Thucydides Point Of View Of The Peloponnesian War
The purpose of this paper is to tell about one of the greatest ancient historians Thucydides, his ideas and to compare his point of view with other great philosophers and writers. Thucydides famous by his work ‘The war of the Peloponnesians and the Athenians’. He is the first western historians who strictly chronicled nearly 30 years of war between Athens and Sparta. The Peloponnesian War, one the largest conflicts in the Greek City State era.
When Thucydides wrote about the war between Athens and Sparta he says: “beginning at the moment that it broke out, and believing that it would be a great war and more worthy of relation than any that had preceded it.” According to Thucydides, the Peloponnesian War of the end of the fifth century BCE arose when Sparta start afraid of the rising power of Athens. Sparta decided to wage a preventive war in order to check Athens’ power. The war lasted twenty-seven years. It was the most terrible period of time. …show more content…
Thucydides served as an Athenian commander in northern Greece in the early years of the war until the assembly exiled him for losing an outpost to the enemy.
During exile, he worked hard collecting information, writing and revising. It was one of the most important moments of his life, he began to analyze, understand such concept as politics itself. Thucydides was able to see absolutely clear the tactics from both sides of the conflict. Unlike Herodotus, Thucydides concentrated on contemporary history and presented his account of the events of the war in an annalistic framework, that is, by organizing his history year by year. He included versions of direct speeches like Herodotus and in addition with clearly description of events. Thucydides preferred longer and complex speeches and also he tried to deal with major events and issues of the war in difficult and dramatic language. Often he tries to mention such issues as human nature and behavior because Thucydides saw that the Peloponnesian War is a human conflict in
general.
What Thucydides provides is strategic insight. The crucial point is that he determine such concept as a national policy making judgments about the factors that lead states to victory or defeat in protracted strategic competition.
Those who read Thucydides for the first time are usually impressed by his work. He tried to reflect in his writings all this terrible moments of the war which occurred. As a reflection on war intended to help us to understand the larger strategic environment, The Peloponnesian War remains unsurpassed.
Thucydides was born around 460 in the 5th century. He was 29 years old when the Peloponnesian War began, and 55 when it ended with Athens’ defeat. The author records his full name as Thucydides son of Olorus. Thucydides was clearly of high social standing, and a man of means. Because of his work we can conclude that he was an intelligent person. During the war, Thucydides tried to chronologies every crucial historical moment year by year. That is why his work known as one of the most important historical books of Greece. More important than the details of this biography is what it quite easy to indicate about the author’s intellectual orientation. He was contemporary with the political leader Pericles, the historian Herodotus, Socrates, the dramatists Sophocles and Aristophanes. Thucydides begins his history by telling that its subject is “the war between the Peloponnesians and the Athenians believing that it would be a great war, and more worthy of relation than any that had preceded it.” Actually he makes no attempt to justify this focus. “War is the father and king of all,” wrote the philosopher Heraclitus. The political, social, and cultural implications of the great war between the Athenians and the Peloponnesians are the real and the main subject of Thucydides history.
Thucydides’ analysis of the causes of war was really strong. The author every time refers to the differences in style, attitude also in the values that split the major belligerents. On his words we can see that Sparta was a distinctive variant of the oligarchic tyranny, with an agricultural economy based on the labor and discipline. Therefore, the main thing for them was a traditional values and the land power of course with a status-quo. Athens on the point of view of Thucydides is dynamic and innovative city. Thucydides thought that fear is one of the constant and universal human characteristics. This fear leads to an evil human nature and thus evil human behavior and war. The growth of power in Athens caused the Balance of Power destabilizing. Spartans begun to feel more and more unsafety and thus they started to prepare to defend themselves. This very much reflects the realist point of view that without a Balance of Power there can be no peace. Moreover, it shows how easy to destroy the balance between countries.
Thomas Hobbes was the first person who decided to translate from Greek to English Thucydides’ ‘The Peloponnesian War’. This translation still the best one.
Like Hobbes, Thucydides suggested that human beings governed not only by reason but also by and, like Hobbes, he too seems to think that human nature is constant and knowable. He himself tells to us: “both past events and those that at some future time, in accordance with human nature, will recur in similar or comparable ways”. Hobbes in effect found in Thucydides work what he was looking for. Later he described the idea about the nature and natural condition of man.
