Download or read book Style and Necessity in Thucydides written by Tobias Joho and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2022-10-20 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ancient literary critics were struck by what they described as Thucydides' "nominal style," a term that refers to Thucydides' fondness for abstract nominal phrases. As this book shows, Thucydides frequently uses these phrases instead of approximately synonymous verbal and personal constructions. These stylistic choices tend to deemphasize human agency: people find themselves in a passive role, exposed to incidents happening to them rather than being actively in charge of events. Thus, the analysis of the abstract style raises the question of necessity in Thucydides. On numerous occasions, Thucydides and his speakers use impersonal and passive language to stress the subjection of human beings to transpersonal forces that manifest themselves in collective passions and an inherent dynamic of events. These factors are constitutive of the human condition and become a substitute for the notion of divine fatalism prevalent in earlier Greek thought. Yet Thucydidean necessity is not absolute. It stands in the tradition of a type of fatalism that one finds in Homer and Herodotus. In these authors, the gods or fate tend to settle the outcome of the most significant events, but they leave leeway for the specific way in which these pivotal events come to pass. Thus, the Greeks endorsed a malleable variant of necessity, so that considerable scope for human choice persists within the framework fixed by necessity. Pericles turns out to be Thucydides' prime example of an individual who uses the leeway left by necessity for prudent interventions into the course of events.

Download or read book Style and Necessity in Thucydides written by TOBIAS. JOHO and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2022-11-17 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ancient literary critics were struck by what they described as Thucydides' "nominal style," a term that refers to Thucydides' fondness for abstract nominal phrases. As this book shows, Thucydides frequently uses these phrases instead of approximately synonymous verbal and personalconstructions. These stylistic choices tend to deemphasize human agency: people find themselves in a passive role, exposed to incidents happening to them rather than being actively in charge of events. Thus, the analysis of the abstract style raises the question of necessity in Thucydides.On numerous occasions, Thucydides and his speakers use impersonal and passive language to stress the subjection of human beings to transpersonal forces that manifest themselves in collective passions and an inherent dynamic of events. These factors are constitutive of the human condition and becomea substitute for the notion of divine fatalism prevalent in earlier Greek thought. Yet Thucydidean necessity is not absolute. It stands in the tradition of a type of fatalism that one finds in Homer and Herodotus. In these authors, the gods or fate tend to settle the outcome of the most significantevents, but they leave leeway for the specific way in which these pivotal events come to pass. Thus, the Greeks endorsed a malleable variant of necessity, so that considerable scope for human choice persists within the framework fixed by necessity. Pericles turns out to be Thucydides' prime exampleof an individual who uses the leeway left by necessity for prudent interventions into the course of events.

Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Thucydides written by Ryan Balot and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017-02-10 with total page 801 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Oxford Handbook of Thucydides contains newly commissioned essays on Thucydides as an historian, thinker, and writer. It also features chapters on Thucydides' intellectual context and ancient reception. The creative juxtaposition of historical, literary, philosophical, and reception studies allows for a better grasp of Thucydides' complex project and its intellectual context, while at the same time providing a comprehensive introduction to the author's ideas. The volume is organized into four sections of papers: History, Historiography, Political Theory, and Context and Reception. It therefore bridges traditionally divided disciplines. The authors engaged to write the forty chapters for this volume include both well-known scholars and less well-known innovators, who bring fresh ideas and new points of view. Articles avoid technical jargon and long footnotes, and are written in an accessible style. Finally, the volume includes a thorough introduction prefacing each paper, as well as several maps and an up-to-date bibliography that will enable further study. The Oxford Handbook of Thucydides offers a comprehensive introduction to a thinker and writer whose simultaneous depth and innovativeness have been the focus of intense literary and philosophical study since ancient times.

Download or read book On Justice Power Human Nature written by Thucydides and published by Hackett Publishing Company Incorporated. This book was released on 1993 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Designed for students with little or no background in ancient Greek language and culture, this collection of extracts from The History of the Peloponnesian War includes those passages that shed most light on Thucydides' political theory--famous as well as important but lesser-known pieces frequently overlooked by nonspecialists. Newly translated into spare, vigorous English, and situated within a connective narrative framework, Woodruff's selections will be of special interest to instructors in political theory and Greek civilization. Includes maps, notes, glossary.

