Customer Reviews

The History of the Peloponnesian War

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There are four main translations of Thucydides available for the English reader:

Thomas Hobbes' 1628 version. Although made over 300 years ago this translation is still considered a classic by many in the English-speaking world. Hobbes is best known for writing "Leviathan" that classic work on Politics that all College students in the Western world for the past 200 years had to read. Do you like Shakespeare? If so give this edition a try. Hobbes vigorous and lively Jacobean English prose will enchant those more literary minded souls - however, Hobbes version has been noted for some inaccuracies due to his lack of proper understanding of the original Greek language text.

William Smith's 1754 translation. Most know of Crawley and Hobbes works but Smith's excellent 18th century version has been almost forgotten. I think you can only get it in a used edition on abebooks dot com. Smith's prose is as majestic as you you expect for a 18th century translation. While a bit hard to read for most modern readers Smith's prose is worth the effort if you stick with him. Some things were not meant to be "dumbed down". I compare reading Smith's Thucydides to plowing through Whiston's translation of Josephus.

The mid-Victorian (1874) Richard Crawley version is the one that most English speaking people were familiar with until the Penguin Books edition came out. This is a much easier version to understand than the Hobbes and Smith translations. While still retaining a very formal prose style it captures the Greek much more accurately than any previous version. This translation has the best balance between literary style and accuracy to the original text. This is the edition that many of our Grandparents and Great Grandparents read in school or College. Modern Library puts out a very affordable edition.

Rex Warner's Penguin edition. This is the version offered here. Warner is excellent for those who want to avoid the archaic and more challenging prose of Hobbes, Smith, or Crawley. He is very clear and lucid in his rendition of the text. This edition is more suitable for modern readers who want an easy to read prose that maintains accuracy. I think that Warner's translation is the only serious rival to Richard Crawley's version. For those of you who are first embarking on your exploration of Thucydides I would recommend this edition.

"History of the Peloponnesian War" is, superficially, merely an account of a war that happened centuries ago, the Peloponnesian War, between Athenas and Sparta. Of course, you might think that the subject is trivial to you. After all, how important can a book like that be?. Well, if you were to think that, you would be enormously mistaken.

To start with, this book is a milestone you need to be aware of. Thucydides, its author, is very possibly the first modern historian. He tried to explain the causes of the Peloponnesian War, without reducing its complexity by saying that the gods had motivated it. Thucydides doesn't follow the easy path; instead, he searches those causes in human nature, and in power. He doesn't weave tales, but tries to write History.

It is rather astonishing how objective this Athenian was when he analyzed the war, and all that happened immediately before it. He examines methodically many events, paying special attention to facts. The author also gives his opinion from time to time, but he doesn't judge whether an action is good or evil: he merely shows that those that have power can use it as they see fit. Due to that, Thucydides is called by many the first realist theoretician. I was especially taken aback by how well he expresses his ideas regarding the fact that "power makes right" in the Melian debate. I don't agree with him, but I cannot deny that he makes a powerful case, and that his point of view is shared nowadays by many noteworthy thinkers.

It is important to point out that in "History of the Peloponnesian War" you will find a painstaking account of many things that actually happened, but also some speeches that weren't made by the actors, but could have been made by them. To explain that more clearly: Thucydides wrote some political dialogues and monologues that allow us to understand some aspects of the conflict (and many of his ideas) better. The introduction to this edition also highlights that the author sometimes made up some of the speeches (from the data he had), and was present when others were pronounced. My favorite speech is the one made by Pericles, in honor of the men who died during the war. In that discourse, he explains why those men fought and died to defend Athens, and what Athens meant not only for Athenians but also for Greece.

This book isn't easy to read, but it is well-worth the effort. The translation is quite good, so that will make your task a little easier. If you don't feel like reading this book all at once, try to read it little by little. The results will be the same, but you won't feel dismayed by the need of finishing it immediately.

Also, if you can, try to relate some of Thucydides themes to our modern world. You will find that easier that you might think, and it will make you pay more attention to what you are reading. You are likely to be very surprised, for example, at how similar some of nowaday's justifications for taking advantage of power without paying attention to justice are to those that Thucydides already made a long time ago. On the whole, I highly recommend this book :)

Belen Alcat

I had a Greek teacher who loved Herodotus, and did not love Thucydides. The consequences were not, perhaps, what you might expect. In the event, when we studied Herodotus, she would chatter on about the background, the characters. When we came to Thucydides, without nearly so much to entertain her, we just read the Greek.

