The Landmark Thucydides: A Comprehensive Guide to the Peloponnesian War

by Thucydides

At Book 1.21–22 Thucydides clearly outlined his own methods of historical inquiry, offering a self-conscious candor rare in ancient narrative writing. He did not trust first impressions, he says, not even his own. But through inquiry and cross-examination of witnesses (“tried by the most severe and detailed tests possible”), autopsy, and apparent inspection of written documents, Thucydides claims an objective inquiry that has “cost me some labor.” His later admission that his own exile allowed him time for careful investigation, “especially with the Peloponnesians” (5.26.5), suggests the image of a careful and nonpartisan note taker, eager to hunt down the principals themselves—both Athenian and Spartan—who took part in the war. His keen knowledge of Spartan custom and tradition (1.20.3; 4.80; 5.66.2–72.4) bears out this confident assertion. While it is once again fashionable to see this statement of principles at 1.21–22 as a clever smokescreen of sorts, a sham to hide biased fiction packaged as “objective history,” such modern cynicism rings mostly false for a variety of reasons. Although some of Thucydides’ narrative is highly stylized and focused deliberately on just a few individuals who best illustrate the author’s own ideas about fate, chance, and human experience, elsewhere he is clearly aiming to be accurate, objective, and comprehensive. Anonymous men are questioned (6.55.1), oracular pronouncements investigated (2.17.1; 2.54.2–5; 5.16), poets and prose authors b...

Methodology.