The Peloponnesian War – a titanic struggle for control of Greece between the opposing forces of Athens and Sparta in the 5th century BC – is known to us largely through the writings of a single individual. He was Thucydides, a wealthy Athenian who was himself a minor participant in the war. He was not the first historian of the Classical world – that was Herodotus, who was some 20 years his senior – but he was the first to adopt a recognisably professional approach to his subject. Where Herodotus retailed anecdotes with varying degrees of accuracy, Thucydides set out to produce a sober, reliably researched chronicle of his own time. He was deeply interested in the complex causes of historical events. Untypically for his time, he avoided explanations based on the presumed will of the Greek gods. He was a serious scholar, who explicitly intended to leave a legacy in prose to future generations: ‘It will be enough for me,’ he wrote, ‘if these words of mine are judged useful by those who want to understand clearly the events which happened in the past and which (human nature being what it is) will, at some time or other, and in much the same ways, be repeated in the future.’
An epic clash
Thucydides did not, of course, meet in full the stringent standards that would be expected of modern scholarship. It is striking that he does not reveal his sources. Although he aimed to report events faithfully, he did not apply the same rigour when relaying speeches. Indeed, he admits to presenting the speaker’s main points and what he felt the situation called for. Thucydides vividly evokes the nature of the competing powers and their allies. The reader has a ringside seat at the epic clash between maritime Athens – restless, expansionist, and risk-taking – and its more cautious, enduring, land-based Spartan antagonist. He also takes a keen interest in military matters, recounting sieges and battles in detail.
Thucydides is remarkably objective in his reporting of the war. He does not even seek to justify his own failure to avert the fall of Amphipolis to the Spartans, in spite of the lengthy exile imposed on him as a penalty. Yet he does have strong views on the forces that shaped the conflict, and on the individuals who held high command. Thucydides’ mistrust of the unrestrained power of Athenian democracy comes across clearly. His admiration for the aristocratic leadership of Pericles, in the early stages of the war, contrasts sharply with his portrayal of his successor, Cleon, whom he depicts as an unscrupulous manipulator of public opinion.