Thucydides begins his account of the civil war at Corcyra in the same way like Hobbes did it—by describing first its human and then its political symptoms. As Thucydides explains: “So the condition of cities was civil war, and where it came later, awareness of earlier events pushed to extremes the revolution in thinking…In self-justification men inverted the usual verbal evaluations of actions. Irrational recklessness was now considered courageous commitment, hesitation while looking to the future was high-styled cowardice, moderation was a cover for manhood, and circumspection meant inaction, while senseless anger now helped to define a true man, and deliberation for security was a specious excuse for dereliction. The man of violent temper was always credible, anyone opposing him was suspect. The intriguer who succeeded was intelligent, anyone who detected a plot was still cleverer, but a man who made provisions to avoid both alternatives was undermining his party and letting the opposition terrorize him”.
In short, to be rash became courageous, to exercise caution became a sign of cowardice, to follow moderation became a sign of weakness, and to exhibit anger became magnanimous. Thucydides writes: “All this was caused by leadership based on greed and ambition and led in turn to fanaticism once man were committed to the power struggle. For the leading men in the cities, through their emphasis on an attractive slogan for each side — political equality for the masses, the moderation of aristocracy — treated as their prize the public interest to which they paid lip service and, competing by every means to get the better of one another, boldly committed atrocities and proceeded to still worse acts of revenge, stopping at limits set by neither justice nor the city’s interest but by the gratification of their parties at every stage and whether by condemnations through unjust voting, both sides were ready to satisfy to the utmost their immediate hopes of victory”. In other words, the “leading men” choose the violence and in order to ensure their respective side’s victory, while those who refrained were immediately destroyed. The result was the end of human law. According to Thucydides, people “strengthened their trust in one another less by religious law than by association in committing some illegal act,” and ,“one was praised for outracing everyone else to commit a crime—and for encouraging a crime by someone who had never before considered one.” In addition, one of the most important things is that Thucydides tells us: “There was no secure principle, no oath that was feared, but those who were strong, in contemplation of the impossibility of security, all took measure to avoid suffering rather than allowing themselves to feel trust.” Both Thucydides and Hobbes refers to such problem as human nature. They have pessimistic and deterministic point of view about the human nature. As was mentioned above, selfish and egoistic behavior are typical characters of humanity, they appear to be governed entirely by passion and a general desire for power. We can see this philosophical relationship between Thucydides and Hobbes—namely, that Hobbes, because of his self-professed admiration for Thucydides, derived his understanding of human nature from readings, strictly analyzing and using it to describe his modern philosophical point of view. As writer Cogan argues in ‘The Human Thing’: “That Thomas Hobbes should have found Thucydides congenial enough to warrant translation is hardly surprising. The two share an almost identical view of the nature of mankind, of its motives, of the origin of those motives, and of the usual result when this nature is allow a free reign to operate.”
It is important to note that Thucydides’ description of human behavior during the civil war is not just similar to Hobbes’s description of human behavior in his state of nature. That is, the “natural condition of mankind.”
Over and above, Thucydides wrote in his book about the plague that occurred during the second year of the Peloponnesian war. He writes of a disease coming from Ethiopia and passing through Egypt and Libya into the Greek world that killed nearly a third of the Athenian population in the summer of 430 and caused greater loss of human life. Interesting fact is that despite of terrible plague Athenians did not abandon belief in God existence.
Thucydides mentioned: “… there was also mention of the oracle given to the Spartans, who were told when they asked the god whether they should go to war that, if they fought hard, victory would be theirs and he himself would join them. So they took the events to correspond.” Therefore, it means that despite the moral and political chaos surrounding Athenians, some citizens nevertheless looked to the gods for answers. Life, of course, became as Thucydides told: “poor, nasty, and short,” but it was not always lonely and was not always cruel. The human attempt for justice, for the freedom, cannot simply disappear...
All after mentioned above we can conclude that Thucydides’ description of people’s behavior during the civil war at Corcyra, also during the plague, are in parallel with the behavior of human beings in Hobbes’s philosophy about state of nature. Thucydides' served as an Athenian commander in northern Greece, he was familiar with the conditions of the war and also with the tactics during the war period. Thucydides famous not because just of simple writing, but mainly because of his methods of expression, of reflecting Peloponnesian War. Thucydides tried to chronologies every crucial historical moment and also analyze it. He was one of the first persons who decided to use such method, that’s why his book is famous till nowadays.
