Editing Thucydides (section)

== Comparison with Herodotus ==
[[File:Herodot und Thukydides.jpg|thumb|Double [[Herm (sculpture)|herm]] showing Herodotus and Thucydides. [[Farnese Collection]], Naples]]
Thucydides and his immediate predecessor, [[Herodotus]], both exerted a significant influence on Western historiography. Thucydides does not mention his counterpart by name, but his famous introductory statement is thought to refer to him:<ref>Lucian, How to write history, p. 42</ref><ref>{{Thucydides|en|1|22|shortref}}</ref><blockquote>To hear this history rehearsed, for that there be inserted in it no fables, shall be perhaps not delightful. But he that desires to look into the truth of things done, and which (according to the condition of humanity) may be done again, or at least their like, shall find enough herein to make him think it profitable. And it is compiled rather for an everlasting possession than to be rehearsed for a prize. ([[s:History of the Peloponnesian War/Book 1#1:22|1:22]])</blockquote>

Herodotus records in his ''[[Histories (Herodotus)|Histories]]'' not only the events of the [[Persian Wars]], but also geographical and ethnographical information, as well as the fables related to him during his extensive travels. Typically, he passes no definitive judgment on what he has heard. In the case of conflicting or unlikely accounts, he presents both sides, says what he believes and then invites readers to decide for themselves.<ref>Momigliano, pp. 39, 40.</ref> Of course, modern historians would generally leave out their personal beliefs, which is a form of passing judgment upon the events and people about which the historian is reporting. The work of Herodotus is reported to have been recited at festivals, where prizes were awarded, as for example, during the games at [[Olympia, Greece|Olympia]].<ref>Lucian: ''Herodotus'', pp. 1–2.</ref>

Herodotus views history as a source of moral lessons, with conflicts and wars as misfortunes flowing from initial acts of injustice perpetuated through cycles of revenge.<ref>Ryszard Kapuscinski: ''Travels with Herodotus'', p. 78.</ref> In contrast, Thucydides claims to confine himself to factual reports of contemporary political and military events, based on unambiguous, first-hand, eye-witness accounts,<ref>{{Thucydides|en|1|23|shortref}}</ref> although, unlike Herodotus, he does not reveal his sources. Thucydides views life exclusively as ''political'' life, and history in terms of ''political'' history. Conventional moral considerations play no role in his analysis of political events while geographic and [[ethnography|ethnographic]] aspects are omitted or, at best, of secondary importance. Subsequent Greek historians—such as [[Ctesias]], [[Diodorus]], [[Strabo]], [[Polybius]] and [[Plutarch]]—held up Thucydides's writings as a model of truthful history. [[Lucian]]<ref>Lucian, pp. 25, 41.</ref> refers to Thucydides as having given Greek historians their ''law'', requiring them to say ''what had been done'' ({{lang|grc|ὡς ἐπράχθη}}). Greek historians of the fourth century BC accepted that history was political and that contemporary history was the proper domain of a historian.<ref>Momigliano, Ch. 2, IV.</ref> [[Cicero]] calls Herodotus the "father of history";<ref>Cicero, ''Laws'' 1.5.</ref> yet the Greek writer Plutarch, in his ''[[Moralia]]'' (''Ethics'') denigrated Herodotus, notably calling him a ''philobarbaros'', a "barbarian lover", to the detriment of the Greeks.<ref>Plutarch, ''On the Malignity of Herodotus'', ''[[Moralia]]'' XI (''Loeb Classical Library 426'').</ref> Unlike Thucydides, however, these authors all continued to view history as a source of moral lessons, thereby infusing their works with personal biases generally missing from Thucydides's clear-eyed, non-judgmental writings focused on reporting events in a non-biased manner.

