A Handbook to the Reception of Thucydides offers an invaluable guide to the reception of Thucydides, with a strong emphasis on comparing and contrasting different traditions of reading and interpretation. • Presents an in-depth, comprehensive overview of the reception of the Greek historian Thucydides • Features personal reflections by eminent scholars on the significance and perennial importance of Thucydides’ work • Features an internationally renowned cast of contributors, including established academics as well as new voices in the field
An accessible modern translation of essential speeches from Thucydides’s History that takes readers to the heart of his profound insights on diplomacy, foreign policy, and war Why do nations go to war? What are citizens willing to die for? What justifies foreign invasion? And does might always make right? For nearly 2,500 years, students, politicians, political thinkers, and military leaders have read the eloquent and shrewd speeches in Thucydides’s History of the Peloponnesian War for profound insights into military conflict, diplomacy, and the behavior of people and countries in times of crisis. How to Think about War presents the most influential and compelling of these speeches in an elegant new translation by classicist Johanna Hanink, accompanied by an enlightening introduction, informative headnotes, and the original Greek on facing pages. The result is an ideally accessible introduction to Thucydides’s long and challenging History. Thucydides intended his account of the clash between classical Greece’s mightiest powers—Athens and Sparta—to be a “possession for all time.” Today, it remains a foundational work for the study not only of ancient history but also contemporary politics and international relations. How to Think about War features speeches that have earned the History its celebrated status—all of those delivered before the Athenian Assembly, as well as Pericles’s funeral oration and the notoriously ruthless “Melian Dialogue.” Organized by key debates, these complex speeches reveal the recklessness, cruelty, and realpolitik of Athenian warfighting and imperialism. The first English-language collection of speeches from Thucydides in nearly half a century, How to Think about War takes readers straight to the heart of this timeless thinker.
The ancient Greek historian Thucydides has had an enormous impact on modern historiography, political theory, international relations and strategic studies, but this influence has never been properly studied. This book brings together leading scholars from a range of disciplines to explore the different facets of Thucydides' modern reception and influence, from the birth of political theory in Renaissance Europe to the rise of scientific history in nineteenth-century Germany and the triumph of 'realism' in twentieth-century international relations theory. Its chapters consider the different national and disciplinary traditions of reading and citing Thucydides, but also highlight common themes and questions; in particular, the variety of images of the historian produced by his modern readers: the scientific historian or the artful rhetorician, the brilliant analyst of society and politics or the great narrator of political and military events, the man of experience and affairs or the man of contemplation and reflection.
The notion of a "Thucydides Trap" that will ensnare China and the United States in a 21st century conflict-much as the rising power of Athens alarmed Sparta and made war "inevitable" between the Aegean superpowers of the 5th century BCE-has received global attention since entering the international relations lexicon 6 years ago. Scholars, journalists, bloggers, and politicians in many countries, notably China, have embraced this beguiling metaphor, coined by Harvard political science professor Graham Allison, as a framework for examining the likelihood of a Sino-American war. This case study examines the Thucydides Trap metaphor and the response it has elicited. Hewing closely to what the historian of the Peloponnesian War actually says about the causes and inevitability of war, it argues that, while Thucydides' text does not support Allison's normative assertion about the "inevitable" result of an encounter between "rising" and "ruling" powers, the History of the Peloponnesian War (hereafter, History) does identify elements of leadership and political dynamic that bear directly on whether a clash of interests between two states is resolved through peaceful means or escalates to war. It is precisely because war typically begins with a considered decision by a national command authority to reject other options and mobilize for conflict (and thus always entails an element of choice) that insight from Thucydides' History remains relevant and beneficial for the contemporary strategist, or citizen, concerned in such decisions.Accordingly, this case study concludes that the Thucydides Trap, as conceived and presented by Graham Allison, draws welcome attention both to Thucydides and to the pitfalls of great power competition, but fails as a heuristic device or predictive tool in the analysis of contemporary events. Allison's metaphor offers, at best, a potentially misleading over-simplification of Thucydides' nuanced and problematic account of the origins of the epochal conflict that defined his age. Moreover, it overlooks actual insights from the History that can help political decisionmakers-including, but not limited to, those of the United States and China-either avoid war or, if ignored, pose genuine policy "traps" that can make an avoidable war more likely, and a necessary war more costly.
Thucydides and Herodotus is an edited collection which looks at two of the most important ancient Greek historians living in the 5th Century BCE. It examines the relevant relationship between them which is considered, especially nowadays, by historians and philologists to be more significant than previously realized.
"From the eighteenth century onwards, the ancient Greek writer Thucydides (c.460 c.395 bc) was viewed as the most important classical historian. He was acclaimed not only as a vital source for reconstructing antiquity but as a purveyor of timeless political wisdom. His name is almost inescapable in nineteenth-century discussions of history's nature and purpose. And his spirit, or the image of him constructed by German historicists, remains a significant presence in more recent debates about historical method. It is remarkable, then, that the trajectory of Thucydides' modern reception has never been properly studied. Neville Morley here sets right that neglect. He examines different aspects of the reception of Thucydides within modern western historiography, casting fresh light on ideas about history and the historian in the contemporary world. His nuanced readings illuminate changing notions of the nature and purpose of history and of the historian's proper task. This latest volume in the I.B.Tauris 'New Directions in Classics' series makes a bold and significant contribution to understandings of how to reclaim the past."--Bloomsbury Publishing.
In Thucydides and the Pursuit of Freedom, Mary P. Nichols argues for the centrality of the idea of freedom in Thucydides' thought. Through her close reading of his History of the Peloponnesian War, she explores the manifestations of this theme. Cities and individuals in Thucydides' history take freedom as their goal, whether they claim to possess it and want to maintain it or whether they desire to attain it for themselves or others. Freedom is the goal of both antagonists in the Peloponnesian War, Sparta and Athens, although in different ways. One of the fullest expressions of freedom can be seen in the rhetoric of Thucydides’ Pericles, especially in his famous funeral oration. More than simply documenting the struggle for freedom, however, Thucydides himself is taking freedom as his cause. On the one hand, he demonstrates that freedom makes possible human excellence, including courage, self-restraint, deliberation, and judgment, which support freedom in turn. On the other hand, the pursuit of freedom, in one’s own regime and in the world at large, clashes with interests and material necessity, and indeed the very passions required for its support. Thucydides’ work, which he himself considered a possession for all time, therefore speaks very much to our time, encouraging the defense of freedom while warning of the limits and dangers in doing so. The powerful must defend freedom, Thucydides teaches, but beware that the cost not become freedom itself.
The Peloponnesian War (431–404 BCE) ostensibly arose because of the fear that a rising Athens would threaten Sparta’s power in the Mediterranean. The idea of Thucydides’ Trap warns that all rising powers threaten established powers. As China increases its power relative to the United States, the theory argues, the two nations are inevitably set on a collision course toward war. How enlightening is an analogy based on the ancient Greek world of 2,500 years ago for understanding contemporary international relations? How accurate is the depiction of the history of other large armed conflicts, such as the two world wars, as a challenge mounted by a rising power to displace an incumbent hegemon?Thucydides’s Trap?: Historical Interpretation, Logic of Inquiry, and the Future of Sino-American Relations offers a critique of the claims of Thucydides’s Trap and power-transition theory. It examines past instances of peaceful accommodation to uncover lessons that can ease the frictions in ongoing Sino-American relations.
