Great Greeks Α through Ω: Thucydides
Posted on Sep 26th, 2009 by E P Wohlfart |
Thucydides is often dubbed the father of history as a science
Thucydides was an influential man – a politician and general of the Athenian army. But when, in 423 BCE, he failed to protect a city under Athenian control from a Spartan attack he was exiled. Unlike most exiles, Thucydides used banishment to his advantage. As neither Athenian or Spartan he could move like an ancient freelance reporter and see the Peloponnesian War, the almost 30 year long conflict between the Peloponnesian League headed by Sparta and the Delian League headed by Athens, from both sides. This allowed him particular insights when writing his book about the causes and events of that war.
Thucydides is set apart from earlier historians by the fact that he sought to only include first-hand eye-witness accounts, evaluating probability and excluding morality and word of divine intervention. This makes his work more like the current fashion of history than anything before his time and closer to what we like to consider scientific. Of his methods, he says himself:
“And with regard to my factual reporting of the events of the war I have made it a principle not to write down the first story that came my way, and not even to be guided by my own general impressions; either I was present myself at the events which I have described or else I heard of them from an eye-witness whose reports I have checked with as much thoroughness as possible. Not that even so the truth was easy to discover: different eye-witnesses give different accounts of the same event, speaking out of partiality for one side or the other or else from imperfect memories. And it may well be that my history will seem less easy to read because of the absence in it of a romantic element.”
That’s it for θ. Until it’s time for ι, feel free to nominate ancient great Greeks of any letter of the alphabet following θ in the comments section.
About the author: E P Wohlfart is a twenty-something freelance writer with a Classical Archaeology degree, a laptop and a maxed-out library card. Aside from administrating PastPresenters.com, which she started in 2008, she works with several historical publications and is a regular contributor at Suite101. 
