history of the peloponnesian war sparknotes

Thucydides was writing after Herodotus and his epic on the Persian war but opens by telling us that this war was 'more worthy of of relation than any that had preceded it.the greatest movement yet known in history' (p1).

His history is a book that can be reread, studied, attention paid to each word as much because of what he doesn't say and how he says what he does.

I found Thucydides difficult to start the translation might have been an issue but increasingly intriguing. The best way to maintain a reputation as fierce-some warriors is not to fight, but to be frightening, and the Spartans seem to have displayed a rare skill in finding reasons in the shape of a sacrificed animal's liver or a passing earthquake or a religious festival for either staying home or returning there. Judging by Thucydides' history that could have been a lucky guess. The correct answer was that this was in response to an earthquake. Towards the end of this book I had a flashback of watching an episode of Mastermind in the 80s, the contestant had chosen the Spartan military as their specialist subject was asked being asked by Magnus Magnusson, the Icelandic Viking who swooped down from the north to Britain as a child to become a TV quiz host, why the Spartans had stopped their campaign on one particular occasion and gone home. More generally, Thucydides showed an interest in developing an understanding of human nature to explain behaviour in such crises as plague, genocide (as practised against the Melians), and civil war. His classical text is still studied at advanced military colleges worldwide, and the Melian dialogue remains a seminal work of international relations theory. He has also been called the father of the school of political realism, which views the relations between nations as based on might rather than right. Thucydides has been dubbed the father of 'scientific history' due to his strict standards of evidence-gathering and analysis in terms of cause and effect without reference to intervention by the gods, as outlined in his introduction to his work. war between Sparta and Athens to the year 411 B.C. 395 B.C.) (Greek Θουκυδίδης, Thoukydídēs) was a Greek historian and author of the History of the Peloponnesian War, which recounts the 5th century B.C.

History of the peloponnesian war sparknotes