It is impossible to read ancient sources without a sense of awe. And especially the literary efforts of the past. Whether one finds oneself on the battlefield of Troy, treks along with Gilgamesh in search of immortality, or watches with astonishment the rise and fall of mighty dynasties in the Mahābhārata, one cannot but be convinced that it is the sheer quality of these works which preserved them throughout the ages and made it possible to become the affordable paperback editions that we can buy at the local airport.¹ However, as you might have gleaned from the tone of that last sentence, the reasons that we admire those ancient texts today, manifold as they are, often have not much to do with the reasons that they used to be appreciated.² Seldom has this been more obvious than with Thucydides’ famous account of the Peloponnesian War. Some of the modern uses of his text might even have baffled many of those reading it in centuries past!

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Thucydides and the Peloponnesian War

As an Athenian in the Greek world of the 5^th century BCE, Thucydides had the misfortune of living through a period of devastating wars.³ After having fought off the Persians earlier in that century, the Greeks were at war with themselves from 431 until 404 BCE. And it is the latter war that led Thucydides to become a historian and chronicle its causes and its course. It is this History of the Peloponnesian War that now serves as one of our foremost primary sources on the conflict.⁴

This work, however, was never finished in its intended state and the edition that has come down to us ends abruptly in the middle of 411 BCE.⁵ And this is all the more frustrating, as we know that Thucydides lived to see the end of the war. Throughout the texts he hints at its ending and things that happened thereafter. Sometimes Thucydides might even seem like a Hollywood movie narrator who entrusts the audience with his foresight and alludes to dooms that are yet to come.⁶ But even incomplete, we today treasure Thucydides’ History of the Pelopponesian War and it really became, as he hoped for in his introduction, “a possession for all time.”⁷ And this is not only for its literary qualities and information on the past, but also for a variety of other reasons.

The Contemporary Appreciation of Thucydides

There are perhaps too many ways in which Thucydides is appreciated today to be discussed here. But I will note some of the more salient trends. One that speaks to my own sensibilities and is singled out by Uwe Walter in a recent Companion to the Ancient Greek World, is the reading of Thucydides as a lesson in the devastations of war.⁸ Another characteristic of Thucydides’ work that is regularly praised, is his methodology. As his stated intent was to get the facts right.⁹ And though he does not offer many competing accounts – unlike his near contemporary Herodotus – and appears to present certainty when that was simply not possible – because there would have been no available sources, for instance, or because the persons who speak to each other could have never met on the given time and place – his efforts in this regard are often commended.¹⁰

Though the most influential role of Thucydides’ work in the contemporary world – the one that makes the newspapers – is the appreciation in the field of (international) politics.¹¹ From circa the midpoint of the last century onwards, Thucydides has often been ascribed a ‘realistic’ view on humankind, and politics which could be used to explain why states go to war.¹² This so-called realist perception has multiple interpretations, but a common throughline is that states rationally pursue power and their own interests, primarily to ensure their own continuation.¹³ Thucydides’ work is held up as a prime example of this dynamic, even though historians – or even cursory readers of the text – might disagree with such an analysis.¹⁴ This realist perception might therefore not last, just like many of the interpretations of Thucydides’ masterwork that came before it.

The Earlier Appreciation of Thucydides

Not all of the aforementioned reasons are peculiar to our own time. The interest in Thucydides’ methodology, for instance, has a long pedigree.¹⁵ But many of them are – as peculiar as the earlier reasons for reading, commenting on, and preserving the work in bygone ages are to their times.

Thucydides himself would point to the usefulness of his work, not only as a report on the Peloponnesian war, but also as a treatise on human nature.¹⁶ And both these uses, among others, were taken up by other ancient historians. But these authors would also contrast their own works and methodology with their illustrious predecessor.¹⁷ A complicating factor is that we cannot always ascertain Thucydides’ influence in this period. Because, even though classical historians never had to write reflections on group projects, they nonetheless often tended to mention their confreres mainly in order to criticize them and seldom when they agreed with them or emulated them.¹⁸ But at least there were those in antiquity who did the hard work of copying Thucydides’ monumental work – even more impressive, when you realize they had to do so by hand!

