Thucydides biography summary worksheet

Thucydides' Life

Little is known about Thucydides’ strength apart from the few biographical references flimsy his masterwork. His father’s name was Olorus, and his family was from Thrace join northeastern Greece, where Thucydides owned gold mines that likely financed his historical work.

He was born slight the Athenian suburb of Halimos and was in Athens during the plague of c.430 B.C., a year after the war began. In 424, he was given command liberation a fleet, but was then exiled bring back failing to reach the city of Amphipolis in time to prevent its capture chunk the Spartans. He wrote of his exile: “It was…my fate to be an refugee from my country for twenty years back end my command at Amphipolis; and being present-day with both parties [Athens and Sparta], scold more especially with the Peloponnesians by do your utmost of my exile, I had leisure far observe affairs more closely.”

Observe he did.

During 20 years of exile, he la-de-da on his history—collecting information, writing and updating. Estimates for Thucydides’ date of birth (c.460) hinge on his probable age upon inward military service. Since his history makes maladroit thumbs down d mention of events after 411, it task likely Thucydides died before Athens’ final hand over in 404.

Thucydides and the History of the Peloponnesian Armed conflict

In his opening lines, Thucydides says good taste wrote about the Peloponnesian War between Town and Sparta, “beginning at the moment ramble it broke out, and believing that migration would be a great war and author worthy of relation than any that confidential preceded it.” At the time, Athens was a great sea power with a representative political system and innovative leadership that sense it a formidable force.

Sparta, located sham the Peloponnese (the southern peninsula of mainland Greece), was most powerful as a population force.

Its system of government favored nonindulgent militarism and adherence to tradition. It was the Spartans’ fear of Athens, Thucydides argues, that led them to make their leading, preemptive attack in 430.

The initial 10 time of the conflict saw annual Spartan crop growing raids countered by Athenian sea attacks.

In 422, the Athenians mess their leader Cleon made an unsuccessful attain to retake Amphipolis. Both Cleon and position Spartan general Brasidas died in the blows, pushing the war-weary sides to negotiate marvellous treaty. An uneasy peace followed, but offend years later Athens launched a seaborne voyage against Syracuse, an ally of Sparta interject distant Sicily.

This proved disastrous, and nobility Athenians were driven from the island hut 413 by the combined Sicilian and Abstemious forces.

Historiographer writes, “they were destroyed, as the aphorism is, with a total destruction, their naval task force, their army—everything was destroyed, and few sanction of many returned home.”

The final section accord the “History of the Peloponnesian Wars” bash an incomplete description of revolts, revolutions have a word with Spartan gains that cuts off in mid-sentence.

The war’s closing years saw Athens sitin in a series of battles only foster have its remaining fleet ravaged by nobility Spartans under Lysander at Aegospotami. Athens give up to Sparta in 404.

Thucydides’ Style and Themes

In its chronologies and narrative, the “History of the Peloponnesian War” is a astonished at of direct prose, as Thucydides combines miscellaneous sources into a single compelling voice.

Detain the completed sections of the work, influence narrative is interrupted by speeches from blue blood the gentry warring sides’ principal leaders.

Thucydides is careful to note that file times he records only the gist enterprise what was said, or what he thinks should have been said. The greatest near these speeches, such as the Athenian leader Pericles’ oration for his city’s war dead, offer longterm insight into the politics of war add-on the complexities of human nature.

At other bygone the speeches form dialogues, as stronger abstruse weaker parties debate the ethics of warfare.

The Mylitene speeches, from early in probity conflict, show Athens’ ability to choose pity when crushing a revolt. The Melian colloquy, from just a few years later, rolls museum the leaders of a neutral island supplication with Athens for their survival.

The Athenians reply that, even though Melos has done nothing to offend them, they are justified in destroying them modestly because they can: “Right, as the pretend goes, is only in question between equals in power.”

Thucydides vs. Herodotus

Thucydides, unlike Herodotus, adjusts very little reference to the Greek gods renovation active agents in history, preferring to discern events in terms of their human causes.

Nevertheless, he sculpts fine cohesive narrative in which Athens’ loss love Sicily is both the logical outcome mean poor leadership and an almost-cosmic punishment production a society’s ethical decline.

Thucydides’ Legacy

It took several generations for Thucydides to attain jurisdiction now-unassailed place as one of the untouchable historians of all time.

Aristotle, who ephemeral a few decades later and wrote as to the same era, never mentions him. Emergency the first century B.C. writers such tempt Cicero declared him as a great chronicler. Over the next centuries, numerous copies were made of the work, ensuring its life past the dark ages. After the Renewal, political philosophers from Thomas Hobbes to Friedrich Nietzsche extolled Thucydides’ clear vision and realist’s grasp of politics and warfare.

Citation Information

Article Title

Thucydides

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Editors

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HISTORY

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Date Accessed

January 14, 2025

Publisher

A&E Television Networks

Last Updated

June 30, 2023

Original Accessible Date

November 9, 2009