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BRILL’S COMPANION TO THUCYDIDES
BRILL’S COMPANION
TO THUCYDIDES
edited by
ANTONIOS RENGAKOS AND ANTONIOS TSAKMAKIS
LEIDEN • BOSTON
2006
Cover illustration: ©Bildarchiv Preußischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin, 2006,
Antikensammlung, SMB / Ingrid Geske
This book is printed on acid-free paper.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
A C.I.P. record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.
ISBN-13: 978 90 04 13683 0
ISBN-10: 90 04 13683 5
© Copyright 2006 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands
Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill,
Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP.
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CONTENTS
List of Contributors ....................................................................
ix
Abbreviations ..............................................................................
xv
Introduction ................................................................................
xvii
PART ONE
AUTHOR, CONTEXTS, IDEAS
1. Biographical Obscurities and Problems of Composition ....
Luciano Canfora
3
2. The New Genre and its Boundaries: Poets and
Logographers ........................................................................
Aldo Corcella
33
3. Thucydides and Herodotus: Aspects of their Intertextual
Relationship ..........................................................................
Zacharias Rogkotis
57
4. Thucydides’ Intellectual Milieu and the Plague ................
Rosalind Thomas
87
5. Contract and Design: Thucydides’ Writing ........................
Egbert Bakker
109
6. Thucydides and the Invention of Political Science ............
Josiah Ober
131
7. Leaders, Crowds, and the Power of the Image:
Political Communication in Thucydides ............................
Antonis Tsakmakis
8. Thucydides on Democracy and Oligarchy ........................
Kurt Raaflaub
161
189
vi
contents
PART TWO
THE ART OF THUCYDIDES
9. Objectivity and Authority: Thucydides’ Historical
Method ................................................................................
Tim Rood
10. Interaction of Speech and Narrative in Thucydides ........
James V. Morrison
225
251
11. Thucydides’ Narrative: The Epic and Herodotean
Heritage ................................................................................
Antonios Rengakos
279
12. Narrative Unity and Consistency of Thought:
Composition of Event Sequences in Thucydides ............
Hans-Peter Stahl
301
13. Thucydides’ Workshop of History and Utility outside
the Text ..............................................................................
Lisa Kallet
335
14. Theatres of War: Thucydidean Topography ....................
Peter Funke – Matthias Haake
369
15. Warfare ................................................................................
Peter Hunt
385
16. Thucydides and Religion ....................................................
William D. Furley
415
17. Individuals in Thucydides ..................................................
David Gribble
439
18. Thucydides and Power Politics ..........................................
Lawrence Tritle
469
contents
vii
PART THREE
WIE ES EIGENTLICH GEWESEN?
19. Thucydides and Epigraphy ................................................
Bernhard Smarczyk
495
20. Thucydides and Athenian History ....................................
P.J. Rhodes
523
21. Thucydides and Comedy ....................................................
Jeffrey Rusten
547
22. Sparta and the Spartans in Thucydides ..........................
Paul Cartledge – Paula Debnar
559
23. Macedonia and Thrace in Thucydides ............................
Michael Zahrnt
589
24. Thucydides and the Argives ..............................................
Simon Hornblower
615
25. Sicily and Southern Italy in Thucydides ..........................
Michael Zahrnt
629
26. “. . . keeping the two sides equal”: Thucydides, the
Persians and the Peloponnesian War ................................
Josef Wiesehöfer
27. Peloponnesian War: Sources Other Than Thucydides ....
Martin Hose
657
669
viii
contents
PART FOUR
AFTER THUCYDIDES
28. Thucydides Continued ........................................................
Roberto Nicolai
693
29. Thucydides in Rome and Late Antiquity ........................
Luciano Canfora
721
30. Byzantine Adaptations of Thucydides ..............................
Diether Roderich Reinsch
755
31. Thucydides’ Rennaissance Readers ..................................
Marianne Pade
779
32. Thucydidean Modernities: History between Science
and Art ................................................................................
Francisco Murari Pires
811
Bibliography ................................................................................
839
Index
Index
Index
Index
883
904
912
935
of Names and Selected Technical Terms ....................
of Selected Greek Terms ................................................
Locorum I (Thucydides) ................................................
Locorum II (Other authors) ..........................................
LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS
Egbert J. Bakker is Professor of Classics at Yale University. His
main interests are early Greek poetry and the narrative aspects of
Greek historiography. His books include Linguistics and Formulas in
Homer (1988), Poetry in Speech: Orality and Homeric Discourse (1997), and
Pointing at the Past: From Formula to Performance in Homeric Poetics (2005);
he also co-edited Brill’s Companion to Herodotus (2002).
Luciano Canfora is Professor of Greek and Latin Philology at the
University of Bari. He has been Director of Quaderni di Storia since
1975. His main works include The Vanished Library (1990), Ideologias
de los estudios clásicos (1991), Ach, Aristoteles! (2000), El misterio Tucidides
(2001), Caesar, der demokratische Diktator (2001), Histoire de la littérature
grecque (1994–2004), and Democracy in Europe: A short History (2005).
Paul Cartledge is Professor of Greek History in the Faculty of
Classics, Cambridge University and a Professorial Fellow of Clare
College. He has written, co-written, edited and co-edited some twenty
books, and co-edits two monograph series, “Key Themes in Ancient
History” and “Classical Inter/Faces”. He is an Honorary Citizen of
(Modern) Sparta and holds the Gold Cross of the Order of Honour,
bestowed by the President of the Hellenic Republic. His most recent
book is the revised paperback edition of his Alexander the Great: The
Hunt for a New Past. His Thermopylae: Turning Point in World History is
to be published in the autumn of 2006.
Aldo Corcella is Professor of Classical Philology at the University
of Basilicata in Potenza, Italy. A specialist in ancient historiography,
he has written on Herodotus (Erodoto e l’analogia [1984]), a commentary on Book IV (1993), an edition of Book VIII (2003), Thucydides
(a translation of Books VI–VII accompanied by an essay [1996]),
and several other ancient writers (Aristotle, Diodorus Siculus, Horace,
Plutarch, Lucian, Choricius).
Paula Debnar is Associate Professor of Classics at Mount Holyoke
College. She is the author of Speaking the Same Language: Speech and
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list of contributors
Audience in Thucydides’ Spartan Debates (2001) and several articles on
the rhetoric of Thucydidean speakers. She is currently working on
an article on the figure of Cassandra in Aeschylus’ Agamemnon.
Peter Funke is Professor of Ancient History at the Westfälische
Wilhelms-Universität, Münster. His research focuses on the political
history of the Greek states from the Archaic to the Hellenistic period,
ancient constitutions and interstate relations, and the study of the
Greek world in its geographical and topographical setting. His most
recent book is Athen in klassischer Zeit (2nd ed., 2003).
William D. Furley is Associate Professor of Classics at Heidelberg
University. A graduate of University College London and Cambridge
University, he has held positions in Tübingen, Heidelberg, and
Mannheim. His main publications are in the field of Greek literature and religion: Fire in Greek Religion (1981), Andokides and the Herms
(1996), Greek Hymns (2001, with J.M. Bremer).
David Gribble is a former senior scholar at Merton College, Oxford,
and author of Alcibiades and Athens (1999).
Matthias Haake is Lecturer of Ancient History at the Westfälische
Wilhelms-Universität, Münster. His research focuses on the history of
Greek Philosophy and the social history in the Hellenistic period. His
most recent book is Der Philosoph in der Stadt. Untersuchungen zur öffentlichen
Rede über Philosophen und Philosophie in den hellenistischen poleis (2006).
Simon Hornblower is Professor of Classics and Ancient History at
University College London. His books include The Greek World 479–323
BC (1983; 3rd ed. 2002), and a commentary on Thucydides (two
volumes published, 1991 and 1996; the third and final volume is in
progress). He co-edited the new (3rd) edition of the Oxford Classical
Dictionary (1996) and Greek Personal Names: Their Value as Evidence (2002).
His most recent book is Thucydides and Pindar: Historical Narrative and
the World of Epinikian Poetry (2004).
Martin Hose is Professor of Classical Philology, Chair of Greek, at
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Munich. His research focuses on
Greek tragedy, historiography, and literature of the Later Roman
Empire, and his books include Studien zum Chor bei Euripides, 2 vols.
(1990, 1991), Erneuerung der Vergangenheit. Die Historiker im Imperium
list of contributors
xi
Romanum von Florus bis Cassius Dio (1994), Drama und Gesellschaft (1995),
Kleine griechische Literaturgeschichte (1999), Die historischen Fragmente des
Aristoteles. Übersetzung und Kommentar (2002), Poesie aus der Schule. Überlegungen zur spätgriechischen Dichtung (2004). He is also the Editor in
Charge of Gnomon.
