Thucydides
Autore di La guerra del Peloponneso
Sull'Autore
Born into a family of Athens's old nobility claiming descent from the Homeric hero Ajax of Salamis, Thucydides pursued a political career under Pericles and served as a general in the Great Peloponnesian War of 431--404 b.c. His subsequent exile for failure to prevent a Spartan takeover of an mostra altro Athenian colony in Thrace enabled him to observe the war from both sides. In his history of the war, he examines the policies and motives of the people involved with a calculated rationality that nevertheless conveys great passion. Although his narrative style is lucid and astringent, the language of the speeches that he gives his protagonists is some of the most difficult, yet rhetorically powerful, Greek from any period of antiquity. The work is deeply serious in tone. As Thucydides tells his readers at the beginning of the work, it contains nothing of entertainment value. He meant it, as he says, to be not simply a set-piece written for the delectation of an audience, but a "possession for ever." As Herodotus was the inventor of universal history, Thucydides was the inventor of the analytical historical monograph. He wrote in conscious contrast to Herodotus, whose work is full of entertaining fable and romance. While Herodotus wrote about the past by using all manner of traditions gleaned in his travels, Thucydides considered only contemporary history to be reliable and writes as an interrogator and witness of contemporary men and events. The gods, too, are absent from Thucydides's work, which scrutinizes human motivations as the exclusive business of history. The most powerful intellectual influences visible are the fully rational method of description and prognosis developed by the Hippocratic physicians and the tools of logical analysis and verbal argument then being forged by the Sophists. Behind these, however, lay a sense of tragedy. The history of Thucydides possesses the rhythm of a Sophoclean drama of reversal of fortune in which Athens falls from the pinnacle of imperial success and brilliance into political corruption, ruthless and amoral imperial aggression, and finally utter defeat and disaster. Athens's imperial hubris leads to its nemesis at the hands of Sparta, a conservative and landlocked state that had been powerless at the beginning of the war to inflict significant harm on the Athenians. Thucydides's work is unfinished. It ends abruptly in midsentence during a discussion of the events of the year 411 b.c. It was continued to the end of the war by Xenophon. Although very much the intellectual inferior of Thucydides, Xenophon managed by imitation to infuse this part of his Hellenica (his continuation to 362 b.c. of the history of Thucydides) with an elevation absent in the rest of his work. Until relatively recently, scholars took Thucydides at his word as an objective writer. More recently it has been recognized that his work skillfully promotes a patriotic and political argument, written in the climate of postwar recriminations. He presents Athens's empire as a natural consequence of the position of that city-state in the Greek world and the Athenian leader Pericles as Athens's greatest statesman, a leader who had governed Athens and preserved the empire with a firm and intelligent hand. Thucydides wanted to persuade his readers that Pericles was not the villain who destroyed Athens, that the blame fell to the politicians who came after him and pandered to the most extreme ambitious of the common citizens, the politicians who were the ultimate arbiters of policy in Athens's democracy. Some modern historians remain persuaded by Thucydides's portrait of Pericles and the Athenian democracy, but others argue from Thucydides's own testimony that Pericles led Athens into an unnecessary war in the belief that the opportunity had arrived to advance Athenian domination over the whole of the Greek world. (Bowker Author Biography) mostra meno