The period after antiquity presents a frightening bottleneck for the survival of Thucydides’ work. For a time, the Greek text only survived in the dominion of the Byzantines, that is the parts of the Roman Empire that survived in the eastern Mediterranean.¹⁹ That the Byzantines kept reading and copying Thucydides had less to do with the Peloponnesian War and more with their need for a good example on writing history and with schooling purposes.²⁰ Because, as a difficult text in a very old dialect, the History of the Peloponnesian War could be “mined as a lexical resource and used for training in rhetoric.”²¹ Though the importance of the history conveyed in the pages of Thucydides’ masterwork seems to have been recognized again towards the end of the Empire in the 14^th and 15^th centuries CE.²² In that same period many ancient Greek texts, including Thucydides’ magnum opus, began to find their way back to Italy and they would eventually be brought to northern and western Europe.²³

The period in which the study of these texts was taken up in those parts is commonly denoted as the Renaissance.²⁴ In this time Thucydides mostly spoke to the elites, many of whom put their own spin on his History of the Peloponnesian War. Some painted the ancient historian as someone who abhorred war and would instead counsel us to become virtuous and skilled speakers, while others would have him be a veritable war monger – and then there is Thomas Hobbes, who postulated that Thucydides was both anti-war and anti-rhetoric!²⁵ In addition to being a source of advice on morality, prudence, politics, and war, Thucydides’ work also functioned as an educational tool when writing history and it played a part in other disciplines besides.²⁶

The trends that were started during the Renaissance continued well into the modern period and towards the 19^th century CE. Though we also come to see the seeds of some of the current caveats regarding Thucydides’ veracity and usefulness that were mentioned above. This has to do with what Alexandra Lianeri calls the paradox of the historiography of the 19^th century: ancient historians like Thucydides were viewed as a necessary presence, even though their respective eras, methodologies, and perspectives were mostly considered outdated.²⁷ One can still make the case, however, that it was Thucydides’ work which was one of the proverbial midwives for the historiography of our contemporary era – with all the negative implications that entails.²⁸ As such, we can say that the current appreciation of this ancient text, with the necessary caveats, is probably well-deserved.

Conclusion: A Fellowship of Lost Texts

The reasons why some ancient texts have come down to us and others did not, could be an ongoing series on this blog. Or perhaps even a tv-show wherein we follow ancient texts of which we know their existence and see how far in time they made it before they were lost forever, with only a select few making it to the reading public in present-day airports. Because frighteningly narrow bottlenecks, such as the one faced by Thucydides’ History of the Peloponessian War during its prolonged stay with the Byzantines, are not that uncommon. And these are, frankly speaking, the things that keep me up at night! Those that did survive such bottlenecks, in addition, were often merely continuously copied because of motives that differ as much from our sensibilities as the reasons for which they appreciated these texts. Besides schooling and rhetoric purposes, like with Thucydides’ work, we can discern religious and antiquarian incentives – and sometimes even dreams played a part.²⁹ Then there are the texts that survived not through copying, but because they were written on a medium that was fit to make it through the ages on its own – like clay tablets – or were kept in places where they were protected against the ravages of time – such as the some of the dry environment in the Egyptian dessert.³⁰ But those journeys will have to remain stories for another time, as are much of the other interesting topics concerning Thucydides.

These blogs are, if I assume correctly, also appreciated for a variety of reasons – and many of these I have probably never thought of! But that is alright, as long as they are appreciated, isn’t it? And next week I hope to provide you once again with a blog that is worthy of your appreciation.

