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Thucydides and the Uses of History
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 January 2009
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The question ‘Is History an art or a science?’ will be familiar to anyone who has answered more than a handful of General Papers, and it is tempting to think of it, not as a real question, but as a sort of logical puzzle, rather on the lines of ‘Is a tomato a fruit or a vegetable?’ To set it aside, however, or to answer it on a purely theoretical level, is to disregard a problem which is as old as History itself and which concerns historians now perhaps more than at any other time. Is History subjective ? Must it necessarily reflect the ideas and values and conceptual framework of those who write it ? Is the historian by his very nature a distorting medium? Or is this merely an excuse that historians themselves have invented? Is it possible, after all, to be objective ? Are there such things as historical facts, and is it possible so to arrange these facts that they speak for themselves and not with a voice from another and alien age ? Behind these questions, and to some extent bound up with them, there is, of course, another: if History is subjective, is this necessarily bad, and if it could be objective would this be desirable?
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- Copyright © The Classical Association 1971
References
page 199 note 1 This paper was originally read at St. David's College, Lampeter, and (in a shortened version) to sixth-formers at Christ College, Brecon. In spite of its somewhat dogmatic tone, which was intended to provoke discussion, it is here printed largely in the form in which it was delivered, though I have altered one or two passages where the discussions convinced me that I was mistaken.
page 199 note 2 For summaries and discussion of this and the opposing view, as well as an introduction to the problem as a whole, see Professor Harry Hoarder's inaugural lecture Ideological Commitment and Historical Interpretation (Cardiff, 1969).Google Scholar
page 200 note 1 The most famous examples are the ‘ready-mades’ of Marcel Duchamp, but there have since been plenty of others.
page 201 note 1 i. 22. 2–4.
page 201 note 2 Cf. Grundy, G. B., Thucydides and the History of his Age 2 (Oxford, 1948), 11 ff.Google Scholar
page 202 note 1 v. 26. 5.
page 202 note 2 ii. 48. 3.
page 202 note 3 iii. 38. 4.
page 202 note 4 The question is discussed in Cochrane's book referred to above (p. 201), and more recently by Kirkwood, G. M., AJP lxxiii (1952), 37 ff.Google Scholar; Pearson, L. C., TAPA lxxxiii (1952), 205 ff.Google Scholar; and Gomme, A. W., A Historical Commentary on Thucydides, ii (Oxford, 1956), 154–5Google Scholar (his note on Thuc. ii. 49. 2).
page 203 note 1 i. 138. 3.
page 203 note 2 ii. 65. 6. The word Πρόγνωσις itself is not found in Thucydides, but the verb γιγνώσκειν is found at ii. 64. 6 and ii. 65. 13, and Πρόνοια occurs frequently (e.g. iv. 108. 4, viii. 57. 2, etc.).
page 203 note 3 ii. 48. 3. For a sceptical view of the ‘medical’ terminology in Thucydides' account see now Parry, A., BIGS xvi (1969), 106 ff.Google Scholar
page 203 note 4 For the arguments and an introductory bibliography see Gomme's note on Thuc. ii. 48. 3, and most recently , R. J. and Littman, M. L.TAPA, c (1969), 261 ff.Google Scholar
page 203 note 5 Cf. Westlake, H. D., Hermes xc (1962), 276 ff.Google Scholar
page 204 note 1 i. 22. 1.
page 204 note 2 ii. 35–46.
page 204 note 3 iii. 8–14.
page 204 note 4 See, for example, Woodhead, A. G., Mnemosyne xiii (1960), 289 ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
page 204 note 6 v. 85–113.
page 205 note 1 See especially lines 441–525 and 631–780. One need not, of course, assume that the influence is from drama directly: the values are embodied in the drama but not invented by it.
page 205 note 2 iii. 39. 4.
page 206 note 1 La Peste (Paris, 1947)Google Scholar; English translation by Stuart Gilbert (Hamish Hamilton, London, 1948, and Penguin Books, 1960). I cannot pretend to have done more than scratch the surface of modern writing on Camus, but among the works that have been most useful are Thody, Philip, Albert Camus, A Study of his Work (London, 1957)Google Scholar, and Cruickshank, John, Albert Camus and the Literature of Revolt (Oxford, 1959).Google Scholar
page 206 note 2 The poem called ‘1st September, 1939’, originally published in the collection Another Time (London, 1940)Google Scholar, and later in the Collected Shorter Poems, 1930–19441 (London, 1950), 74.Google Scholar
page 208 note 1 p. 107 in the Penguin edition.
page 208 note 2 ii. 48. 3, quoted above (p. 203).
page 209 note 1 iii. 82–4.
page 209 note 2 It is interesting that when Sallust appropriates the passage and applies it to the corruption of late Republican Rome (Catiline 10Google Scholar) he describes the situation explicitly as a plague (pestilentia).
page 210 note 1 While not presuming to enlist him as a supporter, I am encouraged to find that Professor Finley, M. I., History and Theory iv (1965), 301Google Scholar, can talk of Thucydides and Tolstoy together, and can see the same sort of motives behind War and Peace as behind the Histories.