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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 September 2009
Hobbes's first published work, which appeared in 1629, was a translation of Thucydides's Eight Books of the Peloponnesian War, and it was a work which was to have a deep and lasting, if also sometimes ambiguous, influence on the subsequent development of his political ideas and on the language in which he couched them. In his introduction to the work he had this to say of Thucydides's political ideas:
For his opinion touching the government of the state, it is manifest that he least of all liked the democracy. And upon divers occasions he noteth the emulation and contention of the demagogues for reputation and glory of wit; with their crossing of each other's counsels, to the damage of the public; the inconsistency of resolutions, caused by the diversity of ends and power of rhetoric in the orators; and the desperate actions undertaken upon the flattering advice of such as desired to attain, or to hold what they had attained, of authority and sway among the common people.
In addition to his rejection of rhetoric and demagogy, Thucydides had also condemned superstitious beliefs as causes of controversy and dissent. For this, for his belief in ‘natural reason’ and his denunciation of the ‘ridiculous religion’ of the common people, he had been unjustly accused of atheism. Hobbes was similarly hostile to superstitious beliefs and in Leviathan he described the Catholic church as a ‘Kingdome of Darkenesse’ because it used liturgy to reinforce its political power.
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