Customer Reviews

The Landmark Thucydides: A Comprehensive Guide to the Peloponnesian War

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Robert B. Strassler's edition of the famous Richard Crawley translation of Thucydides is a remarkable work, not only because of its intrinsic merit but also because it is quite simply unique. Mr. Strassler has provided the ultimate in critical apparatus, an exhaustive series of tools with which to understand and appreciate one of the great books of world civilisation. I have never seen anything like it. First of all, there is the index; if an index can be said to be a work of art, the Strassler index is a work of art in the way it organises and informs the text. Next there are the maps - dozens of them - not clumped together in the middle of the book or hidden away at the end, but strategically placed throughout the appropriate points in the text, right at the reader's fingertips when he or she needs them. The footnotes (yes footnotes, not those pesky and inconvenient endnotes!) would fill a small volume of their own and add immeasurably to one's understanding. And as if this were not enough, there are 11 appendices - short essays by prominent classical scholars on different aspects of the Greek world in the time of Thucydides, from "Athenian Government" and "Trireme Warfare" to "Religious Festivals" and "Classical Greek Currency." As far as I am concerned, the only problem with Mr. Strassler's edition is that is has made me greedy for more of the same - a similar edition of the Mahabharata, say, or Gibbon! Any takers?

This is a superb edition of one of the greatest books ever written. However, there is a MAJOR CAVEAT: the paperback edition has a TERRIBLE BINDING, and will fall apart on you as you read it, guaranteed. This happened to every student in our class. Such a fantastic edition of a classic should obviously be sewn, rather than glued, but the publisher has apparently tried to cheap it out with an inferior glued binding which, I repeat, WILL NOT LAST. We wrote the publisher as a group, but did not receive an adequate reaponse. By all means, use this edition, but if you want to keep it, BUY THE HARDCOVER.

Robert Strassler has done a remarkable editing job with Thucydides' Peloponnesian War. He has included three key features which provide the reader much luxury:

One, he has provided maps throughout the text, to the extent of repetition, to ensure that textual geographic references are always accompanied, in close proximity, cartographically.

Two, he has provided paragraph summaries on the margin throughout the work so that a reader, who has put the edition down for any length of time, may refresh their memories quickly by reading as many of these one to two sentence summaries as necessary.

Three, as Thucydides provides his narrative in chronological order, he must often leave one narrative to begin another. Strassler has provided a thread to follow each narrative through to its' end by way of footnotes.

These editorial enhancements greatly enrich the reading experience and would be a welcome addition to any historical text.

Thucydides, himself, presents the reader with a narrative unromanticized, strictly adhering to the events of the Peloponnesian War. His work possesses many passages that rivet the reader, but also contains areas where the sheer and voluminous recitation of fact can render one foggy. This is not a book for the light-hearted, though Strassler's editorial enhancements make for a pleasurable experience. It is, in short, a classic which has been classically edited.

