Thucydides

On the History of Political Philosophy is a lively and lucid account of the major political theorists and philosophers of the ancient Greek, Roman, medieval, renaissance, and early modern periods. Topics include discussions concerning human nature, social justice, the origin of law and human rights, the rise and development of different forms of government, idealism and realism in international relations, the distinction between just and unjust war, and the sources of public authority and the nature of legitimate sovereignty. The organizing principle of the book is the idea that the great political thinkers were searching for the best political order and a criterion for human conduct in both domestic and international politics. Demonstrating the continued relevance of historical ideas to today's problems, the author traces ongoing discussions about politics by examining the ideas of key political theorists. The book is intended for use in courses on political philosophy or the history of political philosophy.
https://www.routledge.com/On-the-History-of-Political-Philosophy-Great-Political-Thinkers-from-Thucydides/Korab-Karpowicz/p/book/9780205119745

Collection of contributions on the reception of ancient historiography in Early Modern Culture and Intellectual History. 

INDICE
INTRODUZIONE
I. G. Mastrorosa (Università di Firenze)
Oltre ‘riscoperte’, Nachleben e ‘fortuna’: considerazioni introduttive
ARCHETIPI
L. Porciani (Università di Pavia)
La parola orale. Erodoto e la costruzione del discorso politico
M. Lentano (Università di Siena)
L’eredità di Serse. Suasoria retorica e discorso storiografico a Roma
INTERPRETI E MODELLI
S. Gambino Longo (Université de Lyon III)
Erodoto nel Rinascimento: dalla riabilitazione a un nuovo modello storiografico
J.C. Iglesias-Zoido (Universidad de Extremadura-Cáceres)
La ‘actualización’ de los discursos de Tucídides en las antologías renacentistas de contiones: los argumenta del epitafio (2.35-46)
A. Raffarin (Université Paris-Est-Créteil)
D’un antiquaire à l’autre : Varron source et modèle de Flavio Biondo
P. Ponzù Donato (Università di Firenze)
Interpretazione, divulgazione, attualità: Pier Candido Decembrio volgarizzatore di Cesare
I. G. Mastrorosa (Università di Firenze)
Livio e Machiavelli fra passato e presente: tendenze demagogiche, aspirazioni tiranniche e strumenti di tutela della ‘riputazione’
A. Severi (Università di Bologna)
Dalla Roma imperiale alla Bologna principesca: la vocazione attualizzante del commento beroaldiano a Svetonio
L. Claire (Université de Picardie Jules Verne)
Sur quelques évolutions des commentaires aux Annales de Tacite dans les années 1580: Lipse, Muret, Pasquali, Scotti
LABORATORI FIORENTINI
L. Bernard-Pradelle (Université de Limoges)
L’historien en son laboratoire: Leonardo Bruni Aretino (ca. 1370-1444) et le travail sur les sources antiques
V. Pineda (Universidad de Extremadura-Cáceres)
The Memory of the Ancients in the Florentine Genre of epistole e dicerie
CONCLUSIONI
U. Roberto (Università Europea di Roma)
‘Attualizzare il passato’: alcune riflessioni sulla rilettura dei testi antichi tra l’età tardoantica e l’Europa del Rinascimento
ABSTRACTS

In Rhetoric and Power, Nathan Crick dramatizes the history of rhetoric by explaining its origin and development in classical Greece beginning the oral displays of Homeric eloquence in a time of kings, following its ascent to power during the age of Pericles and the Sophists, and ending with its transformation into a rational discipline with Aristotle in a time of literacy and empire. Crick advances the thesis that rhetoric is primarily a medium and artistry of power, but that the relationship between rhetoric and power at any point in time is a product of historical conditions, not the least of which is the development and availability of communication media.
Investigating major works by Homer, Heraclitus, Aeschylus, Protagoras, Gorgias, Thucydides, Aristophanes, Plato, Isocrates, and Aristotle, Rhetoric and Power tells the story of the rise and fall of classical Greece while simultaneously developing rhetorical theory from the close criticism of particular texts. As a form of rhetorical criticism, this volume offers challenging new readings to canonical works such as Aeschylus's Persians, Gorgias's Helen, Aristophanes's Birds, and Isocrates's Nicocles by reading them as reflections of the political culture of their time.
Through this theoretical inquiry, Crick uses these criticisms to articulate and define a plurality of rhetorical genres and concepts, such as heroic eloquence, tragicomedy, representative publicity, ideology, and the public sphere, and their relationships to different structures and ethics of power, such as monarchy, democracy, aristocracy, and empire. Rhetoric and Power thus provides a foundation for rhetorical history, criticism, and theory that draws on contemporary research to prove again the incredible richness of the classical tradition for contemporary rhetorical scholarship and practice.