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References

1. Regarding the previous examples, see: Robert Fagles (ed.), Homer – The Illiad (London: Penguin Books, 1991); Andrew George (ed.), The Epic of Gilgamesh (London: Penguin Books, 1999); John Smith, The Mahabharata (London: Penguin Books, 2009).
2. Jeffrey Michael Hunt, Riggs Alden Smith & Fabio Stok, Classics from Papyrus to the Internet: An Introduction to Transmission and Reception (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2017), p. 5.
3. Rosalind Thomas, “Introduction”, in: Robert Strassler (ed.), The Landmark Herodotus: The Histories (New York: Anchor Books, 2007), p. x-xi.
4. Another major source, which continued where Thucydides stopped, is the work of Xenophon, see: Peter Rhodes, “The Literary Sources”, Konrad Kinzl (ed.), A Companion to the Ancient Greek World (Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 2006), p, 30-31.
5. Robert Strassler, “Epilogue”, in: Robert Strassler (ed.) The Landmark Thucydides: A Comprehensive Guide to the Peloponnesian Wars (New York: Free Press, 1996), p. 549. The edition that we do have is also unevenly composed and it has been suggested that Thucydides was not able to revise the latter parts to his liking, see: Kenneth Dover, “The Classical Historians”, in: Kenneth Dover et al, Ancient Greek Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980), p. 95.
6. Strassler, “Epilogue”, p. 549. For an outstanding example, see: Thuc 2.65.
7. Thuc 1.22.4, Robert Strassler (ed.), The Landmark Thucydides: A Comprehensive Guide to the Peloponnesian War (New York: Free Press, 1996), p. 16; Richard Buxton, Imaginary Greece: The Contexts of Mythology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. 46. But see also: Polly Low, “Introduction”, in: Polly Low (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Thucydides (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023), p. 4, note 10.
8. Uwe Walter, “The Classical Age as a Historical Epoch”, in: Konrad Kinzl (ed.), A Companion to the Ancient Greek World (Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 2006), p. 14-15; Dover, “The Classical Historians”, p. 99-100.
9. Jonas Grethlein, “The Rise of Greek Historiography and the Invention of Prose”, in: Andrew Feldherr & Grant Hardy (eds.), The Oxford History of Historical Writing: Volume 1 – Beginnings to AD 600 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), p. 152.
10. Ibidem, p. 153; Rhodes “The Literary Sources”, p. 29-30; Thomas, “Introduction”, p. xxiv-xxxii; Peter Rhodes, “Thucydides’ Use of Evidence and Sources”, in: Polly Low (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Thucydides (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023), p. 50-62; Low, “Introduction”, p. 2-3.
11. Joel Schlosser, “’What Really Happened’: Varieties of Realism in Thucydides’ History”, in: Polly Low (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Thucydides (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023), p. 301.
12. Ibidem, p. 301-302.
13. Ibidem, p. 303-304.
14. Ibidem, p. 305-306; David Welch “Why International Relations Theorists Should Stop Reading Thucydides.” Review of International Studies 2003, 29 (3), p. 307-308, 312.
15. Luke Pitcher, “Thucydides in Greek and Roman Historiography”, in: Polly Low (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Thucydides (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023), p. 248.
16. Low, “Introduction”, p. 28.
17. Pitcher, “Thucydides in Greek and Roman Historiography”, p. 248.
18. Ibidem, p. 235. An important exception is Xenophon in his Hellenica, see: Ibidem, p. 238.
19. Scott Kennedy & Anthony Kaldellis, “Thucydides in Byzantium”, in: Polly Low (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Thucydides (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023), p. 249.
20. Anthony Kaldellis, “The Byzantine Role in the Making of the Corpus of Classical Greek Historiography: A Preliminary Investigation.” The Journal of Hellenic Studies 2012, 132 (1), p. 80.
21. Kennedy & Kaldellis, “Thucydides in Byzantium”, p. 250.
22. Ibidem, p. 249.
23. Kinch Hoekstra, “Thucydides in the Renaissance and Reformation”, in: Polly Low (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Thucydides (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023), p. 265-266.
24. Hunt, Smith & Stok, Classics from Papyrus to the Internet, p. 149.
25. Hoekstra, “Thucydides in the Renaissance and Reformation”, p. 265.
26. Ibidem, p. 280-281.
27. Alexandra Lianeri, “Narrative of Thucydides and the Nineteenth-Century Discipline of (Ancient) History”, in: Polly Low (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Thucydides (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023), p. 283.
28. Ibidem, p. 298-299.
29. Hunt, Smith & Stok, Classics from Papyrus to the Internet, p.96.
30. Marc van de Mieroop, A History of the Ancient Near East (Chichester: John Wiley & Sons Inc, 2016), p. 3-4.