Thucydides and the Modern World
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This subdivision was most likely made by librarians and archivists, themselves being historians and scholars, most likely working in the Library of Alexandria. They encouraged Athens to avoid letting their pride become hubris and to use their new-found position wisely, or find themselves imperiled as Sparta had. This article appeared originally at Strategy Bridge. Each time Athens overreaches, it seems to suffer reversals to the detriment of their existing position. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. It is no accident that even today Thucydides turns up as a guiding spirit in military academies, neocon think tanks and the writings of men like Henry Kissinger ; whereas Herodotus has been the choice of imaginative novelists Michael Ondaatje's novel The English Patient and the film based on it boosted the sale of the Histories to a wholly unforeseen degree and—as food for a starved soul—of an equally imaginative foreign correspondent from Iron Curtain Poland, Ryszard Kapuscinski.
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The Influence of Thucydides in the Modern World
Thucydides - Wiki en. Related Content You may also like. Similar programmes By genre: Home Help Schedule Downloads Blog. Added, go to My Music to see full list. These ideals shaped their image of themselves and a belief as articulated by Pericles in the right to rule others, and hence a willingness to use military force to achieve their interests. However, over the course of the war these military cultures discernibly changed, leaving them more closely aligned.
Why Thucydides?
It is important to point out, however, that the changes in culture Thucydides highlights are important for us to understand in detail because change may not actually be for the better. Thucydides shows us that by removing the civilised restraints on human behaviour built up so tenuously over time, war can barbarise us; and, like a plague, this can destroy all the good that a civilisation has achieved.
So it was for Athens, who adopted an ends justifies the means approach to the conflict. This speech poses questions about whether a state can respect who they are forced to become as a result of compromising on their beliefs purely to succeed in war. Is the cost of what a state can lose in terms of honour worth what it seeks to gain from pursuing its perceived interest?
The famous line from the Melian Dialogue: This is an observation as relevant to the great power politics of today as much as it was to that of fifth century Greece. The Athenian response to the Melians actually shows how far their ideals had fallen, rather than the power they believed they had gained. This was a shrewd warning and echoes Spartan attempts to help Athens understand the limits of power after its defeat at Pylos. They encouraged Athens to avoid letting their pride become hubris and to use their new-found position wisely, or find themselves imperiled as Sparta had.
The outcome was a descent into a cycle of brutality and vengeance that further sullied Athenian strategic and military culture to the point where the slaughter at Melos seemed the logical extension of the abandoned intentions for Mytilene. Thucydides, therefore, remains important because this debate still shapes strategic and military culture today, with the result defining who a state has become once the war is concluded.
This is one of the most important reasons strategists must continue to advocate for the reading of The Peloponnesian War.
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Ultimately, Thucydides tells us, war is about people, and as they change based on the influence of war, so must the cultures they create:. The moral decline of Athens culminated in their decision to invade Syracuse where Athens proved they had become victims of their own success, incapable of seeing risk through potential reward.
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Athens had lost its grip on reality as it sought to continue expansion because it knew of no other course. The strategic culture that existed pre-war where fear at least drove a semblance of rationality in the political objective and strategy was gone.
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It was replaced by brashness and arrogance that failed to see the strategic vulnerabilities it created. By failing to understand the vulnerabilities inherent in imperial overstretch the Athenians were left exposed in a two-front war with insufficient resources to satisfy either. They found themselves reinforcing a sideshow in Sicily while the main effort in Greece remained unresolved. This created the crucial opportunity for Sparta to turn the tables in the war through the adoption of a strategy based on exhaustion. The reversal this signified for Athens is all the more tragic for the decline in Athenian strategic and military culture that it represented.
The Peloponnesian War shows how strategic perceptions based on the innately human frailties of fear, honour, and interest lead a state to war. Some choices will be right and others will not; but the outcome of these choices will eventually define victor and vanquished.
He provides a powerful case study of continuity and change in war; and as with Clausewitz, the lessons he identifies should not be reduced to glib epigrams. Thucydides chronicled an epochal war so as to make the conflict available for examination by future generations in the hope of producing greater understanding of war itself.
The Influence of Thucydides in the Modern World Thucydides, the Ancient Greek historian of the fifth century B.C., is not only the father of scientific history, but. www.farmersmarketmusic.com: Thucydides and the Modern World: Reception, Reinterpretation and Influence from the Renaissance to the Present (): Katherine .
That contemporary students of war still commend him to us for insights on the nature and character of war proves that he was indeed successful in creating a history that is truly a possession for all time. The views provided here are his own and do not reflect any official positions.
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