Books by Thucydides
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Thucydides.
The Peloponnesian War. Vol. 1.
(Audiobook, Unabridged).
Thomasville, GA: Audio Connoisseur, [c. 400 B.C.] 2005.
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Not only is
The
Peloponnesian War the first true work of history to have come
down to us from antiquity, in writing it
Thucydides essentially
invented the historical narrative as it is presently understood. Although
having served as a general
(στρατηγός)
on the Athenian side in the war, he adopts a scrupulously objective viewpoint and
presents the motivations, arguments, and actions of all sides in the conflict
in an even-handed manner. Perhaps his having been exiled from Athens due to
arriving too late to save
Amphipolis
from falling to the Spartans
contributed both to his dispassionate recounting of the war as well as
providing the leisure to write the work. Thucydides himself wrote:
It was also my fate to be an exile from my country for twenty
years after my command at Amphipolis; and being present with both
parties, and more especially with the Peloponnesians by reason of
my exile, I had leisure to observe affairs somewhat particularly.
Unlike earlier war narratives in epic poetry, Thucydides based
his account purely upon the actions of the human participants
involved. While he includes the prophecies of oracles and auguries,
he considers them important only to the extent they influenced
decisions made by those who gave them credence. Divine intervention
plays no part whatsoever in his description of events, and in his
account of the
Athenian Plague
he even mocks how prophecies are interpreted to fit subsequent
events. In addition to military and political affairs, Thucydides
was a keen observer of natural phenomena: his account of the Athenian
Plague reads like that of a modern epidemiologist, including his
identifying overcrowding and poor sanitation as contributing factors
and the observation that surviving the disease (as he did himself)
conferred immunity. He further observes that solar eclipses
appear to occur only at the new Moon, and may have been the first
to
identify
earthquakes as the cause of tsunamis.
In the text, Thucydides includes lengthy speeches made by figures on
all sides of the conflict, both in political assemblies and those of
generals exhorting their troops to battle. He admits in the
introduction that in many cases no contemporary account of these
speeches exists and that he simply made up what he believed the
speaker would likely have said given the circumstances. While this is
not a technique modern historians would employ, Greeks, from their
theatre and poetry, were accustomed to narratives presented in this
form and Thucydides, inventing the concept of history as he wrote it,
saw nothing wrong with inventing words in the absence of eyewitness
accounts. What is striking is how modern everything seems.
There are descriptions of the strategy of a sea power (Athens)
confronted by a land power (Sparta), the dangers of alliances which
invite weaker allies to take risks that involve their guarantors in
unwanted and costly conflicts, the difficulties in mounting an
amphibious assault on a defended shore, the challenge a democratic
society has in remaining focused on a long-term conflict with an
authoritarian opponent, and the utility of economic warfare (or, as
Thucydides puts it [over and over again], “ravaging the
countryside”) in sapping the adversary's capacity and will to
resist. Readers with stereotyped views of Athens and Sparta may be
surprised that many at the time of the war viewed Sparta as a
liberator of independent cities from the yoke of the Athenian empire,
and that Thucydides, an Athenian, often seems sympathetic to this
view. Many of the speeches could have been given by present-day
politicians and generals, except they would be unlikely to be as
eloquent or argue their case so cogently. One understands why
Thucydides was not only read over the centuries (at least prior to the
present Dark Time, when the priceless patrimony of Western culture has
been jettisoned and largely forgotten) for its literary excellence,
but is still studied in military academies for its timeless insights
into the art of war and the dynamics of societies at war. While
modern readers may find the actual campaigns sporadic and the battles
on a small scale by present day standards, from the Hellenic perspective,
which saw their culture of city-states as “civilisation”
surrounded by a sea of barbarians, this was a world war, and
Thucydides records it as such a momentous event.
This is Volume 1 of the audiobook, which includes the first
four of the eight books into which Thucydides's text is conventionally
divided, covering the prior history of Greece and the first nine years of
the war, through the Thracian campaigns of the Spartan
Brasidas
in 423 B.C.
(Here is Volume 2, with the balance.)
The audiobook is distributed in two parts, totalling 14 hours and 50
minutes with more than a hour of introductory essays including
a biography of Thucydides and an overview of the work.
The Benjamin Jowett translation is used, read by the versatile
Charlton Griffin.
A print edition of this translation is
available.
May 2008
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Thucydides.
The Peloponnesian War. Vol. 2.
(Audiobook, Unabridged).
Thomasville, GA: Audio Connoisseur, [c. 400 B.C.] 2005.
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This is the second volume of the audiobook edition of Thucydides's
epic history of what was, for Hellenic civilisation, a generation-long
world war, describing which the author essentially invented historical
narrative as it has been understood ever since. For general comments
about the work, see my notes for Volume I.
Although a work of history (albeit with the invented speeches
Thucydides acknowledges as a narrative device), this is as much a
Greek tragedy as any of the Athenian plays. The war, which began,
like so many, over a peripheral conflict between two regional
hegemonies, transformed both Athens and Sparta into “warfare
states”, where every summer was occupied in military campaigns,
and every winter in planning for the next season's conflict. The
Melian dialogue,
which appears in Book V of the history, is one of the most chilling
exemplars of raw power politics ever expressed—even more than
two millennia later, it makes the soul shiver and, considering its
consequences, makes one sympathetic to those, then and now, who
decry the excesses of direct democracy.
Perhaps the massacre of the Melians offended the gods (although
Thucydides would never suggest divine influence in the affairs
of men), or maybe it was just a symptom of imperial overreach
heading directly for the abyss, but not long afterward Athens launched
the disastrous
Sicilian Expedition,
which ultimately resulted in a defeat which, on the scale of classical
conflict, was on the order of Stalingrad and resulted in the end of
democracy in Athens and its ultimate subjugation by Sparta.
Weapons, technologies, and political institutions change, but the humans who
invent them are invariant under time translation. There is wisdom in
this narrative of a war fought so very long ago which contemporary
decision makers on the global stage ignore only at the peril of the
lives and fortune entrusted to them by their constituents. If I
could put up a shill at the “town hall” meetings of
aspiring politicians, I'd like to ask them “Have you read
Thucydides?”, and when they predictably said they had, then
“Do you approve of the Athenian democracy's judgement as
regards the citizens of Melos?”
This recording includes the second four of the eight books into which
Thucydides's text is conventionally divided. The audiobook is
distributed in two parts, totalling 11 hours and 29 minutes with an
epilogue describing the events which occurred after the extant text of
Thucydides ends in mid-paragraph whilst describing events of
410 B.C., six years before the end of
the war.
The Benjamin Jowett translation is used, read by Charlton Griffin.
A print edition of this translation is
available.
August 2008