Due to the loss of the ability to read Greek, Thucydides and Herodotus were largely forgotten during the [[Middle Ages]] in Western Europe, although their influence continued in the [[Byzantine]] world. In Europe, Herodotus become known and highly respected only in the late-sixteenth and early-seventeenth century as an ethnographer, in part due to the discovery of [[The Americas|America]], where customs and animals were encountered that were even more surprising than what he had related. During the [[Protestant Reformation|Reformation]], moreover, information about Middle Eastern countries in the ''Histories'' provided a basis for establishing [[Bible|Biblical]] chronology as advocated by [[Isaac Newton]].

The first European translation of Thucydides (into Latin) was made by the humanist [[Lorenzo Valla]] between 1448 and 1452, and the first Greek edition was published by [[Aldus Manutius|Aldo Manuzio]] in 1502. During the [[Renaissance]], however, Thucydides attracted less interest among Western European historians as a political philosopher than his successor, [[Polybius]],<ref>Momigliano Chapter 2, V.</ref> although [[Poggio Bracciolini]] claimed to have been influenced by him. There is not much evidence of Thucydides's influence in [[Niccolò Machiavelli]]'s ''[[The Prince]]'' (1513), which held that the chief aim of a new prince must be to "maintain his state" [i.e., his power] and that in so doing he is often compelled to act against faith, humanity, and religion. Later historians, such as [[J. B. Bury]], however, have noted parallels between them:

<blockquote>If, instead of a history, Thucydides had written an analytical treatise on politics, with particular reference to the Athenian empire, it is probable that&nbsp;... he could have forestalled Machiavelli&nbsp;... [since] the whole innuendo of the Thucydidean treatment of history agrees with the fundamental postulate of Machiavelli, the supremacy of [[national interest|reason of state]]. To maintain a state, said the Florentine thinker, "a statesman is often compelled to act against faith, humanity and religion".&nbsp;... But&nbsp;... the true Machiavelli, not the Machiavelli of fable&nbsp;... entertained an ideal: Italy for the Italians, Italy freed from the stranger: and in the service of this ideal he desired to see his speculative science of politics applied. Thucydides has no political aim in view: he was purely a historian. But it was part of the method of both alike to eliminate conventional sentiment and morality.<ref>[[J. B. Bury]], ''The Ancient Greek Historians'' (London, MacMillan, 1909), pp. 140–143.</ref></blockquote>

[[File:Thomas Hobbes (portrait).jpg|thumb|[[Thomas Hobbes]] translated Thucydides directly from Greek into English]]
In the seventeenth century, the [[England|English]] political philosopher [[Thomas Hobbes]], whose ''[[Leviathan (Hobbes book)|Leviathan]]'' advocated absolute monarchy, admired Thucydides and in 1628 was the first to translate his writings into English directly from Greek. Thucydides, Hobbes, and Machiavelli are together considered the founding fathers of western [[political realism]], according to which, state policy must primarily or solely focus on the need to maintain military and economic [[Power in international relations|power]] rather than on ideals or ethics.

Nineteenth-century [[positivist]] historians stressed what they saw as Thucydides's seriousness, his scientific objectivity and his advanced handling of evidence. A virtual [[cult following]] developed among such [[Germany|German]] philosophers as [[Friedrich Schelling]], [[Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel|Friedrich Schlegel]], and [[Friedrich Nietzsche]], who claimed that, "[in Thucydides], the portrayer of Man, that culture of the most impartial knowledge of the world finds its last glorious flower." The late-eighteenth-century Swiss historian [[Johannes von Müller]] described Thucydides as "the favourite author of the greatest and noblest men, and one of the best teachers of the wisdom of human life".<ref>Johannes von Müller, ''The History of the World'' (Boston: Thomas H. Webb and Co., 1842), Vol. 1, p. 61.</ref> For [[Eduard Meyer]], [[Thomas Babington Macaulay]] and [[Leopold von Ranke]], who initiated  modern source-based history writing,<ref>See Anthony Grafton, ''The Footnote, a Curious History'' (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1999)</ref> Thucydides was again the model historian.<ref>Momigliano, p. 50.</ref><ref>For his part, Peter Green notes of these historians, the fact "That [Thucydides] was exiled for military incompetence, did a hatchet job on the man responsible and praised as virtually unbeatable the Spartan general to whom he had lost the key city of Amphipolis bothered them not at all." Peter Green (2008) cit.</ref>

