Customer Reviews

The Landmark Thucydides

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

You should buy the hardcover book and not the paperback edition of this book. The paperback edition falls apart when you read it. This translation of Thucydides's history of the Peloponnesian War is outstanding. The text has numerous maps that help the reader locate the areas Thucydides is writing about. I found Thucydides's use of the speeches to provide a better understanding of the key persons and the motives of the nations at war to be suberb. I urge the reader to pay particular to Pericles furneral speech after the first of the war and the Melian Dialogue[Book Five] This book has many lessons we can learn today. Buy It

Quibbles with the translation used aside, I believe this book exemplifies how all history, especially ancient history, should be presented. Too often an author tells a story with place names that cannot be found on a map; even more common, no maps are offered in a book. It's worse with ancient texts, since many of the place names no longer exist.

This book, however, solves those issues. The reader can actually use the numerous maps to follow along with the history. When I first ran across this book I was almost stunned when I realized that all history books up to this one could have been presented this way but weren't. I think the authors (and publisher) have done a great service to this classic text. And now that I see that they have released The Landmark Herodotus, I have even more hope that the classics will be re-released in the future in this more accessible format.

If you have even a passing interest in this topic, I would highly recommend this version of Thucydides. Presented in this format, the story of the Peloponnesian War becomes easy to follow and more interesting than ever.

This is the best edition of the first and best history of the war between Sparta and Athens. Both cities were in decline after this war. Very highly recommened.

To even attempt a review of Thucydides is a act of supreme arrogance.

Therefore, let's deal with the edition:

Well translated with extensive notes and maps which assist the reader, especially this one, in following this ancient historians contemporary telling of the events of the Peleoponnesian War of 2400 years ago. For those of us who read portions of this narrative when we were much younger, this is edition is an eye opener. It is a proper companion to the same publishers edition of Herodotus Histories of the Persian War of a couple of generations earlier.

To anyone with an interest in the ancient wars between Athens & Sparta, The Landmark Thucydides is an essential roadmap to your journey through the world of Thucydides. The translation is good, the introduction great, and the footnote and annotated aids are exceptional. I enjoy reading the "Landmark" edition along with my preferred translation of Thucydides, the Loeb Classical Library translation. I find the two complement one another extremely well.

I am exceptionally impressed with the "Landmark" edition's price as well. Purchasing Thucydides' four separate volumes from Loeb (hardcover) will run you about $90 with tax and shipping. The "Landmark" edition (hardcover) is about 1/3 of this price. Accordingly, I highly recommend this single volume translation! While the Loeb translation, in my humble opinion, is slightly superior, the value for The Landmark Thucydides is greater. The footnoted and annotated explanations of the text are simply outstanding and make this book a wonderful exploratory tool.

As per usual, I am not reviewing Thucydides as an historian, merely this edition of the text. 'The Landmark Thucydides' is a great introductory translation of the text due to its contextualizing materials. Whereas the Penguin Classics History Of The Peloponnesian War has quite limited support material, such things overflow in the Landmark. Eleven appendices are placed in the rear of the book, dealing with topics such as trireme warfare, dating systems, and classical Greek currency. These papers are all written by experts in their respected fields. Most of the names are recognizable to those who study the Greek world, and the papers themselves are simply quite good for being one or two pages in length. The actual text in this edition is clear and easy to read. I did not check any particular passages against the Greek, but I'm trusting the translation based upon how widely read Thucydides is and how Strassler seems to be familiar with a great volume of scholarship. One area where this book does fall short is in the notes. Most references at the bottom of each page refer to the omnipresent maps which define the Landmark series (and these maps are very good and helpful when reading the text). However, the footnotes frequently repeat themselves time and again, defining the same terms over and over again. I'm just not sure how many times it described terms like "metic" or "hoplite" over and over again. The book also has a nice afterward describing the end of the Peloponnesian War for those who want an end to the story but are not yet ready to delve into Xenophon's Hellenica.

This is a very handy edition of Thucydides due to the great variety and good quality of the supporting materials. The appendices flesh out the Greek world, and the index makes things very easy to reference. The timeline is particularly nice, too. Although this book costs around 3x that of the Penguin, the extra material makes it worth it.

A quick note, since I have heard that there has been trouble with the binding of the paperback. I have the hardcover, and it stays together just fine.

According to strategist Colin Gray: "If Thucydides, Sun-Tzu, and Clausewitz did not say it, it probably is not worth saying." (Colin Gray, Fighting Talk: Maxim 14) Although that might be a bit of an overstatement, it is undoubtedly true that "The Peloponnesian War" is a real masterpiece. In it, Thucydides describes the war between Athena and archrival Sparta (433-405 BC) between 433 and 411 BC, where the book abruptly stops. The rest of the book being either lost or never written, although the writer surely did survive the war and - probably - died in the mid-390s.

In "The Landmark Thucydides", (editor) Robert Strassler has done everybody a huge favor, in making this book as accessible as possible. The book is heavily annotated, littered with maps and completed with annexes on subjects such as Land Warfare, Trireme Warfare, Spartan Institutions, Greek Currency and Religious Festivals.

The Peloponnesian War is not always easy to read, littered as it is with names of places, tribes, cities and coalitions, but some of the longer stories of the war a particularly rewarding (like the fatal Athenian expedition to Sicily). Also the 'Melian Dialogue' ("... the strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must.") is considered the classical example of die-hard Realpolitik.

Torture is how I'd describe trying the read through this book. Unlike Stassler's Landmark Herodotus, in which someone did a new easy to read translation, in this edition of Thucydides, Strassler uses a very old, cumbersome translation and makes some (probably very minor) changes--we are told.

The content, Thucydides' first hand account of the Peloponnesian War, kept me going, but it wasn't easy. There is an abundance of excellent maps and footnotes indicating where every anthill was located (I can't imagine reading Thucydides without knowing the geography), but the footnotes are otherwise totally devoid any higher level explanation of the text. This is also a serious shortcoming of the book.

There is a very good introduction and several short, well-written 2 to 4 page chapters at the end of the book on various themes, though what's sorely needed is some good explanation in the meat of the text. Unfortunately, reading another version of the text but relying on the Landmark edition for figuring out where the locations are is overly burdensome. The jumping from location to location in the text didn't bother me as far as being able to follow the action, though others did mention this as a problem--something they'd have to take up with Thucydides, not Strassler.

If you are reading this on your own I highly recommend an 18-CD lecture series put out by The Teaching Company on the Peloponnesian War that is fantastic. I highly recommend it, especially if you are reading Thucydides on your own.

Good luck!

The book arrived within the timeframe that was specified and the book was in good condition.