[B-Greek] Is Thucydides helpful reading material?

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Thu Oct 19 19:21:10 EDT 2006


On Oct 19, 2006, at 5:20 PM, Elizabeth Kline wrote:

> Assuming one wanted to make some rapid headway in Attic would
> Thucydides be helpful reading material? I have been looking over the
> opening lines of Thucydides History and wondering if this would be
> something worth reading. Is Thucydides representative of Attic prose
> syntax?
>
> I am not too concerned about the difference between Thucydides and
> the NT greek which I assume would be substantial.

I've read the four answers (Spinti, Ernest, Shumaker, Campbell) to  
this query that have come in since it was posted. I'd concur that  
Thucydides is perhaps the most difficult Attic prose one can read; we  
used to class the hardest Attic writers as Thucydides and Aeschylus  
-- and although Pindar isn't Attic, he belongs in that category also.

On the other hand, Thucydides isn't uniformly difficult; he is  
difficult especially in those sections that are generally agreed to  
be the most significant: the speeches -- the sequence of four  
speeches that triggered the Peloponnesian War, the three speeches of  
Pericleas (including the celebrated Epitaphios), the debate over what  
to do with the rebels in Mitylene, and the Melian Dialogue. Then too  
there's the account of the revolution on Corcyra which has always  
seemed to me to be a sort of "Platonic form" of political/social  
revolution. BUT: the narrative sequences in Thucydides are quite  
significantly easier reading,


Elizabeth actually raises more than one question here. To the most  
simple of them I'd have to say: NO, T is NOT helpful material for one  
wanting to make some rapid headway in Attic (far better would be  
Xenophon -- e.g. the Memorabilia of Socrates, or the pseudo- 
Xenophontic "Constitution of Athens" more commonly called "The Old  
Oligarch"  or some speeches of Lysias). One needs to acquire some  
vocabulary for Herodotus, but Herodotus is fun and worth while (but  
Herodotus isn't Attic but Ionic.

Is Thucydides worth reading? Eminently. It is one of the great  
classics of all literature offering an analysis of what makes people  
tick politically and socialy in time of war. Ultimately it is worth  
reading for its own sake rather than for the sake of learning Greek.  
In fact, it would be more nearly true to say it's worth learning  
Greek to be able to read Thucydides. I once vowed that I would learn  
to read Russian in order to be able to read Dostoyevsky; I never got  
that far, but I don't regret reading Thucydides.


Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)
1989 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad2 at mac.com
WWW: http://www.ioa.com/~cwconrad/





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