What a valuable historical source this is! It has to be placed a little higher even than historians like Tacitus and Livy (who probably had a better idea of what they were doing, given that that they were working as historians in an exisiting field, rather than pretty much creating the field as they went along). There's something quite strange reading about these events from the perspective of someone who doesn't simply want to record history, but also to mention their own part in making it. I still have to remind myself: Thucydides really lived through these events, and played a role in many of them.

The party opposed to the traitors were sufficiently strong in number to prevent the immediate opening of the gates, and with the assistance of the general Eucles (who was there from Athens to protect the place) they sent for help to the other general in the Thraceward region, Thucydides the son of Olorus, the author of this history. He was at Thasos, an island colonized from Paros, about half a day’s sail from Amphipolis. As soon as he received the message he sailed at full speed with the seven ships at his disposal, wanting to reach Amphipolis, if possible, before any move to surrender the city, or, failing that, to secure Eïon.

And that is probably a pretty indicative passage in terms of the style of this text. Yes, it's dry. But Thucydides is not entirely without skill as a story-teller. If you are thinking about reading this, you shouldn't let the lack of liveliness put you off. Thucydides is not a bad writer. In fact, his analysis is often what makes this text enjoyable. Not only was he an eye-witness to events, he was also a knowledgable strategist in and of himself, and could often break down why things went wrong.

They did not have the same opportunity to learn the enemy password, as the Syracusans, getting the better of the battle and keeping their forces concentrated, had less difficulty in recognizing their own side. The result was that if a superior force of Athenians encountered a group of enemy, the enemy could get away by knowing the Athenian password, whereas the other way round, if the Athenians could not respond when challenged for the password, they were killed. But nothing did greater harm than the confusion caused by the singing of the paean, which had a virtually identical sound on both sides. Whenever the Argives, Corcyraeans, or other Dorian contingents on the Athenian side raised their paean, the effect was to frighten the Athenians just as much as the enemy’s paeans.

But yes, it's a comendable text. It's not easy to imagine what our knowledge of the period would look like without it. No doubt, our knowledge of the war would be enormously impoverished.

خوندن این کتاب به همه توصیه می کنم. توکیدید خود در جنگ های پلوپلنزی میان اتحادیه آتنی و اتحادیه مسینایی که به ترتیب دو قدرت آبی و خاکی یونان باستان بودند، شرکت داشته است. برخلاف سایر تاریخ نگاران دنیای باستان در اثر توکیدید هیچ ذکری از اسطوره ها و نیروهای خیالی نیست. او با لحنی بسیار شیوا به تشریح ع��ل سیاسی و اقتصادی واقعی (علل پشت پرده) این جنگ پرداخته است. به همین دلیل است که به درستی به وی لقب پدر واقع گرایی سیاسی را داده اند. عمر وی کفاف نداده است تا انتهای جنگ را تاریخ نگاری کند اما همان قدر هم که روایت کرده است برای درک مکانیزم های که حتی شاید امروزهم در روابط بین الملل استفاده می شوند کافی است. ترجمه هم بسیار شیوا و روان است که جای تقدیر از مترجم، آقای لطفی را دارد

From BBC Radio 4 - Book at Bedtime:
'My work is not a piece of writing designed to meet the taste of an immediate public, but was done to last for ever,' Thucydides

Ancient Greek historian Thucydides' spellbinding first-hand account chronicles the devastating 27-year-long war between Athens and Sparta during the 5th century BC. It was a life-and-death struggle that reshaped the face of ancient Greece and pitted Athenian democracy against brutal Spartan militarism.

Thucydides himself was an Athenian aristocrat and general who went on to record what he saw as the greatest war of all time, applying a passion for accuracy and a contempt for myth admired by historians today. Looking at why nations go to war, what makes a great leader, and whether might can be better than right, he became the father of modern Realpolitik. His influence fed into the works of Machiavelli, Thomas Hobbs and the politics of the Cold War and beyond.

Thucydides' masterful account of the end of Greece's Golden Age, depicts an age of revolution, sea battles, military alliances, plague and massacre, but also great bravery and some of the greatest political orations of all time.
Today: With Spartan distrust of the rising power of Athens, is war inevitable?