Good thing, too. Herodotus' Greek is not elegant, and it is not pure Attic. But it is accessible to the relative novice. Thucydides, on the other hand, is about as hard as it comes - made worse by the fact that he is most accessible where he is least interesting, which is to say in the passages of pure battle narrative. It is in the "reflective" passages - where his "characters" are trying to explain or justify their actions, or where he is simply trying to make sense of an appalling calamity - that he is most obscure.

Is this an accident? I think not. Thucydides is, after all, an originator. He is perhaps not quite the first to give us a narrative of events, but he is surely the first to try to make sense of it all. And to recognize the path taken by his own beloved country as the course of stark strategy. It is the story, in short (at least at one level) of how a nation perhaps too rich and too self assured, can go terribly wrong.

It was fashionable to cite Thucydides in the dark days of the Vietnam War. I wonder if the comparison shows us too much flattery. For Thucydides' story is not only a story about the arrogance of power. Athens at its best was a priceless treasure. Anyone can throw away an opportunity, but some opportunities are better than others.

Suggestion: of all the readers who responded to the challenge of Thucydides, none met it more dramatically than Thomas Hobbes, the British political philosopher who began his career by fashioning the first great English translation of the Peloponnesian War. Hobbes' 17th-Century translation is perhaps not the most accessible, and I gather it is not the most accurate. But Hobbes has a gnarly directness of his own, and echoes of Thucydides reverberate through just about everything he later wrote.

What a silly debate is taking place on this page! Who cares if Thucydides' account of the war is factually accurate? When have you ever read a factually accurate account of a war, that is without moral or political bias?

I read _History of the Peloponnesian War_ in search of information broader than just the Athenian-Spartan conflict. This book is about humans in political society, not about Athenians. I find examples of crowds swayed by rhetoric rather than facts; of contemporary debates between power and morality; of social breakdown in times of great stress; of perennial logistical truths about the difficulty of fighting a war on multiple fronts. I read about the Delian League and learn about NATO.

This is a great book, and a must read for anyone interested in contemporary world politics!

I will spare a full-blown review. But if you have the extra money or could easily afford it, I would recommend the newer more expensive edition of this book with the introduction by Victor Davis Hanson. There, you will have maps to your hearts content, including chapter summaries. This edition lacks in both of these areas. As a result, this edition gets 4 stars, while the history written by Thucydides is beyond measure.

Thucydides is a top-notch ancient historian, although he can be a bit dry at times. In fact, this may be part of what makes him such a great historian; he says in the beginning that he's concerned only with the facts and pretty much sticks to that for the whole history. Whatever the case, it's important for a translation of his history to not end up sounding too dry and provide the reader with some geographical and historical background.

The Penguin version does nothing of the sort. The text just goes on and on, without any maps, diagrams, or summaries of droning narratives to refer to. While this text is certainly great (seeing as many other reviews have already explained why this is so, I won't get into that), it can definately be intimiidating and dry sometimes. The Landmark Thucydides provides a much superior translation and book, complete with paragraph summaries and a plethora of maps (it really does help to be able to see where the action is taking place without having to fip too much). If you want to read Thucydides, invest in the best possible translation you can find. Trust me; it's worth it.

Five stars for the book itself, one star for the translation and accessories. I bought this because I thought it would be cheaper, but I ended up selling it used and getting the Landmark.

Thucydides is one of the great historians of antiquity. He offers a first hand account of the terrible Peloponnesian war that plagued Greece for over thirty-years. Not only does he discuss the war between Athens and Sparta, but also he gives a very informative description of Greek life and history leading up to the war.

Thucydides discusses the early war with the Persians and the subsequent power-vacuum left in Greece following the conclusion of the conflict. He discusses the merits of both the Athenian League and their Spartan counter parts, thus remaining objective even though having served as an Athenian general. His knowledge of battles is profound, but more interesting is his discussion on the politics of Greece at the time.

He makes great use of political dialogues in order to emphasize important aspects of the conflict and the Grecian political situation. Especially interesting are Pericles' funeral oration, and the Melian dialogue. Both dialogues deal with matters of state, i.e. the good citizen, and realist thought towards nationalist interest.

