Very little is known about the life of Thucydides,
particularly his early years.He was born and raised
in Athens as an aristocrat,“son of Olorus,” as he described
himself, and apparently relished his status.
Athens and Sparta were both military superpowers;
the former ruled the seas and the latter
boasted the world’s greatest army. After the Greek
city-states unexpectedly defeated the powerful Persian
Empire in the early fifth century B.C., the alliance
between Athens and Sparta disintegrated.
The allies became adversaries, each struggling for
dominance, leading to the Peloponnesian War.
Thucydides fought for Athens in the war, and
by 424 B.C., he had been designated a general. Stationed
in the Balkans in a region called Thrace, he
failed to thwart the capture of the strategically positioned
port city of Amphipolis. When he described
the incident in his only known work, the
History of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides defended
his good intentions, saying that even
though he “sailed in haste with seven ships,” the
citizens surrendered before he could reach them.
For this mistake, he was exiled from Athenian territory
for 20 years, until the end of the war, when
Sparta, with the aid of Persia, annihilated the
mighty Athenian navy, cut off the food supply
until the city surrendered, and installed an oligarchy
at Athens.
From adversity arose opportunity. “Because of
my exile,” Thucydides wrote, “I was enabled to
watch quietly the course of events.” Like his older
colleague HERODOTUS, Thucydides became an observer
and investigator of both warring factions.
He was permitted to return to Athens in 404 B.C.,
but he must have died within a few years of his return,
for he never completed his History of the
Peloponnesian War.
Critical Analysis
Whatever his feelings about his exile, Thucydides
wrote History without rancor or prejudice. He
gives equal attention to both parties, who perpetrated
brutality and bloodshed in an acquisitive
and ruthless grasp for power. His History is an important
treatise on the nature and causes of war, its
impact and consequences, and under what circumstances
it will continue to disgrace and destroy
civilization.
Unlike Herodotus, who often digresses during
his history of the Persian War, Thucydides remains
focused on recording military events and their implications.
He divides History of the Peloponnesian
War into three military phases. The first covers the
conflict between Sparta and Athens, which lasted
from 431 to 421 B.C. The second covers the Athenians’
expedition into Sicily and its failure during the
years 415 to 413 B.C. The third phase covers the
new war between Sparta and Athens, which lasted
from 413 to 404 B.C., although Thucydides’s writing
ends in 411 B.C.
The historian begins his opus by clarifying his
methodology and assuring readers that his conclusions
are reliable, based on the “clearest data.” He
acknowledges, however, that memories are imperfect,
impressions fallible, and eyewitnesses biased.
Unlike “the compositions of the chroniclers that
are attractive at truth’s expense” (presumably
Herodotus), “[t]he absence of romance in my history
will . . . be judged useful by those inquirers
who desire an exact knowledge of the past as an aid
to the interpretation of the future. . . . I have written
my work . . . as a possession for all time.”
Thucydides concludes in his introduction, “The
real cause” of the Peloponnesian War was “the
growth of the power of Athens, and the alarm which
this inspired in” Spartan territory,which “made war
inevitable.” Important throughout the History is his
ongoing comparisons of the two antagonists.
Athens was a democracy that had only recently
gained influence in Greece. Because its power was
naval, its economy was a commercial one. Thucydides
believed, incorrectly, that Pericles, a statesman
and military commander of the time, perfected
Athenian democracy; thus, he includes several of
Pericles’ speeches in Book II of his History.
In Sparta, government was controlled by a
handful of powerful men, and the city-state was
known for its long-standing power and military
prowess. As its forces were land-based, so was its
agrarian economy. If Athens was enterprise and innovation,
Sparta was fortitude and discipline.
A turning point in the war occurred after the
revolt of Mytilene, the chief city on the prosperous
island of Lesbos, home of the lyric poet SAPPHO. All
of Attica had been ravaged by the Spartans, and
Athens had been blockaded. Teeming with refugees
who had fled the countryside, the city succumbed
to overcrowding, creating abysmal sanitary conditions
and a plague that killed Pericles. During the
Mytilene uprising,Athens was still reeling from the
devastation, but its forces nevertheless laid siege to
Mytilene, which finally succumbed when conditions
there became intolerable.
