thucydides and beyond
"Thucydides is to my taste the first true model of an historian. He reports the facts without judging them, but he omits none of the circumstances proper to make us judge them for ourselves. He puts all he recounts before the reader's eyes. Far from putting himself between the events and his readers, he hides himself. The reader no longer believes he reads; he believes he sees."-Jean Jacques Rousseau from Emile, or of education Rousseau's words convey a quite commonly held notion: Thucydides was undoubtedly the first true historian. Though this is quite a subjective statement, it is quite true that Thucydides had an emphatic effect on the field of history. In fact, after viewing his technique in historiographical terms, it is clear that he was the first to start the move towards a sharper focus on the science of history. History, as an empirical field, developed largely because of his work. Thucydides was born in 460 BC of Thracian roots and was a general in 424 BC in the struggle for the Greek city of Amphipolis.1 Though he failed at securing this city and was exiled, his predicament developed the objective aspect of the field of history when he decided to write about the Peloponnesian War
As alluded to before, Thucydides has also been criticized about the chronology in which he wrote the events. In 1919, Ed Schwartz found that the speeches of the Corinthians and Archidamus to Sparta were composed after the Peace of Nicias, while those of the Athenians and the ephor Stenalaidos were added after 404 BC, after the end of the war.21 If this is true, Thucydides must have once regarded Corinth as the cause of the war and only later saw Sparta's fear of Athens as the cause. Furthermore, Thucydides could have come to this new understanding of Sparta in 404 BC and added the speech of Pericles, because of its support of the causes of the course of events, though at one point Pericles had been thought to have ruined Athens. When conceptualizing the causes of certain situations, Thucydides may have seen that his previous views did not preserve the fluidity he sought to maintain. Instead of stating his flaws, he may have rearranged his previous accounts and added some facets in the interest of his empiricism. His view of history was as dominant in antiquity as it is today. Each society still gets the history it deserves. Realpolitik is still seen as the only rational response in politics, even when it leads to self-destruction. That is natural, once Thucydides' characterization of history is accepted as being the realm of politics and war. The lesson is already there in Thucydides himself: a society which lives by such criteria will inevitably destroy itself.
Some common words found in the essay are:
Peloponnesian War, Thucydides Herodotus, History Italy, Book II, Thucydides Mythistoricus, Furthermore Thucydides, Grosskinsky Patzer, History Church, Rousseau Emile, Earl Clarendon, human nature, peloponnesian war, princeton university press, princeton princeton, york penguin, revolution corcyra, university press, princeton university, princeton princeton university, history italy, history church, university press 1969, penguin 1965, war york routledge, humanity thucydides princeton,
Approximate Word count = 2565
Approximate Pages = 10 (250 words per page double spaced)
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