Thucydides ( ; ; BC) was an Athenian historian and general. His History of the Peloponnesian War recounts the 5th century BC war between Sparta and Athens until the year 411 BC. Thucydides has been dubbed the father of "scientific history" by those who accept his claims to have applied strict standards of impartiality and evidence-gathering and analysis of cause and effect, without reference to intervention by the gods, as outlined in his introduction to his work.Meyer, p. 67; de Sainte Croix.
Thucydides has been called the father of the school of political realism, which views the political behaviour of individuals and the subsequent outcomes of relations between states as ultimately mediated by, and constructed upon, fear and self-interest.Strauss, p. 139. His text is still studied at universities and military colleges worldwide.Harloe, Katherine, Morley, Neville, eds., Thucydides and the Modern World: Reception, Reinterpretation, and Influence from the Renaissance to the Present. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press (2012). p. 12. The Melian dialogue is regarded as a seminal text of international relations theory, while his version of Pericles's Funeral Oration is widely studied by political theorists, historians, and students of the classics. More generally, Thucydides developed an understanding of human nature to explain behaviour in such crises as plagues, massacres, and wars.
Life In spite of his stature as a historian, modern historians know relatively little about Thucydides's life. The most reliable information comes from his own History of the Peloponnesian War, in which he mentions his nationality, paternity, and birthplace. Thucydides says that he fought in the war, contracted the plague, and was exiled by the democracy. He may have also been involved in quelling the Samian Revolt..
Evidence from the classical period Thucydides identifies himself as an Athenian, telling us that his father's name was Olorus and that he was from the Athenian deme of Halimous.. According to one disputed anecdote, when Thucydides was 10–12 years old, he and his father were supposed to have gone to the agora of Athens where the young Thucydides heard a lecture by the historian Herodotus. According to some accounts, the young Thucydides wept with joy after hearing the lecture, deciding that writing history would be his life's calling. The same account also claims that after the lecture, Herodotus spoke with the youth and his father, stating: "Oloros your son yearns for knowledge." The episode is most likely from a later Greek or Roman account of his life.Herodot iz Halikarnasa. Zgodbe. Ljubljana: Slovenska Matica v Ljubljani (2003), p. 22. The original quote (in Slovene): Oloros, tvoj sin koprni po izobrazbi.
He survived the Plague of Athens,. which killed Pericles and many other Athenians. There is a first observation of acquired immunity.. He also records that he owned gold mines at Scapte Hyle (literally "Dug Woodland"), a coastal area in Thrace, opposite the island of Thasos..
Because of his influence in the Thracian region, Thucydides was sent as a strategos (general) to Thasos in 424 BC. During the winter of 424–423 BC, the Spartan general Brasidas attacked Amphipolis, a half-day's sail west from Thasos on the Thracian coast, sparking the Battle of Amphipolis. Eucles, the Athenian commander at Amphipolis, sent to Thucydides for help.. Brasidas, aware of the presence of Thucydides on Thasos and his influence with the people of Amphipolis, and afraid of help arriving by sea, acted quickly to offer moderate terms to the Amphipolitans for their surrender, which they accepted. Thus, when Thucydides arrived, Amphipolis was already under Spartan control.–106.3.
Amphipolis was of considerable strategic importance, and news of its fall caused great consternation in Athens.. The fall of the city was blamed on Thucydides, although he claimed that it was not his fault and that he had been unable to reach it in time. Because of his failure to save Amphipolis, he was exiled:.
Using his status as an exile from Athens to travel freely among the Peloponnesian allies, Thucydides was able to view the war from the perspective of both sides. Thucydides claimed that he began writing his history as soon as the war broke out, because he thought it would be one of the greatest wars waged among the Greeks,
This is all that Thucydides wrote about his own life, but a few other facts are available from reliable contemporary sources. Herodotus wrote that the name Olorus, Thucydides's father's name, was connected with Thrace and Thracian royalty.. Thucydides was probably connected through family to the Athenian statesman and general Miltiades and his son Cimon, leaders of the old aristocracy supplanted by the Radical Democrats. Cimon's maternal grandfather's name also was Olorus, making the connection quite likely. Another Thucydides lived before the historian and was also linked with Thrace, making a family connection between them very likely as well.
Combining all the fragmentary evidence available, it seems that Thucydides' family had owned a large estate in Thrace, one that even contained gold mines, and which allowed the family considerable and lasting affluence. The security and continued prosperity of the wealthy estate must have necessitated formal ties with local kings or chieftains, which explains the adoption of the distinctly Thracian royal name Óloros into the family. Once exiled, Thucydides is commonly said to have taken up permanent residence in the estate and, given his ample income from the gold mines, he was able to dedicate himself to full-time history writing and research. In essence, he was a well-connected gentleman of considerable resources who, after involuntarily retiring from the political and military spheres, decided to fund his own historical investigations.