The rulers of Athens were in no mood to be
magnanimous in dealing with the insurrectionists;
the assembly voted to slaughter the men and sell
the women and children. A warship was promptly
dispatched, but the assembly soon regretted its decree.
Wholesale extermination would eliminate
potential friends as well as foes; it might trigger
rebellion rather than suppress it; and Mytilene had
military and monetary resources that could help
Athens defeat Sparta. Even though Cleon, Pericles’
successor, insisted that mercy was not in the empire’s
best interests, cooler heads prevailed, and the
two cities eventually became allies.
Throughout the remainder of the History,
Thucydides characterizes Athens as increasingly
bloodthirsty and repressive, and less the idealistic,
enlightened force depicted at the beginning.
He emphasizes how the Athenians compromised
their principles, gave way to revenge, attained a
feverish level of ruthlessness, and justified murder
for political gain despite their democratic
ideals.
Just one example of this overriding desire for
power appears in Thucydides’ account of the conflict
between Athens and Melos. Melos was a
colony of Sparta that endeavored to remain neutral
during the Peloponnesian War. Athens, affronted,
tried to force an alliance with the small island citystate,
to no avail. According to Thucydides, during
a conference between councils for the two entities,
the Athenian representative asserted that the “will
to power” is a fundamental human drive and, essentially,
that “might makes right”:
[We] both alike know that into the discussion
of human affairs the question of justice only
enters where the pressure of necessity is equal,
and that the powerful exact what they can, and
the weak grant what they must. . . . For . . . of
men we know, that by a law of their nature
wherever they can rule they will. This law was
not made by us, and we are not the first who
have acted upon it; we did but inherit it, and
shall bequeath it to all time, and we know that
you and all mankind, if you were as strong as
we are, would do as we do.
In 416 B.C., the Athenians inflicted on Melos
and other Greek city-states what it had spared
Mytilene: massacre, slavery, and occupation.As the
war persisted, Thucydides portrayed Athenians as
becoming weak in body and spirit, fractious and
factious; he saw the ideal of Athenian democracy
deteriorating as a result. According to Harvard
professor John H. Finley, Jr., the end of the History
expresses “a mood of fear, instability and division”
among the Athenians. “As description, the account
of the slow death . . . of Athens’ strength and hope
is Thucydides’ masterpiece and one of the masterpieces
of all historical writing.”
Classics scholar H. C. Baldry writes:
Thucydides’ proud claim to immortality has
proved correct: his book is still absorbing reading.
. . . His swift narrative . . . breathes the
spirit of contemporary rationalism yet has an
old-fashioned flavor; it is concise and austere,
yet forceful and impassioned. [Thucydides is]
deeply moved by Athens’ folly . . . and its disastrous
results; yet he austerely surveys the whole
story as a clinical example of human behavior
under the stresses of imperialism and war.
As such, the History of the Peloponnesian War influenced
a host of Greek writers, politicians, and
historians, including XENOPHON, Cassius Dio (ca.
164–ca. 229), Polybius (ca. 200–ca. 118 B.C.),
Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679), and more recently
author Lewis Lapham.More importantly, however,
Thucydides’ History has influenced the perception
of war—its philosophy and politics—throughout
the ages and up to the present day.
English Versions of Works by Thucydides
On Justice, Power, and Human Nature: Selections from
History of the Peloponnesian War. Translated by
Paul Woodruff. Indianapolis, Ind.: Hackett Publishing,
1998.
The Peloponnesian War: The Complete Hobbes Translation.
Translated by Benjamin Jowett. Buffalo,
N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 1998.
Stories of Thucydides. Retold by H. L. Havell. Indy-
Publish, 2004.
Works about Thucydides
Lapham, Lewis. Theater ofWar: In Which the Republic
Becomes an Empire. New York: The New Press,
2003.
Palmer, Michael. Love of Glory and the Common
Good: Aspects of the Political Thought of Thucydides.
Lanham,Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2001.
Rood, Tim. Thucydides: Narrative and Explanation.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998.
Stahl, Hans-Peter. Thucydides: Man’s Place in History.
Cardiff: The Classical Press of Wales, 2002.