This is a review of Thucydides' The Peloponnesian War rather than Strassler's edition of it, as many of the other reviews more or less are. But hats off to Mr Strassler! He should receive an award, a salary increase, a villa on the Riviera...Something commensurate with his painstaking and infinitely helpful notes and elaborations and maps, maps, maps!-Now I know where everything is. The previous editions of Thucydides I've read were rather scanty on maps (i.e., They didn't have any.) All readers of this edition owe Strassler a bundle for making us more successful readers of an author who, at times, can be a bit on the difficult, if not to say inscrutable, side. What do we have to learn from Thucydides? As several reviwers have pointed out, Thucydides intended his opus as a work for the ages. But what were "the ages" supposed to glean from this first thorough account of war in the Western world?... Why men go to war? How to prevent war? How to be successful in war? What it means to go to war?...Just what did he intend? Nobody really knows the answer to the question. But I've read the work several times (never with a clearer understanding than after fnishing the Strassler edition) and have some ideas that might prove helpful. First off, one thing Thucydides almost certainly meant by declaring that his work was for the ages was that war is a permanent condition of mankind. Man has always and will always go to war. It's part of what we would call human nature or (if we wanted to be upscale about it), man's genetic make-up. This means that man is not, as Aristotle famously intoned, the rational animal, but irrational to the core. But, still, what does this really mean? The deepest impression I've always taken away from Thucydides was how moved, how liberated, how emboldened, indeed how festive the people were when they learned of an imminent war. What is this feeling, and why do people react to what, one way or another, is going to bring mayhem and slaughter into the world? In Book Six, concerning the Athenian attack on Syracuse, which Nicias (the Athenian General) and those Athenians with any military insight at all regarded as the naval equivalent of the charge of the light brigade (or would have thought of it in those terms, if the British had been around to tell them about it at the time), Nicias makes a famous speech before the Athenians, rationally explaining all the reasons that the expedition would prove disastrous. As recorded in these pages, however, Nicias' speech had the opposite of the intended effect..."Everyone FELL IN LOVE with the enterprise." ...So, eventually, the defeated Athenians ended up being held in quarries near Syracuse for eight months under the most extreme conditions before being sold as slaves. Nicias was executed. Thucydides says,"This was the greatest Hellenic achievement of any in this war,or, in my opinion, in Hellenic history; at once most glorious to the victors, and most calamitous to the conquered (i.e., the Athenians)." I think one of the lessons, the most important to me, to take away from Thucydides is that love (that "many splendored thing") can be horribly, horribly dangerous and destructive. What is it that the Nazi soldiers felt toward their Fuhrer, or the Chinese toward Mao, or the Confederate soldiers toward General Lee?---LOVE: a grand, noble emotion...The grandest, the most noble...Thucydides understood more amount human nature than many a philosopher. He reached his conclusions from what people did, rather than ruminating about them from secluded groves. The most important thing I have learned from reading him is a different level of introspection. When the band plays The Star Spangled Banner now (as when I was watching the Australian Olympics) and my heart leaps inside me and tears come quickly to the corners of my eyes....I stand back and look at myself and wonder...Is this the way the Athenians felt? What is this sudden whirlwind of feeling, and what sort of acts could it lead me to commit?...What is my nature?

This book presents a wonderful way to read Thucydides. While the introduction and appendices can be quite helpful to the non-specialist, the edition's greatest strengths are its translation and its maps. Crawley's is truly the definitive English translation, doing justice to Thucydides' majestic, albeit sometimes dense, prose. At the same time the maps make reading it a real pleasure. The Peloponnesian War ranged all across the Greek world, and most editions force you to constantly flip back to a few small and confusing maps in a feeble attempt to follow it. This volume entirely relieves you of that burden, removing all obstacles to the enjoyment and appreciation of this classic.

For those further interested in Thucydides and the war he recounts, I highly recommend Donald Kagan's four-volume analysis of the Peloponnesian War. An up-to-date, thoroughly scholarly work, it is also very accessible to the non-expert and well-written to boot. For expanded views and interpretations of the war, as well as an evaluation of Thucydides himself, pick up any one of his volumes.

I bought the Landmark Thucydides because it was the only hardback edition I could find. I was pleasantly surprised because it happens to be the best modern edition available. The editor, Robert Strasser, set out to make the most authoritative book on Thucydides's History of the Peloponnesian War, and I believe he has succeeded brilliantly.

Strasser uses Richard Crawley's translation, apparently revised and updated. In any case the text is very good, though Thucydides' syntax is sometimes complex and even a bit confusing. Strasser uses marginal notes besides each paragraph to summarize the events described in the text. The most valuable additions are the maps- there are maps every few pages, illustrating the geography described in the text as needed. Other welcome additions are a timeline, breaking down the events of the book according to date, appendices covering topics such as Athenian and Spartan government, trireme construction, land and naval warfare in ancient times, and even an essay on the monetary units and religious festivals used in the ancient world. There is also an introduction, discussing both the text and the author in detail and in the context of their time. There is also a full and complete index. If you want Thucydides, this is the book to buy!

This is an easy to read translation of the Greek historian. Mr. Strassler has done an A+ job of making the history easy to read. There are many first rate maps of Greece, Sicily and the other areas of the Pelopanessian war. The summaries of each paragraph of the book are brilliant and very clear when Thucydides is not always the easiest to comprehend. If there are any faults to the book they are the faults of Thucydides who is occasionally confusing and disorganized. The essays at the back of the book about Athens and Sparts and their social customs are first rate and very helpful. I enjoyed this book very much and give it the highest recommendation possible.