<blockquote>Generals and statesmen loved him: the world he drew was theirs, an exclusive power-brokers' club. It is no accident that even today Thucydides turns up as a guiding spirit in military academies, [[neocon]] think tanks and the writings of men like [[Henry Kissinger]]; whereas Herodotus has been the choice of imaginative novelists (Michael Ondaatje's novel ''[[The English Patient]]'' and the film based on it boosted the sale of the ''Histories'' to a wholly unforeseen degree) and—as food for a starved soul—of an equally imaginative foreign correspondent from Iron Curtain Poland, [[Ryszard Kapuscinski]].<ref>(Green 2008, op. cit.)</ref></blockquote>

These historians also admired Herodotus, however, as social and ethnographic history increasingly came to be recognized as complementary to political history.<ref>Momigliano, p.&nbsp;52.</ref> In the twentieth century, this trend gave rise to the works of [[Johan Huizinga]], [[Marc Bloch]], and [[Fernand Braudel]], who pioneered the study of long-term cultural and economic developments and the patterns of everyday life. The [[Annales School]], which exemplifies this direction, has been viewed as extending the tradition of Herodotus.<ref>Stuart Clark (ed.): ''The Annales school: critical assessments'', Vol. II, 1999.</ref>

At the same time, Thucydides's influence was increasingly important in the area of [[international relations]] during the Cold War, through the work of [[Hans Morgenthau]], [[Leo Strauss]],<ref>See essay on Thucydides in ''The Rebirth of Classical Political Rationalism: An Introduction to the Thought of Leo Strauss – Essays and Lectures by Leo Strauss'', edited by Thomas L. Pangle ([[Chicago]]: [[University of Chicago Press]], 1989).</ref> and [[E. H. Carr|Edward Carr]].<ref>See, for example, E. H. Carr's ''[[The Twenty Years' Crisis]]''.</ref>

The tension between the Thucydidean and Herodotean traditions extends beyond historical research. According to [[Irving Kristol]], self-described founder of American [[neoconservatism]], Thucydides wrote "the favorite neoconservative text on foreign affairs";<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/003/000tzmlw.asp|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20030816080450/http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/003/000tzmlw.asp|url-status=dead|archive-date=16 August 2003|title=The Neoconservative Persuasion|work=[[The Weekly Standard]]}}</ref> and Thucydides is a required text at the [[Naval War College]], an American institution located in Rhode Island. On the other hand, Daniel Mendelsohn, in a review of a recent edition of Herodotus, suggests that, at least in his graduate school days during the Cold War, professing admiration of Thucydides served as a form of self-presentation:
<blockquote>To be an admirer of Thucydides' ''History'', with its deep cynicism about political, rhetorical and ideological hypocrisy, with its all too recognizable protagonists—a liberal yet imperialistic democracy and an authoritarian oligarchy, engaged in a [[war of attrition]] fought [[war by proxy|by proxy]] at the remote fringes of empire—was to advertise yourself as a hardheaded connoisseur of global Realpolitik.<ref>"[http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2008/04/28/arms-and-the-man-3 Arms and the Man]: What was Herodotus trying to tell us?" (''[[The New Yorker]]'', April 28, 2008)</ref></blockquote>

Another contemporary historian believes that,<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Sorensen|first=Benjamin|date=2013|title=The Legacy of J. B. Bury, 'Progressive' Historian of Ancient Greece|url=http://digitalcommons.apus.edu/saberandscroll/vol2/iss2/10/|journal=Saber and Scroll|volume=2 |issue=2}}</ref> while it is true that critical history "began with Thucydides, one may also argue that Herodotus' looking at the past as a reason why the present is the way it is, and to search for causality for events beyond the realms of Tyche and the Gods, was a much larger step."{{citation needed|date=May 2021}}