Download or read book Thucydides and the Ancient Simplicity written by Gregory Crane and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2023-12-22 with total page 461 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War is the earliest surviving realist text in the European tradition. As an account of the Peloponnesian War, it is famous both as an analysis of power politics and as a classic of political realism. From the opening speeches, Thucydides' Athenians emerge as a new and frightening source of power, motivated by self-interest and oblivious to the rules and shared values under which the Greeks had operated for centuries. Gregory Crane demonstrates how Thucydides' history brilliantly analyzes both the power and the dramatic weaknesses of realist thought. The tragedy of Thucydides' history emerges from the ultimate failure of the Athenian project. The new morality of the imperialists proved as conflicted as the old; history shows that their values were unstable and self-destructive. Thucydides' history ends with the recounting of an intellectual stalemate that, a century later, motivated Plato's greatest work. Thucydides and the Ancient Simplicity includes a thought-provoking discussion questioning currently held ideas of political realism and its limits. Crane's sophisticated claim for the continuing usefulness of the political examples of the classical past will appeal to anyone interested in the conflict between the exercise of political power and the preservation of human freedom and dignity.

Download or read book Thucydides and Political Order written by Christian R. Thauer and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-04-08 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book, the second of two monographs, consists of contributions by world-class scholars on Thucydides' legacy to the political process. It also includes a careful examination of the usefulness and efficacy of the interdisciplinary approach to political order in the ancient world and proposes new paths for the future study.

Download or read book Thucydides written by Thucydides and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2013-03-28 with total page 761 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new translation of Thucydides, a foundational text in the history of Western political thought, with extensive student reference material.

Download or read book Thucydides s Melian Dialogue and Sicilian Expedition written by Martha C. Taylor and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2019-01-17 with total page 459 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Best known for his account of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides (c. 454–c. 395 b.c.) was an Athenian general and historian. This valuable commentary addresses the most famous part of Thucydides’s narrative: the Sicilian Expedition (books 6–8.1), which resulted in a major defeat for Athens. Designed for advanced undergraduate and graduate students of Greek, Martha C. Taylor’s student-friendly text is the first single volume in more than a century to focus on the expedition and the first to include the Melian Dialogue (5.84–116), considered the “prelude” to the invasion. Many beginning readers of Thucydides require assistance with the author’s often difficult constructions. In her notes to the text, Taylor breaks down Thucydides’s convoluted sentences and explains them piece by piece. Her notes also explain the author’s many historical and literary references. In her in-depth introduction, Taylor provides students with all the information they need to begin reading Thucydides. She discusses what we know about the Greek author—and what we do not—and she analyzes his unique language and style. To place the Sicilian Expedition in historical context, she summarizes the events leading up to and following the Sicilian Expedition, and she examines important aspects of Athenian democracy, including Thucydides’s presentation of the Athenian boule, the city’s advisory citizen council. In addition to textual and historical commentary, this volume includes three maps; an appendix addressing the epitaph of Perikles (2.65.5–13), in which Thucydides appears to contradict his later presentation of the Sicilian Expedition; source suggestions for student term papers on relevant topics; and a general bibliography. Thucydides’s Melian Dialogue and Sicilian Expedition is designed for use with the Oxford Classical Text of Thucydides, which is available online.

