Here’s a fun bit of OSP-Lore for you: way back in the early days when Red and I were
in our freshman years of college and the channel was still 90% Shakespeare summaries by volume,
I was a little beeby economics major with near-zero interest in history outside of Assassin’s
Creed, and absolutely no involvement with OSP.
That all changed when my humanities class assignment had me crack open Thucydides’
History of the Peloponnesian War.
In a week’s worth of reading, listening to lectures, and discussing it in class, I
became so enthusiastic about the book in particular and ancient Greece in general that I just
needed to tell someone about it.
Luckily, the internet is purpose-built for shouting into the void, so Red graciously
let me channel this new enthusiasm into my first ever history video.
It is very bad, and I am sorry it exists, BUT it’s the reason that I’m here today.
So Thucydides is someone I’d solidly qualify as “Ma Boi”, and this episode has me very
excited, because all these videos about places that aren’t ancient Greece have me feeling
homesick.
But enough about little old me and more about bigger and much older Thucydides.
Though the History-Makers series has discussed many non-historians who’ve had a hefty influence
on how we engage with the past by way of journals or stories or philosophy, today we’re focusing
on a guy who basically codified the way we do History.
SO, to see how this Greekboi created the field as we know it, ας κάνουμε ιστορία.
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Despite a truly depressing lack of semicircular roof architecture to be found in this particular
setting, Classical Greece still made for some pretty killer source material.
Back in the 5th century BC, the architectural mainstay was Big hecking triangles on fancy
marble columns, which is a very passable substitute.
Politically, Greece wasn’t one unified thing, but was the domain of hundreds of small city
states.
Every Polis had its own government but shared a common culture, language, and sporting event.
So when Stephanos the Corinthian went to the Olympics, he and his Theban pals could laugh
it up over their most recent playthrough of Entitled Zeus Game.
That said, the classical Greek world was a lot wider than what we today consider Greece.
Settlers from Attica crossed the Aegean to the coast of Anatolia and Peloponnesians made
their way west across the Ionian to Southern Italy and Sicily.
And up to the north the Macedonians were bopping around too but they don’t become plot-relevant
until the 4th century.
So the Greeks were spread out across land and sea, largely minding their own business
and only going to war when the town next door started eyeing their farmland a little too
keenly.
There were, however, two occasions when most of Greece did come together.
One was the quasi-mythical Trojan War as described by Homer’s Iliad (go read it), and the other
was the much more recent Persian invasions in the early 5th century as recounted in Herodotus’
Histories.
And that second instance directly sets the stage for the subject of Thucydides history.
After the Persian Wars, Athens and Sparta found themselves as the most prominent states
in Greece, kind of on accident.
For one, they were probably more than a little surprised their anti-Persian death crusade
worked, and Athens had to rebuild their burned-out city from scratch.
But by virtue of being the guys who saved Greece, they had some goodwill, and more importantly,
some bigass armies.
Sparta remained the pinnacle of hoplite warfare, and while Athens was still a wimp on land,
they could boast a shiny new navy, and as we’ll see, the only navy that mattered.
So after the Persian wars, both cities followed their strengths; Sparta went like that, and
Athens went like that.
Now as one Athenian general noted, the typical intercity balance of power was even, and local,
and didn’t have the potential to engulf the entire Greek world.
But this time, uhh, no.
This Athenian was named Thucydides, and he realized very early on that the gravity of
this situation warranted taking some notes.
And it’s those notes about the Greek world during the rivalry of Athens and Sparta that
would become his History of the Peloponnesian War.
So, obvious segue: Who is this Thicccydides guy and why is he writing nerd stuff?
Well, he tells us a couple key details about himself.
He was a general in the Athenian army who lost a very important battle against an unbeatable
Spartan general (at least, he says it was a very important battle against an unbeatable
spartan general), and was then exiled from Athens, whereupon he wandered around Greece
and spent some time in Sparta.
So he had first-hand experience with the war, he was familiar with both factions, and … he
had nothing better to do HA— *ahem, obviously this biography is a little slim, but as far
as understanding the text goes, lemme tell you we’ve had worse.
Though what really makes this book A+ is that he tells us his methodology.
He says outright that his goal is to write an account of the biggest, lengthiest, and
by far the most thematic conflict ever seen in the Greek world, and a task this momentous
requires only the highest standards of quality.
You know how you hear a thing and then you go write it down?
NO, GARBAGE, you gotta corroborate that with multiple different eyewitness accounts, because
sometimes fools misremember stuff or they just make sh*t up.
Now this is a pointed contrast with his rough contemporary Herodotus, who tells you every
single thing he hears, makes no judgements about what’s true or not, and never lets
anything get in the way of a good story.
There’s an invented anecdote of Thucydides once listening to Herodotus tell some story
and being so moved that he cried, but knowing the way these guys did their research, lemme
tell you Thucydides wouldn’t’ve been crying because he thought it was good.
However, these two did write in a similar style, constructing their histories as stories
with speeches and characters, and Thucydides stretches this definition to include states.
