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Overview
This book is a concise, readable introduction to the Greek author Thucydides, who is widely regarded as one of the foremost historians of all time.
Why does Thucydides continue to matter today? Perez Zagorin answers this question by examining Thucydides' landmark History of the Peloponnesian War, one of the great classics of Western civilization. This history, Zagorin explains, is far more than a mere chronicle of the conflict between Athens and Sparta, the two superpowers of Greece in the fifth century BCE. It is also a remarkable story of politics, decision-making, the uses of power, and the human and communal experience of war. Zagorin maintains that the work remains of permanent interest because of the exceptional intellect that Thucydides brought to the writing of history, and to the originality, penetration, and the breadth and intensity of vision that inform his narrative.
The first half of Zagorin's book discusses the intellectual and historical background to Thucydides' work and its method, structure, and view of the causes of the war. The following chapters deal with Thucydides' portrayal of the Athenian leader Pericles and his account of some of the main episodes of the war, such as the revolution in Corcyra and the Athenian invasion of Sicily. The book concludes with an insightful discussion of Thucydides as a thinker and philosophic historian.
Designed to introduce both students and general readers to a work that is an essential part of a liberal education, this book seeks to encourage readers to explore Thucydides--one of the world's greatest historians--for themselves.
Editorials
Library Journal
The ancient Greek historian Thucydides thought that his history of the Peloponnesian War between Athens, Sparta, and their surrogates would be a "possession for all times." Zagorin (history, emeritus, Univ. of Rochester), an authority on the English civil war, affirms this assessment in this lucid introduction to Thucydides as a philosophical historian. Rejecting chronicles, legends, or the interventions of gods, Thucydides offered a careful, realistic account of events, informed by the principle that similar events will result in similar outcomes, and more prophetically the observation that in war, morality, and democratic institutions are increasingly compromised to expediency. For him, history was about the play of power. A stimulating introduction for the student of history, political philosophy, or the serious general reader. The only weakness is the lack of an index. Highly recommended.-T.L. Cooksey, Armstrong Atlantic State Univ., Savannah, GA Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.Times Higher Education Supplement
Thucydides: An Introduction for the Common Reader offers an engrossing intellectual appreciation of the most important and most difficult historian in the western cultural tradition. . . . Perez Zagorin . . . brings formidable personal intelligence to major questions in Thucydidian scholarship, and his book goes well beyond the typical synthetic handbook. . . . There is nothing else like it.— Tom Palaima
The Wall Street Journal
Thucydides: An Introduction for the Common Reader is a useful book.... Thucydides' ... depth and breadth remain an extraordinary reminder of how little political distance we have traveled since his time.— Peter Stothard
European Legacy
[E]specially useful as a textbook for undergraduate courses as well as for general readers curious about an ancient historian whose name has a prime place in any history of history, as well as in the study of the mature stage of the classical age of Greece.— Victor Castellani