Table of Contents

Acknowledgments xi Abbreviations xiii Introduction 1 Chapter 1: Thucydides' History and Its Background 7 Chapter 2: The Subject, Method, and Structure of Thucydides' History 23 Chapter 3: Thucydides on the Causes of the War 40 Chapter 4: Thucydides and Pericles 57 Chapter 5: Scenes from the Archidamian War 75 Mytilene, Plataea, Corcyra, Pylos Chapter 6: Dialogue at Melos, the Sicilian Expedition 100 Chapter 7: Endings 125 Chapter 8: Thucydides as a Philosophic Historian 139 Notes 163 Further Reading 185 Index 187

Promotional Information

A perceptive, well-informed, concise, and readable introduction to Thucydides for the nonspecialist. Perez Zagorin has done a service to readers by composing such a vigorous and succinct book. -- Barry S. Strauss, Cornell University Lucid and engaging. This is an intelligent and helpful companion to the first-time reader of Thucydides. -- Josiah Ober, Princeton University Perez Zagorin addresses the main points in Thucydides with sound judgment and estimable intelligence. His choice of topics is expert, as is his treatment of different scholarly views. This is an ideal overview of Thucydides, which at times is as gripping as Thucydides himself. -- George Klosko Professor Zagorin has written a valuable companion for readers of Thucydides. His observations are full of learning, good sense, and wisdom. -- Donald Kagan, Sterling Professor of Classics and History, Yale University

About the Author

Perez Zagorin (1920-2009) was the Joseph C. Wilson Professor of History Emeritus at the University of Rochester and a fellow of the Shannon Center for Advanced Studies at the University of Virginia. He was the author of many articles and a number of books, including "How the Idea of Religious Toleration Came to the West" and "Francis Bacon" (both Princeton).

Reviews

Honorable Mention for the 2006 Award for Best Professional/Scholarly Book in Multi Volume Reference Works/Humanities & Social Sciences, Association of American Publishers "Thucydides: An Introduction for the Common Reader offers an engrossing intellectual appreciation of the most important and most difficult historian in the western cultural tradition... Perez Zagorin ... brings formidable personal intelligence to major questions in Thucydidian scholarship, and his book goes well beyond the typical synthetic handbook... There is nothing else like it."--Tom Palaima, Times Higher Education Supplement "Thucydides: An Introduction for the Common Reader is a useful book... Thucydides' ... depth and breadth remain an extraordinary reminder of how little political distance we have traveled since his time."--Peter Stothard, The Wall Street Journal "[E]specially useful as a textbook for undergraduate courses as well as for general readers curious about an ancient historian whose name has a prime place in any history of history, as well as in the study of the mature stage of the classical age of Greece."--Victor Castellani, European Legacy

Honorable Mention for the 2006 Award for Best Professional/Scholarly Book in Multi Volume Reference Works/Humanities & Social Sciences, Association of American Publishers "Thucydides: An Introduction for the Common Reader offers an engrossing intellectual appreciation of the most important and most difficult historian in the western cultural tradition... Perez Zagorin ... brings formidable personal intelligence to major questions in Thucydidian scholarship, and his book goes well beyond the typical synthetic handbook... There is nothing else like it."--Tom Palaima, Times Higher Education Supplement "Thucydides: An Introduction for the Common Reader is a useful book... Thucydides' ... depth and breadth remain an extraordinary reminder of how little political distance we have traveled since his time."--Peter Stothard, The Wall Street Journal "[E]specially useful as a textbook for undergraduate courses as well as for general readers curious about an ancient historian whose name has a prime place in any history of history, as well as in the study of the mature stage of the classical age of Greece."--Victor Castellani, European Legacy