THUCYDIDES

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The chronographically first critic, historiographer and noteworthy Attic prose writer. He was born in the municipality of Alimundos (NE of P. Faliros, today's Alimos) in 470 BC. A naturalized Athenian, he was the son of Olarus, a descendant of Olorus, king of Thrace, whose daughter, Hegsipolis, was married to Miltiades, the Marathon warrior. But he was also related to the Peisistratides. His father's wealth allowed him to receive an excellent education and training. His teachers were the philosopher Anaxagoras and the orator Antiphon, whose virtue he extols in his writings. Apart from them, other sages who flocked to Athens at that time influenced his mental attitude.

In 430 he was attacked by the terrible epidemic which had started and which he himself describes. In 424 he was named general in a campaign about Thassos and Thrace, where he was known and exercised power, because in the so-called Skaptin Hylin, he was the owner of gold mines. Because he failed in this campaign and was defeated by Brasidas at Amphipolis, he was accused of treason and sentenced to death. But he escaped execution, leaving his homeland, and exiled himself for twenty years. This flight benefited the history of letters, because the exiled Thucydides found time to visit places that had become the theater of war and, completely undistracted, to study. He seems to have visited Italy and Sicily, as evidenced by the lively account of the warlike events in Sicily, during that ill-fated campaign of the Athenians. He stayed close to the philomuse King Archelaus of Macedonia for some time. He then went down to Skaptin Ylin, and there, while writing his story, he seems to have died suddenly, as his work which ends abruptly testifies. His bones were brought to Athens and buried in the "Cimonian Tombs".

The modesty of his morals, his blameless life, the strictness of his style, clearly visible in the features of his form. The story of Thucydides resembles a drama, the middle part of which is the campaign of Syracuse. This destruction also brings about the resolution of the drama. In this story, with terrible dramatic beauty, he describes the desertion of the camp, when the Athenians had already been defeated by sea, and there was not a single hero to die fighting, not a corpse to find burial, but innumerable dead moved the sorrow, the wounded and the sick were more pitiable than the dead. Thucydides, as a historian, read the previous logographers, whose works he criticizes. He criticizes them severely, even Herodotus, though he does not name names, and says that they wrote history merely for pleasure,

As a critical historian, he attributes the causes of what happens in the world, as well as the painful results of war, not to the gods, like Herodotus, but to natural causes and human nature that regulate everything, with passions, greed, ambition etc. That is why, in describing the fury of civil wars, he condemns their motives. Freed from religious prejudices, he does not make history a theater of miracles and does not believe that the current natural phenomena (solar eclipses, earthquakes, etc.) were divine messages and warnings. During the civil wars, when hatred, slaughter, destruction, fear, rage, took monstrous proportions (Peloponnesian war), Thucydides stands above the wild passions and soberly, with a calm and measured tone, sees things, setting on the homeland, freedom and goals, the truth and only that.

Works

• Histories

Quotes

1. WAR IS A MATTER NOT SO MUCH OF ARMS AS OF MONEY
2. SELF-CONTROL IS THE CHIEF ELEMENT IN SELF-RESPECT, AND RESPECT OF SELF, IN TURN, IS THE CHIEF ELEMENT IN COURAGE
3. IF YOU GIVE WAY, YOU WILL INSTANTLY HAVE TO MEET SOME GREATER DEMAND, AS HAVING BEEN FRIGHTENED INTO OBEDIENCE IN THE FIRST INSTANCE, WHILE A FIRM REFUSAL WILL MAKE THEM CLEARLY UNDERSTAND THAT THEY MUST TREAT YOU MORE AS EQUALS
4. THE SECRET OF HAPPINESS IS FREEDOM AND THE SECRET OF FREEDOM IS COURAGE
5. CONCESSIONS TO ADVERSARIES ONLY END IN SELF REPROACH, AND THE MORE STRICTLY THEY ARE AVOIDED THE GREATER WILL BE THE CHANCE OF SECURITY
6. THE TRUE AUTHOR OF THE SUBJUGATION OF A PEOPLE IS NOT SO MUCH THE IMMEDIATE AGENT, AS THE POWER WHICH PERMITS IT HAVING THE MEANS TO PREVENT IT
7. THE FREAKS OF CHANCE ARE NOT DETERMINABLE BY CALCULATION
8. IN PRACTICE WE ALWAYS BASE OUR PREPARATIONS AGAINST AN ENEMY ON THE ASSUMPTION THAT HIS PLANS ARE GOOD; INDEED, IT IS RIGHT TO REST OUR HOPES NOT ON A BELIEF IN HIS BLUNDERS, BUT ON THE SOUNDNESS OF OUR PROVISIONS
9. SPECULATION IS CARRIED ON IN SAFETY, BUT, WHEN IT COMES TO ACTION, FEAR CAUSES FAILURE
10. I AM MORE AFRAID OF OUR OWN BLUNDERS THAN OF THE ENEMY'S DEVICES
11. IGNORANCE PRODUCES RASHNESS, REFLECTION TIMIDITY
12. HE WHO VOLUNTARILY CONFRONTS TREMENDOUS ODDS MUST HAVE VERY GREAT INTERNAL RESOURCES TO DRAW UPON
13. WE KNOW THAT THERE CAN NEVER BE ANY SOLID FRIENDSHIP BETWEEN INDIVIDUALS, OR UNION BETWEEN COMMUNITIES THAT IS WORTH THE NAME, UNLESS THE PARTIES BE PERSUADED OF EACH OTHERS HONESTY
14. THE ONLY SURE BASIS OF AN ALLIANCE IS FOR EACH PARTY TO BE EQUALLY AFRAID OF THE OTHER
15. I HAVE OFTEN BEFORE NOW BEEN CONVINCED THAT A DEMOCRACY IS INCAPABLE OF BEING AN EMPIRE
16. STILL HOPE LEADS MEN TO VENTURE, AND NO ONE EVER YET PUT HIMSELF IN PERIL WITHOUT THE INWARD CONVICTION THAT HE WOULD SUCCEED IN HIS DESIGN
17. WORDS HAD TO CHANGE THEIR ORDINARY MEANING AND TO TAKE THAT WHICH WAS NOW GIVEN THEM. RECKLESS AUDACITY CAME TO BE CONSIDERED THE COURAGE OF A LOYAL ALLY; PRUDENT HESITATION, SPECIOUS COWARDICE; MODERATION WAS HELD TO BE A CLOAK FOR UNMANLINESS; ABILITY TO SEE ALL SIDES OF A QUESTION, INAPTNESS TO ACT ON ANY
18. NOBODY IS DRIVEN INTO WAR BY IGNORANCE, AND NO ONE WHO THINKS THAT HE WILL GAIN ANYTHING FROM IT IS DETERRED BY FEAR
19. WE MUST MARCH AGAINST THE ENEMY, AND TEACH HIM THAT HE MUST GO AND GET WHAT HE WANTS BY ATTACKING SOMEONE WHO WILL NOT RESIST HIM
20. THEY STOOD WHERE THEY STOOD BY THE POWER OF THE SWORD
21. CONTEMPT FOR AN ASSAILANT IS BEST SHOWN BY BRAVERY IN ACTION