Download or read book The Humanity of Thucydides written by Clifford Orwin and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2020-10-06 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thucydides has long been celebrated for the unflinching realism of his presentation of political life. And yet, as some scholars have asserted, his work also displays a profound humanity. In the first thorough exploration of the relation between these two traits, Clifford Orwin argues that Thucydides' humanity is not a reflection of the author's temperament but an aspect of his thought, above all of his articulation of the central problem of political life, the tension between right and compulsion. This book provides the most complete treatment to date of Thucydides' handling of the problem of injustice, as well as the most extensive interpretations yet of the speeches in which it comes to light. Thucydides does not merely display the weakness of justice in the world, but joins his characters in exploring the implications of this weakness for our understanding of what justice is. Orwin pursues this question through Thucydides' work and relates it to the historian's other leading concerns, such as the contrast between the Athenian way and the Spartan way, the role of piety in political life, the interaction of foreign and domestic politics, and the role of statesmanship in a world dominated by frenzies of hope, fear, and indignation. Above all, Orwin demonstrates the richness, complexity, and daring of Thucydides' articulation of these issues.

Download or read book Reason and Cause written by Richard Ned Lebow and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2020-03-12 with total page 363 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A cultural history of the concepts of reason and cause, showing that they are culturally and historically local.

Download or read book The Civic Conversations of Thucydides and Plato written by Gerald M. Mara and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2008-07-15 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book argues that classical political philosophy, represented in the works of Thucydides and Plato, is an important resource for both contemporary democratic political theory and democratic citizens. By placing the Platonic dialogues and Thucydides' History in conversation with four significant forms of modern democratic theory—the rational choice perspective, deliberative democratic theory, the interpretation of democratic culture, and postmodernism—Gerald M. Mara contends that these classical authors are not enemies of democracy. Rather than arguing for the creation of a more encompassing theoretical framework guided by classical concerns, Mara offers readings that emphasize the need to focus critically on the purposes of politics, and therefore of democracy, as controversial yet unavoidable questions for political theory.

Download or read book Hobbes s Thucydides written by Thucydides and published by . This book was released on 1975 with total page 624 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Om den Peloponnesiske krig 431-404 f. Kr.

Download or read book Thucydides and Herodotus written by Edith Foster and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2012-05-03 with total page 414 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thucydides and Herodotus is an edited collection which looks at two of the most important ancient Greek historians living in the 5th Century BCE. It examines the relevant relationship between them which is considered, especially nowadays, by historians and philologists to be more significant than previously realized.

Download or read book Brill s Companion to Thucydides written by Antonis Tsakmakis and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2006-09-30 with total page 968 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume on Thucydides, the most important historian of the ancient world, comprises articles by thirty leading international scholars. The contributions cover a wide range of issues, including Thucydides’ life, intellectual milieu and predecessors, Thucydides and the act of writing, his rhetoric, historical method and narrative techniques, narrative unity in the History, the speeches, Thucydides’ reliability as a historian, and his legacy through the centuries. Other topics dealt with include warfare, religion, individuals, democracy and oligarchy, the invention of political science, Thucydides and Athens, Sparta, Macedonia/Thrace, Sicily/South Italy, Persia, and the Argives. The volume aims to provide a survey of current trends in Thucydidean studies which will be of interest to all students of ancient history. Brill's Companion to Thucydides was awarded Choice Outstanding Academic Title 2007.

Download or read book A War Like No Other written by Victor Davis Hanson and published by Random House Trade Paperbacks. This book was released on 2006-09-12 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of our most provocative military historians, Victor Davis Hanson has given us painstakingly researched and pathbreaking accounts of wars ranging from classical antiquity to the twenty-first century. Now he juxtaposes an ancient conflict with our most urgent modern concerns to create his most engrossing work to date, A War Like No Other. Over the course of a generation, the Hellenic city-states of Athens and Sparta fought a bloody conflict that resulted in the collapse of Athens and the end of its golden age. Thucydides wrote the standard history of the Peloponnesian War, which has given readers throughout the ages a vivid and authoritative narrative. But Hanson offers readers something new: a complete chronological account that reflects the political background of the time, the strategic thinking of the combatants, the misery of battle in multifaceted theaters, and important insight into how these events echo in the present. Hanson compellingly portrays the ways Athens and Sparta fought on land and sea, in city and countryside, and details their employment of the full scope of conventional and nonconventional tactics, from sieges to targeted assassinations, torture, and terrorism. He also assesses the crucial roles played by warriors such as Pericles and Lysander, artists, among them Aristophanes, and thinkers including Sophocles and Plato. Hanson’s perceptive analysis of events and personalities raises many thought-provoking questions: Were Athens and Sparta like America and Russia, two superpowers battling to the death? Is the Peloponnesian War echoed in the endless, frustrating conflicts of Vietnam, Northern Ireland, and the current Middle East? Or was it more like America’s own Civil War, a brutal rift that rent the fabric of a glorious society, or even this century’s “red state—blue state” schism between liberals and conservatives, a cultural war that manifestly controls military policies? Hanson daringly brings the facts to life and unearths the often surprising ways in which the past informs the present. Brilliantly researched, dynamically written, A War Like No Other is like no other history of this important war.

