Thucydides

Clifford Orwin (University of Toronto)

Ed. by Vaios Liapis, Open University of Cyprus
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.1.1: Greek Writing and Culture: Archaic, Classical, Hellenistic and Imperial, -800--100.
Vol. editors: Jonathan Burgess (University of Toronto), Anca Dan (École Practique de Hautes Études PSL), Martine Diepenbroek (University of Johannesburg), Giacomo Fedeli (University of Exeter), Victoria Fendel (University of Oxford), Emily Kneebone (University of Nottingham), Vaios Liapis (Open University of Cyprus), Elodie Paillard (University of Sydney), Mali Skotheim (Ashoka University), Laura Swift (The Open University), Guendalina Daniela Maria Taietti (University of Liverpool)

Dates

Born c. -460
Died c. -395
Activity c. -440-c. -395

Places

Born in Ancient Greece
Active in Ancient Greece

Activities

Primary

Historian / Chronicler

Resources

Thucydides' Works

Save to Bookshelf

Thucydides is to my taste the true model of an historian. He reports the facts without judging them, but he omits none of the circumstances proper to making us judge them ourselves. He puts all he recounts before the reader’s eyes. Far from putting himself between the events and his readers, he hides himself. The reader no longer believes he reads; he believes he sees. [Rousseau,

Emile or On Education

, Book 4 (tr. Bloom, 239)]

The author

Thucydides, son of Olorus, was an Athenian writer of the late fifth century B.C. He was the author of a single untitled work conventionally called The Peloponnesian War. Nothing reliable is known of Thucydides’ life beyond what he tells us. We learn at the outset that he was an Athenian (1.1.1) and that he “lived through the whole war,

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4662 words

Citation: Orwin, Clifford. "Thucydides". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 19 July 2010 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=4395, accessed 22 November 2024.]

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