The Modern Scholar: The Dawn of Political History

Thucydides and the Peloponnesian Wars

By: Fred Baumann

Narrated by: Fred Baumann

In this fascinating course of lectures, Professor Fred Baumann leads us on an engaging exploration of this penetrating work. Taking in each of the eight books, we examine the complex juxtaposition of events Thucydides demonstrates without much comment of his own. We see how democrats and oligarchs, Athenians and Spartans, understand the world and misunderstand each other. We explore how Thucydides contrasts Sparta - so deliberately narrow, provincial, overtly moral, and covertly cynical - with Athens - cosmopolitan, sophisticated, overtly cynical and covertly moral. In doing so, we discover his admonishment to respect both and to get past our own instinctive, and sometimes destructive, human tendencies.

In the end, we come to understand how Thucydide's work shows human nature in the most extreme circumstances and thus provides deep insight into both political practice and philosophy. That may indeed be the reason for its lasting relevance: its unique ability to still shed light upon our own predicament some two-thousand years later.

©2012 Crescite Group (P)2012 Recorded Books

Very good summary and analysis

The lecturer is intelligent and a bit humorous. He gives an excellent close reading of Thucydides, without going on too long. Well worth the time.

Best lecture made so far (I almost said ever)

Amazing, brilliant, original thought on a well covered topic. It is hard to make such a well worn subject feel fresh and new, but it hardly seems like a challenge for the author. Cannot recommend more highly.

The Devastating Fruits of Ignorance, Fear, Honor

I should say first that although I enjoyed and learned from Professor Fred Baumann’s The Dawn of Political History: Thucydides and the Peloponnesian Wars (2012), a compact series of eight roughly 30-minute lectures about Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War (which lasted for 27 years in the 5th century BC), and it did make me WANT to read Thucydides, Baumann felt so concisely complete that he made me not want to HURRY to read Thucydides…

The audiobook belongs to The Modern Scholar series of lectures by various professors of various fields. Dr. Baumann, a professor of political philosophy at Kenyon College, speaks well, with much (but not too much) enthusiasm, clear pronunciation, good pace, and few distracting mannerisms (apart from an occasional confirming, “Yeah?”). Unlike with the Great Courses series, the Modern Scholar lectures don’t impose catchy music or canned applause to start or end each lecture. Really, anyone interested in the war between Sparta and Athens or ancient Greek culture should find a lot of enrichment here.

Dr. Baumann begins by telling us that Thucydides’ history of the Peloponnesian War—written some 2000 years ago—is the best book on politics he knows and that he’ll be using the Crawley English translation of the Greek original. He’ll analyze Thucydides as a work of political philosophy rather than as a work of art or military strategy. Then he leads us through Thucydides’ history book by book, pointing out important events, elements, ideas, and figures.

One of the high points for me was Dr. Baumann covering the spectacular debacle that was the Athenian “invasion” of Sicily and saying that at times reading Thucydides is like reading or watching a horror story, where the characters do something REALLY stupid, so, because you care what happens to them, you’re (internally) shouting, “Don’t go in that house again!” Only in the case of Thucydides, you’re shouting at the Athenians, “Don’t put all your ships in the harbor!” and “Go home now while you still can!”

Another high point was learning about Alcibaides, the most fascinating figure, a celebrity athlete, friend-student of Socrates, purely ambitious, prodigiously charismatic, consummately conning, a supreme manipulator-schemer who defected from Athens to Sparta, from Sparta almost back to Athens but then to Persia, always getting in good with the powers that be and getting them to follow his advice. One wonders how he got away with as much as he did and yearns for a book or movie about him.

Here are a few of the other interesting things I learned from these lectures:

*Athenian Thucydides approaches his history (much of which he was a participant of or witness to) objectively, almost never giving his opinion about events or people, so you have to get at what he thinks by looking at which events he chooses to relate and at which events he chooses to juxtapose them with. For example, after he relates Pericles’ famous funeral oration featuring an almost utopic Athens, he covers in vivid detail the terrible plague that soon killed Pericles shortly after his famous speech and helped doom Athens.

*Thucydides’ work is a political history because it teaches us about how people behave in a crisis.

*Athens and Sparta were prodigiously contrasting cultures: Athens cosmopolitan, innovative, democratic, outward looking, nautical, expansive, etc., and Sparta provincial, conservative, oligarchic, inward looking, land-based, stable, etc. Athens on the surface had a “realistic” view of human nature that let them treat treaties flexibly, whereas Sparta on the surface had an ideal view that made them act “honorably.” In fact, Athens did act for honor, while Sparta could be flexible with treaties. And finally both were alike in going to war from fear, Athens fearing that if they didn’t continue expanding their empire their colonies would rebel, Sparta fearing that an expanding Athens would swallow them.

*People are crazy, acting against their own self-interest, especially when subject to fear or honor.

*Pericles’s successor Cleon was (for Thucydides) a demagogue, appealing to and fanning the fear of the Athenian people, and saying that only he could save them and that every other politician except him would lie to them so they should trust only him. Not unlike certain thug politicians of our present time…

*Athens had numerous chances to end the war but repeatedly rejected Spartan overtures.

*The war devastated both cultures (and probably helped prepare the way for Alexander the Great).

*Problems with democracy (overreach, martial folly, etc.) happen especially in GOOD times.

Baumann closes by explaining why we should read Thucydides:

1) Lessons on statesmanship and the relations of political reality to morality and of international to domestic politics.
2) Exploration of what it is to be a democracy. (Thucydides was an honest critic of democracy and therefore a true friend of it.)
3) Lessons on how to be and how people are, without any Christian salvation.

Too Dense for Consumption

I listened to this book desiring to gather a better understanding of the Greeks, particularly the political thought. All of it was interesting. My critique is that it really requires one to be very familiar with Thucydides and the Peloponnesian Wars, and we'll acquainted with many of the lesser known figures. I often complain that education is dumbed down. In this instance my criticism is that the material is much too dense to follow without a first rate knowledge of the Peloponnesian War and all of the actors in that story. I suppose it's my job to know this, but that's why I rented the book! I know Pericles, and Themistocles, and Alcibiades but I don't know anything about King Agis or Nicias or two score other figures that are part of this grand epic tale. The professor need to slow down and help the listener with the dramatis personae and the military history and places that he mentions so often. I think it's too dense for what it professes to be- a discussion of political thought, instead it is a dense retelling of the war with names and places and generals such that I was lost.

I think it's a good book, but not for those who have not read Thucydides within the year. Too muchn in too little time.