This article offers a new interpretation of Athenian tragedy, in which the poets competed for their audience's favour by constructing stories in which the protagonists suffer and die because they act within a world which lacks the institutional compensations of which fifth-century Athenians were so proud. Far from being a subversive or apolitical art form (the most popular current poles of scholarly interpretation), Athenian tragedy was heavily and positively involved in its contemporary social and political discourse.

Thucydides was perhaps the most influential historian in antiquity; his work
inspired countless subsequent authors. In the past decade, interest in the
connection between Julius Caesar’s commentaries and Thucydides’
Peloponnesian War has grown, and linguistic and other links between the
works have been noted. In this paper I will show, following Powell 2009,
connections between Caesar’s civil war commentaries and Thucydides’
analysis of stasis. Caesar redeploys the different characteristics of stasis and
then employs them to highlight the Pompeians as the true villains and
culprits of the civil war, using the work of the famed Greek historian as his
modello codice.

Thucydides' story of the Athenian Plague (430 BCE) is the earliest preserved literary source describing and analysing the social consequences of a pandemic. Like many other episodes in Thucydides' monumental history, the story still serves as magistra vitae, as a guide to life, especially for societies in times of crisis.

Syllabus and Reading Schedule for The Rise and Fall of Popular Rule—Athens (Integrated Humanities Program, History Module, Fall 2018, UVM). Course Description: America's founders, when establishing our political institutions, took elements from those of ancient Athens and Rome, which pioneered representative government in various (and changing) forms. It is natural, after nearly two-and-a-half centuries, to think of our democracy as unshakeable and eternal. But independent popular rule in Athens—the focus of this class—lasted for less than two centuries, during which the city, after playing a leading role in the liberation of Greece from foreign control (The Persian Wars, 490–479 BC), grew into an Empire that imposed democracy on its subjects—some willing and others not—as a means of enriching and empowering itself. Athenian expansionism finally forced Sparta to lead a coalition against her rival (The Peloponnesian War, 431–404). Athens was eventually defeated. Though the city endured as an independent democracy until the conquest of Greece in 338 by Philip of Macedon (father of Alexander the Great), its defeat in the Peloponnesian War marked the end of the Athenian Golden Age. Through key ancient texts we shall follow the rise and fall of this political experiment, and examine the social and economic forces that led to the establishment and gradual corruption of Athenian democracy.

Similarities and verbal allusions that link the letters of Nicias in Thucydides (7.11-15) and Pompey in Sallust (Hist. 2.98M) prompt a comparison of the two men and their situations; but the contrasts that emerge from this comparison also invite the reader to observe how different the men were, and then to read through these differences to note the similarities between Pompey and Nicias's rival Alcibiades, who turned against his own city. The subsequent comparison of the recipients of the letters and their responses — Athenian democrats and Roman senators — shows a contrast even more extreme, for the former were united, strong, and public-spirited; the latter fracturing, weak, and self-centred. The contrasts that finally emerge from both comparisons suggest a fundamental parallel intended by both authors: the impending death of language, descent into ferocious action, and doom of civil war for both polities.

This paper assesses Thucydides' thoughts on the causes and inevitability of conflict in the Peloponnese by incorporating realist theories of interstate relations in addition to a sound analysis of Athenian imperial policy and the role of kinship in ancient Greek warfare.

Thucydides is generally not considered a philosopher in the sense that Socrates, Plato, or Aristotle are. David Bolotin, for instance, said, “[Thucydides] is not generally thought of as a political philosopher.” Yet his only work, The War of the Peloponnesians and the Athenians, is the densest and most profound work that deals with philosophy from antiquity. If political philosophy concerns itself with the nature of the human city, as Plato’s Republic and Aristotle’s Politics do, then Thucydides’ work stands alongside those canonical classics as a volume concerned with the question of the human city and is therefore a work of political philosophy.

