Paper 10: The Invention of History: Thucydides (= Paper C1, Classical Tripos Part II) Course Director: Professor Robin Osborne ([email protected]) Course Description It is hard to overstate the influence of Thucydides. He is the earliest author whose text substantially survives to theorise the writing of history. He describes his methods and the reasons for adopting them, and he also structures his work so as explicitly to address historical causation. Thucydides’ primary concern was not simply to preserve a record of events, but to come to understand the forces at work in bringing to pass what he argued to be the greatest war fought in the Greek world down to his own day. Thucydides’ analysis of internal politics and of the relations between states has proved foundational, not simply for all subsequent attempts to understand the dynamics of individual cities and their interrelations within the Greek world, but for understandings of politics and international relations across time and space. His decisions about what was and what was not relevant as an explanatory framework have had a massive impact. His exploration of the inter-relationship between word and deed has come to dominate our understanding both of Athenian democracy and of how politics in general works. This course will look closely at Thucydides’ whole history, trying to understand why he included and excluded what he included and excluded, and exploring the interpretation embedded in the structure of his work. It will look closely at Thucydides’ understanding of what brings success or failure in war, and what the effects of war are. It will explore his treatment of internal political dynamics, both in his treatment of individual political occasions (e.g. meetings of the assembly in Athens and elsewhere) and in his discussion of civil strife, both in Corcyra and in Athens. It will ask what role Thucydides allows to the supernatural, and how the influence of the gods is manifested. The course will also look at Thucydides’ influence, both on the writing of history and on understandings of international relations. Those taking the course are expected to read Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War in translation (the most helpful edition is probably the Landmark edition, with the translation by Crawley). Close study of the following passages will be expected: 1.1–23, 79–88; 2.13– 17, 34–54; 3.35–50, 70–85; 5.26, 84–116, 6.1–40, 53–60; 8.47–77. Preliminary Reading W.R. Connor Thucydides (Princeton, 1984) Mode of teaching 8 lectures; 8 2-hour classes. The teaching will be organised around 8 topics that are first explored in lectures and then discussed in 2-hour follow-up classes. The 8 topics will be: 1 Thucydides the writer and the writing of history: aims, claims, the plague and literary practice 2 Thucydides and historical causation: the archaeology, the causes of war in 431 and the causes of the Sicilian expedition. 3 Thucydides and war: strategy, tactics, experience and the role of the leader. 4 Thucydides and civil strife: Corcyra and the 400 at Athens 5 Thucydides as political theorist: Pericles’ funeral speech and the analysis of democracy 6 Thucydides and rhetoric: paired speeches and political persuasion 7 Thucydides and international relations: Mytilene, Plataia, Melos: treaties and ethics 8 Thucydides and religion: curses, oracles and purification. Supervisions will be centrally organised. Maximum supervision capacity: 20 Reading list: This reading list is for reference purposes. Further advice will be given as to the major landmarks within this field of scholarship. Thucydides general Abbott, G.F. 1925. Thucydides: A Study in Historical Reality. London. Adcock, F.E. 1963. Thucydides and his History. Cambridge. Badian, E. 1993. From Plataea to Potidaea. Studies in the History and Historiography of the Pentecontaetia. Baltimore. Cawkwell, G. 1997. Thucydides and the Peloponnesian War. London – New York. Connor, W.R. 1984. Thucydides. Princeton. Crane, G. 1996. The Blinded Eye: Thucydides and the New Written Word. Lanham. Dover, K.J. 1973. Thucydides (Greece & Rome, New Surveys in the Classics vol. 7). Oxford. Finley, J.H. 1942. Thucydides. Cambridge. Finley, J.H. 1967. Three Essays on Thucydides. Cambridge, Mass. Forsdyke, S., Foster, E. and Balot, R. ed. 2017. The Oxford Handbook of Thucydides. Oxford. Hornblower, S. 1987. Thucydides. London. Hornblower, S. 1991–2008. A Commentary on Thucydides. 3 vols. Oxford: Clarendon. Hornblower, S. 2010. Thucydidean Themes. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press. Lee, C. M., and N. Morley, eds. 2015. A Handbook to the Reception of Thucydides. Chichester, West Sussex: John Wiley. Parry, Adam. 1981. Logos and Ergon in Thucydides. New York: Arno. Rengakos, A. & Tsakmakis, A. eds 2006 Brill’s Companion to Thucydides. Leiden. de Romilly, J. 1956. Histoire et raison chez Thucydide. Paris. Stahl, H.