Thucydides

Thucydides (thsĭd`ĭdēz), c.460–c.400 B.C., Greek historian of Athens, one of the greatest of ancient historians. His family was partly Thracian. As a general in the Peloponnesian War he failed (424 B.C.) to prevent the surrender of the city of Amphipolis to the Spartan commander Brasidas and was exiled until the end of the war. He thus had opportunity to acquaint himself with both the Athenians and the Spartans and to acquire firsthand information for his one work, the incomplete History of the Peloponnesian War. It covered the period from 431 to 411 and was a departure from the histories of the past, both in method and presentation. He wrote a text to be read, not recited, and he was scrupulous in his presentation of facts. Preeminently a military history, chronicling events by the seasons, it completely avoids any reference to social conditions or state policy, unless they have to deal with the progress of the war, and interprets the succession of events in view of the general nature and behavior of man rather than as the result of a fate outside man's influence. The work is enlivened by the well-crafted speeches he puts into the mouths of participants in the events he chronicles, a common technique in his day. The most splendid of these is Pericles' funeral oration. Thucydides' account of the plague, through which he lived, displays his clinical and descriptive attitude and is a standard of its type. He is generally acclaimed as the creator of scholarly history as we know it today. The classic English translation of the History is that of Thomas Hobbes (1629; ed. by David Grene, 1959); modern translations include those by Richard Crawley (1910, repr. 1952), Rex Warner (1954), and R. W. Livingstone (1960).

Bibliography

See studies by J. H. Finley (1942, repr. 1967), G. B. Grundy (2d ed. 1948), H. D. Westlake (1968), and A. G. Woodhead (1970); A. W. Gomme et al., A Historical Commentary on Thucydides (5 vol., 1945–78).

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Thucydides

(born c. 460—died c. 404 BC) Greatest of ancient Greek historians. An Athenian who commanded a fleet in the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides failed to prevent the capture of the important city of Amphipolis and consequently was exiled for 20 years. During that period he wrote his History of the Peloponnesian War; evidently he did not live to complete it, for it stops abruptly in 411 BC. It presents the first recorded political and moral analysis of a nation's war policies, treating the causes of the conflict, the characters of the two states, and the technical aspects of warfare in a carefully drawn, strictly chronological narrative of events, including some in which he took an active part.