This article delves into the relevance of the concept of "total war" as it is applied to the Peloponnesian War. In so doing, it is noticed a lack of consensus among contemporary scholar in regards to what is required for a war to be considered as total. Therefore, I here advance three sufficient and necessary conditions to deem a warlike conflict as total war. My conclusion, on the one hand, is that the Peloponnesian War fulfilled only part of those conditions. On the other, I hold that the tendency among Hellenists is to constantly compare the two World Wars that ravaged the 20 th-century. This distorts the analysis and hampers the explanatory capacity of the concept.

It was the rise of Athens and the fear that this instilled in Sparta that made war inevitable.” (Thucydides, 431 BCE, cited in Allison, 2017, p. 27). Ancient Athenian historian Thucydides died towards the end of the Peloponnesian War (431-404 BCE), a conflict that spread across the majority of Ancient Greece. Thucydides spent his last years documenting the brutal battle, in what would later become a classic known as The History of the Peloponnesian War, from which the above quote originates. From the vast pool of possible contributing factors leading to the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides was able to shine a light on one of particular pertinence – the impact of a rising power. This is to say that when a ruling power perceives itself to be threatened by a rising power, war is the most likely outcome (Allison, 2017). Nearly 2400 years later, Thucydides’ analysis can still be applied. In the last five centuries there have been sixteen examples of a rising power threatening to supersede a ruling power, with twelve of those instances resulting in war. The continuation of this trend resulted in the creation of the term ‘Thucydides trap’, the phenomenon of outbreak of war that occurs when a rising power threatens to displace an established power. The falling of the Soviet Union in 1991 supposedly marked ‘The End of History’, in which western liberal democracy ‘wins’ and becomes the final form of government, with the USA as the global hegemon (Fukuyama, 1992). Spending more on its military than the next seven countries combined (SIPRI, 2018), the USA sat at the top comfortably for two decades without fear of being knocked from its perch. However, in 2014 the IMF reported that China had overtaken the USA in becoming the world’s largest economy, a record the USA had held since 1872 (IMF 2014, cited in Financial Times, 2014). Alongside this, China achieved other significant milestones: largest automaker, largest middle class, most billionaires, fastest supercomputer, largest solar power capacity, and the highest investment in artificial intelligence (Allison, 2018). China continues to grow, and with a higher population than both the USA and Europe combined, it is on track to become a global force to be reckoned with. Thus, the question remains: can China rise peacefully, or will they fall into Thucydides Trap once again?

Pericles has had the rare distinction of giving his name to an entire period of history, embodying what has often been taken as the golden age of the ancient Greek world. “Periclean” Athens witnessed tumultuous political and military events, and achievements of the highest order in philosophy, drama, poetry, oratory, and architecture. Pericles of Athens is the first book in more than two decades to reassess the life and legacy of one of the greatest generals, orators, and statesmen of the classical world.

In this compelling critical biography, Vincent Azoulay provides an unforgettable portrait of Pericles and his turbulent era, shedding light on his powerful family, his patronage of the arts, and his unrivaled influence on Athenian politics and culture. He takes a fresh look at both the classical and modern reception of Pericles, recognizing his achievements as well as his failings while deftly avoiding the adulatory or hypercritical positions staked out by some scholars today. From Thucydides and Plutarch to Voltaire and Hegel, ancient and modern authors have questioned the great statesman’s relationship with democracy and Athenian society. Did Pericles hold supreme power over willing masses or was he just a gifted representative of popular aspirations? Was Periclean Athens a democracy in name only, as Thucydides suggests? This is the enigma that Azoulay investigates in this groundbreaking book.

Pericles of Athens offers a balanced look at the complex life and afterlife of the legendary “first citizen of Athens” who presided over the birth of democracy.

Genocide is a word that conjurors the darkest aspects of humanity. It is the crime of crimes; the unthinkable deed that is largely considered to be a product of modernity. The word itself did not exist prior to the Twentieth Century, therefore neither the ancient Greeks nor the ancient Romans held it as a conceptual category. That does not mean they did not commit acts of genocide in their all-encompassing desire for imperial expansion, with the ancient cities of Melos and Carthage being two such victims of this fate.

En el presente artículo (publicado el 17 de octubre de 2017 en la Revista Éufrates) se analizan las principales ideas reflejadas en el Discurso de Pericles, recogido por Tucídides en el Libro II de la Historia de la Guerra del Peloponeso. Su relevancia reside en ser el primer manifiesto de la teoría democrática.

