Thucydide - SpeedyLook encyclopedia

Thucydide (in Greek old Θουκυδίδης / Thoukudídês ), politician and Athenian historian , born towards 460 av. J.C in the Dème of Halimunte (Attic), died towards 400 av. J. - C. He is the author of the Histoire of the Peloponnesian War , which tells the war of between Sparte and Athens. This work is regarded as traditional, the first of the kind.

Biography

Origin and youth

Thucydide is the son of a eupatridês (aristocrat) Athenian named Oloros. Its family is probably related with that of Cimon. She also profits from a considerable fortune. The father of Thucydide has gold mines in Thrace and forests on the Pangée mount. One estimates his birth date at 460 av. J-C, thanks to a comment of Pamphila.

According to Lucien de Samosate and the Welded , Thucydide child witnessed a reading made by Hérodote of its work, at the time of the Olympic Games: no doubt this tradition represents a manner symbolic system of paying homage to its predecessor - that which one calls the “father of the History”. However, as noticed it the historian Alexis Pierron in 1881, " Thucydide did not admire that poorly the book of Hérodote. It even rather harshly reproaches the old historian for having had in sight the pleasure of the reader more than his utility, and to have sacrificed too often to the love of the marvellous one. But it is here the judgment of Thucydide already ripe man, worried above all the political lesson which must rise from the history, and working with effort, like it says it itself, in order to bequeath to the centuries to come a monument impérissable".

Career and exile

During its first thirty years, Thucydide had to prepare with the governmental loads which were going to fall on to him, but its life is between two extreme moments of the history of Athens: between the splendor of the years triumphing over the medium of Ve century and the last quarter of the century, where the city leaves bloodless and humiliated occupation Spartan.

Of this crisis, Thucydide, between thirty and forty years, writes the history as it is held. He does not speak about him, in 430, that to describe the symptoms of the plague which he believes to have contracted. He is the disciple of Anaxagore de Clazomènes and, according to the tradition, he studied the teaching of Antiphon. Married, it has a son, Timothée. In -424, it is elected Stratège. One entrusts to him the command of a squadron of seven ships, which it must carry out in Thrace to maintain the order. A forwarding of the Spartan Brasidas obliges it to carry help to its counterpart Euclès. Unfortunately, it cannot prevent the Lacédémonien from taking Amphipolis, even if it manages to seize Eion. For this reason, he is shown of treason, which forces it to be exiled of Athens during twenty years. During its exile, Thucydide will travel through the whole of Greece and will accumulate many testimonys near the combatants of the two camps.

Its death (perhaps a murder) is probably between 400 and 395. Thucydide thus probably knew the end of the Peloponnesian War and the tyranny of the Thirty, but without to have had time to finish its work. Its account of the war indeed brutally stops in 411, after the inversion of the oligarchical mode of the Four hundred with Athens and the naval battle of Cynossema. The philosopher and historian Xénophon will resume however unfinished work and will tell the seven last years of the war in his Helléniques.

Method

Research of the truth

Thucydide remains the first true historian with the direction where it rationalizes the facts and explores the fundamental causes of the events, by drawing aside all that proceeds of the myth or the rumor. For him, the fundamental quality of its trade is the exactitude, which implies the impartiality, and its first duty thus consists in seeking the truth. Itself exposes from the start its method (I, 20,21,22), by explaining the care which it put to collect all the documents, all testimonys, and to compare them to draw from them what they contained of truth.

In a famous preamble, he explains for which reason he chose to report the Peloponnesian War: it is the most important event of the Greek history until its time. In order to show it, it devotes to a synthesis Greek history to the medic wars. Then it evokes the remote or immediate causes which caused the conflict of Athens and Sparte. Once arrived at the account even of the war, it establishes the date of the first hostilities, then is devoted about it.

Philosophy of the history

Not digressions on the interior matters of Sparte or Athens, not of anecdotes: only what is essential to the clearness of the demonstration. Thucydide tells the war year per year, season per season, brewing the simultaneous events without fearing to parcel out its account. Contained by such an inflexible method, the narration remains very sober. It is hardly if, for better rendering comprehensible the facts, it mingles with it with the very fast considerations, of the morals definitions, of the analyzes of feelings. It however stops sometimes in order to explain, in a luminous summary, a reflection incisor, the causes of the events, the moral situation of the people, the bottom even of the policy. At the time of the disorders of Corcyre, it traces a general table of manners of its time. From these reflections, from these paintings morals, its philosophy emerges. Thucydide does not see in the events the result of a divine intervention, but the consequence of general laws which control the world. When it describes an eclipse of the sun or of the Moon, it is with the manner of a scientist. If he speaks about the oracles, it is from a simple objective, factual point of view. When he speaks about the gods, it is under the beliefs of its time. He opposes the weakness of human to them, weakness whose man can be raised only by the reason ( gnome ). Here a Analogie between Thucydide and Anaxagore resides; but, while the us of Anaxagore is the intelligence taken alone, the reason of Thucydide represents the intelligence applied to the knowledge of the things. Thucydide places the gnome at the first rank of qualities; when it speaks in praise of some large characters, it is always in relation to this gnome . No doubt the interest is the mobile of the actions, but it is not necessary that the man lets himself involve by egoistic passion. To succeed, the action must be intelligent and consequently morals, or else the men fail in their companies.

This impartiality excludes neither the Patriotisme nor the political preferences: in more than one passage, one recognizes the work of a proud Athenian of his fatherland. Thucydide admires Périclès and approves its capacity on the people, while not approving neither the demagogs who follow it, nor the radical democracy that he preaches. He however considers the democracy acceptable between the hands of a rational leader.

Work

Thus the author starts:

Θουκυδίδης Ἀθηναῖος ξυνέγραφε τὸν πόλεμον τῶν Πελοποννησίων καὶ Ἀθηναίων.
“Thucydide the Athenian told the war of Péloponnésiens and the Athenians. ”

Work includes/understands eight books:

I: introduction, account of the elements releases of the war
II: years 431 - 428, account of the plague of Athens
III: years 428 - 425, the bag of Mélos
IV: years 425 - 422, battles of Sphactérie
V: years 422 - 415, peace of Nicias
VI: years 415 - 413, beginning of the Forwarding of Sicily
VII: year 413, end of forwarding
VIII: years 412 - 411 until the return of Alcibiade

The text stops suddenly at year 411, in the middle of a sentence. It is not known if this interruption is voluntary, or if the author could not supplement his account before his death. The question of knowing if Thucydide wrote its work by stages or in only once is discussed still today by the researchers.

Quotations

“the thickness of a wall counts less than the will to cross it. ”

“It is a general rule of the human nature: people scorn those which treat them well and look towards those which do not make them concessions. ”

“the strong fact what it can do and the weak one undergoes what it must undergo. ”

“Of the famous men has as a tomb the whole ground. ”

“the history is a perpetual restarting. ”

“It is not by accepting the good officess of others that we are made friends, but by offering ours. ”

“When one can use of violence, it is not no need for lawsuit. ”

“It is in the nature of the man to oppress those which yield and to respect those which resist. ”

“Put happiness in freedom, freedom in valiancy. ”

“While wanting to justify acts considered until there as blâmables, one changed the ordinary direction of the words. ”

“Any man tends to going until the end of its capacity. ”

“It is necessary to choose, to rest or be free. ”

“a man who does not interfere himself policy deserves to pass, not for a peaceful citizen, but for an useless citizen. ”

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