Thucydides

Thucydides' account of the war between Athens and Sparta is the first great work of political history and still a fundamental text for political science and international relations today; it is also a compelling story, with vivid characters, brilliant strategy and ideas, and tragic miscalculations. This collection of essays is designed to accompany, instruct, and stimulate readers of Thucydides (whether in English or in Greek) by making accessible some classic and influential studies that are frequently cited but not always easy to access. (One-third of the essays appear here in English for the first time.)

Here can be found essays on new directions in the interpretation of Thucydides (and their attendant dangers), on his preface, authorial persona, and relation to Herodotus, the problem of the speeches, his portraits of Pericles and of Athens, the distortions of political rthetoric in the Mytilinean debate and its corruption during civil war at Corcyra, the alleged incompleteness of Book 5, the morality of the Melian dialogue, and the grand and terrible epic of the Sicilian expedition; additional essays explore how Thucydides was read ion antiquity, how he influenced Thomas Hobbes, and how political scientists and international relations theorists should read him today.

The introduction is new, surveying trends and controversies among Thucydides' readers chronologically from antiquity to the present, thematically, and sequentially (book-by-book through Thucydides' text). A comprehensive bibliography of Thucydidean studies is arranged by topic, giving priority to the most recent works, and to those in English.

Thucydides' account of the war between Athens and Sparta is the first great work of political history and still a fundamental text for political science and international relations today; it is also a compelling story, full of vivid characters and tragic miscalculations. This collection of essays is designed to accompany, instruct, and stimulate readers of Thucydides by making accessible some classic and influential studies that are frequently cited but not always easy to access. (One-third of the essays appear here in English for the first time.) All Greek is translated, and an introductory chapter surveys the chronology and thematic controversies among Thucydides' readings from antiquity to the present.

Jeffrey S. Rusten is Professor of Classics at Cornell University.