Thucydides' account of the war between Athens and Sparta is the first great work of political history and still a fundamental text for political science and international relations today; it is also a compelling story, full of vivid characters and tragic miscalculations. This collection of essays is designed to accompany, instruct, and stimulate readers of Thucydides by making accessible some classic and influential studies that are frequently cited but not always easy to access. (One-third of the essays appear here in English for the first time.) All Greek is translated, and an introductory chapter surveys the chronology and thematic controversies among Thucydides' readings from antiquity to the present.

Jeffrey S. Rusten is Professor of Classics at Cornell University.

• Introductory


• 1: Jeffrey S. Rusten: Thucydides and his Readers


• 2: W. Robert Connor: A Post-modernist Thucydides?


• 3: Kenneth J. Dover: Thucydides 'as History' and 'as Literature'


• 4: Simon Hornblower: Intellectual Affinities


• Book I


• 5: Lowell Edmunds: Thucydides in the Act of Writing


• 6: Carolyn DeWald: The Figured Stage: Focalizing the Initial Narratives of Herodotus and Thucydides


• 7: Tim Rood: Thucydides' Persian Wars


• 8: Christopher B. Pelling: Thucydides' Speeches


• Book II and Pericles


• 9: Hermann Strasburger: Thucydides and the Political Self-Portrait of the Athenians


• 10: Joseph Vogt: The Portrait of Pericles in Thucydides


• Book III


• 11: Bernd Manuwald: Diodotus' Deceit (On Thucydides 3.42-8)


• 12: Nicole Loraux: Thucydides and Sedition Among Words


• Book V


• 13: H. D. Westlake: Thucydides and the Uneasy Peace: A Study in Political Incompetence


• 14: Brian Bosworth: The Humanitarian Aspect of the Melian Dialogue


• Books VI-VII


• 15: Hans-Peter Stahl: Speeches and the Course of Events in Books Six and Seven of Thucydides


• 16: Jacqueline de Romilly: A Complex Battle-Account: Syracuse


• Reception (Ancient, Modern, and Contemporary)


• 17: Roberto Nicolai: Ktêma es aei: Aspects of the Reception of Thucydides in the Ancient World


• 18: Jonathan Scott: The Peace of Silence: Thucydides and the English Civil War


• 19: Josiah Ober: Thucydides Theôrêtikos/Thucydides Histôr: Realist Theory and the Challenge of History