The Landmark Thucydides: A Comprehensive Guide to the Peloponnesian War

by Thucydides

“Revolution thus ran its course from city to city, and the places where it arrived at last, from having heard what had been done before carried to a still greater excess the refinement of their inventions, as manifested in the cunning of their enterprises and the atrocity of their reprisals. Words had to change their ordinary meanings and to take those which were now given them. Reckless audacity came to be considered the courage of a loyal supporter; prudent hesitation, specious cowardice; moderation was held to be a cloak for unmanliness; ability to see all sides of a question incapacity to act on any. Frantic violence became the attribute of manliness; cautious plotting a justifiable means of self-defense. The advocate of extreme measures was always trustworthy; his opponent a man to be suspected. To succeed in a plot was to have a shrewd head, to divine a plot a still shrewder; but to try to provide against having to do either was to break up your party and to be afraid of your adversaries” (3.82.3–5).

Thucydides is writing a strictly military chronicle of the Peloponnesian War, not a cultural or agrarian history of late-fifth-century Greece. In this regard, Herodotus is by far the more inquisitive recorder of ethnography and anthropology, and proves the more sensitive to the role that culture plays in a people’s political and military conduct.

There are also clear heroes and villains in Thucydides’ history. To a modern audience steeped in the behavioral and social sciences, Thucydides can appear to miss nuances in human temperament, concentrating instead on “objective” and absolute criteria such as timidity and heroism or recklessness versus self-control. In his eyes, human behavior is not predicated on or explained by one’s specific environment or upbringing, but instead directed by the play of chance, fate, and hope upon innate character—conditions universal to all and particular to no man.

The ambiguity of a man’s thought and intent is scarcely appreciated in the historian’s effort to paint broad strokes of character. Intention counts for little; action is everything. Pericles is thoroughly majestic (2.65.5–9), and Cleon is violent and mean-spirited (3.36.6; 4.21.3–4.22.2)—period. Most Spartans predictably conform to their conservative and unimaginative stereotypes (1.86.1–1.87.6; 5.105.4), as if better to contrast a few Spartans of unquestioned dash and audacity, like Gylippus (7.1.1–7.7.2) and Brasidas especially (2.25.2; 4.11.4–4.12.1; 4.81; 5.6.3–5.11.5). The rash and amoral Alcibiades is as un-Periclean (6.15.2–4) as the conventional, cautious, and ineffective Nicias. Admiration for men of action like H...

More curious is Thucydides’ very limited angle of vision. Slaves and women are scarcely mentioned. Yet from snippets in Thucydides’ own text it is clear that women played crucial roles during times of sieges (2.4.2; 3.74.2), and must have suffered inordinately from the loss of male providers and es...

From Thucydides and other sources we know that slaves provided at least some of the power for the triremes on both sides. Their flight in numbers was felt by all to have deleterious effects on their host cities (1.139.2; 7.27.5; 8.40.2). More mundanely, no hoplite army could easily march with...

Thucydides’ concentration on political and military affairs is not to suggest that even he could possibly have given a comprehensive account of those events during the twenty-seven-year war (3.90.1).

The purported “Peace of Callias” between Persia and Greece (449),a the important Athenian colony at Brea (445), and the reassessment of the Athenian tributeb (425) all help explain the rise and nature of Athenian power but are ignored by Thucydides.

In the final analysis, what stands out about Thucydides is not his weaknesses but his strengths as a historian. We note his omissions, but no account of the Peloponnesian War or of fifth-century Greece in general is more complete. Some scholars worry over his cut-and-dried heroes and villains. But is there much evidence to suggest that these assessments were fundamentally wrong? Others argue that his speeches are biased distortions, but no one can prove that any are outright fabrications.

At times Thucydides may be clearly mistaken in both detail and interpretation, but the extent of his accuracy and analysis astounds in a world where travel was difficult, written sources rarely available, and the physical obstacles to the writing of history

Even more extraordinary is Thucydides’ ability to use that knowledge to reach a higher wisdom about the nature of human behavior, whether it be unveiled by plague (2.53), revolution (3.82–84), or war (5.103). And never forget that Thucydides was much more than an accurate recorder, more even than a keen judge of human character and the role that natural law and chance play in men’s affairs (3.45.5–7; 3.84.1–3). He was a profound literary artist as well, emotional and poignant on so many surprising occasions.

“most glorious to the victors, and most calamitous to the conquered. They were beaten at all points and altogether; all that they suffered was great; they were destroyed, as the saying is, with a total destruction, their fleet, their army—everything was destroyed, and few out of many returned home.” (7.87)

And while Thucydides, a man of empathy and passion, was proud that he had written his history “not as an essay which is to win the applause of the moment, but as a possession for all time (1.22.4),” The Peloponnesian War turns out to be no dry chronicle of abstract cause and effect. No, it is above all an intense, riveting, and timeless story of strong and weak men, of heroes and scoundrels and innocents too, all caught in the fateful circumstances of rebellion, plague, and war that always strip away the veneer of culture and show us for what we really are. Victor Davis Hanson Professor of Greek Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures California State University, Fresno

The survival of Thucydides’ history over the last two thousand four hundred years is all the more remarkable in that his text has long been characterized by those who have read it (or have been assigned to read it) as difficult, complex, and occasionally obscure.

