- Thucydides' life: note his "second introduction"
at V.26:
- "I myself remember that all the time from the
beginning to the end of the war it was being put about by
many people that the war would last thrice nine years. I
lived through the whole of it, being of an age to
understand what was happening."
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- Book 1, paragraph 1: The historian's
problem--evidence: lack of evidence and interpretation of
evidence.
- The archaeology (1.1-19) is less a description of
early Greece or a chronicle of events as the
establishment of a WAY OF LOOKING AT THE PAST. (Connor,
1991)
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- To whom does Thucydides explicitly contrast his
way of dealing with the historian's problem?
- The poets, who exaggerate (e.g. Homer,
Trojan War)
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- The logographers/prose writers, who
are interested in sensationalism and who pass
on unreliable information (e.g. Herodotus,
Persian Wars)
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- Thucydides uses the contemporary examples of
Sparta and Athens to claim that one cannot judge cities
by their APPEARANCE instead of by ACTUAL POWER. What IS
actual power by Thucydides' reckoning?
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Actual power is economically based: power
based on access to and deployment of
resources.
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Take for example Thucydides' treatment of
the Trojan War in contrast to Homer's.
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- For Homer, what determines the
progress and eventual outcome of the war?
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- For Thucydides, what determined the
progress and eventual outcome of the Trojan
War?
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- Thucydides offers his own method as a scientific
method based on scrutinizing evidence; it argues for
third person objectivity and is designed to inspire a
sense of security in the reader.
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- Thucydides uses a grid, or set of criteria, by
which he scrutinizes evidence, both ancient and
contemporary (e.g., reports about the Peloponnesian War).
We may observe elements of his interpretive grid in the
archaeology, and will watch for it throughout the rest of
his history:
- what is "likely" to have happened (a
Sophistic style of argumentation)
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- naval power inclines particularly
toward accumulation of wealth and empire
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- human nature = accumulation of wealth
(=power) inclines the wealthy/powerful to
dominate the poor/powerless
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- The REAL CAUSE, as opposed to intermediate causes,
of the Peloponnesian War is, in Thucydides' view, the
growth of Athenian power and the fear this generated in
the Spartans (1.23)
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- NOTE WELL what Thucydides says about his method
with respect to SPEECHES and EVENTS!! Keep what he says
in mind as you read the next assignment, which consists
of a set of speeches.
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