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VII. Acts and Intentions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2016

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Extract

Thucydides tells us (i. 22. 2 f.) his procedure in respect of what he calls . He claims not to have obtained information ‘from anyone who happened to be available’ but to have described events of which he himself was a witness and, for the rest, to have scrutinized his information with the utmost care. This was a laborious process, since accounts were often contradictory; memory has gaps, and a man’s picture of a past event is coloured by his loyalties (i. 22. 3). Documentation of the kind which a modern historian would expect to use was hardly available to Thucydides. Treaties were recorded in writing, and so were Athenian decrees and some balance-sheets; but it is questionable whether the letter written by Nicias in 414 (vii. 8, 10–15) was kept in an archive long enough for Thucydides to read it, and the figures given in iii. 87. 3 for cavalry and hoplite deaths in the plague were probably taken from a speech made by a general in the assembly. There is no evidence for the existence in the fifth century of written operation orders, situation reports, or war diaries, and it is to be presumed that what Thucydides has to tell us about operations is based on oral information from people who had taken part or had themselves received information from participants.

Type
Research Article
Information
New Surveys in the Classics , Volume 7: Thucydides , 1973 , pp. 28 - 34
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1973

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References

page no 28 note 1 In general, speeches attributed by Thucydides to commanders in the field resemble enlargements on themes which we associate with an “order of the day”. Cf.Luschnat, O., Philologus Supplbd. xxxiv. 2 (1942)Google Scholar.

page no 30 note 1 Ziegler, K., RhM lxxviii (1929), 58–67.Google Scholar

page no 30 note 2 Dover, K. J. in Wege der Forschung xcviii (1968), 344-68Google Scholar.

page no 30 note 3 Cf.Snodgrass, A. M., The Dark Age of Greece (Edinburgh, 1971), 5–20.Google Scholar

page no 31 note 1 Cf.Woodhead, A. G., Mnemosyne N.S. xiii (1960), 289–317 CrossRefGoogle Scholar (reprinted in Wege der Forschung xcviii).

page no 32 note 1 Plutarch, Alcibiades xvi. 6 Google Scholar says that Alcibiades was regarded as mainly responsible; perhaps an illegitimate inference from [Andocides] iv. 22.

page no 32 note 2 Cf. especially Tod, M. N., Greek Historical Inscriptions, ii (Oxford, 1948), 59–70.Google Scholar

page no 32 note 3 Cf.Meiggs, Russell and Lewis, David, A Selection of Greek Historical Inscriptions to the End of the Fifth Century B.C. (Oxford, 1969), 188–201.Google Scholar

page no 32 note 4 Cf. Meiggs and Lewis, op. cit., 205-17.

page no 33 note 1 Cornford, F. M., Thucydides Mythistoricus (London, 1907)Google Scholar; see, however, de Ste Croix, G. E. M., The Origins of the Peloponnesian War (London, 1972), 211-14Google Scholar, on the difficulty of reconciling this interpretation with the history of relations between Athens and Corinth and evidence for the nature of Greek commerce.

page no 33 note 2 Green (p. 4 n. 2 above), 11-35.

page no 34 note 1 Cf.Austin, M. and Vidal-Naquet, P., Économies et sociétés en Grèce ancienne (Paris, 1972), 129-46Google Scholar.

page no 34 note 2 Cf. de Ste Croix (above, p. 33 n. 1), 225-89, 381-98: all our evidence for the decree refers to ‘the Megarians’.