reclaim the past."--Bloomsbury Publishing.
This book addresses the question of how and why history begins with the work of Thucydides. The History of the Peloponnesian War is distinctive in that it is a prose narrative, meant to be read rather than performed. It focuses on the unfolding of contemporary great power politics to the exclusion of almost all other elements of human life, including the divine. The power of Thucydides' text has never been attributed either to the charm of its language or to the entertainment value of its narrative, or to some personal attribute of the author. In this study, Darien Shanske analyzes the difficult language and structure of Thucydides' History and argues that the text has drawn in so many readers into its distinctive world view precisely because of its kinship to the contemporary language and structure of Classical Tragedy. This kinship is not merely a matter of shared vocabulary or even aesthetic sensibility. Rather, it is grounded in a shared philosophical position, in particular on the polemical metaphysics of Heraclitus.
Ideas of history: Ktema es aiei : Thucydides' concept of "learning through history" and its realization in his work / Kurt A. Raaflaub -- The distribution of character judgments in Thucydides / Matthieu de Bakker -- Ascribing motivation in Thucydides : between historical research and literary representation / Melina Tamiolaki -- The causes of the Athenian pestilence and the plague / Paul Demont -- Representations of time and space: The presence of the past in Thucydides / Jonas Grethlein -- The Cylon conspiracy : Thucydides and the uses of the past / Tim Rood -- Katâ ethne kai kata poleis : from the catalogues to the archaeologies / Roberto Nicolai -- In the shadow of Pericles: Athens' Samian victory and the organization of the Pentekontaetia / Marek Węcowski -- Transformations of landscapes in Thucydides / Vassiliki Pothou -- Thucydides and politics: "Reading" Athens : foreign perceptions of the agency of leaders and demos in Thucydides / Sarah Brown Ferrario -- Thucydides and the masses / Suzanne Saad -- Thucydides' Pericles : between historical reality and literary representation /Panos Christodoulou -- Aspects of the narrative: The balance of power and compositional balance: Thucydides, book I / June Allison -- Blurring the boundaries of speech: Thucydides and indirect discourse / Paula Debnar -- The narrative strategy: observations on the 7th book of Thucydides / Anna Lamari -- "The dot on the i" : Thucydidean epilogues / Hans-Peter Stahl -- The narrative legacy of Thucydides: Polybius book 1 / Nikos Miltsios -- The language of Thucydides: The litotes of Thucydides / Pierre Pontier -- History as presence : time, tense and narrative modes in Thucydides / Rutger J. Allan -- Textual structure and modality in Thucydides' military exhortations / Antonis Takmakis, Charalambos Themistokleous -- Attributive discourse in the speeches of Thucydides / Maria Pavlou -- Difficult statements in Thucydides / Jonathan Price -- The language of Pericles / Daniel P. Tompkins.
Designed for students with little or no background in ancient Greek language and culture, this collection of extracts from The History of the Peloponnesian War includes those passages that shed most light on Thucydides' political theory--famous as well as important but lesser-known pieces frequently overlooked by nonspecialists. Newly translated into spare, vigorous English, and situated within a connective narrative framework, Woodruff's selections will be of special interest to instructors in political theory and Greek civilization. Includes maps, notes, glossary.
A Handbook to the Reception of Thucydides offers an invaluable guide to the reception of Thucydides, with a strong emphasis on comparing and contrasting different traditions of reading and interpretation. • Presents an in-depth, comprehensive overview of the reception of the Greek historian Thucydides • Features personal reflections by eminent scholars on the significance and perennial importance of Thucydides’ work • Features an internationally renowned cast of contributors, including established academics as well as new voices in the field
Kagan, one of the foremost classics scholars, illuminates the historian Thucydides and his greatest work, "The Peloponnesian War," both by examining him in the context of his time and by considering him as a revisionist historian.
Thucydides' work was one of the most exciting creations in the cultural history of Greece in the fifth century BC and it still poses fresh and challenging questions about the writing of history. There is a marked tension in Thucydides' History between his aim to write about contemporary events and his desire that his work should outlast the period in which he composed it. Thucydides and the Shaping of History addresses two important issues: how contemporary was the History when it was written in the fifth century, and how 'contemporary' is it now? This book combines a close analysis of Thucydides' narrative with a discussion of its intellectual motivation; it examines how the historian attempted to determine the way in which readers would respond to his conception of the events of the Atheno-Peloponnesian War, and to ensure the continuing influence of his ideas.
Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War is the earliest surviving realist text in the European tradition. As an account of the Peloponnesian War, it is famous both as an analysis of power politics and as a classic of political realism. From the opening speeches, Thucydides' Athenians emerge as a new and frightening source of power, motivated by self-interest and oblivious to the rules and shared values under which the Greeks had operated for centuries. Gregory Crane demonstrates how Thucydides' history brilliantly analyzes both the power and the dramatic weaknesses of realist thought. The tragedy of Thucydides' history emerges from the ultimate failure of the Athenian project. The new morality of the imperialists proved as conflicted as the old; history shows that their values were unstable and self-destructive. Thucydides' history ends with the recounting of an intellectual stalemate that, a century later, motivated Plato's greatest work. Thucydides and the Ancient Simplicity includes a thought-provoking discussion questioning currently held ideas of political realism and its limits. Crane's sophisticated claim for the continuing usefulness of the political examples of the classical past will appeal to anyone interested in the conflict between the exercise of political power and the preservation of human freedom and dignity.
In Thucydides and the Pursuit of Freedom, Mary P. Nichols argues for the centrality of the idea of freedom in Thucydides' thought. Through her close reading of his History of the Peloponnesian War, she explores the manifestations of this theme. Cities and individuals in Thucydides' history take freedom as their goal, whether they claim to possess it and want to maintain it or whether they desire to attain it for themselves or others. Freedom is the goal of both antagonists in the Peloponnesian War, Sparta and Athens, although in different ways. One of the fullest expressions of freedom can be seen in the rhetoric of Thucydides’ Pericles, especially in his famous funeral oration. More than simply documenting the struggle for freedom, however, Thucydides himself is taking freedom as his cause. On the one hand, he demonstrates that freedom makes possible human excellence, including courage, self-restraint, deliberation, and judgment, which support freedom in turn. On the other hand, the pursuit of freedom, in one’s own regime and in the world at large, clashes with interests and material necessity, and indeed the very passions required for its support. Thucydides’ work, which he himself considered a possession for all time, therefore speaks very much to our time, encouraging the defense of freedom while warning of the limits and dangers in doing so. The powerful must defend freedom, Thucydides teaches, but beware that the cost not become freedom itself.