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Born into a family of Athens's old nobility claiming descent from the Homeric hero Ajax of Salamis, Thucydides pursued a political career under Pericles and served as a general in the Great Peloponnesian War of 431--404 b.c. His subsequent exile for failure to prevent a Spartan takeover of an vis mere Athenian colony in Thrace enabled him to observe the war from both sides. In his history of the war, he examines the policies and motives of the people involved with a calculated rationality that nevertheless conveys great passion. Although his narrative style is lucid and astringent, the language of the speeches that he gives his protagonists is some of the most difficult, yet rhetorically powerful, Greek from any period of antiquity. The work is deeply serious in tone. As Thucydides tells his readers at the beginning of the work, it contains nothing of entertainment value. He meant it, as he says, to be not simply a set-piece written for the delectation of an audience, but a "possession for ever." As Herodotus was the inventor of universal history, Thucydides was the inventor of the analytical historical monograph. He wrote in conscious contrast to Herodotus, whose work is full of entertaining fable and romance. While Herodotus wrote about the past by using all manner of traditions gleaned in his travels, Thucydides considered only contemporary history to be reliable and writes as an interrogator and witness of contemporary men and events. The gods, too, are absent from Thucydides's work, which scrutinizes human motivations as the exclusive business of history. The most powerful intellectual influences visible are the fully rational method of description and prognosis developed by the Hippocratic physicians and the tools of logical analysis and verbal argument then being forged by the Sophists. Behind these, however, lay a sense of tragedy. The history of Thucydides possesses the rhythm of a Sophoclean drama of reversal of fortune in which Athens falls from the pinnacle of imperial success and brilliance into political corruption, ruthless and amoral imperial aggression, and finally utter defeat and disaster. Athens's imperial hubris leads to its nemesis at the hands of Sparta, a conservative and landlocked state that had been powerless at the beginning of the war to inflict significant harm on the Athenians. Thucydides's work is unfinished. It ends abruptly in midsentence during a discussion of the events of the year 411 b.c. It was continued to the end of the war by Xenophon. Although very much the intellectual inferior of Thucydides, Xenophon managed by imitation to infuse this part of his Hellenica (his continuation to 362 b.c. of the history of Thucydides) with an elevation absent in the rest of his work. Until relatively recently, scholars took Thucydides at his word as an objective writer. More recently it has been recognized that his work skillfully promotes a patriotic and political argument, written in the climate of postwar recriminations. He presents Athens's empire as a natural consequence of the position of that city-state in the Greek world and the Athenian leader Pericles as Athens's greatest statesman, a leader who had governed Athens and preserved the empire with a firm and intelligent hand. Thucydides wanted to persuade his readers that Pericles was not the villain who destroyed Athens, that the blame fell to the politicians who came after him and pandered to the most extreme ambitious of the common citizens, the politicians who were the ultimate arbiters of policy in Athens's democracy. Some modern historians remain persuaded by Thucydides's portrait of Pericles and the Athenian democracy, but others argue from Thucydides's own testimony that Pericles led Athens into an unnecessary war in the belief that the opportunity had arrived to advance Athenian domination over the whole of the Greek world. (Bowker Author Biography) vis mindre
Image credit: Bust of Thucydides, Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto

Serier

Værker af Thucydides

The History of the Peloponnesian War (0400) 7,822 eksemplarer
Thucydides, Book 7 (1886) 77 eksemplarer
Thucydides, Book 2 (1989) 76 eksemplarer
Thucydides, Book 6 (1971) 53 eksemplarer
Pericles's Funeral Oration (0404) 41 eksemplarer
Thucydides, Book 1 (1905) 39 eksemplarer
Hérodote - Thucydide : Oeuvres (1964) 32 eksemplarer
The Complete Works of Thucydides (2013) 24 eksemplarer
Pericles Orations (1979) 23 eksemplarer
Thucydides Reader (2005) 21 eksemplarer
Thucydides, Book 3 (1909) 19 eksemplarer
Thucydides, Book 4 (1982) 16 eksemplarer
Thucydides: The Peloponnesian Wars (1963) 15 eksemplarer
Thukydides (1977) 5 eksemplarer
Thucydides, Book 5 5 eksemplarer
The Capture of Sphacteria (2010) 4 eksemplarer
Stories from Thucydides (2021) 3 eksemplarer
Thucydides : Book II (1985) 2 eksemplarer
Thucydides, book 3 2 eksemplarer
La grande dune 2 eksemplarer
Thucydides - Vol. I 2 eksemplarer
THUCYDIDES. (1881) 2 eksemplarer
Thucydidis Historiae Vol I-II (1934) 2 eksemplarer
Thucydides, book I, ch.1-55 (1978) 2 eksemplarer
La Peste ad Atene (2020) 1 eksemplar
Le storie. vol. 2 1 eksemplar
Sull'arte equestre 1 eksemplar
Thukydides in Auswahl (1950) 1 eksemplar
Politische Reden 1 eksemplar
Economico 1 eksemplar
Thucydides book 7 1 eksemplar
Thucydides Bk II 1 eksemplar
Thucydides Bk III 1 eksemplar
Thucydides Bk IV 1 eksemplar
Thucydides Bk VI 1 eksemplar
Thucydides Bk VII 1 eksemplar
Thukydides V 1 eksemplar
Thukydides IV 1 eksemplar
Thukydides III 1 eksemplar
Thukydides II 1 eksemplar
Thoukydidēs 1 eksemplar
Thucydides, Vol II. 1 eksemplar
L'illusione della democrazia (2018) 1 eksemplar
THUCYDIDES. 1 eksemplar
Thucydides Book II 1 eksemplar
Thucydides Book 2 1 eksemplar

