Mind of Thucydides

de Romilly Jacqueline, Trapnell Rawlings Elizabeth

Description

The publication of Jacqueline de Romilly's Histoire et raison chez Thucydide in 1956 virtually transformed scholarship on Thucydides. Rather than mining The Peloponnesian War to speculate on its layers of composition or second-guess its accuracy, it treated it as a work of art deserving rhetorical and aesthetic analysis. Ahead of its time in its sophisticated focus upon the verbal texture of narrative, it proved that a literary approach offered the most productive and nuanced way to study Thucydides. Still in print in the original French, the book has influenced numerous Classicists and historians, and is now available in English for the first time in a careful translation by Elizabeth Trapnell Rawlings. The Cornell edition includes an introduction by Hunter R. Rawlings III and Jeffrey Rusten tracing the context of this book's original publication and its continuing influence on the study of Thucydides.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.

Sujets

• Histoire
• Classical antiquity
• Ancient Greece
• Ancient history
• Historiography
• History of Europe

Informations

• Publié par: Cornell University Press
• Date de parution: 15 décembre 2017
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781501719745
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

TheMindofThucydides

AVOLUMEINTHESERIES CornellStudiesinClassicalPhilology Edited by Frederick M. Ahl, Theodore R. Brennan, Charles F. Brittain, Kevin M. Clinton, Gail J. Fine, Michael S. Fontaine, David P. Mankin, Sturt W. Manning, Alan J. Nussbaum, Hayden N. Pelliccia, Verity J. Platt, Pietro Pucci, Hunter R. Rawlings III, Èric Rebillard, Jeffrey S. Rusten, Barry S. Strauss

A list of titles in this series is available at www.cornellpress.cornell.edu.

The Mind of Thucydides

JacquelinedeRomilly

TranslatedbyElizabethTrapnellRawlings

Editedandwithanintroductionby Hunter R. Rawlings III and Jeffrey S. Rusten

CornellUniversityPress IthacaandLondon

Original French edition,Histoire et raison chez Thucydide. Copyright © Les Belles Lettres, 1967.

Copyright © 2012 by Cornell University

All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press, Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850.

First published 2012 by Cornell University Press First paperback printing 2017 Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress CataloginginPublication Data Romilly, Jacqueline de.  [Histoire et raison chez Thucydide. English] The mind of Thucydides / Jacqueline de Romilly; translated by Elizabeth Trapnell Rawlings; edited and with an introduction by Hunter R. Rawlings III and Jeffrey S. Rusten.  p. cm. — (Cornell studies in classical philology)  Includes bibliographical references and index.  ISBN 9780801450631 (cloth : alk. paper)  ISBN 9781501714825 (pbk. : alk. paper)  1. Thucydides. History of the Peloponnesian War. 2. Greece— History—Peloponnesian War, 431–404 B.C.—Historiography. I. Rawlings, Elizabeth. II. Rawlings, Hunter R. III. Rusten, Jeffrey S. IV. Title. V. Series: Cornell studies in classical philology.  DF229.T6R613 2012  938'.05—dc23 2012019948

Cornell University Press strives to use environmentally responsible suppliers and materials to the fullest extent possible in the publishing of its books. Such materials include vegetablebased, lowVOC inks and acidfree papers that are recycled, totally chlorinefree, or partly composed of nonwood fibers. For further information, visit our website at cornellpress.cornell.edu.

Contents

Editors’andTranslator’sPreface

Editors’Introduction

Author’sDedication

Introduction

1. Narrative Methods

2. Battle Accounts: Analysis and Narration

3. The Antithetical Speeches

4. Investigating the Past: The “Archaeology”

Conclusion

Works Cited

IndexofThucydideanPassagesDiscussed

General Index

vii ix xvii

1 8 60 106 144

181 185 189 193

Editors’andTranslator’sPreface

JacquelinedeRomilly’sHistoire et raison chez Thucydideturned the modern study of Greece’s most admired historian upside down, focusing not onwhathe thought buthowhe thought, and particularly on the unique consistency and rigor with which he set forth the account of his war. This work, published to great acclaim in 1956, marked the start of a career of expounding the greatness of ancient Greek thought that took Romilly to the Sorbonne in 1957, the Collge de France in 1973, and the Acadmie FranÇaise in 1989. Histoire et raisonremains in print more than fifty years later, and we are certainly not the first to wonder why it has never been translated into En glish to make its insights available to readers of Thucydides at every level. It seemed particularly appropriate that the initiative be taken by Cornell University, where Romilly delivered the Messenger Lectures in 1967 (Time in Greek Tragedy[Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1968]) and was A. D. White ProfessoratLarge in 1974–80. The editors and transla tor conceived this project together, with the enthusiastic support of Peter

v i i i E d i t o r s ’ a n d Tr a n s l a t o r ’s P r e f a c e

Potter, editor in chief of Cornell University Press, and Charles Brittain and Hayden Pelliccia, chairs of the Classics Department at Cornell. Allthreeofushaveworkedtogetherfromthestart.ElizabethRawlings prepared the translation of the French in consultation with Hunter Rawl ings, Jeffrey Rusten added and translated the Greek and provided fuller references to ancient texts and a bibliography, and both Hunter and Jef frey revised the translation extensively with the Hellenist reader in mind. We were pleased that Pietro Pucci and Jeannine RoutierPucci, longtime friends of the author, could advise us on some remaining uncertainties. Cynthia King and Marian Hartman Rogers made numerous corrections to the final manuscript.Jake Nabel prepared the indexes. Wehavenotattemptedtoupdatethebibliographyornotes,sincethe book’s sense of discovery and its cogency seemed to us in no way dated or altered by subsequent work. Readers interested in later scholarship on any part of Thucydides are urged to consult Simon Hornblower,A Commentary on Thucydides, 3 vols. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991–2009), or the systematic bibliography in Jeffrey Rusten, ed.,Thucy dides, Oxford Readings in Classical Studies (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2009). Romilly’s many subsequent writings on Thucydides, building on and extending the method presented here, have been helpfully collected with a preface by Monique Trd inL’invention de l’histoire politique chez Thucydide(Paris: Rue d’Ulm Presses de l’Ècole Normale Suprieure, 2005).

ElizabethTrapnellRawlings HunterR.RawlingsIII JeffreyS.Rusten

Editors’Introduction

ThucydideswasthefirstproseauthorintheWesttocomposeawork consciously designed for close reading. He makes this intent clear in his preface, 1.21–22, where he criticizes his predecessors for their superficial appeal to immediate listening pleasure and proclaims his own history a permanent image of reality that requires and repays active and repeated scrutiny: “It is possible that for reading, the lack of traditional stories in my narrative will seem rather unappealing; but if those who will want to study the truth of what happened and is going to happen again in similar or related form according to the human condition judge my account useful, I shall be content. For it has been composed as a permanent acquisition to be read repeatedly, rather than as a popular piece to be read just once.” Jac queline de Romilly heeded Thucydides’ explicit call for close reading and first uncovered the principles of his historiographical composition. This was the contribution made by the publication in 1956 of herHistoire et rai son chez Thucydides, a book that set Thucydidean scholarship on a new and productive path still followed today, over a half century later.