Since Thucydides’ work is a complex political and military history of a protracted war that took place long ago over a wide expanse of territory, it is not surprising that the general reader—in the absence of maps, specific dates, or knowledge of many practices, beliefs, or technical conditions of the time—is often puzzled by the text and unable to draw pleasure or instruction from it. Indeed, without the guidance of a teacher, or the acquisition of background knowledge from other sources, most readers simply cannot comprehend—let alone appreciate—many of Thucydides’ observations or the intentions and actions of his characters.

Maps of every significant episode are located in the text within that episode. Thus, every city, town, river, mountain, or other geographic feature that is important to the narrative and mentioned in a given episode is referenced to a location on a map found nearby in the text. For complex maps with many labels, a simple grid system permits footnotes to identify sites with map coordinates so that readers will know where to direct their attention on the map and thus minimize the time and effort required to locate a specific site. In the interest of clarity, each map displays the names of only those features that appear in the surrounding text: thus the reader is not forced to turn to a map section elsewhere in the book or a general map crowded with names drawn from the entire work. If the location of a place is unknown, the footnote admits this. If we moderns are not sure of its location, our uncertainty is mentioned in the footnote and indicated on the map with a question mark.

A series of Appendices written by a number of scholars is intended to provide just the specific background information that would be necessary or useful to understanding the text.

The Landmark Edition is intended to increase the number of general readers of Thucydides, both now and in the future, by assisting them to appreciate his great value as a historian, to consider the nature of historiography itself, and to learn about the extraordinary world of ancient Greece—from which our own still derives so much. Despite the edition’s focus on the non-scholar, I believe that the scholar too will find this work’s unique set of features quite useful. If this edition expands the number of general readers who tackle Thucydides and extends their grasp and appreciation of the text, or if it even marginally increases the number of professors and teachers who decide to incorporate Thucydides in their curriculum and to enlarge the amount of his text that they include in their course work, I will rest

The goodness of the land favored the enrichment of particular individuals, and thus created faction which proved a fertile source of ruin. It also invited invasion. [5] Accordingly Attica,5a from the poverty of its soil enjoying from a very remote period freedom from faction, [6] never changed its inhabitants. And here is no minor example of my assertion that the migrations were the cause of there being no correspondent growth in other parts.

The Archaeology1a HELLAS Thucydides offers an anthropological analysis of primitive life, noting that Attica’s poor soil led to overcrowding and the establishment of colonies.

For the love of gain would reconcile the weaker to the dominion of the stronger, and the possession of capital enabled the more powerful to reduce the smaller cities to subjection.

Now Agamemnon’s was a continental power; and he could not have been master of any except the adjacent islands (and these would not be many), if he had not possessed a fleet.

ships. That they were all rowers as well as warriors we see from his account of the ships of Philoctetes, in which all the men at the oar are bowmen. Now it is improbable that many who were not members of the crew sailed if we except the kings and high officers; especially as they had to cross the open sea with munitions of war, in ships, moreover, that had no decks, but were equipped in the old piratical fashion. [5]

TROY A lack of money forced the Greeks at Troy to disperse their force, reduce siege efforts, and forego a quick victory.

Migration and turmoil occurred in Hellas after the Trojan war. When tranquillity returned, Ionia, the islands, Italy, and Sicily were colonized.

Again, the earliest sea fight in history was between the Corinthians and Corcyraeans;

Again, wherever there were tyrants, their habit of providing simply for themselves, of looking solely to their personal comfort and family aggrandizement, made safety the great aim of their policy, and prevented anything great proceeding from them; though they would each have their affairs with their immediate neighbors.

The way that most men deal with traditions, even traditions of their own country, is to receive them all alike as they are delivered, without applying any critical test whatever.

So little pains do the vulgar take in the investigation of truth, accepting readily the first story that comes to hand.

Thucydides notes that people accept traditions that are clearly in error, for example, the tale about Harmodius and Aristogiton.

The absence of romance in my history will, I fear, detract somewhat from its interest; but if it be judged useful by those inquirers who desire an exact knowledge of the past as an aid to the understanding of the future, which in the course of human things must resemble if it does not reflect it, I shall be content. In fine, I have written my work, not as an essay which is to win the applause of the moment, but as a possession for all time.

The real cause, however, I consider to be the one which was formally most kept out of sight. The growth of the power of Athens, and the alarm which this inspired in Sparta, made war inevitable.