-P. 2003. Thucydides: Man’s Place in History, Swansea. Strassler, R.B. (ed.) 1998. The Landmark Thucydides. A Comprehensive Guide to the Peloponnesian War. New York. Westlake, H.D. 1989a. Studies in Thucydides and Greek History. Bristol. Thucydides the writer Allan, R. J. 2007. “Sense and Sentence Complexity: Sentence Structure, Sentence Connection, and Tense- Aspect as Indicators of Narrative Mode in Thucydides’ Histories.” In The Language of Literature: Linguistic Approaches to Classical Texts, edited by R.J. Allan and M. Buijs, 93–121. Leiden: Brill. Allan, R. J. 2013. “History as Presence: Time, Tense and Narrative Modes in Thucydides.” In Thucydides between History and Literature, edited by A. Tsakmakis and M. Tamiolaki, 371–90. Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter. Allison, J.W. 1983. “Pericles’ Policy and the Plague”, Historia 32, 14–23. Allison, J. W. 1997. “Homeric Allusion at the Close of Thucydides” Sicilian Narrative.’ American Journal of Philology, 118(4): 499–516. Babut, D. 1981. “Interprétation historique et structure littéraire chez Thucydide: remarques sur la composition du livre IV”, BAGB 40, 417–39. Badian, E. 1992. “Thucydides on Rendering Speeches”, Athenaeum 80, 187–90. Bakker, E.J. 1997. “Verbal Aspect and Mimetic Description in Thucydides”, in: id. (ed.), Grammar as Interpretation: Ancient Greek Literature in its Linguistic Contexts, Leiden, 7–54. de Bakker, M.P. 2013. “Character Judgements in the Histories: Their Function and Distribution.” In Thucydides between History and Literature, edited by A. Tsakmakis and M. Tamiolaki, 23–40. Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter. Christodoulou, P. 2013. “Thucydides’ Pericles: Between Historical Reality and Literary Representation.” In Thucydides between History and Literature, edited by A. Tsakmakis and M. Tamiolaki, 225–54. Berlin: De Gruyter. Connor, W.R. 1977. “A Post Modernist Thucydides?”, CR 72, 289–98. Connor, W.R. 1985. “Narrative Discourse in Thucydides”, in: M.H. Jameson (ed.), The Greek Historians, Literature and History, Papers Presented to A.E. Raubitschek, Stanford, 1–17. Cornford, F.M. 1907. Thucydides Mythistoricus. London. Debnar P. 2013. “Blurring the Boundaries of Speech: Thucydides and Indirect Discourse.” In Thucydides between History and Literature, edited by A. Tsakmakis and M. Tamiolaki, 271–85. Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter. Demont, Paul. 2013. “The Causes of the Athenian Plague and Thucydides.” In Thucydides between Literature and History, edited by A. Tsakmakis and M. Tamiolaki, 73–87. Berlin and Boston, De Gruyter. Dewald, C. 1999. “The Figured Stage: Focalizing the Initial Narratives of Herodotus and Thucydides”, in: Th.M. Falkner – N. Felson – D. Konstan (eds.), Contextualizing Classics: Ideology, Performance, Dialogue. Essays in Honor of J.J. Peradotto, Lanham, MD, 221–52. Dewald, C. 2005. Thucydides’ War Narrative: A Structural Study. Berkeley. Dover, K.J. 1983. “Thucydides as ‘History’ and as ‘Literature’”, History and Theory, 22, 54–63. Edmunds, L. 1993. “Thucydides in the Act of Writing”, in: R. Pretagostini (ed.), Tradizione e innovazione nella cultura greca da Omero all’età ellenistica, Scritti in onore di B. Gentili, Rome, vol. 2, 831–52. Flory, S.G. 1990. “The Meaning of to me mythodes (1.22.4) and the Usefulness of Thucydides’ History”, CJ 85, 193–208. Greenwood, E. 2006. Thucydides and the Shaping of History. London: Duckworth. Grethlein, J. 2010. The Greeks and Their Past: Poetry, Oratory and History in the Fifth Century BCE. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gribble, D. 1998. “Narrator Interventions in Thucydides”, JHS 118, 41–67. Gribble, D. 1999. Alcibiades and Athens: a Study in Literary Presentation. Oxford. Holladay, A.J. – Poole, J.C.F. 1979. “Thucydides and the Plague of Athens”, CQ 29, 282–300. Hornblower, S. 1994. “Narratology and Narrative Techniques in Thucydides”, in: id. (ed.), Greek Historiography, Oxford, 131–66. Hornblower, S. 2004. Thucydides and Pindar: Historical Narrative and the World of Epinikian Poetry. Oxford. Hunter, V.J. 1973. Thucydides the Artful Reporter. Toronto. Jung, V. 1991. Thukydides und die Dichtung. Frankfurt. Lang, M., J. Rusten, and R. Hamilton, eds. 2011. Thucydidean Narrative and Discourse: Essays by Mabel Lang. Ann Arbor: Michigan Classical Press. Lateiner, D. 1977: “Pathos in Thucydides”, Antichthon 11, 42–51. Longrigg, J. 1992. “Epidemics, Ideas and Classical Athenian Society”, in: T.O. Ranger –P. Slack (eds.), Epidemics and Ideas: Essays on the Historical Perception of Pestilence, Cambridge, 21–44. Luraghi, N. 2000. “Author and Audience in Thucydides’ Archaeology: Some Reflections.” Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 100: 227–39. Mackie, C. J. 1996. “Homer and Thucydides: