P.J. Rhodes - Thucydides

Thucydides

Thucydides

P. J. Rhodes

Bloomsbury Academic

An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

ANCIENTS IN ACTION

Boudicca

Marguerite Johnson

Catiline

Barbara Levick

Catullus

Amanda Hurley

Cleopatra

Susan Walker and Sally-Ann Ashton

Hadrian

James Morwood

Hannibal

Robert Garland

Horace

Philip D. Hills

Lucretius

John Godwin

Martial

Peter Howell

Ovid: Love Songs

Genevieve Lively

Ovid: Myth and Metamorphosis

Sarah Annes Brown

Pindar

Anne Pippin Burnett

Sappho

Marguerite Johnson

Spartacus

Theresa Urbainczyk

Tacitus

Rhiannon Ash

Contents

My thanks to Dr R. D. Rees and to the staff of Bloomsbury for inviting me to write this book and encouraging me as I worked on it. This series of books, Ancients in Action, introduces major figures of the ancient world to the modern general reader, including the essentials of each subjects life, works and significance for later western civilisation. I hope that my book will be found interesting and worthwhile by students as well as by the modern general reader, and will encourage readers of both kinds to read and enjoy Thucydides, and I end the book with a guide to further reading, but the publishers did not want and I have not set out to provide a textbook.

I have been involved with Thucydides for many years, and inevitably I say some things in this book which I have said previously elsewhere, in different ways and on different levels for different audiences. In particular I thank Oxbow Books (successors to Aris and Phillips) for permission to adapt material from my editions of books I, II, III and IV. 1V. 24, and Oxford University Press for permission to adapt material from my Introduction to and Notes on the Oxford Worlds Classics translation of Thucydides by M. Hammond. All translations are my own, apart from the quotations on p. 84.

References by numbers alone (e.g. I. 2. iiiiv) are to Thucydides. For other texts I use the following abbreviations:

( Dates in the form 478/7 are either Athenian official years, beginning in midsummer, or from 431 onwards Thucydidean years, beginning in spring )

499493 Ionian Revolt against Persia

Persian invasion of Greece (battle of Marathon)

480479 Persian invasion of Greece (battles of Thermopylae, Artemisium, Salamis, Plataea)

478/7 foundation of Delian League

c. 460 birth of Thucydides

c. 460446 First Peloponnesian War

440439 Athens war against Samos

435433 war between Corinth and Corcyra

Athens attack on Potidaea

Thebes attack on Plataea

beginning of Peloponnesian War

430427/6 plague in Athens

battles in Gulf of Corinth, aborted Spartan attack on Piraeus

428427 revolt of Mytilene against Athens

capitulation of Plataea to Sparta

427425 civil war in Corcyra

427424 Athens campaign in Sicily

Athens defeat in Aetolia

426/5 campaign in north-western Greece

Athens success at Pylos

Athens capture of Cythera

Athens unsuccessful attack on Megara

424/3 Athens defeat by Boeotians at Delium

424422 campaign to north-west of Aegean

one-year truce between Athens and Sparta

Peace of Nicias

Athens alliance with Argos and other Peloponnesians

Spartas victory over Athens and allies at Mantinea

Athens capture of Melos

religious scandals at Athens

415413 Athens major campaign in Sicily

Spartas occupation of Decelea

Spartas first alliance with Persia

oligarchic revolutions in Athens

411 autumn end of Thucydides narrative

Athens victory over Sparta at Cyzicus

Spartas victory over Athens at Notium

Athens victory over Sparta at Arginusae

Spartas victory over Athens at Aegospotami

Athens capitulation, end of Peloponnesian War

c. 400 death of Thucydides

Thucydides, the Athenian historian, lived from about 460 b.c. to a little after 404, and wrote a history of the Peloponnesian War, the war between Athens and Sparta, at the time the two most powerful states in Greece, which began in 431 and ended with Spartan victory in 404. Although there are a few allusions to the end of the war, he did not live to finish his history, but the narrative breaks off in the autumn of 411. The war was important, because, as Thucydides says, it was long drawn out (I. 23. i), and most of the Greek world, together with some non-Greek peoples, were caught up in it (I. 1. iii), though it did not finally settle the rivalry between Athens and Sparta, which continued into the fourth century. Thucydides history of the war is important, because he lived through it and was involved in it, and because his history has impressed readers as a work of exceptional thoroughness and intellectual calibre, and it has been admired ever since, both in antiquity and in more recent times.

In it he sought not only to establish what happened but also to explain how and why it happened, writing:

To the listener its lack of a fabulous element will perhaps make it less attractive; but if it is judged useful by those who want to examine a clear account of what happened, the like of which or similar things will in the course of human nature some time happen again, that will suffice.

Not lacking in confidence, he continued:

What I have written is a possession for all time rather than a competition piece for immediate hearing (I. 22. iv)