Peter Hunt is Associate Professor of Classics at the University of
Colorado at Boulder. He is the author of Slaves, Warfare, and Ideology
in the Greek Historians (1998) and several articles and reviews. Forthcoming
commissioned chapters include “Military Forces” for The Cambridge
History of Greek and Roman Warfare, “Slaves in Greek Culture” for The
Cambridge World History of Slavery, and “Classical Greece” in Arming
Slaves in World History. His current project, War, Peace, and Alliance in
Demosthenes’ Athens (forthcoming), is an exploration of Greek thinking
about interstate relations based on assembly speeches.
Lisa Kallet is Professor of Classics at the University of Texas,
Austin. She is the author of Money, Expense and Naval Power in Thucydides’
History, 1–5.24 (1993) and Money and the Corrosion of Power in Thucydides:
The Sicilian Expedition and its Aftermath (2001). Her current research
focuses on Athenian economic interests in the north Aegean and
Thrace in the archaic and classical periods.
James V. Morrison is Associate Professor and Chair of Classical
Studies at Center College in Danville, Kentucky. His research interests include Greek literature and modern Caribbean literature. He
is the author of two books on Homer: Homeric Misdirection: False
Predictions in the Iliad (1992) and A Companion to Homer’s Odyssey (2003).
Reading Thucydides is to be published by Ohio State University press
in 2006.
Roberto Nicolai is Professor of Greek Literature at the University
of Sassari, Italy. He is the author of several works on Greek epic
poetry and on historical and geographical literature. His publications
include La storiografia nell’educazione antica (1992), an Italian translation
of Polybius with short commentary (1998), Studi su Isocrate (2004),
and A Handbook of Greek Literature (2002–2003, with L.E. Rossi).
Josiah Ober is Magie Professor of Classics and Professor of Human
Values at Princeton University. He works primarily within and between the areas of Athenian history, classical political philosophy,
xii
list of contributors
and democratic theory and practice, his current research focusing
on problems of collective action, knowledge exchange, and human
nature. He is the author of a number of articles and books, including Mass and Elite in Democratic Athens (1989), Political Dissent in Democratic
Athens (1998), and Athenian Legacies: Essays on the Politics of Going on
Together (2005).
Marianne Pade is Professor at the Department for Classical and
Romance Philology, University of Aarhus, Denmark. Her field of
research is the reception of Greek historians in the Italian Renaissance.
She is the author of the entry on Thucydides in the “Catalogus
Translationum and Commentariorum” 8 (2003) 103–81, and of The
Reception of Plutarch’s Lives in Fifteenth-Century Italy. She also co-edited
Niccolò Perotti’s Cornu copiae seu Thesaurus Linguae Latinae I–VIII
(1989–2001) and is presently collaborating on the edition of his letters for the Edizione nazionale delle opere di Niccolò Perotti.
Francisco Murari Pires is Professor of Ancient History at the
University of São Paulo, Brazil. He is the author of two books: a
Portuguese translation of Aristotle’s Athenaion Politeia, with notes and
historical commentary (Aristóteles, A Constituição de Atenas, 1995), and
a collection of essays on myth and history in Ancient Greece (Mithistória,
1999). His current work focuses on the different ways in which the
modern Western historiographical tradition has interpreted the
Thucydidean conception of history.
Kurt Raaflaub is David Herlihy University Professor and Professor
of Classics and History at Brown University, Providence, Rhode
Island, where he is also Chair of the Program in Ancient Studies.
His main interests are the social and political history of the Roman
republic, the social, political and intellectual history of archaic and
classical Greece, and the comparative history of the ancient world.
His recent publications include Democracy, Empire, and the Arts in FifthCentury Athens (co-ed., 1998); War and Society in the Ancient and Medieval
Worlds (co-ed., 1999); Social Struggles in Archaic Rome (ed., 2nd ed. forthcoming), The Discovery of Freedom in Ancient Greece (author, 2004), and
Origins of Democracy in Ancient Greece (co-author, forthcoming). He is
currently working on early Greek political thought in its Mediterranean
context.
list of contributors
xiii
Diether Roderich Reinsch is Professor of Byzantine Studies at the
Freie Universität, Berlin. He edited Critobulus of Imbros, Historiae
(1983) and Anna Comnena, Alexiad (2001, with Athanasios Kambylis),
both in the Corpus Fontium Historiae Byzantinae series. His main research
interest is the literature and the textual tradition of the Middle
Byzantine period.
