31 Facts About Thucydides

Thucydides has been dubbed the father of "scientific history" by those who accept his claims to have applied strict standards of impartiality and evidence-gathering and analysis of cause and effect, without reference to intervention by the gods, as outlined in his introduction to his work.

Thucydides has been called the father of the school of political realism, which views the political behavior of individuals and the subsequent outcomes of relations between states as ultimately mediated by, and constructed upon, fear and self-interest.

Thucydides's text is still studied at universities and military colleges worldwide.

Thucydides says that he fought in the war, contracted the plague, and was exiled by the democracy.

Thucydides identifies himself as an Athenian, telling us that his father's name was Olorus and that he was from the Athenian deme of Halimous.

Thucydides survived the Plague of Athens, which killed Pericles and many other Athenians.

Thucydides claimed that he began writing his history as soon as the war broke out, because he thought it would be one of the greatest wars waged among the Greeks in terms of scale:.

Thucydides was probably connected through family to the Athenian statesman and general Miltiades and his son Cimon, leaders of the old aristocracy supplanted by the Radical Democrats.

Once exiled, Thucydides took permanent residence in the estate and, given his ample income from the gold mines, he was able to dedicate himself to full-time history writing and research, including many fact-finding trips.

The remaining evidence for Thucydides' life comes from later and rather less reliable ancient sources; Marcellinus wrote Thucydides' biography about a thousand years after his death.

Pausanias goes on to say that Thucydides was murdered on his way back to Athens, placing his tomb near the Melite gate.

Thucydides admired Pericles, approving of his power over the people and showing a marked distaste for the demagogues who followed him.

Thucydides did not approve of the democratic commoners nor of the radical democracy that Pericles ushered in, but considered democracy acceptable when guided by a good leader.

Thucydides believed that the Peloponnesian War represented an event of unmatched importance.

Thucydides declared his intention was to write an account which would serve as "a possession for all time".

Thucydides is generally regarded as one of the first true historians.

Thucydides assiduously consulted written documents and interviewed participants about the events that he recorded.

Thucydides exerted wide historiographical influence on subsequent Hellenistic and Roman historians, although the exact description of his style in relation to many successive historians remains unclear.

Therefore, Thucydides's method served to rescue his mostly oral sources from oblivion.

Thucydides saw himself as recording an event, not a period, and went to considerable lengths to exclude what he deemed frivolous or extraneous.

Thucydides' work indicates an influence from the teachings of the Sophists that contributes substantially to the thinking and character of his History.

Thucydides was especially interested in the relationship between human intelligence and judgment, Fortune and Necessity, and the idea that history is too irrational and incalculable to predict.

Scholars traditionally viewed Thucydides as recognizing and teaching the lesson that democracies need leadership but that leadership can be dangerous to democracy.

Thucydides's "wisdom was made possible" by the Periclean democracy, which had the effect of liberating individual daring, enterprise and questioning spirit; this liberation, by permitting the growth of limitless political ambition, led to imperialism and eventually, to civic strife.

Cochrane, the son of a physician, speculated that Thucydides generally was influenced by the methods and thinking of early medical writers such as Hippocrates of Kos.

Historian H D Kitto feels that Thucydides wrote about the Peloponnesian War, not because it was the most significant war in antiquity but because it caused the most suffering.

Several passages of Thucydides's book are written "with an intensity of feeling hardly exceeded by Sappho herself".

Lucian refers to Thucydides as having given Greek historians their law, requiring them to say what had been done.

The first European translation of Thucydides was made by the humanist Lorenzo Valla between 1448 and 1452, and the first Greek edition was published by Aldo Manuzio in 1502.

Thucydides has no political aim in view: he was purely a historian.

For Eduard Meyer, Thomas Babington Macaulay and Leopold von Ranke, who initiated modern source-based history writing, Thucydides was again the model historian.