Thucydides: The Reinvention of History

De: Donald Kagan

Narrado por: Paul Hecht

Donald Kagan—Yale’s Sterling Professor of Classics and History—delivers a compelling new look at revisionism in Thucydides’ classic History of the Peloponnesian War. To determine how accurate and dispassionate the Athenian general really was, Kagan exposes his epic to an enlightening and thorough analysis. Using contemporary and modern sources, Kagan reveals the exiled aristocrat’s biases, prejudices, and his clear intention to spin events in his own way.

©2009 Donald Kagan (P)2010 Recorded Books, LLC

Reseñas de la Crítica

"Yale professor of classics Kagan thoroughly examines Thucydides' life and work to successfully demonstrate that the Athenian historian was the first to utilize a truly professional (i.e., realistic and methodical) approach in recounting contemporary events." ( Publishers Weekly)

A classic

Wonderful overview of Thucydides’ work — done by a true great of the classics world. I will listen to it again.

prof kagan's books are always authoritative...

For one who has read the four volumes of D. Kagan on the ppw this book is an extract of themes very familiar...Still, it is a good book and one very competently read.

Nothing better. Feels like being in Ancient Greece

Feels like being in Ancient Greece as the war unfolded. We all can learn to this day

Some lessons just don't get shared with sons

"I doubt seriously whether a man can think with full wisdom and with deep convictions regarding certain of the basic international issues today who has not at least reviewed in his mind the period of the Peloponnesian War and the Fall of Athens."

- George C Marshall, 1947

"An, perhaps, my account will seem less pleasing to those who hear it because of its lack of fabulous tales, but if it be judged useful by those who seek an exact knowledge of the past as an aid to the interpretation of the future, which in the course of human things must resemble if it does not reflect it, I shall be satisfied."

- Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War

Donald Kagan, one of the preeminent Classical scholars of the last 50 years, who has spent most of his professional career writing and researching the Peloponnesian War has written a tight book exploring Thucydides as a historian, philosopher, and comparing the myth of the Man/Historian/Philosopher against the reality. Kagan investigates Thucydides motives, revisions to history, and opinions. It is an interesting biography of a historian combined with a light textual analysis of his book. It is a historical love not, with just a dash of realism and hint of criticism.

It is also, put in today's context, not a little bit ironic. Each time I've read about the Peloponnesian War I finish the book or article thinking of how Thucydides was an early master of real politick. I think about how Athens invading Scicilly strangely parallels the US preemptively invading Iraq, waging war against the "enemies of democracy" and the "axis of evil". I was going to make some snarky comment about how hard it must be for Donald Kagan, this historian of the brilliant and pragmatic historian/philosopher/general Thucydides, to share a name with Robert Kagan one of the neocons responsible for providing intellectual cover for the last couple decades of American Imperialism. Imagine my surprise to discover that Donald is John's father. Gods. What a Greek Drama there. I just can't decide if having Robert Kagan be Donald Kagan's son is more of a comedy, satire, or tragedy. Some lessons just don't get shared with sons I guess. Well, perhaps they do, but only when they are carved into marble.

Thucydides is not as objective as we thought!

I just finished listening to Donald Kagan’s Thucydides: The Reinvention of History. Kagan, who passed away recently, was a prominent historian of Ancient Greece. In this book, Kagan often argues with Thucydides, and while he acknowledges his greatness, he urges readers not to take Thucydides’ arguments at face value and to distinguish between his facts and his agenda.

According to Kagan, too many historians have been under the influence of Thucydides, who laid the foundations of modern political history and its methods. From ancient times, through Voltaire and Nietzsche, and up to modern specialists, the norm has been to admire Thucydides for his objectivity. Yet, he was not the disinterested and entirely objective historian he is often made out to be. On the contrary, Thucydides was a participant in the events who passionately supported a very subjective view of events. The establishment of facts (erga) was ultimately subordinate for him to their interpretation (logoi).

The unprecedented efforts Thucydides made to establish the truth do not make him infallible, Kagan asserts. He was a man of his time and a participant in the events. He was an exiled general, banished for a military defeat, an aristocrat who admired the democratic leader Pericles, yet briefly thrived under his successors, whom he called dangerous demagogues, and harshly criticized democracy itself. In short, he had an agenda, and quite a strong one at that. Taking his account at face value, Kagan argues, is like treating Churchill’s memoirs as objective history.

Kagan demonstrates that Thucydides set out to refute the prevailing public opinion of his time on nearly all major points. However, despite Thucydides' wisdom and logic, Kagan argues that public opinion might have been right in many cases.
According to Thucydides, Pericles did not lead Athens into war through his actions but was the first to recognize its inevitability and devised a brilliant defensive strategy. Thucydides argues that this strategy would have certainly succeeded if not for Pericles' untimely death and his replacement by dangerous and incompetent demagogues. Kagan challenges all these points, arguing that Pericles' strategy was not only unsuccessful but also unbearably costly, while his successors nearly led Athens to victory through more proactive measures. Moreover, the long truces and the numerous short-term causes for the war’s renewal cast doubt on Thucydides’ entire concept that the decades-long series of conflicts was one inevitable war, driven by the presence of two dominant powers in the Greek world. Thucydides almost suggests that events like the Megarian Decree and the Peace of Nicias were, in fact, not very relevant to the war's conduct, because the war was always inevitable.

According to Thucydides, under Pericles, Athens was not a democracy (a negative term for Thucydides) but a wise rule of the best citizen. After Pericles, demagogy and mob rule took hold, leading to defeat. Kagan counters that Pericles always depended on the assembly and could not dictate his will, only persuade; thus, there is no basis for calling him an autocrat. And anyone who has lived under dictatorships and autocracies, like most currently living Russians, knows that a leader who is lambasted in the theater in the most humiliating manner, dragged through the courts, and constantly contradicted in the assembly is unlikely to be called an autocrat.

According to Kagan, democracy persisted under Pericles’ successors as well, not Thucydides’ mob rule. Cleon was not a dangerous demagogue and incompetent coward, but a talented, albeit inexperienced, military leader who brought the Athenians close to victory with his operation at Sphacteria and later lost only to the brilliant general Brasidas. Similarly, Kagan believes that the disaster of the Sicilian expedition was caused by a series of strategic military blunders by the commanding general Nicias, not the stupidity, greed, and aggressiveness of the Athenian mob, as Thucydides argues. On the contrary, Nicias’ clumsy manipulations resulted in the expedition being launched against his advice, and during the second stage, out of fear of being punished for failure and then for defeat, he continued raising the stakes in an ever-worsening situation. And the Athenian assembly followed Nicias’ advice precisely as Thucydides describes, so it shouldn’t be blamed for his advice, Kagan argues.

In conclusion, Kagan acknowledges two fundamental strengths of Thucydides. First, his History contains numerous facts that allow for the refutation of his own theories or at least provide a reasonable basis for arguing against them. Second, Thucydides established the foundation for a historical tradition and standards for establishing and verifying facts, which ultimately shaped modern political history. While not entirely objective, his approach made history far more fact-based and objective than it otherwise would have been.