This edition of Thucydides is the right source to begin a study of the Peloponnesian War. The appendices and margin notes, and the multitude of maps, conveniently located in the text to minimize page-flipping, allow the reader to easily follow Thucydides account of this brutal, multi-theater war.

A note on the maps: I vehemently disagree with the reviewer who claimed they distracted the reader. I found, with my limited knowledge of Hellenic geography (and I have sailed those waters myself) that the maps were invaluable. I can't imagine reading Thucydides without a visual reference -- and in this edition, that reference is built-in.

Thucydides' account is essential reading for any student of politics (comparative or otherwise), military history, strategy, oration, leadership... have I left anything out? What makes Thucydides even more compelling is that he was not some ashen academic. Rather, he was an Athenian general who fought in this very war, and was exiled for his failure to prevent Brasidas' capture of Amphipolis. He writes of Athens' successes and failures with an admirable detachment and impartiality, despite the fact that he knows his beloved home will go down in the end. Of course, the history is incomplete, but Strassler's epilogue nicely sums up the end of the war and its geopolitical impact through Alexander the Great's vast empire.

My only regret in having read this book is that I am now spoiled, and will pine for Touchstone books to develop a "Landmark Herodotus," and other similar editions of vital histories.

I suffered through Thucydides many years ago in college and never understood what all the fuss was about. This was greatness for the ages? Please. The book was tedious and obscure, and it certainly didn't help when I was told how wonderful it is in the original Greek.

Strassler has done a wonderful thing. He's taken an old translation (19th century), done a bit of judicious editing, and made it sing. Pericles' funeral oration turns out be be extraordinary oratory. Thucydides himself turns out to be a clear and powerful writer. Strassler's excellent maps help bring the text to life - they are numerous and right there where you need them. Sometimes the almost exact the same map shows up again a couple of pages after its first appearance because the text on that page refers to a location on it - there's no flipping back and forth to find a map. Where the text mentions a location, Strassler gives us a map.

The footnotes are very helpful. I especially like the dates put at the top of every page - Thucydides doesn't offer much help with chronology, and those dates help keep everything in place. The index is very useful; it's what every index should aspire to be. The essays at the end of the book, which cover everything from local politics in Athens and Sparta to coinage to trireme warfare, are tremendously informative. I only wish some of them had been longer. All of this makes this edition of Thucydides a fine study tool.

At the heart of it we shouldn't forget Thucydides himself. His history is a powerful examination of war, why war is fought, how men behave in time of war. He shows clearly that the Peloponnesian war was a disaster for all Greeks and he shows why. The Greeks were extraordinary observers and describers of human nature, and their observations remain as sharp and relevant today as they ever were. It's his skill as an observer of his fellow men that gives Thucydides claim to being the best historian of all times. I once thought that the claim was so much puffery from classicists trolling for students, but Strassler makes me repent of that belief. This history is indeed great, a work for the ages, and Strassler has presented it in the best possible light.

I found this book on sale in a bookstore in Nijmegen, Holland. It looked very appealing, I bought it, took it home with me and waited for several months before I read it. I am not a scholar, nor a historian, I am interested in history and in fact rather than fiction. The splendid appendices gave insight in much of the text and maps are a definite plus.

As for the book itself. The further along you get, the more you are drawn into it. It really has the aura of an eye witness account. But somehow Thucydides manages to go beyond mere history and trancend the story into a classic Greek drama, the rise and fall of Athens. By the time the Athean fleet sails for Sicily I realised his very factual style of writing had turned an historic event of over two thousand years ago into harsh everyday reality. Here's a man struggling with depicting a war he was part of, with losses that he himself felt, with the downfall of a country that was his.

After reading it, I read Livius. The difference to me is stunning. Whereas Livius writes from a very chauvinistic Roman viewpoint, Thucydides actually tried to write a factual account. Even more stunning that Livius didn't manage objectivity with events hundreds of years ago and Thucydides did with events in his own lifetime.

Read it as you would read a newspaper.

Recently, I've often seen the book misquoted and its authority misused, suggesting that few people actually read it.

Do yourselves a favour, buy it, put it on your bookshelves and for God's sake, read it.