1. War Begins
2. From Funerals to Plague
3. Spartan Surrender at Pylos
4. An Athenian Atrocity
5. The Beginning of the End

This is a classic work of history, about the war between Athens and Sparta in the 430s and 420s BC. I'm not terribly interested in the war itself, or the geographical details (though I would have liked it if my Penguin edition had put useful maps in the text closer to the descriptions of events taking place on obscure islands); I hoped to find out from reading it the extent to which Thucydides' reputation as the first proper historian is justifiable.

What I found was rather different to what I expected. This is not an academic history as we know such things, but a commentary on contemporary international relations, propagandistically crafted for a particular domestic interpretation in Athens, rather like most of the books you can find in shops on the War on Terror or the Cold War. Thucydides' use of rhetoric, his visibly partial citation of evidence and his dramatic reconstruction of conversations at which he was not present are all familiar tactics from today's literature. He would have been very much in his intellectual element as a crafter of drama-documentaries. I rate it as fascinating artistically - particularly the complex character of Alcibiades - but barely history.

I blame Thucydides directly for the useless mess that is most academic research into international relations. In Thucydides' account (the Melian dialogue is the most obviously fictional passage, but there are many others) decisions about war and peace (and, later in the text, internal revolution) are made on the basis of perfect or near-perfect knowledge of the international and local situation, after mature reflection and rational debate of the alternatives. It's a lovely fairy-tale and it's not surprising that many people choose to believe it; I had not appreciated, however, that it went back so far. Irrational decisions are only made by the deranged, who are normally anonymous (eg the people of Corcyra in 3.84, or the Syracusans who mistreat the Athenian captives in 7.86-87).

I know I'm not being fair; Thucydides is at the very beginning of recorded history, and it is amazing that a book written 2430 years ago is still lucidly intelligible (and interrogable) on its own terms. Pericles' funeral oration (2.34-46), in particular, whether by Pericles or Thucydides, is a brilliantly eloquent appeal to the emotions of those who have lost their loved ones in the service of their country, and is far ahead of anything else I have read on that subject in terms of literary quality. But I think his inability, for whatever reason, to examine the cultural context of his time, and to be honest about his own political situation, weakens the truth of the book.

Apart from the general issue of the book's ideological purpose, there are a lot of interesting points of detail here. As a lapsed astronomer, my eye was caught by the three eclipses mentioned, especially the first, where we are told that "the sun took on the appearance of a crescent and some of the stars became visible before it returned to its normal shape" (1.28). I was a bit surprised about the stars becoming visible even though this was not a total eclipse. A little research, however, got me to Mercury being close to maximum elongation 25 degrees from the Sun, and Venus approaching superior conjunction and 15 degrees from the sun, and I suppose both would have been visible if the Sun was sufficiently dimmed.

In 5.16 we read of accusations that "Pleistoanax... and his brother Aristocles had bribed the priestess at Delphi to give oracles to the Spartan delegations, commanding them to bring home from abroad the seed of the demigod son of Zeus". The what??? of who??? I checked the original: Διὸς υἱοῦ ἡμιθέου τὸ σπέρμα - ​what on earth can it be?

Snerk in 4.84 about Brasidas, who "was not at all a bad speaker, for a Spartan."

Anyway, very glad to have finally ploughed through this.

Courage in the face of reality ultimately distinguishes such natures as Thucydides and Plato: Plato is a coward in the face of reality--consequently he flees into the ideal; Thucydides has himself under control--consequently he retains control over things. ------Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols

Όποιος αποφασίσει να διαβάσει, θα του πρότεινα την παρούσα έκδοση σε μεταφραστή του διπλωμάτη και συγγραφέα Αγγέλου Βλαχου. Παραμένει για μένα αξεπέραστη και προέρχεται από έναν διπλωμάτη που είχε διαβάσει και ασχολήθηκε με τον Θουκυδίδη και την αρχαιότητα όλη του τη ζωή.