Later sources
The remaining evidence for Thucydides's life comes from later and rather less reliable ancient sources; Marcellinus wrote Thucydides's biography about a thousand years after his death. According to Pausanias, someone named Oenobius had a law passed allowing Thucydides to return to Athens, presumably shortly after the city's surrender and the end of the war in 404 BC. Pausanias goes on to say that Thucydides was murdered on his way back to Athens, placing his tomb near the Melite gate.Pausanias, Description of Greece, 1.23.9. Many doubt this account, seeing evidence to suggest he lived as late as 397 BC, or perhaps slightly later. Plutarch preserves a tradition that he was murdered in Skaptē Hulē and that his remains were returned to Athens, where a monument to him was erected in Cimon's family plot.Plutarch, Cimon 4.1.2. There are problems with this, since this was outside Thucydides's deme and the tradition goes back to Polemon, who asserted he had discovered just such a memorial.Luciano Canfora (2006). “Biographical Obscurities and Problems of Composition”. Antonis Tsakmakis, Antonios Rengakos (eds.). Brill's Companion to Thucydides. Brill, pp. 6–7, 63–33. . Didymus mentions another tomb in Thrace.Canfora (2006). p. 8.
Thucydides's narrative breaks off in the middle of the year 411 BC, and this abrupt end has traditionally been explained as due to his death while writing the book, although other explanations have been put forward. During his description of the Athenian plague, he remarks that old Athenians seemed to remember a verse predicting a Dorian War that would bring about a "plague" (loimos) .“ἥξει Δωριακὸς πόλεμος καὶ λοιμὸς ἅμ᾽ αὐτῷ.’ 2:54.2. A dispute later arose, when some claimed that the saying referred to the advent in such a war of "famine" or "starvation" (limos) . Thucydides draws the conclusion that people adapt their recollections to their present state of suffering. Were the same situation to recur, but with people experiencing famine rather than a pestilence, the verse would be remembered differently, in terms of starvation (limos), thereby cancelling the received adage about a plague (loimos).Thucydides, Peloponessian War, 2:54.2–3.Lowell Edmunds, 'Thucydides in the Act of Writing,' in Jeffrey S. Rusten (ed.), Thucydides, Oxford University Press 2009. . pp. 91–113, p. 111.
Thucydides admired Pericles, approving of his power over the people and showing a marked distaste for the demagogues who followed him. He did not approve of the democratic commoners nor of the radical democracy that Pericles ushered in, but considered democracy acceptable when guided by a good leader.. Thucydides's presentation of events is generally even-handed; for example, he does not minimise the negative effect of his own failure at the Battle of Amphipolis. Occasionally, however, strong passions break through, as in his scathing appraisals of the democratic leaders Cleon., . and Hyperbolus.. Sometimes, Cleon has been connected with Thucydides's exile.Marcellinus, Life of Thucydides p. 46.
It has been argued that Thucydides was moved by the suffering inherent in war and concerned about the excesses to which human nature is prone in such circumstances, as in his analysis of the atrocities committed during the civil conflict on Corcyra,–83. which includes the phrase "war is a violent teacher" ().
The History of the Peloponnesian War
Thucydides believed that the Peloponnesian War represented an event of unmatched importance.. As such, he began to write the History at the onset of the war in 431 BC..Zagorin, Perez. Thucydides. (Princeton University Press, 2015), p. 9. He declared his intention was to write an account which would serve as "a possession for all time".. The History breaks off near the end of the 21st year of the war (411 BC), in the wake of the Athenian defeat at Syracuse, and so does not elaborate on the final seven years of the conflict.
The History of the Peloponnesian War continued to be modified well beyond the end of the war in 404 BC, as exemplified by a reference at Book I.1.13. to the conclusion of the war.Mynott, Jeremy, The War of the Peloponnesians and Athenians. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press (2013). p. 11. After his death, Thucydides's History was subdivided into eight books: its modern title is the History of the Peloponnesian War. This subdivision was most likely made by librarians and archivists, themselves being historians and scholars, most likely working in the Library of Alexandria.
Thucydides is generally regarded as one of the first true historians. Like his predecessor Herodotus, known as "the father of history", Thucydides places a high value on eyewitness testimony and writes about events in which he probably took part. He also assiduously consulted written documents and interviewed participants about the events that he recorded. Unlike Herodotus, whose stories often teach that a hubris invites the wrath of the deities, Thucydides does not acknowledge divine intervention in human affairs.