Associated Works

The Portable Greek Historians (1959) — Bidragyder — 550 eksemplarer
The Penguin Book of War (1999) — Bidragyder — 450 eksemplarer
Britannica Great Books: Herodotus and Thucydides (1952) — Bidragyder — 350 eksemplarer
The Columbia Anthology of Gay Literature (1998) — Bidragyder — 158 eksemplarer
Greek Civilization and Character (1924) — Bidragyder — 149 eksemplarer
The Mammoth Book of True War Stories (1992) — Bidragyder — 87 eksemplarer
The Book of the Sea (1954) — Bidragyder — 36 eksemplarer
Modern School Classics : Four Greek authors (1968) — Bidragyder — 12 eksemplarer
The Athenian Half-Century 478-431 BC Thucydides I 89-118 (1971)nogle udgaver10 eksemplarer
Selections from Greek Historians (1878) — Bidragyder — 10 eksemplarer
Griekse geschiedschrijvers (1951) — Bidragyder — 6 eksemplarer

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Discussions

OT for GMacAree i Fine Press Forum (november 2023)
New LE: Thucydides The Peloponnesian War i Folio Society Devotees (juli 2023)
Thucydides i Ancient History (december 2021)
Group read - Thucydides' The Peloponnesian War i The 11 in 11 Category Challenge (december 2010)
Translating Thucydides i Ancient History (november 2010)
Herodotus vs. Thucydides i Ancient History (marts 2007)

Anmeldelser

Reason Read: ancient history, nonfiction
This was not an easy read. A lot of towns, names and all in all it was often a blur. I did enjoy some points made in debates and the discussions on oligarchy, democracy, and constitution. I think this might be a reference book but not something I would want to read cover to cover again.
 
Markeret
Kristelh | 58 andre anmeldelser | Jan 31, 2024 |
The version I read was an abridged edition - 96 pages - old Danish translation that were used for high school. Interesting to read about men doing sports naked, about very detailed description of some sort of plague or epidemic - really horrible - that they couldn't find a cure for. But mostly it was long speeches of peace-negotiations or war declarations with moral arguments on why a city should be spared or everyone killed in it.
 
Markeret
ctpress | 58 andre anmeldelser | Jan 27, 2024 |
Bought this book in Newport at the end of our epic summer 2023 PCS. Started reading it to get ahead for the school year. Incredible historical research undertaking by Strassler to make it understandable and less dense to read. I read the entirety of the first four books, but due to time constraints only read key speeches and the paragraph summaries for books 5-8.

From the S&W Syllabus: Thucydides covers all nine Strategy and War course themes in his account of this war, compelling his readers to think through the interrelationship of policy, strategy, and operations and the integration and application of naval power.… (mere)
 
Markeret
SDWets | 20 andre anmeldelser | Sep 1, 2023 |
As this book has been review a zillion times I'm not going to repeat the effort (plus I'm super busy at the moment), but I'll explain why I gave it a three at least.

It's a classic of course, and the translation seems pretty good to my relatively untrained eyes/ears, but the narration was definitely sub-par. I've no idea if there are more recent audiobooks, but I'd definitely recommend looking for one before going for this one by Pat Bottino--or just read a non-audio version of course.
 
Markeret
qaphsiel | 58 andre anmeldelser | Feb 20, 2023 |

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Associated Authors

Pericles Author
Johanna Hanink Translator
Arrian Author
Xenophon Author
Lucretius Author
Victor Davis Hanson Introduction, Contributor
Richard Crawley Translator
Benjamin Jowett Translator
J.W. Barnard Translator
Thomas Hobbes Translator
M. I. Finley Introduction
Rex Warner Translator
Joseph Gavorse Introduction
Fricis Garais Translator
Holger Thesleff Introduction
J. A. Hollo Translator
Savino Ezio Translator
George Giusti Cover designer
M.A. Schwartz Translator
Jack Wolfgang Beck Cover artist
William Smith Translator
Betty Radice Translator
Moses Hadas Introduction
Hanson W. Baldwin Introduction
Martin Hammond Translator
John H. Finley Introduction
Alan L. Boeghehold Contributor
Paul Cartledge Contributor
Nicolle Hirschfeld Contributor
Gregory Crane Contributor
Thomas R. Martin Contributor
William F. Wyatt Contributor
Alan L. Boegehold Contributor
Karl Hude Editor
Sture Linnér Translator
E. H. Blakeney Translator
John O'Connor Illustrator
D. Loenen Translator
J. A. Prout Translator
Helmuth Vretska Translator
Werner Rinner Übersetzer

Statistikker

Værker
206
Also by
11
Medlemmer
12,678
Popularitet
#1,845
Vurdering
4.0
Anmeldelser
109
ISBN
386
Sprog
21
Udvalgt
36

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