The Mind of Thucydides
About this ebook
Romilly shows that Thucydides constructs his account of the Peloponnesian War as a profoundly intellectual experience for readers who want to discern the patterns underlying historical events. Employing a commanding logic that exercises total control over the data of history, Thucydides uses rigorous principles of selection, suggestive juxtapositions, and artfully opposed speeches to reveal systematic relationships between plans and outcomes, impose meaning on the smallest events, and insist on the constant battle between intellect and chance. Thucydides' mind found in unity and coherence its ideal of historical truth.
Discover more
About the author
Jacqueline de Romilly (1913–2010) was the author of more than thirty books on the literature and history of ancient Greece; among her many honors, she was the first woman Professor of the Collège de France, and in 1989 was the second woman elected to the Académie Française. Elizabeth Trapnell Rawlings is an independent translator of books including The Care of the Dead in Late Antiquity by Éric Rebillard and The Mourning Voice by Nicole Loraux, both from Cornell. Hunter R. Rawlings III is President of the Association of American Universities and Professor of Classics and History at Cornell University, where he served as president from 1995 to 2003. He is the author of The Structure of Thucydides' History and a number of articles on Thucydides. Jeffrey Rusten is Professor of Classics at Cornell University, author of The Birth of Comedy: Texts, Documents, and Art from Athenian Comic Competitions, 486–280, and editor of Thucydides (Oxford Readings in Classical Studies).
