Thucydides Roundtable, Book I: An introduction
Thucydides earned a place at my “internal council” table. A spot has been saved for him near the doorway, between the seats given to Xunzi and Ibn Khaldun. One day he might sit opposite to Tocqueville; the next he will debate with Madison. In all cases I will be glad to hear his voice. But Thucydides is a wily one, and I am not quite ready to let him in yet. I have too many questions that must first be answered. So I invite him instead (or, at least, so I imagine) to a cozy side room, warmed by a great fire place and graced with two old armchairs. I ask him to sit down and bear kindly the interrogation that is to follow.
- “How should I read your book?”
- “Should it be understood as a work of what we call history, or literature, or social science?”
- “How can I distinguish between your narrative of events and the events themselves?”
- “Could your explanations be wrong? How would I know?”
- “And why, for heaven’s sake, did you not tell us when and how the Athenians passed the sanctions on Megara?”
Thucydides smiles, pulls out his manuscript, and begins his reply. I listen carefully, questioning here, prodding there, occasionally crying out, “You rascal, you almost fooled me!” and then arguing furiously against what I hear. I know these questions will not all be resolved in one sitting. It will go on for weeks, I think, and even then some queries will remain unanswered. But by then the old Hellene will be ready to take his seat place at my table. I, in turn, will have learned a great deal about the world and its workings that I’d never considered before.
Luckily for you, Thucydides no longer lives in flesh and blood. I cannot secret him off to my study for weeks on end to prevent others from stealing his company. Everyone reading this has an equal claim to the historian; all can spend their evenings considering his words. I invite you to do so. Question him about his work, argue with him about war and power, badger him about what he might think of the wars in Vietnam or Iraq. Ask away! Just remember to write down what you have learned. Share with us what you have gained by wrestling with Thucydides.
I will have more to say about Book I later this week. For now, welcome to the Thucydides Roundtable.
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1 Joseph Sobran, “Reading Old Books,” The Imaginative Conservative (8 July 2013).
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zen:
October 18th, 2016 at 12:08 am
Superb beginning, Mr. Greer.
J.ScottShipman:
October 18th, 2016 at 1:22 am
First rate, sir! Love the Sobran quote!
Mike-K:
October 18th, 2016 at 1:59 am
Well begun is half done. I read Thucydides in high school and again in college. We know him because he wrote it down. Sophocles and Aeschylus wrote things down. It is only benign chance that saved them from the ravages of time.
Karl Walling:
October 18th, 2016 at 2:20 am
Inviting beginning.
HG:
October 18th, 2016 at 3:25 am
If the rest is as good as your introduction, it will be a masterpiece.
Emmett:
October 18th, 2016 at 4:20 am
I was on the fence until this lovely introduction. Now I’m off to the bookstore.
Lexington Green:
October 18th, 2016 at 4:24 am
Bravo, sir.
I have set sail with Thucydides, and will have a few words about a few words in Book I posted soon!
nati:
October 18th, 2016 at 9:23 am
Excellent!
I read this book several times and now read it again specially for this occasion.
It is one of my favorities.
One of the questions I Would ask Thucidides is what was the reason he did not finish his book.
Thank you!
Pauline Kaurin:
October 18th, 2016 at 4:25 pm
This is a nice start! It raises well the question of why we ought to read Thucydides and how we ought to do so. It was the second book this year for my Honors Experience of War course and my students had interesting things to say. For my post (in a day or two) I will focus on one issue: the role of political rhetoric, both in the culture of Greece and the run up to this war. Stay tuned!
A. E. Clark:
October 18th, 2016 at 4:56 pm
The genius of Thucydides does indeed set the Peloponnesian war apart from other wars, but I would suggest that this is not *all* that sets it apart. There were other geniuses involved as well, without whom even this inspired historian could not have produced such an immortal story — Pericles and Themistocles, for example. But, granted, *many* wars gleam with the genius of at least one leader or commander.
The Peloponnesian War has another feature which makes it unusual, perhaps highly unusual. Like many conflicts, it took place (in part) on the plane of social values. As Pericles’ Funeral Oration shows, the contestants were conscious of (and articulate about) standing for different ideals. Two circumstances made the clash of values, in this war, richly dramatic.
The first is that a great many of the city-states were divided into oligarchic and democratic camps that were evenly enough matched to ensure that the large-scale conflict frequently ignited ferocious internecine conflicts on the same issues. (Granted, this was not the case in Sparta herself, but it was the case in many of her allies.) This has happened in other wars — perhaps in the Thirty Years’ War, where substantial opposing religious communities were found in several of the participating powers — but I think it is unusual.
The second is that an inversion of values had occurred in the years leading up to the war. Against Persia, Athens had stood for freedom and continued to invoke freedom as a fundamental value; but she expanded her empire over other Greeks and justified her hegemony as fairly earned. Pericles never said, “As I would not be a slave, so would I not be a master.” The resulting dissonance, and the irony of Greeks fighting for their freedom against the victors of Marathon, add to the tragic fascination of this war.
Cheryl Rofer:
October 18th, 2016 at 7:14 pm
As usual, I will be somewhat contrarian.
Charles Cameron:
October 18th, 2016 at 9:05 pm
A sterling company indeed. I’ll be the neophyte.
Zen:
October 18th, 2016 at 10:28 pm
Cheryl – contrarian views are a welcome and necessary tonic.
.
A.E. I think your point about differing religious ideas is correct. The conservative Spartans were called “the craftsmen of war” not because of their military skills but because of their religious zeal for following divinatory “intelligence” readings on the battlefield. The Periclean regime in Athens was promoting a democratic yet meritocratic humanism and less mystical interpretation of religion through the Parthenon that was at odds with traditional Greek conceptions of the mysteries of the gods that had strong political implications ( later demonstrated in the trial of Socrates) that may have irritated other, more traditional polities as well as Spartan sympathizing elements of Athenian aristocracy
T. Greer:
October 19th, 2016 at 2:21 pm
Thank you all for the kind words.
.
You are right, A.E. Clark, about the fascination with the ideological element of this struggle–it is part of the reason, I think, Thucydides was so popular during the cold war. It is not entirely without parallel today: consider the Philippines, tilting towards China as it throws itself into authoritarianism.
Dangerman:
October 19th, 2016 at 4:31 pm
One of my favorite summaries of the difference between “classes” of people (“lower” class vs. “middle” class) is from the book “Limbo” by Alfred Lubrano:
“How can you compete with people whose parents read them The History of the Peloponnesian War to help them sleep?”
Enrique:
October 21st, 2016 at 2:13 pm
I’m with Emmett, HG, and the others. This intro makes me want to go out and read “the history of the peloponnesian war”; is there a particular translation or specific edition anyone can recommend to me (a first time reader of Thucydides)
zen:
October 21st, 2016 at 2:47 pm
Landmark is very readable, but the first version I read was Penguin, which is probably true for most people (and like most Penguin translations, the cheap price gives you what you pay for though nothing is quite as bad as their translation of On War, which is in a class by itself in terms of turgidity and error). Lynn Rees can probably recommend other editions to you and Donald Kagan’s Peloponnesian War is extremely readable but it is also a “Kaganized” version of the war as he has some disputes with Thucydides to work out.