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Thucydides and The Power Syndrome

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 September 2009

A. French
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Extract

In the twentieth century the content of historiography has been expanded to envelop a very broad range of studies. But in a popular sense History retains familiar associations. Although theoretically its subject-matter can be as wide as the range of human activities and the life of all God's creatures, popular history deals mainly with the past of ruling groups: the weak are historically insignificant and touch upon History only by their contact with the great. The powerful make History: the weak endure and illustrate it. History appears as a retrospect on human activities organized around the theme of power—its origin, use, misuse, and consequences.

Type
Research Article
Information
Greece & Rome , Volume 27 , Issue 1 , April 1980 , pp. 22 - 30
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1980

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References

Notes

1. For references to the good use of power, see, e.g., Thuc. 6.18.2 (power to defend one's friends); and, in contrast, Thuc. 2.69.1 (the guilt of those who refuse to use their power to prevent injustice).

2. Thuc. 2.63.2; 3.37.2.

3. Herodot. 7.104; 135.

4. Thuc. 1.4–8.

5. Herodot. 3.40–45; 5. 92.

6. For a discussion of the evidence, see Lattimore, R., ‘The Composition of the History of Herodotus’, CPh 53 (1958), 9–21Google Scholar .

7. Herodot. 6. 131.

8. Thuc. 1. 23.6.

9. Thuc. 1. 70.

10. Thuc. 1. 75. 3–4; 143.5; 2. 63.2; 3. 37.2. For an analysis of Athenian motives for her imperial policies see Thuc. 1. 73–6, where an unplanned and unconscious decline into an imperialist mentality is sketched. The words are attributed to an unnamed speaker, but for good reasons, which it is not necessary to detail here, it is possible to attribute the views of the speaker to Thucydides himself. For an important discussion of this point see De Romilly, J., Thucydides and Athenian Imperialism (Oxford, 1963), pp. 241–54Google Scholar .

11. Thuc. 2. 52–3; 3. 82–3; 5. 89–105.

12. Thuc. 1. 22.4.