Because of his failure to save Amphipolis, he was exiled. Thus it was as an exile from Athens that Thucydides traveled freely among the Peloponnesian allies and was able to view the war from the perspective of both sides. Thucydides says nothing more about himself, so we must depend on much later sources to learn more about his life.
Pausanias reports that Thucydides was murdered while traveling back home to Athens. Every light on the sense will be a light on the words; and when, as is not seldom the case, Thucydides comes victoriously out of this struggle of thought and language, having achieved perfect expression of his meaning in a sufficiently lucid form then his style rises into an intellectual brilliancy-thoroughiy manly, and also penetrated with intense feeling-which nothing in Greek prose literature surpasses.
The uncertainty as to the date of Thucydides' birth renders futile any discussion of the fact that before he took no prominent part in Athenian politics. If he was born in , the fact needs no explanation; if in , it is possible that his opportunities were modified by the necessity of frequent visits to Thrace, where the management of such an important property as the goldnlines must have claimed his presence.
He was at Athens in the spring of , when the plague broke out. If his account of the symptoms has nct enabled physicians to agree on a diagnosis of the malady, it is at least singularly full and vivid.
He had himself been attacked by the plague; and, as he briefly adds, "he had seen others suffer. The turningpoint in the life of Thucydides came in the winter of He was then forty seven or, according to Busolt, about thirtysix , and for the first time he is found holding an official position. He was one of two generals entrusted with the command of the regions towards Thrace His colleague in the command was Eucles. About the end of November Eucles was in Amphipolis, the stronghold of Athenian power in the northwest.
To guard it with all possible vigilance was a matter of peculiar urgency at that moment. The ablest of Spartan leaders, Brasidas q. Under such circumstances we might have expected that Thucydides, who had seven ships of war with him, would have been ready to cooperate with Eucles.
It appears, however, that, with his ships, he was at the isl:md of Thasos when Brasidas suddenly appeared before Amphipolis. Eucles sent in all haste for Thucydides, who arrived with his ships from Thasos just in time to beat off the enemy from Eion at the mouth of the Strymon, but not in time to save Amphipolis.
The profound vexation and dismay felt at Athens found expression in the punishment of Thucydides, who was exiled. Cleon is said to have been the prime mover in his condemnation; and this is likely enough. From to Thucydides lived on his property in Thrace, but much of his timeappears to have been spent in travel. He visited the countries of the Peloponnesian allies-recommended to them by his quality as an exile from Athens; and he thus enjoyed the rare advantage of contemplating the war from various points of view.
He speaks of the increased leisure which his banishment secured to his study of events. He refers partly, doubtless, to detachment from Athenian politics, partly also, we may suppose, to the opportunity of visiting places signalized by recent events and of examining their topography.
The local knowledge which is often apparent in his Sicilian books may have been acquired at this period. The mind of Thucydides was naturally judicial, and his impartiality-which seems almost superhuman by contrast with Xenophon's Hellenica- was in some degree a result of temperament. But it cannot be doubted that the evenness with which he holds the scales was greatly assisted by his experience during these years of exile.
His own words make it clear that he returned to Athens, at least for a time, in , though the precise date is uncertain. The older view cf. Classen was that he returned some six months after Athens surrendered to Lysander. More probably he was recalled by the special resolution carried by Oenobius prior to the acceptance of Lysander's terms Busolt, ibid. He remained at Athens only a short time, and retired to his property in Thrace, where he lived till his death, working at his History.
The preponderance of testimony certainly goes to show that he died in Thrace, and by violence. It would seem that, when he wrote chapter II6 of his third book, be was ignorant of an eruption of Etna which took place in There is, indeed, strong reason for thinking that he did not live later than His remains were brought to Athens and laid in the vault of Cimon's family, where Plutarch Cimon, 4 saw their restingplace.
The abruptness with which the History breaks off agrees with the story of a sudden death. The historian's daughter is said to have saved the unfinished work and to have placed it in the hands of an editor. This editor, according to one account, was Xenophon, to whom Diogenes Laertius ii. The History. His purpose had been formed at the very beginning of the war, in the conviction that it would prove more important than any event of which Greeks had record.
The leading belligerents, Athens and Sparta, were both in the highest condition of effective equipment. The whole Hellenic world- including Greek settlements outside of Greece proper-was divided into two parties, either actively helping one of the two combatanu or meditating such action. Nor was the movement confined within even the widest limits of Hellas, the "barbarian" world also was affected by it-the nonHellenic populations of Thrace Macedonia Epirus, Sicily and, finally, the Persian kingdom itseif.
The aim of Thucydides was to preserve an accurate record of this war, not only in view of the intrinsic interest and importance of the facts, but also in order that these facts might be permanent sources of political teaching to posterity. His hope was, as he says, that his History would be found profitable by "those who desire an exact knowledge of the past as a key to the future, which in all probability will repeat or resemble the past.
The work is meant to be a possession for ever, not the rhetorical triumph of an hour. It referred to the permanent value of the lessons which his History contained.
Thucydides stands alone among the men of his own days, and has no superior of any age, in the width of mental grasp which could seize the general significance of particular events. The political education of mankind began in Greece, and in the time of Thucydides their political life was still young. Thucydides knew oniy the smaU citycommonwealth on the one hand, and on the other the vast barbaric kingdom; and yet, as has been well said of him "there is hardly a problem in the science of government which the statesman will not find, if not solved, at any rate handled, in the pages of this universal master.
Such being the spirit in which he approached his task, it is interesting to inquire what were the points which he himself considered to be distinctive in his method of executing it.
His Greek predecessors in the recording of events had been, he conceived, of two classes. First, there were the epic poets, with Homer at their head, whose characteristic tendency, in the eyes of Thucydides, is to exaggerate the greatness or splendour of things past. Secondly, there were the Ionian prose writers whom he calls "chroniclers" see LOGOGRAPH , whose general object was to diffuse a knowledge of legends preserved by oral tradition and of written documents-usually lists of officials or genealogies-preserved in public archives, and they published their materials as they found them, without criticism.
The vice of the "chroniclers," in his view, is that they cared only for popularity, and took no pains to make their narratives trustworthy.
Herodotus was presumably regarded by him as in the same general category. In contrast with these predecessors Thucydides has subjected his materials to the most searching scrutiny. The ruling principle of his work has been strict adherence to carefully verified facts. My account rests either on personal knowledge or on the closest possible scrutiny of each statement made by others.
The process of research was laborious, because conflicting accounts were given by those who had witnessed the several events, as partiality swayed or memory served them. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! Subscribe for fascinating stories connecting the past to the present. The two most powerful city-states in ancient Greece, Athens and Sparta, went to war with each other from to B. The Peloponnesian War marked a significant power shift in ancient Greece, favoring Sparta, and also ushered in a period of regional decline that signaled the Leonidas c.
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Since the 19th-century The term Ancient, or Archaic, Greece refers to the years B. Archaic Greece saw advances in art, poetry and technology, but is known as the age in which the polis, or city-state, was Live TV.
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