Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Contributors
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Military history and the history of war
- Part I The influence of history on the military profession
- Part II The past as illuminator of the future
- 7 Thucydides as educator
- 8 Clausewitz, history, and the future strategic world
- 9 History and the nature of strategy
- 10 Military transformation in long periods of peace: the Victorian Royal Navy
- 11 Military history and the pathology of lessons learned: the Russo-Japanese War, a case study
- 12 Obstacles to innovation and readiness: the British Army's experience, 1918–1939
- 13 What history suggests about terrorism and its future
- 14 History and future of civil–military relations: bridging the gaps
- Index
7 - Thucydides as educator
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Contributors
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Military history and the history of war
- Part I The influence of history on the military profession
- Part II The past as illuminator of the future
- 7 Thucydides as educator
- 8 Clausewitz, history, and the future strategic world
- 9 History and the nature of strategy
- 10 Military transformation in long periods of peace: the Victorian Royal Navy
- 11 Military history and the pathology of lessons learned: the Russo-Japanese War, a case study
- 12 Obstacles to innovation and readiness: the British Army's experience, 1918–1939
- 13 What history suggests about terrorism and its future
- 14 History and future of civil–military relations: bridging the gaps
- Index
Summary
Exiled Thucydides knew
All that a speech can say
About Democracy
And what dictators do,
The elderly rubbish they talk
To 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.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Past as PrologueThe Importance of History to the Military Profession, pp. 95 - 110Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2006
- 1
- Cited by