Download or read book Thucydides Other Traps written by Alan Greeley Misenheimer and published by . This book was released on 2019-06-06 with total page 76 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The notion of a "Thucydides Trap" that will ensnare China and the United States in a 21st century conflict-much as the rising power of Athens alarmed Sparta and made war "inevitable" between the Aegean superpowers of the 5th century BCE-has received global attention since entering the international relations lexicon 6 years ago. Scholars, journalists, bloggers, and politicians in many countries, notably China, have embraced this beguiling metaphor, coined by Harvard political science professor Graham Allison, as a framework for examining the likelihood of a Sino-American war. This case study examines the Thucydides Trap metaphor and the response it has elicited. Hewing closely to what the historian of the Peloponnesian War actually says about the causes and inevitability of war, it argues that, while Thucydides' text does not support Allison's normative assertion about the "inevitable" result of an encounter between "rising" and "ruling" powers, the History of the Peloponnesian War (hereafter, History) does identify elements of leadership and political dynamic that bear directly on whether a clash of interests between two states is resolved through peaceful means or escalates to war. It is precisely because war typically begins with a considered decision by a national command authority to reject other options and mobilize for conflict (and thus always entails an element of choice) that insight from Thucydides' History remains relevant and beneficial for the contemporary strategist, or citizen, concerned in such decisions.Accordingly, this case study concludes that the Thucydides Trap, as conceived and presented by Graham Allison, draws welcome attention both to Thucydides and to the pitfalls of great power competition, but fails as a heuristic device or predictive tool in the analysis of contemporary events. Allison's metaphor offers, at best, a potentially misleading over-simplification of Thucydides' nuanced and problematic account of the origins of the epochal conflict that defined his age. Moreover, it overlooks actual insights from the History that can help political decisionmakers-including, but not limited to, those of the United States and China-either avoid war or, if ignored, pose genuine policy "traps" that can make an avoidable war more likely, and a necessary war more costly.

Download or read book Status in Classical Athens written by Deborah E Kamen and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2013-07-21 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ancient Greek literature, Athenian civic ideology, and modern classical scholarship have all worked together to reinforce the idea that there were three neatly defined status groups in classical Athens--citizens, slaves, and resident foreigners. But this book--the first comprehensive account of status in ancient democratic Athens--clearly lays out the evidence for a much broader and more complex spectrum of statuses, one that has important implications for understanding Greek social and cultural history. By revealing a social and legal reality otherwise masked by Athenian ideology, Deborah Kamen illuminates the complexity of Athenian social structure, uncovers tensions between democratic ideology and practice, and contributes to larger questions about the relationship between citizenship and democracy. Each chapter is devoted to one of ten distinct status groups in classical Athens (451/0-323 BCE): chattel slaves, privileged chattel slaves, conditionally freed slaves, resident foreigners (metics), privileged metics, bastards, disenfranchised citizens, naturalized citizens, female citizens, and male citizens. Examining a wide range of literary, epigraphic, and legal evidence, as well as factors not generally considered together, such as property ownership, corporal inviolability, and religious rights, the book demonstrates the important legal and social distinctions that were drawn between various groups of individuals in Athens. At the same time, it reveals that the boundaries between these groups were less fixed and more permeable than Athenians themselves acknowledged. The book concludes by trying to explain why ancient Greek literature maintains the fiction of three status groups despite a far more complex reality.