The History of the Peloponnesian War

Obviously one of the ornaments of Classical History, this Penguin edition, translated by Rex Warner has been on my shelf, and occasionally been referred to for the last sixty years. Though not as lively as the Plutarch biographies dealing with some of the popular figures of this war, or as simple in approach as Herodotus, this is a basic book in historical education. While Thucydides was a participant in some of the events he describes, the author, probably a minor commander on the Athenian side of the struggle,does make efforts to seem even handed in his account of a brutal and exhausting struggle. Rex Warner's translation seems readable. The Mapping is sparse and not really adequate. For those desiring to discover how the war eventually ended, there is a book by Xenophon describing the final years of the war. The Penguin edition of that work is called "A History of My Times." While this 551 page edition does have an index, it is a fairly sketchy effort. I note the ISBN cited here is of an E-book edition. ( )

Thucydides predicted that the lessons in his History of the Peloponnesian War would be valid “for ever” (I, 22, p. 48), and sure enough, scholars still apply his concepts. Graham Allison, for example, in Destined for War (2017), examines several wars between established powers and rising ones, and whether the United States and China “can escape Thucydides’s trap.”

Now that the world is in the midst of a pandemic, Thucydides’s account of the Plague of Athens (II, 47-55. Pp. 151-6) takes on additional interest. Thucydides contracted the disease but survived. Pericles, Athens’s greatest leader, died of it. A medical symposium in 1999 judged that the Plague of Athens was typhus, but in light of the significance of coronaviruses, that judgment may need reexamination. Thucydides concluded that “Nothing did the Athenians so much harm . . . or so reduced their strength for war” (III, 87: p. 246).

Thucydides was an Athenian strategos (a general and also an admiral) until relieved of his command and exiled. Exile enabled him to write about the war with relative impartiality, because he had access to information from Sparta and other city states. He appears to have been inured to the suffering and death in ordinary battles, and he does not address why the Greek city states so often chose war over peace, but he was appalled by the bitterness of civil conflict, when political and personal enmities intermingled, moderation was denounced as cowardice and “words, too, had to change their usual meanings” (III, 82, p. 242).

Some readers will find the History an uncongenial work of a hard-bitten and humorless author who grinds through obscure battles, amphibious expeditions and local revolts. To make more sense of the narrative, readers can skip the inadequate maps in the Penguin Classic in favor of The Ohio State University’s computerized geographic information: https://ehistory.osu.edu/exhibitions/peloponnesian. ( )

It's been so long since I read this that I can't really remember the details.
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888.01 TOU

888.01 THU