P.J. Rhodes was, until recently, Professor and is now Honorary
Professor of Ancient History at Durham University. His main academic interest is Greek politics and political institutions. He has
edited Books II (1988), III (1994), and IV.1–V.24 (1998) of Thucydides;
other publications include The Athenian Boule (1972), A Commentary on
the Aristotelian Athenaion Politeia (1981), The Decrees of the Greek States
(with D.M. Lewis, 1997), Greek Historical Inscriptions, 404 –323 BC
(2003, with Robin Osborne), and A History of the Classical Greek World,
478–323 BC (2005).
Zacharias Rogkotis is currently a full-time tutor in Classics and
Head of Lower School at DLD College in London. His PhD Thesis
(University College London, 2003) explored various aspects of the
intertextual relationship between Thucydides and Herodotus in terms
of historical methodology, ideology, and literary presentation.
Tim Rood is Fellow and Tutor in Classics at St. Hugh’s College,
Oxford. He is the author of Thucydides: Narrative and Explanation (1998),
The Sea! The Sea! The Shout of the Ten Thousand in the Modern Imagination
(2004), and several articles on Greek historiography.
Jeffrey Rusten is Professor of Classics at Cornell University. He is the
author of Dionysius Scytobrachion, commentaries on Thucydides’ Book II
and Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannus, a translation of Theophrastus’ Characters
(Loeb Classical Library), and is general editor of The Birth of Comedy:
translated fragments of Athenian Comedy 560–280 BC (in preparation).
Bernhard Smarczyk is Privatdozent in Ancient History at the University
of Cologne. His publications include Untersuchungen zur Religionspolitik
und politischen Propaganda Athens im Delisch-Attischen Seebund (1990) and
most recently Timoleon und die Neugründung von Syrakus (2003). His principal research interests are religious history and international relations in the ancient world.
xiv
list of contributors
Hans-Peter Stahl is Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Classics at the
University of Pittsburgh. He is the author of Propertius: ‘Love’ and
‘War’: Individual and State under Augustus (1985) and Thucydides: Man’s
Place in History (2003), and editor of Vergil’s Aeneid: Augustan Epic and
Political Context (1998).
Rosalind Thomas has written extensively on literacy and orality in
ancient Greece (Oral Tradition and Written Record in Classical Athens,
1989; Literacy and Orality in Ancient Greece, 1992); her research interests also include Greek law and the polis, Greek medicine, and historiography. Her most recent book is Herodotus in Context. Ethnography,
Science and the Art of Persuasion (2000). She was Professor of Greek
History at Royal Holloway, University of London until 2004, and
is now Tutorial Fellow and University Lecturer in Ancient History
at Balliol College, Oxford.
Lawrence A. Tritle is Professor of History at Loyola Marymount
University, Los Angeles. His publications include Phocion the Good
(1988), The Greek World in the Fourth Century (1997), From Melos to My
Lai: War and Survival (2000), and The Peloponnesian War (2004). His
research currently falls within the area of ancient Greece and comparative war and violence.
Josef Wiesehöfer is Professor of Ancient History at the University
of Kiel. He is the author of Die dunklen Jahrhunderte der Persis: Untersuchungen zu Geschichte und Kultur von Fars in frühhellenistischer Zeit (330–140
v.Chr.) (1994), Ancient Persia: From 550 BC to 650 AD (2001), and Das
frühe Persien (2002); editor of Das Partherreich und seine Zeugnisse—The
Arsacid Empire: Sources and Documentation (1998), and co-editor of Carsten
Niebuhr und seine Zeit (2003), among other publications. His main interests are the history of the Ancient Near East, Greek and Roman
social history, the history of the Jews in Antiquity and the history
of scholarship.
Michael Zahrnt is Professor Emeritus of Ancient History at the
University of Cologne. His main research interests include Greek
history of the fourth and fifth centuries bc, Greek-Persian relations,
Macedonia, Sicily, Alexander III, and Hadrian.
ABBREVIATIONS
A.
Ar.
Arist.
D.
D.L.
D.S.
E.
Hdt.
Hes.
Pi.
Plb.
Plu.
Th.
X.
ADB
CAH
CTC
DK
FGrHist
HCT
Hornblower,
Comm.