When Thucydides wrote about the war between Athens and Sparta he says: “beginning at the moment that it broke out, and believing that it would be a great war and more worthy of relation than any that had preceded it.” According to Thucydides, the Peloponnesian War of the end of the fifth century BCE arose when Sparta start afraid of the rising power of Athens. Sparta decided to wage a preventive war in order to check Athens’ power. The war lasted twenty-seven years. It was the most terrible period of time. …show more content…
Thucydides served as an Athenian commander in northern Greece in the early years of the war until the assembly exiled him for losing an outpost to the enemy.
During exile, he worked hard collecting information, writing and revising. It was one of the most important moments of his life, he began to analyze, understand such concept as politics itself. Thucydides was able to see absolutely clear the tactics from both sides of the conflict. Unlike Herodotus, Thucydides concentrated on contemporary history and presented his account of the events of the war in an annalistic framework, that is, by organizing his history year by year. He included versions of direct speeches like Herodotus and in addition with clearly description of events. Thucydides preferred longer and complex speeches and also he tried to deal with major events and issues of the war in difficult and dramatic language. Often he tries to mention such issues as human nature and behavior because Thucydides saw that the Peloponnesian War is a human conflict in
general.
What Thucydides provides is strategic insight. The crucial point is that he determine such concept as a national policy making judgments about the factors that lead states to victory or defeat in protracted strategic competition.
Those who read Thucydides for the first time are usually impressed by his work. He tried to reflect in his writings all this terrible moments of the war which occurred. As a reflection on war intended to help us to understand the larger strategic environment, The Peloponnesian War remains unsurpassed.
Thucydides was born around 460 in the 5th century. He was 29 years old when the Peloponnesian War began, and 55 when it ended with Athens’ defeat. The author records his full name as Thucydides son of Olorus. Thucydides was clearly of high social standing, and a man of means. Because of his work we can conclude that he was an intelligent person. During the war, Thucydides tried to chronologies every crucial historical moment year by year. That is why his work known as one of the most important historical books of Greece. More important than the details of this biography is what it quite easy to indicate about the author’s intellectual orientation. He was contemporary with the political leader Pericles, the historian Herodotus, Socrates, the dramatists Sophocles and Aristophanes. Thucydides begins his history by telling that its subject is “the war between the Peloponnesians and the Athenians believing that it would be a great war, and more worthy of relation than any that had preceded it.” Actually he makes no attempt to justify this focus. “War is the father and king of all,” wrote the philosopher Heraclitus. The political, social, and cultural implications of the great war between the Athenians and the Peloponnesians are the real and the main subject of Thucydides history.
Thucydides’ analysis of the causes of war was really strong. The author every time refers to the differences in style, attitude also in the values that split the major belligerents. On his words we can see that Sparta was a distinctive variant of the oligarchic tyranny, with an agricultural economy based on the labor and discipline. Therefore, the main thing for them was a traditional values and the land power of course with a status-quo. Athens on the point of view of Thucydides is dynamic and innovative city. Thucydides thought that fear is one of the constant and universal human characteristics. This fear leads to an evil human nature and thus evil human behavior and war. The growth of power in Athens caused the Balance of Power destabilizing. Spartans begun to feel more and more unsafety and thus they started to prepare to defend themselves. This very much reflects the realist point of view that without a Balance of Power there can be no peace. Moreover, it shows how easy to destroy the balance between countries.
Thomas Hobbes was the first person who decided to translate from Greek to English Thucydides’ ‘The Peloponnesian War’. This translation still the best one.
Like Hobbes, Thucydides suggested that human beings governed not only by reason but also by and, like Hobbes, he too seems to think that human nature is constant and knowable. He himself tells to us: “both past events and those that at some future time, in accordance with human nature, will recur in similar or comparable ways”. Hobbes in effect found in Thucydides work what he was looking for. Later he described the idea about the nature and natural condition of man.
