Peloponnesian War by Thucydides

Greetings, Emmett here from readingforwisdom.com. The term classic is a much abused word. I'm pretty guilty of this. Everything is a classic. Today we'll be talking, though, about a work that definitely deserves the title. It's a classic in many ways. A classic because it comes down to us from the classical period of history, classical Greece, particularly classical Athens. It's a classic because it's an enduring work. In the words of its author, it's a work for all time. It's a work that has enduring relevance. It has work that when we read it, we can actually picture politics today, power politics, geopolitics, the dilemmas of strategy, the dilemmas of democracy, the dilemmas of political life. That work is Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War. This work is definitely what could be described as a foundation classic. It's a foundation classic of history, probably the first work of truly modern history, the first work for a person, the proto-historian Thucydides himself, to take quite a rational, measured, reasoned, evidence-based approach to looking as objectively as is possible onto a particular topic. It's also a foundation work on strategy, on geopolitics, probably the very first work that looked at a strategy formulation from the basis of a mass of people, not just one ruler or one great hero. It's also, and this is something that I think I strongly assert, it's a foundation classic of political science. We have no doubt that this has influenced a lot of realist philosophers, a lot of people from the, shall we say, the more realist, the more cynical, the more tragic view on the human condition and human politics. Notably, one of the early translators into the English language of this great work was Thomas Hobbes, he of Leviathan, writing during the English Civil War period that awful period in English history, when he looked back to this work and he saw many parallels and many lessons for his own time. And this is also a foundation work on war, on war, on planning, on the horror of war. It's a work that's imbued with a feeling of great tragedy and a sense of how war debases people and debases societies that themselves have very high values, high aspirations, and how they can sink so low through the tragedy of war. And as the title of the book suggests, it is the history of the Peloponnesian War. Now, for those of you who aren't quite familiar with Greek geography, but you will after becoming more familiar with this work, the Peloponnesus is a large peninsula, part of sort of mainland Greece, and it's away from Attica, where Athens sits. And importantly, the Peloponnese is where Sparta was situated. So the Peloponnesian War is a title that came down to this work much later on in history. Thucydides himself doesn't refer to it as the Peloponnesian War. It's more about an Attic War, because it was a war essentially between Athens, Athens, the mighty city, the mighty sea-borne empire, sea-based trading empire, that came in the 5th century to dominate Greece and its surrounding areas. It must be remembered, of course, that the Greek world includes now areas in Turkey, southern Italy, right over to Spain, and up into the Black Sea area. Very scattered civilization. And Athens was the predominant power. And Athens and its quest for domination brought it into conflict with the main power rival, Sparta. Sparta, the city, the main city in the Peloponnese, a city that was a land-based power. And in these two different cities, we see some amazing contradictions. And this work focuses on the conflict between Athens and Sparta, and the allies on either side of the divide. Tragically, the work follows on from the history captured by writers like Herodotus in the Persian Wars, when Athens and Sparta and the rest of the Greek allies came together to defeat and to push back a Persian encroachment into Greek territory. The determination by Xerxes and the like to dominate the Greek people. So battles like Thalamus and Marathon and some of those great classics, that were really where the Greek world came together, and in its strengths repulsed the Persian Empire. Unfortunately, not too long afterwards, and in the events covered after Herodotus, by Thucydides in this work, Sparta and Athens clashed. And the clash essentially came about because Athens' desire for empire, Athens' desire to dominate, and dominate it did through its trade, through its culture, through its seafaring power. And the Peloponnesian War that Thucydides documents, took place roughly between 431 BC and 404 BC. So roughly sort of a 30-year period, and it's marked by three distinct phases. Phase one, where Athens in dominance begins thrusting in upon the Sparta and her allies. A lot of proxy war going on, but a lot of probing into the Peloponnese, and a lot of wavering on the side of the Spartans. The Spartans, even though a very militaristic and authoritarian society, are quite restrained. Them fearing what this war will actually lead to. In the second phase, Athens comes to something of a grief, when Hubris and the bad side of their democracy, particularly the rise of demagogues, leads them to take an expedition to Syracuse in Sicily, and they come a-crubber. Their fleet is largely destroyed, and thousands upon thousands of great Athenian lives lost. In the third phase, Sparta bringing the war into land, and also projecting it for the first time onto sea, becomes the dominant power, and eventually Athens is subdued. Its enemies want to destroy it completely, but the Spartans are restrained, and they resist completely destroying the city, but subjugate it under its rule. The aftermath of the Peloponnesian war is a terrible one. Greek civilization has been weakened, famine follows, and eventually we see the rise of Macedonia. Now we could talk for hours about this book. This has so many, so many facets to it. One thing we'll warn all readers, is that Thucydides is a bit of a dry character. I think it would be fair to say, that if we were all going to a symposium, where we were going to consume wine, and sit around on our chaise lounge, engaging in witty repartee and conversation, we'd probably want to have Socrates there. We'd probably want to have, in fact, we definitely want to have Herodotus there. I don't know if we'd want Thucydides. I think he's a bit of a bore. He's a bit of a dry old character, but that certainly lends weight and gravitas to this work. And this is a work that most of us will read in translation. By all accounts, its original Greek is very, very complex, very, very challenging. And that makes translation all the more important. Translation that gets what Thucydides is trying to get across, in as truthful and as representative a manner as possible. But also translation that we can actually read, that amuses us, that takes us along with the story. More about translation in a minute. And apart from all of the wonderful history in here, it's full of a cast of amazing characters. We see them in a tragic, one of the most tragic pieces in the book, the so-called Melian Dialogue. We'll be providing a link below to a modern enactment, reenactment of the Melian Dialogue. A little bit too complex and important an exchange to me to cover on this