Thucydides' "Histories" -- the Making Term Paper

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As an historian and a citizen of that democratic city, Thucydides was faced with a task no less daunting -- how to make the saga of a losing war seem like a triumph, or at least seem interesting and relevant, rather than something Athens wished to forget.

When reading Thucydides, one does not read about an ancient war, rather one is witness to the process of historical story, of a history of narrative being created, even the first citing of 'spin' if you like. Unlike the Spartans, for the Athenians in Pericles' oration, "advancement in public life falls to reputation for capacity," and the freedom enjoyed "in our government extends also to our 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 positive penalty." (2.6)

In recording Pericles, and also in his own ruminations, for the first time in Thucydides, a historian asked not what happened, but also why something happened -- and also, from the perspective of a losing army, he asked if simply because an army like the Spartans won did not mean, automatically that the Spartans were better than the Athenians, morally. Military might and greatness was not synonymous with greater valor and better governance. Instead, of the losing Athenians, "thus choosing to die resisting, rather than to live submitting, they fled only from dishonor, but met danger face-to-face, and after one brief moment, while at the summit of their fortune, escaped, not from their fear, but from their glory.

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" (2.6)

Thucydides does not refuse to exercise moral judgment of losing a war through the voice of Pericles. One of the key reasons for Athenian loses was the plague that gripped the city. Rather than see it as a judgment from heaven and the gods, Thucydides records its effects objectively, in technical and graphic terms. In words both clinical and coolly personal he says he is not a doctor but "shall simply set down its nature, and explain the symptoms by which perhaps it may be recognized by the student, if it should ever break out again. This I can the better do, as I had the disease myself, and watched its operation in the case of others." (2.7) modern reader may protest that he or she does not care about unpronounceable Greek islands, except as possible vacation destinations. But it is tempting to view scientific objectivity as a product of the modern era, and clearly it has historical roots of observation in the Histories. Thucydides' historical approach, which is documentary yet personal, partisan yet does not assume that only what wins is right, is the genesis of contemporary modes of recording, and more importantly creating history. In Thucydides, history was transformed from merely being a fabric of myths and legends about the wonderful nature of one's own land, and became a portrait of moral governance. It asked the question, how should citizens rule and be ruled, as well as who won what battle and what war.

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