Because although states are made up of individual squishy humans, he believed that Sparta on
the whole had a certain personality and Athens likewise behaved in a distinct Athenian way.
So Thucydides specifically frames the Peloponnesian War as a thematic conflict between these vastly
different cities.
Much of this ideological competition is conveyed through the almost 150 recorded speeches.
Some are from diplomatic negotiations between rival cities, some are big political performances
for the crowds in the Athenian assembly, and some are closer to regular old conversations
between a few people.
This leaves the curious problem of uh, how did you get your sources for some of these,
buddy?
Because sure, a lot of the big speeches had witnesses for days, but some just didn’t,
and for those cases, Thucydides says he wrote down what he thinks best suited the moment,
but annoyingly, he doesn’t really say when he’s pulling from half a dozen direct quotes
or when he’s just winging it.
So… points off for that, I guess.
And of course, Thucydides spent a lot of time in Sparta after his exile, so he has a deep
understanding of their culture and their internal politics, like how Sparta has a Double-Monarchy
that worked with a set of oligarchic councils.
That’s pretty cool, and Thucydides likes to analyze how these cities operate — showing,
for instance, how Athens’ democratic government was vulnerable to demagoguery (you know, that
ancient-people-problem we don’t worry about anymore?) and how that fueled an imperialist
and ultimately self-destructive mindset.
Now, Thucydides is often accused of having a bias in this rivalry, but his critics disagree
on whom he is biased towards, which I think is rather telling.
Because both players do some nasty stuff in this history.
Sparta’s military class is built on the backs of an entire corner of the Peloponnese
they’ve casually enslaved, and they’re mercilessly cheap with their alliances.
Athens, of course, doesn’t really have allies per se because their Delian League quickly
showed its true colors as an exploitative maritime empire with the primary goal of funneling
cash into the Athenian treasury.
So on the whole, both cities kinda come off as garbage, and the city-bias accusation is
a little flat.
But if we zoom in, we can see where he plays favorites.
Pericles of Athens could basically do no wrong, and every major Athenian after him comes off
as either a scheming weasel or a well-meaning failure.
And the Spartan Brasidas is portrayed as a nigh-invincible general because Thucydides
lost to him and why would he write himself as losing to anyone but the greatest military
mind in Spartan history?
Now, we can also levy some criticism for Thucydides’ narrow focus.
The man was a general and a political figure, and he… only really cares about war and
politics.
So economics, culture, the lower classes, anything involving women… just, no.
In case you were wondering where the rest of history gets it from, now you know better.
And credit where it’s due, anthropology is a place where Herodotus is much more valuable
to us.
Plus, it’s great that Herodotus lays out all of his sources for us to investigate,
rather than doing a bunch of analysis behind the scenes and just asking us to trust him.
Thucydides’ work has some glaring omissions, but he definitely achieved his goal of writing
a clean, no-fuss history of his present day, at a level of quality that would make it,
as he says, “a possession for all time”.
He knew that history wasn’t just recording the past, but doing so in a way that’d be
useful to people later, even us losers 2,500 years out from Classical Greece.
That’s of course not to say that this doorstop of a book isn’t a little dry.
He himself admits that, quote, “the absence of romance in my history will, I fear, detract
somewhat from its interest,” and clearly the biographer Plutarch took note of this,
because his characters f*ck.
Now, before I can go back to my unapologetic praise, the last issue to wrangle is that
Thucydides’ History isn’t finished.
The work cuts off literally midsentence in the winter of 411, with half a decade left
to go.
But, early sections give us clear foreshadowing of Athens’ defeat, so he most likely lived
long enough to see the conclusion.
Probable explanation is that he took notes of everything as it happened and then wrote
& revised the chapters in waves afterwards.
Early sections are much more polished than the later parts, and have far more speeches
too.
But later Greek historians saw this incompleteness as an opportunity, and wrote their works as
a continuation of Thucydides’ narrative, with literally the first line of Xenophon’s
Hellenika being “and after these things” — so Thucydides’ impact on the field of
History was immediately apparent.
And one last tangent, Thucydides’ Greek is notoriously complex and verbose, to the
point where Xenophon started his work emulating that style but fully gives up partway through.
It’s hilarious.
So, as he says himself, “Thucydides, an Athenian, wrote the history of the war”.
He sure did.
Although this work is unfinished and largely unpolished, even the first hundred or so pages
alone would make for one of the best works of history in history.
While this field has made tremendous strides in the 2500 years since, it’s amazing that
this work had such a profound influence on the way we construct history.
And while there’s much more to this book that deserves analysis, I think the most fitting
homage to Thucydides is to end this video right in the middle of—
Thucydides said that he wanted to create a possession for all time, and by his own admission,
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Thank you so much for watching!
I had an unambiguously wonderful time working on this video because classical Greece is
my bread and butter and I could do this basically forever.
So, if you want more Greece content drop a comment below and I Will Oblige.
Until then, I’ll see you in the next video.