This chapter explores Thucydides’ depiction of leadership in the Greek city states. For Thucydides, the association between leader and led is an essential determinant of the direction taken by a state; his text often explores the ways in which the thought and rhetoric of an individual are converted into the actions of a citizen group. Thucydides’ portrait of Pericles’ leadership is central to this question; the characteristics and behaviours that he embodies are replicated, with variations, in other political leaders who appear in the work. After analysing Thucydides’ representation of Pericles, therefore, this chapter goes on to discuss how other leaders in the work – Hermocrates, Archidamus and Brasidas – relate to this Periclean template.

Thucydides served as elected general (strategos) for Athens, and it is likely that he had (perhaps extensive) personal experience of warfare. His work is therefore an important guide both to the practicalities of warfare in 5th-century BCE Greece and to the wider function(s) that war played in politics and society. This chapter analyses what the History tells us about the ‘art of war’ in this period, discussing the use of land troops (light-armed soldiers and cavalry as well as hoplites) and naval forces. It discusses military strategy and tactics, the nature of combat and the consequences of warfare, for non-combatants as well as soldiers.

This chapter introduces the most significant aspects of Thucydidean interpretation in the Renaissance and Reformation. It outlines key developments in the accessibility of the text (through knowledge of Greek and through translation into Latin and other European languages). It also analyses a number of key responses to the work. These include the group centred around Philipp Melanchthon, who saw Thucydides as a source of both rhetorical and moral lessons; Calvinist readings, which enlisted Thucydides to rebut Machiavelli’s views on statecraft; Grotius, who appealed to Thucydides in formulating his theory of Just War; and Thomas Hobbes’ influential translation of the text.

K-pop formations are believed to have drawn inspiration from Seo Taiji and Boys, who arrived in the early 1990s and became a cultural phenomenon before disbanding in 1996. They offered a unique blend of melodic tunes, heavy beats, short raps, and synchronized dance sequences that drew on hip hop, rock, and disco. They transformed Korean music and fashion and had a profound effect on young Koreans’ sense of identity and national pride. However, despite the band’s pioneering role, it did not provide a blueprint for the business model of K-pop today. Partly in response to the decline in record sales, today’s reliance on concert tours, marketing media, and talent shows developed later. But the formulas themselves are not entirely new to Korean pop music. This chapter explores talent shows organized in the 1930s and 1940s. Although the conditions of pop music were different then, the early prevalence of the shows demonstrates that public auditions, competition, and audience participation took root early on. Focusing on the symptomatic ethos, signs, and practices of neoliberalism, rather than retrofitting the neoliberal era to the 1930s, the author contends that the music industry recognized by then that neoliberal attributes can be a powerful marketing ploy.

This chapter examines statements in Thucydides’ work that predict or foreshadow the future (prolepses), placing them in the context of a wider study of the narratological structure of the History as a whole. It analyses predictions made by the narrator himself (including 1.22.4’s famous claim about the future utility of the work), as well as the (often unreliable) claims that characters in the History make about the future course of events. The combined effect of these prolepses is a notable instability in the ‘unreal future’ that the text predicts. Thucydides’ work offers us no clear conclusion about the ultimate significance of the war that he has described: the work as a whole is not a teleological narrative.

The practice of imagining idols within romantic and sexual relationships, known as “shipping,” is central to the global fandom of K-pop, allowing fans to develop affective relationships with celebrities through practices such as writing fan fiction. In particular, shipping that reimagines boy groups such as BTS within romantic or homoerotic relationships is especially common as a method of articulating fandom and exploring sexual agency, thus producing spaces within Korea’s patriarchal society where women’s sexual desires can be safely explored. International aspects of BTS shipping, particularly within Japanese and Anglophone fandom spaces (in Australian and the Philippines), is then analyzed. While BTS shipping in Japan tends to conceptualize homoerotic relationships between men via sexual practices and behaviors divorced from identity, Anglophone shipping tends to instead overtly deploy LGBTQ identity politics. Nevertheless, both practices possess queer potentials that allow fans to affectively explore their sexuality. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the role of shipping in affirming the presence of queer fans within global K-pop culture.

The history and nature of the Athenian Empire (arche) is not the primary subject of Thucydides’ History, but his text is nevertheless a critical piece of evidence for it. After briefly surveying the key features of the Athenian Empire and its development, this chapter explores Thucydides’ picture of Athenian imperialism, focusing on three areas in particular. First: how can imperial power be justified? Second – a related but different question – why do states seek imperial power (is it, indeed, something over which states have a choice or is it an inevitable feature of interstate politics)? Finally, how and why do empires fail?

Thucydides emphasizes the labour that he has put into creating his History, but this is a text that also requires labour from its readers if they are to uncover the truth about past events. This chapter explores what that process of uncovering the truth might look like using as case studies Thucydides’ account of the growth of Athenian imperial power in Book 1 and his narrative of the plague in Book 2. Finally, the chapter addresses the question of why Thucydides might have adopted this approach to writing and presenting his History.

This chapter focuses on so-called proto-K-pop, just prior to the birth of K-pop as exportable good in the late 1990s, and the subcultures based on nightclubs and discotheques from the mid-1980s to the early 1990s. The dancers and DJs who gathered at Seoul nightclubs (and in other cities) emulated dance and music from the United States, Europe, and Japan, and constructed their own “authentic” genre. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, dancers began their careers as backup for the established singers and gradually repositioned themselves as “dancers who sing.” During the same period, some DJs who became producers, managers, and songwriters successfully challenged the existing record industry. This chapter investigates the transformation of the small-scale and scattered subculture based in nightclubs into a lucrative business associated with the organized music industry. Three production-cum-management companies – SM (Hyun Jin-young and Wawa), Line (Kim Gun Mo), and Yoyo (Seo Taiji and Boys) – are closely examined. It is inevitable to contrast the rap/reggae/techno-oriented 1990s with the folk/rock/ballad-oriented 1980s. But this chapter eschews the dichotomy by showing the genre diversity consciously designed by the industry. It aims to show the ground zero of the so-called K-pop machine, without making any teleological assumptions.

Thucydides’ History is a rich source for our understanding of the character and interrelations of the ethnic sub-groups of the Greeks and different communities within the Greek world, as well as the relations between Greeks and non-Greek (‘barbarian’) communities. After establishing some key methodological principles relating to studying ethnicity in the Greek world, this chapter explores Thucydides’ contribution to our understanding of Greek ethnicity. It analyses the role of descent and cultural factors in the construction of ethnicity. It also explores the role that ethnicity plays in Thucydides’ description and analysis of the Peloponnesian War.

With their Billboard chart-topping albums and sold-out stadium concerts around the globe, BTS today is the biggest success story of international K-pop. The unprecedented success of BTS challenges the understanding and study of K-pop, as it simultaneously reinforces previously existing perspectives while demanding several new ones. This chapter traces the career of BTS, surveying the historical implications of their rise to the dramatic change in the landscape of music consumption in the era of new media. Rather than depending on music industry insiders or media gatekeepers, the pop stars of the internet era form a strong and direct connection with their fans. ARMY, BTS’s global fandom, is emblematic of this change. ARMY fans do not merely buy albums or generate publicity for their stars; they open new fronts in the discourse and creative derivative work centered around BTS, further fueling the group’s worldwide success. In the US mainstream pop music market dominated by US and UK acts, these shifts in defining BTS’s success demand reconsideration of the future possibilities of Asian stars.