36 lectures, 30 minutes/lecture.
Kenneth W. Harl, Ph.D.
Professor of Classical and Byzantine History
Tulane University
Lecture 1: Thucydides (465–400 B.C.), Athenian general and adherent of Pericles, penned his eyewitness account of the Peloponnesian …
36 lectures, 30 minutes/lecture.
Kenneth W. Harl, Ph.D.
Professor of Classical and Byzantine History
Tulane University
Lecture 1: Thucydides (465–400 B.C.), Athenian general and adherent of Pericles, penned his eyewitness account of the Peloponnesian War after being exiled in 424 B.C. Although he survived the war, Thucydides failed to complete his history, which ends abruptly in 411 B.C.; we must depend, accordingly, on the less accomplished narratives of Xenophon and Diodorus Siculus for information on the last six years of the war. Thucydides set the standard of historical writing and analysis in the West, and he is often hailed for his accuracy and objectivity, yet he wrote from a distinctly Athenian perspective. He idealized Pericles, and occasionally revealed anti-Spartan prejudices.
Thucydides wrote a narrative of the war so convincing that it has influenced all subsequent interpretations.
The British Victorian scholar George Grote, for example, saw the struggle of Athens and Sparta as comparable to that between Great Britain and Napoleonic France. This comparison, implicitly accepted by
most historians even today, has left open the question of why Sparta won the war. In the era of the Cold
War, scholars hoping to find ways to avoid a crisis between the United States and the Soviet Union which
could escalate into nuclear war debated Thucydides’s judgment that the Peloponnesian War was inevitable. This model, too, is problematic; equating Sparta with the Soviet Union is misleading (and unfair to Sparta). Clearly reading the account of Thucydides, in tandem with other ancient sources, generates a host of questions as to the causes, course, and outcome of the Peloponnesian War, as well as of the characteristics of both Athenian and Spartan society.
Suggested Reading:
George Grote, History of Greece from the Earliest Period to the Close of the Generation Contemporary with Alexander the Great.
Victor D. Hanson, A War Like No Other: How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War.
Donald Kagan, The Outbreak of the Peloponnesian War.
G. E. M. de Sainte Croix, The Origins of the Peloponnesian War.
Robert B. Strassler, The Landmark Thucydides: A Comprehensive Guide to the Peloponnesian War.
Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War.
Lecture 2: https://www.bitchute.com/video/QNTNRWrhrACY/
