Thucydides

Unlike Homer, Thucydides says that Agamemnon wanted to attack Troy out of a desire for conquest and the other Greek states followed him, simply because he was the most powerful. It is likely that Homer invented these characters and their actions for narrative purposes. Thucydides however, writes with the intent to provide readers with exact accounts of history, and so his works should be held with higher regard. Thucydides notes that Homer never uses the term “Hellenes”…

argument for fairness and righteousness, the Athenians responded: “you know as well as we do that right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.” Here, Thucydides effectively captured how human nature’s desire for power is able to undermine any ethical action because at the end of the day, all the Athenians cared about was the maintaining and gaining of power. This is even more clear when the Athenians…

and could not be citizens. According to Thucydides, Pericles changed Athens’s into an empire; Pericles strategies set by the Peloponnesian War. Thucydides backed Pericles, however he did support the idea of democracy because he thought that democracy was controlled. He essentially thought that the democracy under the rule of Pericles would also be controlled however, Thucydides believed that without Pericles there would be total chaos. Regardless of Thucydides' position towards democracy,…

would believe that Thucydides did not have a preferred method of government between Aristocracy and Democracy. I believed that human nature lied somewhere in between Athens and Sparta, and they were the two inhumane extremes of human nature. But after careful consideration of the entirety of the History of the Peloponnesian War, I have found quotations to support a different claim. Additionally, this careful consideration has helped me determine how this affects what Thucydides says about human…

a top Athenian citizen. Even though, Thucydides records the speech from Pericles in first person, there can be some uncertainty that he wrote every single thing Pericles. Thucydides himself says that the speeches are not exact, but are meant to symbolize the key thoughts of what was said. Pericles was perhaps one of the most important and powerful Greek statesman, speaker and general during the Peloponnesian war. Pericles' funeral oration comes from Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War,…

Athens in 429 BC. Thucydides was the recorder of this speech. He also was a general in the Peloponnesian War, who, due to his defeat by Sparta was exiled. During this time he took the opportunity to be the first person to record an account from both sides, Athens and Sparta without the influence of religion and social conditions. Thucydides shared a common trait with Pericles in that they both failed at their military attempts during the Peloponnesian War. However, Thucydides was exiled for…

with knowledge of the decree. Three of them, Thucydides, Aristophanes, and Plutarch, provide the bulk of that knowledge, while three more, Andocides, Aristodemus, and Diodorus Siculus provide short references. The purpose of this chapter is to review the sources available to us and examine any information they provide about the impact of the Megarian decree, as well as the conclusions modern scholarship has arrived at concerning the decree. Thucydides, a contemporary of the Peloponnesian War,…

The Peloponnesian War featured social and political deterioration. Through power struggles, revolutions, land and sea battles, diplomacy, and rapid cultural change, Thucydides demonstrated his belief that human nature is inherently ambitious and ruthless. In his writing on the revolution in Corcyra, he illustrated the conflict between human law and man’s insatiable desires. He saw the revolution of Corcyra as an example of the general decline of Greece during the Peloponnesian War,…

well-being of the city first, Nicias argues from the individual to the city, placing the well-being of the individual above that of the city. This impression is amplified when one considers that “Nicias had not wanted to be chosen for the command” (Thucydides 6.8). In this situation, Nicias is more concerned with his own success than that of Athens, whereas Pericles, in his speech, was trying to motivate the citizens of Athens. As a result, even though the point Nicias is making is outwardly…

Athenians to build the fleet with which they fought at Salamis” which does not reveal any of his feelings towards Themistocles (Thuc. 1.14). It is likely Thucydides could have written this to be a statement of fact without even thinking of how he felt about Themistocles. However, this statement might not contain his true feelings because Thucydides did not want to show a bias or expand the truth like he believed previous historians did (Thuc. 1.21). However, by the end of the same book, he went…