LGPN
ML
NDB
Aeschylus
Aristophanes
Aristotle
Demosthenes
Diogenes Laertius
Diodorus Siculus
Euripides
Herodotus
Hesiodus
Pindar
Polybius
Plutarch
Thucydides
Xenophon
Allgemeine deutsche Biographie, 56 vols. (Leipzig 1875–1912,
rpt. Berlin 1967–71)
The Cambridge Ancient History, 14 vols. (Cambridge
1970–2001)
Catalogus Translationum et Commentariorum (Washington
1960ff.)
H. Diels – W. Kranz, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker,
3 vols. (Berlin 1952)
F. Jacoby, Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker, 15
vols. (Berlin, 1923–30; Leipzig 1940–58)
A.W. Gomme, A. Andrewes, K.J. Dover, A Historical
Commentary on Thucydides, 5 vols. (Oxford 1945–1981)
S. Hornblower, A Commentary on Thucydides, vol. I: Books
I–III, Oxford 1991, vol. II: Books IV–V.24 (Oxford
1996)
Lexicon of Greek Personal Names (Oxford 1987ff.)
R. Meiggs – D.M. Lewis, A Selection of Greek Historical
Inscriptions to the End of the Fifth Century BC, 2nd ed.
(Oxford, 1988)
Neue deutsche Biographie, vol. 1ff. (Munich 1953ff.)
xvi
OCT
PCG
PG
RE
SH
StV
VD 16
abbreviations
Oxford Classical Texts
R. Kassel – C. Austin, Poetae Comici Graeci, 7 vols. (Berlin/
New York 1983ff.)
J.-P. Migne, Patrologiae Graecae Cursus Completus, 166 vols.
(Paris 1857–1866)
A. Pauly – G. Wissowa, Real-Encyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft, 83 vols. (Stuttgart 1894–1980)
H. Lloyd-Jones – P. Parsons (eds.), Supplementum Hellenisticum
(Berlin/New York 1983)
H. Bengtson, Die Staatsverträge des Altertums, vol. 2: Die Verträge
der griechisch-römischen Welt von 700 bis 338 v. Chr. (Munich,
1975)
Verzeichnis der im deutschen Sprachbereich erschienenen Drucke des
XVI. Jahrhunderts, Abt. 1, vols. 1–22 (Stuttgart 1983–95)
INTRODUCTION
The publication of a Companion to Thucydides hardly requires justification.
What is perhaps surprising is the fact that thirty-eight years—a “generation”, roughly speaking—have elapsed since the publication of the
last wide-ranging collective work on Thucydides, the Wege der Forschung
volume edited by Hans Herter (1968; the volume reprinted earlier
articles [in German] and itself covered another one-“generation”
period, the years 1930–1965). Interestingly enough, one of the contributors to the present volume, Hans-Peter Stahl, first published on
Thucydides in 1966, shortly before Herter’s collection came out;
what is more, his still-influential German monograph was recently
published in English (2003), the language of the present volume.
The last forty years have seen a number of notable changes in
Thucydidean studies: the focus has shifted from Thucydides’ method
of investigation to modes of representation, from Thucydides’ values
to his way of thinking, from the quest for anthropological constants
and national characteristics to interpretations based on sociological
and political categories, from the author’s philosophy of history to
his self-awareness as a writer.
During the course of the twentieth century, Thucydidean scholarship has progressed from a certain “inward-lookingness”, imposed
upon it by the subject-matter itself, toward a dialogue with current
ideas and events. Prior to this shift, generations of students had grown
up with the Thucydidean Question concerning the date and process
of creation of the incomplete work. Until the middle of the twentieth century, this complex issue absorbed a great deal of scholarly
energy and critical effort, and determined the direction of research,
regardless of the specific topic of investigation. However, subsequent
generations of scholars felt the need to confront the Thucydidean
world with contemporary questions, either explicitly or implicitly.
The contrast between progress and disaster, between the humanism
and the barbarism of the two World Wars; the emergence of ambitious leaders with popular support and unrestricted power; the rise
and fall of the superpowers and the bipolarity of the Cold War; the
Vietnam War and Western democracy’s existential crisis; the totalitarian
practices of the “new world order” and the rise of “neoconservatism”:
xviii
introduction
all these have left their mark on Thucydidean scholarship, just like
various epistemological doctrines or literary theories—positivism, historicism, new criticism, structuralist narratology, the realist school in
political science, post-structuralism, etc.