Fonte dell'immagine: Bust of Thucydides, Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto
Serie
Opere di Thucydides
On Justice, Power and Human Nature: Selections from The History of the Peloponnesian War: Essence of Thucydides'… (1993) 394 copie
Thucydides: The War of the Peloponnesians and the Athenians (Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought) (2013) 56 copie
A Greek Prose Reading Course for Post-beginners 4: Historiography: Thucydides: Events at Pylos and Sphacteria (1998) 17 copie
Athenian Disaster in Sicily 9 copie
La guerra del Peloponneso II 6 copie
Thucydides' Theory of International Relations: A Lasting Possession (Political Traditions in Foreign Policy) (2000) 5 copie
The Essential Thucydides: On Justice, Power, and Human Nature: Selections from The History of the Peloponnesian War (2021) 5 copie
Thucydides, Book 5 5 copie
Thucydides: History of the Peloponnesian War Books VI and VII: A Companion to the Penguin Translation (Classical… (1998) 3 copie
Thucydides II (LCL 109) 2 copie
Thucydides, book 3 2 copie
La grande dune 2 copie
Thucydides - Vol. I 2 copie
History: Book I, chapt. 1,2,3,5; book II, chapt. 6,7; book V, chapt. 17; book VI, chapt. 18; book VII, chapt. 23 (1947) 2 copie
Le storie. Volume primo 2 copie
Thucydides III @Book III 2 copie
La guerra del Peloponneso vol I 1 copia
Le storie. vol. 2 1 copia
The Funeral Oration of Pericles 1 copia
Sull'arte equestre 1 copia
Politische Reden 1 copia
Anabasi (libri quarto e settimo) 1 copia
La guerra del Peloponeso II 1 copia
Thucydidis Historiae 1 copia
Economico 1 copia
Thucydides book 7 1 copia
Thucydides ; the complete Hobbes translation, with notes and a new introduction by David Grene. 1 copia
Thucydides Bk II 1 copia
Thucydides Bk III 1 copia
Thucydides Bk IV 1 copia
Thucydides Bk VI 1 copia
Thucydides Bk VII 1 copia
Thucydides, book I-VII 1 copia
Thucydides I & VII (2 vois.) 1 copia
Thucydides, books II and III 1 copia
Thukydides V 1 copia
Thukydides IV 1 copia
Thukydides III 1 copia
Thukydides II 1 copia
Speeches from Thucydides 1 copia
Thoukydidēs 1 copia
Peloponneserkrigen B. 2 1 copia
Thucydides, Vol II. 1 copia
Thucydides. Histories, book II 1 copia
Thucydides II @Book II 1 copia
Thucydides in Four Volumes 1 copia
THUCYDIDES. 1 copia
Thucydides Book II 1 copia
Historiarum capita selecta 1 copia
The historians of Greece 1 copia
Thucydides- Volume 1, books 1-3 1 copia
Präparation zu Thucydides 1 copia
Thucydidis Historiae; recognovit brevique adnotatione critica instruxit Henricus Stuart Jones 1 copia
Thucydides Book 2 1 copia
Opere correlate
Etichette
Informazioni generali
- Nome canonico
- Tucídides
- Nome legale
- Θουκυδίδης Ολόρου Αθηναίος (Ancient Greek)
- Altri nomi
- Tucidide
- Data di nascita
- 0460 BCE (circa)
- Data di morte
- 0395 BCE (circa)
- Sesso
- male
- Nazionalità
- Athens
- Nazione (per mappa)
- Greece
- Luogo di nascita
- Athens, Greece
- Luogo di morte
- Athens, Greece
- Luogo di residenza
- Athens, Greece
Thrace - Attività lavorative
- general
historian
Utenti
Discussioni
OT for GMacAree in Fine Press Forum (Novembre 2023)
New LE: Thucydides The Peloponnesian War in Folio Society Devotees (Luglio 2023)
Thucydides in Ancient History (Dicembre 2021)
Group read - Thucydides' The Peloponnesian War in The 11 in 11 Category Challenge (Dicembre 2010)
Translating Thucydides in Ancient History (Novembre 2010)
Herodotus vs. Thucydides in Ancient History (Marzo 2007)
Recensioni
Liste
THE WAR ROOM (1)
A Reading List (1)
Favourite Books (1)
Unread books (1)
Antigua Grecia (1)
Premi e riconoscimenti
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Autori correlati
Statistiche
- Opere
- 207
- Opere correlate
- 11
- Utenti
- 12,756
- Popolarità
- #1,838
- Voto
- 4.0
- Recensioni
- 109
- ISBN
- 387
- Lingue
- 21
- Preferito da
- 36