Thucydides: The Reinvention of History

by Donald Kagan

Overview

The bestselling author of The Peloponnesian War examines Thucydides as the first modern historian.

Donald Kagan's magisterial history of the Peloponnesian War is recognized as a landmark of classical scholarship. Now, Kagan-one of the most respected classical historians in the world-turns his attention from one of the greatest conflicts in history to the author who so magnificently chronicled it: Thucydides, the first truly modern historian. This study offers readers a remarkable opportunity to experience one great historian engaging another across the centuries, in a work that is at once an engrossing voyage of discovery, a moving tribute, and a revelatory meditation on the practice of history and its value in human affairs.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780143118299
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	10/26/2010
Pages:	272
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.65(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Donald Kagan is Sterling Professor of Classics and History at Yale University. His four-volume History of the Peloponnesian War is the leading scholarly work on the subject. He is also the author of many books on ancient and modern topics.

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

Chapter 1 Thucydides the Revisionist 23

Chapter 2 Causes of the War-Corcyra 35

Chapter 3 Causes of the War-From Corcyra to the Megarian Decree 58

Chapter 4 The Strategy of Pericles 75

Chapter 5 Was Periclean Athens a Democracy? 98

Chapter 6 Cleon's Lucky Victory at Pylos 115

Chapter 7 Thucydides and Cleon at Amphipolis 140

Chapter 8 The Decision for a Sicilian Expedition 162

Chapter 9 Who Was Responsible for the Sicilian Disaster? 188

Conclusion 223

Notes 235

Index 247

Editorial Reviews

Yale professor of classics Kagan thoroughly examines Thucydides' life and work to successfully demonstrate that the Athenian historian was the first to utilize a truly professional (i.e., realistic and methodical) approach in recounting contemporary events. An unsuccessful general and a devoted adherent of Pericles, Thucydides believed that the Peloponnesian War was the most significant event in Greek history. He was determined that his study of the war, unlike more romantic or “folkish” histories, would stand the test of time because of his attention to detail; his comprehensive documentation includes symptoms of the mysterious plague afflicting Athens for the benefit of future generations, showing the historian's far-sighted versatility. To his credit, Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War remains a necessity in the study of international relations, military strategy and political science. Like his subject, Kagan (The Peloponnesian War) tends to minimize the impact of Herodotus on the evolution of history as a discipline, yet any such weakness is offset by the inescapable fact that if Herodotus remains the acknowledged “Father of History,” then Thucydides could be described as the “Father of Objective History,” who opened the realm of history to serious study. (Nov. 2)

Publishers Weekly

Classicist Kagan's Thucydides is not a biography but a blow-by-blow account of the hostilities between Athens and Sparta from about 460 to 405 B.C.E. Kagan compares Thucydides' great History of the Peloponnesian Wars with other surviving evidence to argue that, while Thucydides sometimes interpreted events to justify his own failed role in the war, as the first truly modern political historian, he included enough evidence to allow readers to come to different conclusions. Thucydides blames Athens's eventual defeat on the endemic tendency of democratic states to listen to demagogues. Kagan places responsibility on a series of military blunders committed by semi-amateur generals (like Thucydides himself) as two competing city states sought to weaken each other's spheres of influence through small-scale raids on towns and farmlands on the fringes of the two empires. VERDICT While not for the general reader, thanks to Kagan's command of his subject this excellent book bristles with insight into an era not unlike our own of brutal and momentous small-scale battles far, far from the homes and marketplaces of the central players in the war.—Stewart Desmond, New York

Library Journal

Kagan (Classics and History/Yale Univ.; The Peloponnesian War, 2003, etc.) presents a tidy, timeless distillation of Thucydides's thought and work. Although there were numerous historical chronicles preceding The History of the Peloponnesian War, such as the work of Homer, Hesiod and Herodotus, they were often filled with mythological feats and not deemed terribly accurate or objective. In contrast, Thucydides-who lived at the time the war broke out in mid-fifth-century BCE Athens and even served as a general before being exiled for failing to guard the Athenian base at Amphipolis-restrained his personal opinions in describing the events of the war and, writes Kagan, "seems to have taken a spectacular leap into modernity." In pared-down, limpid prose, the author makes a brilliant case for the relevance of this ancient historian's work, which grew out of the naturalistic approach of the Greek enlightenment. Kagan takes the reader through Thucydides's History in terms of his method: to establish the facts, then formulate interpretation, often through the selection of speeches. Thucydides established rather boldly that the war between Sparta and Athens that brought the Athenian empire to an end was more worthy of study than even Homer's Trojan War. He presents its causes and shows how the great general Pericles convinced the Athenians to pursue a defensive course that proved ultimately disastrous. He also looks at the outbreak of the plague that further eroded Athenian strength and morale, and the dangerous expedition to Sicily engineered by Alcibiades, which ended in a rout. Thucydides has been in and out of fashion throughout history, and while he is not considered the first historian,Kagan rightly calls him the "father of political history," whose study of war still imparts lessons for today. A fresh, thorough reassessment of the enduring significance of Thucydides.

Kirkus Reviews

Thucydides, a participant in and chronicler of the Peloponnesian War, the long contest between Athens and Sparta in the fifth century B.C., is one of the most influential early Western historians. His detailed study of the conflict, HISTORY OF THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR, is still pored over by students of war and political science, and the fact-based method of historical study that he introduced has been influential down to the present day. Kagan presents Thucydides the man and asks readers to reconsider the conventional notion of this ancient author as a completely objective reporter of history. Paul Hecht’s reading is a textbook example of good nonfiction narration: It’s clear, confident, and consistent in tone and volume, making for pleasurable listening even in relatively noisy conditions. M.G. © AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine

SEPTEMBER 2010 - AudioFile