Through Thucydides work we are able to draw numerous parallels from antiquity to modern times. Thucydides has almost perfectly captured current international politics on miniature scale, making observation and study most beneficial to those interested in learning the underlying processes of global affairs. I recommend a close reading of The Peloponnesian War for any student of political science or for anyone interested in Ancient History. A most fascinating read.

Why should we take an interest in a war that happened four centuries before the birth of Christ? It is because this disastrous 27-year war between Athens and Sparta had a major impact on the development of the Western world. It finally ended in 404 B.C.E., and recent evidence suggests that Athens finally succumbed not to force of arms, but to typhoid. The result of the war was to put an end to hopes of Greek unification, and it was only a matter of time before the weakened Greek cities would fall victim to foreign conquest and lose the freedoms that were the vital essence of Greek civilization, and their greatest gift to the world. The triumph of Spartan oligarchy over Athenian democracy left a long shadow over the development of Western civilization.

Thucydides is considered by many to be the first great critical Western historian. He was a wealthy Athenian who was born around 460 B.C.E. and died around the age of sixty. He is chiefly remembered for this important book, and for a few pithy epigrams and quotations: "History is philosophy teaching by examples;" and "Be convinced that to be happy means to be free and that to be free means to be brave. Therefore do not take lightly the perils of war."

When the Peloponnesian War broke out, he is thought to have been about 28 or 29 years old, and rose to the rank of general before being exiled for his military failure at the Battle of Amphilpolis. In those days, military failure was counted a crime.

This book is a meticulous chronicle of the disastrous war. Until this work, historians simply recorded events. But his was different: an attempt to find inside information from people on both sides, and to interpret some of the turning points of the whole war and some of the terrible decisions that ultimately changed history.

There will always be squabbles about different translations and versions of a classic text, but this one is as good as they come, and well worth looking at for its insights into some of the events that fashioned our world.

An excellent account of the destructive war between Athens and Sparta from 431 to 404 B.C. The book details three theaters of war--mainland Greece, Sicily and Asia Minor. Thucydides is probably at his best when he details speeches given by various statesmen or generals (even if they are most probably fictitious or highly suspect). This book is, in my opinion, much more engaging than Herodotus' "Histories". I would try to convince anyone to buy this book. Read it!

In 431 BC war broke out between Athens, the dominant empire in Greece at the time, and Sparta, her main rival. The first twenty years of the war are chronicled in this absorbing work: book eight breaks off mid-sentence, and Thucydides' account of the last seven years of the war has not survived.

Apart from fifteen pages in book one, in which he briefly recounts the events of the fifty years prior to the war, Thucydides never strays from the day-to-day and year-to-year details of the war. The only significant Greek historian who predates him is Herodotus, whose account ended where Thucydides' begins, in 479 BC; but Herodotus was a story-teller where Thucydides is a scholar. Reading Herodotus' "Histories" is more like sitting by the fire with a glass of brandy and an interesting friend. Thucydides reads like a textbook, and though this is one of his strengths, it also makes him a little harder for modern readers to approach. On the other hand, the very density of information feels quite modern, so that although the politics is alien, once you find your feet you'll be swept up by the story of a terrible war.

The book is full of names, places, and account of battles and intrigues. There are several maps at the back, which are a great help, but over and over again I found that a key place wasn't on the map, and there are no notes to help out. Where is Naupactus? Who are the Carians? Where do the Illyrians come from? Unlike the Penguin edition of Herodotus, which is packed with helpful notes, this edition provides the reader very little help. Too often I found I just had to wing it, guessing the importance of a name or the approximate location of a place from context. I'd recommend having a good classical dictionary handy while you read, if you're the sort who wants these questions answered.

Thucydides style is to alternate plain narration with speeches. The introduction (by Finley) makes it clear that these speeches are generally made up by Thucydides to fit what he thought would or should have been said. On the other hand, he was there for some of them, and did his best to interview eye-witnesses wherever he could, so the speeches tend to sound quite convincing.

Thucydides' passion for accuracy is what makes this book special. The account of a night battle in Sicily makes it clear how hard he worked to get the details right; he comments that this account is less likely to be accurate because the witnesses he interviewed were unable to see the whole battlefield, as they could in a day battle, and there's a fascinating chapter (book seven, chapter 44) where he talks about all the difficulties of reporting factually in these circumstances.

He sounds quite modern, and he is. He's the first truly modern historian, and would be worth reading for that reason alone. However, the story he tells, of twenty years of bitter conflict between two fine civilizations, is enthralling, and brilliantly told. Recommended.