(Translator: Richard Crawley. Editor: Robert B. Strassler)

Um dos livros mais impressionantes que li recentemente, particularmente os discursos dos políticos e generais ao seu povo e soldados, ao longo da guerra. Documento histórico importantíssimo, é o primeiro relato detalhado e (supostamente) imparcial sobre uma guerra que se estendeu por várias décadas.
Da derrota de Atenas e constante fricção entre os estados gregos surgiu a fragilidade que permitiu a conquista da Hélade por Filipe II da Macedónia.

Historians everywhere owe an incalculable debt to Thucydides of Athens, because of the spirit of rigorous, evidence-based inquiry in which Thucydides set down his history of the Peloponnesian War in which Athens and Sparta fought from 431-404 B.C. Whereas Thucydides’ illustrious predecessor Herodotus sometimes states that an event from antiquity took place because of the intervention of the Olympian gods – “It was the will of Zeus” and all that – Thucydides refuses to settle for deus ex machina explanations. In Thucydides’ system of reasoning, when something goes wrong for Athens, or goes right for Sparta, it is because some power-hungry politician subverted the Athenian democracy, or because some Spartan general made good strategic and tactical decisions. His spirit informs and inspires every modern historian who plies his or her craft in search of the truth.

Few people of his time would have been better suited than Thucydides to write this book, as the historian himself makes clear in Book Five:

“I lived through the whole of it, being of an age to understand what was happening, and I put my mind to the subject so as to get an accurate view of it. It happened, too, that I was banished from my country for twenty years after my command at Amphipolis; I saw what was being done on both sides, particularly on the Peloponnesian side, because of my exile, and this leisure gave me rather exceptional facilities for looking into things.” (p. 364)

That passage well captures Thucydides’ voice – direct, no-nonsense, confident without being arrogant, dedicated to accuracy above all. Just the facts, ma’am.

Book I of Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War sets forth how disagreements over the allegiance of places like Corcyra (modern Corfu) revealed fissures in Athenian-Spartan relations, even though these two leading city-states had been allies in the two Persian Wars decades before. When a Spartan ultimatum is rejected by Athens, the stage is set for the outbreak of a war that will be longer and more costly than either side anticipates.

A highlight of the History of the Peloponnesian War, for many readers, is likely to be the Funeral Oration given by the Athenian leader Pericles at the end of the war’s first year. Pericles’ Funeral Oration pays tribute to the dead soldiers of Athens, to be sure – “[W]hat we ought to remember first is their gallant conduct against the enemy in defense of their native land” (p. 149). Beyond that, however, Pericles also presents a brilliant defense of Athens’ democratic values: “Our constitution is called a democracy because power is in the hands not of a minority but of the whole people….[E]veryone is equal before the law” (p. 145).

Small wonder that Pericles’ Funeral Oration has inspired many leaders on similar occasions in the 2400 years since Thucydides wrote his history – as when U.S. President Abraham Lincoln, asked to deliver “a few appropriate remarks” on the dedication of a national cemetery for Union soldiers killed at the Battle of Gettysburg, consulted Pericles’ Funeral Oration in preparing what has become known to history as the Gettysburg Address.

If only the wise and eloquent Pericles had lived on – the Peloponnesian War might have been much shorter, and its outcome might have been quite different. Unfortunately, however, he died of plague in the war’s second year, and subsequent years were marked by the rise to power of the demagogue Cleon, of whom Thucydides writes that “He was remarkable among the Athenians for the violence of his character, and at this time he exercised far the greatest influence over the people” (p. 212). In stark contrast with Pericles’ expression of rationalism and defense of democratic values in the Funeral Oration, Cleon responds to a revolt by the Athenian-allied city of Mytilene by calling for the killing of all the Mytilenians. While Cleon’s proposal is ultimately defeated, his words provide a chilling reminder of all the subsequent periods of history when demagogues have called for indiscriminate mass violence in hopes of fomenting a “get-tough” spirit against real or perceived enemies.