In: P. Fraňo - M. Habaj (eds.), Antica slavica, Trnava 2018, pp. 61-76.
After a discussion of three minor discrepancies in Thucydides, I deal with Thucydides’ description of the relationships between Athens and Sparta in 420 (and the supposed promise that one side should make neither war nor peace without the other) and with Thucydides’ views on Pericles and the Sicilian expedition.

Kinship in Thucydides is a new contribution to the study of Thucydides and the social history of the ancient Greek world. Drawing on modern anthropological enquiries on kinship and sociology of ethnicity and emotions, and scholarly work on kinship diplomacy and Greek ethnicity, it argues that intercommunal kinship has a far more pervasive importance in Thucydides than has been acknowledged so far. It revisits the stereotype of Thucydides as an ancient theorist of Realpolitik, and seeks to reveal new aspects of his authorial sophistication. Through close reading, contextualization in a variety of sources, and special attention to ancient and modern audiences, Fragoulaki explores the whole spectrum of intercommunal kinship in the ancient Greek world, by studying the various ways in which ancient Greek communities could be related to each other (colonization, genealogies, membership of the same ethnic group, socio-cultural symbols, political mechanisms and institutions) and the preponderantly cultural, emotional and ethical character and expression of these ties.
Kinship in Thucydides provides a fresh and up-to-date discussion of Thucydides’ kinship terminology, and has wider implications for our understanding of terms such as syngeneia and oikeiotes. Through test-cases, organized in terms of geography, ethnicity and kinship categories, it reveals a complex web of intercommunal ties and their interaction with the practical aspects of the War. The kinship theme offers an excellent angle from which to study Thucydides’ artful construction of his narrative, his technique of significant understatement, his challenging silences, his interaction with other genres, and his intense engagement with Herodotus. New readings of much discussed parts of the History are provided, and the problem of Athenian kleruchies is re-opened in Appendix I. Appendix II substantiates the complementary relationship in the amount and distribution of kinship information in Thucydides and Herodotus in the form of a table.

The History of the Peloponnesian War is usually seen as an archetypal statement of power politics. Thucydides is regarded as a political realist who asserts that the pursuit of moral principles does not enter the world of international affairs. (2) I want to show that, on the contrary, we find in Thucydides a complex theory. He supports neither extreme realism, in which international morality is denied, nor utopian idealism that overlooks the aspect of power in international relations. He is profoundly interested in ethical issues in domestic and international politics. Against the provocative title of the recent article of David Welch, "Why International Relations Theorists Should Stop Reading Thucydides," (3) I argue that both theorists and practitioners of international politics should read Thucydides, and can greatly benefit by reading him.

In the article, the author tries to clarify the principles of war which Thucydides lays out in his History. It is well-known that Thucydides' work is " a possession for all time " based on the greatest war in human history. From Thucydides' point of view, this war has fully demonstrated the potential of armed confrontation between men and other forms of human activity connected with it. Starting from the conception of war as a division of men into friends and foes, " us " and " them " , the author follows Thucydides' own logic and gives four principles of the division. Three of them clearly replace each other as the war goes on; from a division by blood to a division by party, then from а division by party to a division based on might or power. The fourth principle of division is a division by humanity or human nature potentially rooted in the form of the text itself, i.e. in the division into two kinds of men in history.

In Thucydides’ history of the Peloponnesian War there are fourteen references to oracular responses published not only by the oracles but also by several diviners during the war period. Although certain people under the influence of the Sophist movement cast doubt upon the possibility of having any kind of real knowledge about deity, which was the source of all oracles, the public opinion of that time took the traditional religion and the published oracles into account. The result of this situation was the involvement of the religious authorities –especially of Delphi and other oracles- in the politics of the city-states.

IG V 1,1 should not be dated to the beginning of the Archidamian War. Connections with an
allusion in Thuc. 2,8,4 and the explication of the beginning of the War in the Peace of Aristophanes are not
very firm. Datation at the Decelean War remains possible.

Antilogies formed a privileged sort of writings where Sophistic excellence could manifest itself at the best.
Hardly a doubt on this point, since mastery works as the Tetralogies by Antiphon, or the Helen and Palamedes by Gorgias, the final agōn of Aristophanes' Clouds or Thucydides' Melian dialogue are there to offer ample evidence of that.
But the list of antilogies is much richer and antilogies have a logic of their own, worth being uncovered.