What is it about?
2500 years ago, Thucydides wrote an account of a war between his home city of Athens and its empire and the Peloponnesians, led by Sparta. This was one of the first works of what we now call history, but over the last 500 years it has often been seen as a pioneering work of political theory, offering important lessons for the present. This chapter explores the different ways in which Thucydides' work has influenced modern political analysis, including theories of Realism in international relations and anxieties about the ability of democracies to make good decisions.
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Why is it important?
Thucydides is cited as an authority for many contemporary issues: the Russian invasion of Ukraine, relations between the USA and China, and polarisation within western democracies are just a few examples. However, this often depends on questionable interpretations of Thucydides' text and of the nature of his work. Having a better understanding of how he thought about politics, rather than cherry-picking a few ideas out of context, can help us make better use of his work.
Perspectives
It's often difficult to avoid a sense that we live in Thucydidean times - that everything he described in his account of war and politics 2500 years ago is simply coming around again. Thucydides did claim that, because of the way humans are, future events would tend to resemble those of the past - but the goal of his work was not to offer a simple deterministic explanation of events but to help us understand their complexity and unpredictability.
Professor Neville Morley
University of Exeter
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: ‘The Most Politic Historiographer’: Thucydides and Political Thought, September 2024, Brill,
DOI: 10.1163/9789004679344_004.
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