Indeed, Cleon’s cruelty and incompetence, as chronicled by Thucydides, emphasize a subtle but important theme of the History of the Peloponnesian War: that Thucydides, even though he fought bravely and well on the Athenian side, may have felt that Athens deserved to lose. This theme comes through with special force when one contrasts Cleon’s despicable behavior with that of the Spartan commander Brasidas. A true soldier, Brasidas is courageous in battle, solicitous for the welfare of his men, and generous toward his adversaries. A characteristic example of Brasidas’ soldierly virtues occurs when, just before the Spartan capture of Amphipolis in 423 B.C., Brasidas “put forward very moderate terms, making a proclamation to the effect that all who wished to do so, whether Amphipolitans or Athenians, could remain in the city with possession of their property and full political rights guaranteed to them; and those who did not wish to remain could take their property with them and leave within five days” (p. 328) – a proposal that impresses everyone in the city by its generosity, and one that Brasidas honors in every particular once Amphipolis has surrendered.

Another of the most famous features of the History of the Peloponnesian War is what has come to be known as the Melian Dialogue. Here, Thucydides uses dialogue format to dramatize the Athenians’ surrender demands against the island of Melos, a colony of Sparta that wished to remain neutral in the war. All of us who like to think of Athens as the capital of philosophy and rationalism are likely to be disheartened by the Athenians’ brutal invocation of might-makes-right realpolitik in the dialogue, as when they say to the Melians that “it is a general and necessary law of nature to rule whatever one can….We are merely acting in accordance with it” (pp. 404-05). And when the Melians ask why the Athenians “would not agree to our being neutral, friends instead of enemies, but allies of neither side”, the Athenians implacably reply that “if we were on friendly terms with you, our subjects would regard that as a sign of weakness in us, whereas your hatred is evidence of our power” (p. 402). Perhaps, over the course of writing his history, Thucydides had come to conclude that the side for which he had fought so valiantly had become an empire not worth preserving.

And anyone who has seen his or her country set forth on a poorly planned military venture will be struck by Thucydides’ account of Athens’ ill-fated expedition against the Spartan city-state of Syracuse in Sicily. Begun in 415 B.C., against a background of lavish promises that an attack on Spartan Syracuse would be the proverbial “game-changer,” the Athenian expedition ended two years later as “the most calamitous of defeats; for they were utterly and entirely defeated; their sufferings were on an enormous scale; their losses were, as they say, total” (p. 537).

The story of how the Syracusan campaign went from promise to disaster for the Athenians makes for compelling reading. And it is against the background of the mutual recriminations over Syracuse that one learns about the oligarchic coup of 411 B.C., in which “the democracy in Athens had been brought to an end” (pp. 573-74). No reader who cares about the survival of democracy in the modern world can read about the destruction of the Athenian democracy without feeling a certain chill in the blood.

Helpfully furnished with maps and appendices, this Penguin Books edition of Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War provides the modern reader with an opportunity to get to know a classic historical work that remains strongly applicable to the world of today.

Fine. I nerded out on this one too. I really liked it. Might I suggest, however, that it is exceedingly beneficial (it was to me, at least) to take a look at Donald Kagan's lectures on the same subject. You can view them or download them at http://oyc.yale.edu/classics/clcv-205.... Lectures 18-21.

Anyhow, while the detail with which Thucydides recounts some of the battles can be tedious at times(though perhaps not to a military historian), the subject matter dealt with is timeless. Pericles's funeral oration is outstanding - it could have been given by an American General during the Civil War (in fact, our instructor pointed out the parallels between it and the Gettysburg Address which, though I hadn't made the direct connection, I realized I had envisioned as I read it). Diodotus's speech about justice versus interests paints a vivid picture of the difference between justice and interests and which ought to be pursued for the "good of the nation."

n  In a word, it is a fact of human nature -- and it is very naive of anyone to believe otherwise -- that when people are really committed in their hearts to doing something they cannot be deterred by force of law or by any other threat.n

It's only through His grace and His mercy that I was able to get halfway through this one before deciding to put it down for the time being. I've spent way too long on this war, and I can barely remember what I've read.

