Abstract
Exiled Thucydides knewAll that a speech can sayAbout DemocracyAnd what dictators do,The elderly rubbish they talkTo an apathetic grave;Analysed all in his book,The enlightenment driven away,The habit-forming pain,Mismanagement and grief.We must suffer them all again.– W. H. Auden, “September 1, 1939”Toward the end of the introductory section of his epic history of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides advances a claim on that work's behalf that hardly any modern historian, contemplating his own efforts in the privacy of his own study, would have the audacity even to consider. My account of the war, Thucydides observes, “was composed as a possession for all times rather than as a contest piece (agō*:nısma) meant to be heard straightaway” (1.22.4). This apparent boast he justifies in advance by first remarking on the absence in his writing of “the mythic” or “fabulous (tò muthō*des),” arguing that, although this may render his account “less delightful (aterpésteron)” to some, it would satisfy his own purpose if his work were “judged useful by those who want to observe clearly the events which happened in the past and which in accord with the character of the human (katà tò anthrō*pınon) will again come to pass hereafter in quite similar ways” (1.22.4).It is my contention that, although we modern historians really are by and large modest little men with much to be modest about, Thucydides had a just understanding of his proper place in the constellation of things – that he was right to think his past akin to our future and to suppose that, despite the passage of time, generations in the far-distant future would stand to profit from studying his account of the Peloponnesian War.