The Peloponnesian War by Thucydides - 0 - Introduction
Introduction
Quote
"It may be that the lack of a romantic element in my history will make it less of a pleasure to the ear: but I shall be content if it is judged useful by those who will want to have a clear understanding of what happened — and, such is the human condition, will happen again."
Notes and Key Takeaways
Thucydides lived from 460 - 400 BC and came from a rich family in Athens. He served as an general in the Peloponnesian War, but was exiled after losing a city to the Spartans. He came back to Athens after the war, but he died before he could finish writing his history.
Thucydides believes the Peloponnesian War was bigger and more significant than any war that came before it. Even while acknowledging that "men always think that any war they are engaged in is the greatest of all wars," he still believes this war will have significance long into the future, and he writes his account as a "permanent legacy, not a show piece for a single hearing."
While not mentioning Herodotus by name, Thucydides does take some shots that are clearly aimed at him. He says that the evidence and arguments in his account are trustworthy, as opposed to "the glorified tales of the poets and the compilations of the prose chroniclers whose stories are written more to please the ear than to serve the truth." At the very beginning of written history there were disagreements about how history should be told. Thucydides' attitude that truth should trump entertainment has been repeated many times against popular historians up to the present.
For Thucydides, history is about the truth above all else. He believes that most people don't care enough about the truth. "All men show the same uncritical acceptance of the oral traditions handed on to them, even about the history of their own country." Most people are too lazy when it comes to finding out the truth, and they "happily resort to ready-made opinions."
The version I'm be reading is the Oxford World's Classics version, translated by Martin Hammond and published in 2009.