[insert required pontifications on "words and deeds" and the funeral speech here]

I managed to make it further through Thucydides than I did Herodotus only because I took the advice of an Amazon review and did not buy the Landmark edition, which is essentially reading a huge coffee table book. The Cambridge edition is at least somewhat wieldy, and you won't drown in all the timelines, summaries, writings in the margins, etc. that you would in the Landmark.

Parts of the account reminded me of another, very relevant international conflict.

‘Spartan dogs!, Turkish Taffy’, I’ve always wanted to use that line from Woody Allen’s Japanese redubbed into English movie ‘What’s Up Tiger Lilly’. Now the Spartan’s really aren’t dogs and taffy and Turkey have nothing to do with this book, but this book ranks as one of the greatest books ever written, and it’s clear that the Spartan’s were more than just laconic warriors and Athenians might have been lovers of wisdom but were also lovers of hegemonic domination.

It is not necessary to understand all the players, the interlocking rivalries or the specifics as they are brilliantly told in this war chronicle. The book takes the particular and connects them to the universal, truths across time. What is justice, what is deserving of our time or what makes the good? All this is laid out in this story telling about the war and the often fatal hubris of humans and what motivates us as human beings.

This book surprised me. I was reluctant to try it because I thought it was going to be a boring telling of war and its inner details. I was wrong. Yes, it does have actual war details but that is only a prelude in order to let the narrative allow the author to get at the universal truth of discovering our meaning of being human, and yes, even why we choose to fight and go to war. (‘Only an admiral can lose a war in a day’)!

I would bet Abraham Lincoln read this book and understood it beyond a story of just the war itself. Pericles funeral oration as dramatized in this book is clearly as moving and meaningful as the Gettysburg Address and probably influenced Lincoln’s thought on sacrificing a life for the sake of one's country, and shows that in each cohort even separated by over 2000 years of time that what we want from life and what matters has a constancy embedded within it and that we as humans are willing to give all for a belief that transcends the material. Each oration has within it the reason why humans will give the ultimate for a cause (ideology), a person (family) or their country (culture). (There are actually shades of ‘God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son in order for you to have eternal life’, within both orations. That just shows that our meaning often lies within us from the value that we place on our own self dignity or self worth).

The description of the plague in Athens in 429 B.C.E. is unlike anything I’ve read elsewhere. History is often best told by observation. Thucydides understands why it mattered and describes the particular while providing the context inside the web of moving parts which make up history and determine the future. I wonder what would have happened to world history if Athens was not devastated with a plague.

Regarding the siege of Syracuse I was totally enraptured by the unfolding of the events. As with most moderns, I had no idea who was going to win the battle and couldn’t wait to find out. The story telling was that good, no, it was better than good, it was great!

But, I haven’t even hinted at the best part of the book. The speeches and the motivations that key players use to rationalize their reasoning. Life is complex and we are easily misled by the framing of the arguments. As an objective observer because of the remoteness of time, I would listen to the first speaker give his piece and think ‘his arguments are irrefutable’, then the contra argument was made and I would think the same. Should we attack, should we not, or should we kill every single man woman and child in the defeated city in order to send a message. The same arguments are used today and politicians always love to ‘send a message’ by projecting strength so the others don’t perceive us as weak. ‘The more things change, the more they remain the same’.

‘Silence and order’ is what the sailors were told before their sea battle. That is what they were told they needed in order to survive. In life ‘silence and order’ serve us well. Two words to describe our modern day perceptions of ancient Spartans: silence and order, also ‘silence and order’ could be a two word definition for ‘stoic’. Conversely, two thoughts to describe our modern day perceptions of ancient Athenians and also serve us well for life: ‘speak and act as an individual’, also a two thought definition for ‘epicurean’.

This book transcends the story that is being told. For those who don’t like it, or think it has no relevance with today, the problem is with them not the book. This is a rare book for which I would recommend to anybody because of the truths that abound within it. This book precedes Plato’s Republic, but one can’t help feeling the echo from this book intentionally reverberating within ‘The Republic’. At least Plato’s contemporary readers would have seen the similarities within this book and would have understood the intentional connections.