Thucydides begins his account of the civil war at Corcyra in the same way like Hobbes did it—by describing first its human and then its political symptoms. As Thucydides explains: “So the condition of cities was civil war, and where it came later, awareness of earlier events pushed to extremes the revolution in thinking…In self-justification men inverted the usual verbal evaluations of actions. Irrational recklessness was now considered courageous commitment, hesitation while looking to the future was high-styled cowardice, moderation was a cover for manhood, and circumspection meant inaction, while senseless anger now helped to define a true man, and deliberation for security was a specious excuse for dereliction. The man of violent temper was always credible, anyone opposing him was suspect. The intriguer who succeeded was intelligent, anyone who detected a plot was still cleverer, but a man who made provisions to avoid both alternatives was undermining his party and letting the opposition terrorize him”.
In short, to be rash became courageous, to exercise caution became a sign of cowardice, to follow moderation became a sign of weakness, and to exhibit anger became magnanimous. Thucydides writes: “All this was caused by leadership based on greed and ambition and led in turn to fanaticism once man were committed to the power struggle. For the leading men in the cities, through their emphasis on an attractive slogan for each side — political equality for the masses, the moderation of aristocracy — treated as their prize the public interest to which they paid lip service and, competing by every means to get the better of one another, boldly committed atrocities and proceeded to still worse acts of revenge, stopping at limits set by neither justice nor the city’s interest but by the gratification of their parties at every stage and whether by condemnations through unjust voting, both sides were ready to satisfy to the utmost their immediate hopes of victory”. In other words, the “leading men” choose the violence and in order to ensure their respective side’s victory, while those who refrained were immediately destroyed. The result was the end of human law. According to Thucydides, people “strengthened their trust in one another less by religious law than by association in committing some illegal act,” and ,“one was praised for outracing everyone else to commit a crime—and for encouraging a crime by someone who had never before considered one.” In addition, one of the most important things is that Thucydides tells us: “There was no secure principle, no oath that was feared, but those who were strong, in contemplation of the impossibility of security, all took measure to avoid suffering rather than allowing themselves to feel trust.” Both Thucydides and Hobbes refers to such problem as human nature. They have pessimistic and deterministic point of view about the human nature. As was mentioned above, selfish and egoistic behavior are typical characters of humanity, they appear to be governed entirely by passion and a general desire for power. We can see this philosophical relationship between Thucydides and Hobbes—namely, that Hobbes, because of his self-professed admiration for Thucydides, derived his understanding of human nature from readings, strictly analyzing and using it to describe his modern philosophical point of view. As writer Cogan argues in ‘The Human Thing’: “That Thomas Hobbes should have found Thucydides congenial enough to warrant translation is hardly surprising. The two share an almost identical view of the nature of mankind, of its motives, of the origin of those motives, and of the usual result when this nature is allow a free reign to operate.”
It is important to note that Thucydides’ description of human behavior during the civil war is not just similar to Hobbes’s description of human behavior in his state of nature. That is, the “natural condition of mankind.”
Over and above, Thucydides wrote in his book about the plague that occurred during the second year of the Peloponnesian war. He writes of a disease coming from Ethiopia and passing through Egypt and Libya into the Greek world that killed nearly a third of the Athenian population in the summer of 430 and caused greater loss of human life. Interesting fact is that despite of terrible plague Athenians did not abandon belief in God existence.
Thucydides mentioned: “… there was also mention of the oracle given to the Spartans, who were told when they asked the god whether they should go to war that, if they fought hard, victory would be theirs and he himself would join them. So they took the events to correspond.” Therefore, it means that despite the moral and political chaos surrounding Athenians, some citizens nevertheless looked to the gods for answers. Life, of course, became as Thucydides told: “poor, nasty, and short,” but it was not always lonely and was not always cruel. The human attempt for justice, for the freedom, cannot simply disappear...
All after mentioned above we can conclude that Thucydides’ description of people’s behavior during the civil war at Corcyra, also during the plague, are in parallel with the behavior of human beings in Hobbes’s philosophy about state of nature. Thucydides' served as an Athenian commander in northern Greece, he was familiar with the conditions of the war and also with the tactics during the war period. Thucydides famous not because just of simple writing, but mainly because of his methods of expression, of reflecting Peloponnesian War. Thucydides tried to chronologies every crucial historical moment and also analyze it. He was one of the first persons who decided to use such method, that’s why his book is famous till nowadays.