So it is clear that to a certain extent, modern Thucydidean scholars are faced afresh with the fundamental questions concerning the
classification and evaluation of Thucydides’ work. Scholarship frequently oscillates between admiration and criticism, and judgments
sometimes depend on the answers to the questions: Whose counterpart did Thucydides intend to be? And who claimed to be his counterpart thereafter? Unlike Herodotus or Xenophon, the other surviving
historians of classical Greece, Thucydides has convinced generations
of scholars that he is to be taken seriously as a historian. But is this
really so? Who among the three is more of a “historian”, and why?
And what influences is a historian subject to, when he is simultaneously trying to be a skilled literary artist, a profound moral thinker,
a political scientist or a geographer? The varied perspectives of modern Thucydidean studies allow different images of Thucydides to
emerge—the scientist striving for accuracy, the psychologist, the narrator, the political theorist—so that the scholarly community always
finds in the Athenian a reliable counterpart.
The present volume aims to give an idea of current developments
in Thucydidean studies. It does not attempt to sweep away old controversies or to impose one particular approach at the expense of
others. Thucydides is rather privileged in the sense that his work
has never ceased to be controversial, at least in some important
respects. Although his own contribution to the formation of a communis opinio on issues such as Pericles and Cleon, the Peloponnesian
War and the Delian League, Herodotus and the Greek enlightenment is beyond doubt, there are important aspects of his work about
which there is no truly common opinion.
Under these circumstances, the production of a short introductory
volume seemed unrealistic. Despite this, some readers may still detect
certain omissions. Some of these have been deliberate: the once popular theme Thucydides and the Sophistic Movement seems to break down
into a variety of distinct problems, and indeed the term sophistic ceases
to be meaningful in modern scholarship. In the case of further, minor
omissions, we would invoke the need to keep the volume to a reasonable length, and our desire to minimize delay in its publication.
introduction
xix
On the other hand, we have not confined ourselves to summarizing
research and illustrating recent progress—we have made an effort
to represent the multiplicity of approaches. In many of the contributions to this volume, the focus is on argument rather than exhaustiveness, and it follows that they are to be read in a critical way.
Particular emphasis has been placed on Thucydides’ Nachleben, even
though not all scheduled contributions on the historian’s reception
in contemporary thought came to fruition. Readers should note that
the bibliography includes only the titles cited by the authors of individual contributions.
Lastly, the editors would like to express their warmest thanks to
Simon Hornblower and Peter Funke for helpful suggestions; to Anna
Pettiward for thorough stylistic refinement and editorial assistance;
and to Brill’s Classics editors Michael Klein Swormink and Irene
van Rossum for their cooperation and unfailing patience.
Antonios Rengakos and
Antonis Tsakmakis
Thessaloniki-Nicosia, June 2006
PART ONE
AUTHOR, CONTEXTS, IDEAS
BIOGRAPHICAL OBSCURITIES AND
PROBLEMS OF COMPOSITION
Luciano Canfora
Date of Birth
Thucydides cannot have been born later than 455 bc; he was elected
stratègos for the year 424/23, and it was customary for no one under
the age of thirty to hold that post. There is no reason to believe
that he was one of those who ran for the strathg¤a as soon as he
was old enough. It should also be remembered that Alcibiades, who
became stratègos for the first time in 420 at the age of thirty, was
considered “too young” (Th. 6.12.2; 6.17.1).
The opening words of Thucydides’ work also offer a clue as to
the year of his birth. In the first four lines of his introduction, the
historian states that he felt instinctively, “from the moment the first
symptoms emerged” (eÈyÁw kayistam°nou), that the conflict that was
about to unfold would be “more serious” than “anything that had
gone before”. He explains the reasoning and evidence that led him
to this belief (1.1.1). He seems, then, to be insisting on the maturity
of his own historical and political perception, specifically with reference to the period in which the conflict was brewing (436–432 bc).
Thucydides was essentially implying that in those years he was already
a competent politician possessed of appropriate historical knowledge.
This too suggests that his date of birth may not have been 455 but
some years earlier.
Family
At the beginning of the introduction, Thucydides refers to himself
simply as “Thucydides the Athenian”. A well-known passage (4.104.4)
mentions his father’s name as being Oloros, while his mother’s name,
Hegesipyle, comes down to us from ancient biographical tradition.
In actual fact, doubts have been raised over his father’s name.
The ancients themselves were not at all certain on this point; the