video. But what you need to know is the Melian Dialogue is the ultimate dialogue on power. Power, politics, ruthlessness. Conducted by the Athenian delegation visiting the island of Melos. Melos, an island that wanted to stay neutral in the conflict, but Athens would not allow this. The dialogue is frightening. And following that dialogue, we see the destruction, the complete destruction of the Melian people by Athens. Athens, remember, a democracy. And at the head of that democracy for the first part of the book was the great character Pericles. Now, Pericles was a true person, a person who really sat for about 30 years at the pinnacle of Athenian politics. He weathered the storms of that city, sat on top of its culture, and as one of its senior political leaders, was a person responsible for making Athens great, great in terms of culture, great in terms of its reach. Unfortunately, Pericles also set the scene for Athens' democracy, creation of its hubistric and imperial views that lay it down. Pericles dies relatively early on in the piece through the great plague that sweeps through Athens during the early years of the war. One of the great speeches in the book, and again, a speech that possibly Thucydides did quite a lot to invent himself, but that speech is the funeral offering where Pericles speaks at the great city funeral for some of the early dead, early Athenian dead from the war, and delivers a rousing speech on culture, democracy, and Athens' place in the great cities. And let's have a little read into that. So from the funeral oration of Pericles, or constitution does not copy the laws of neighboring states. We are rather a pattern to others than imitators ourselves. Its administration favors the many instead of the few. This is why it is called a democracy. If we look to the laws, they afford equal justice to all in their private differences. If to social standing advancement in public life falls to reputation for capacity, class considerations not being allowed to interfere with merit. Nor again does poverty bar the way. If a man is able to serve the state, he is not hindered by the obscurity of his condition. The freedom which we enjoy in our government extends also to ordinary life. There, far from exercising a jealous surveillance over each other, we do not feel called upon to be angry with our neighbor for doing what he likes, or even to indulge in those injurious looks which cannot fail to be offensive, although they inflict no real harm. But all this case in our private relations does not make us lawless as citizens. Against this sphere is our chief safeguard, teaching us to obey the magistrates and the laws, particularly such as regard the protection of the injured, whether they are actually on the statute book or belong to that code, which although unwritten, yet cannot be broken without acknowledged disgrace. So in that passage alone, there sits lessons that have been listened to and heeded and thought upon for the ages on democracy, on issues like freedom of speech, freedom in the pursuit of the just life. So a treasure trove of riches. It's a very hard work, but a very rewarding work, the history of the Peloponnesian War. Now, at this point, I'd actually like to raise something very important, because when you come to this work for the first time, all of the place names, the geography will really challenge the reader. This text is complicated enough without not having maps and guidings to really help the reader along. And this is why I think that this is a text more than many, many others that really requires you to get a good copy, not only a good translation, but a copy that has good supporting notes, that has maps. Now, let's talk about some of the most common versions of Thucydides that you can come across. There are lots online of free versions, free translations, and do feel free to grab those and read them. I do recommend the Thomas Hobbes version. Hobbes, again, writing in the early part of the 17th century, rich, beautiful language, and something that gives you a flavour of Hobbes' time, and what a wonderful writer he was, but maybe not so accessible to the modern reader. A very, very common version, though, is the Penguin Classics version. Now, this features the 1954 Rex Warner translation and some supporting essays and notes. Now, this is a good translation. Warner is a good, fluid, modern writer, and a very good text, this. However, there is something, and a little message to Penguin. Please, please revise this version, because it is hampered by a lack of maps. Really, it is impossible for the modern reader to navigate through this text without good maps to reference. The one map that's in this book is just about useless. So, you know, this is a good value addition. It's a good translation. There's some good notes in here, but it is certainly not the most accessible or valuable version you could buy. That version is the Strassler Landmark Thucydides, and what a work this is. Now, this work is based on the 19th century translation by Richard Crowley. Crowley was a great translator. He was a really wonderful writer. One of the flaws, though, is that the more Crowley translates into accessible English, probably the less faithful it is to the original Greek. So there's a balance there to be struck. But Crowley was hugely influential, and this, his translation, forms the basis. But more importantly than that, what this wonderful, wonderful work does is it illustrates through wonderful maps, great, great maps, timelines, chronologies, to help the reader make sense of what's happening. Also, there are oodles and oodles of supporting essays in here by great classicists like Paul Cartlidge and notably Victor Davis Hanson, the American classicist and modern strategist and theorist on war. And the combination is to create a book that is just so easy to delve into. It's supported by wonderful referencing, as I said, a huge supporting material and a very fluid original translation. If you're going to get a copy of Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War, I urge you get this version. You'll not regret it. More expensive and a bigger investment, but as Thucydides himself said, this is a work for all time. So it's worthy of our dollars. And if all of the notes and readings in the landmark Thucydides weren't enough, the bookstores and bookshelves are filled with our wonderful supporting material on the Peloponnesian War period. You could do worse. In fact, you could do a little better than reading the works of Donald Kagan. Donald Kagan, fabulous historian, large part of his life dedicated to producing a four-volume definitive work on the Peloponnesian War. But in this, he wrote the first modern biography of Pericles, Pericles of Athens and the birth of democracy. Now there's some great lectures from Kagan online. Kagan himself has fathered a rich family of historians and political scientists and thinkers. So they're going to continue his legacy. But down below, we'll provide some links to Kagan, to Victor Davis Hanson and to many of the others. If you like the work that we feature on this channel, please do subscribe. Make sure you give a thumbs up and a like to this video. 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