Academic literature on the topic 'Thucydides Tacitus'

Abstract This article demonstrates that ancient historians did not simply draw upon inscriptions and statues as sources, but also subverted the original messages of these artefacts by placing their own spin on events. These readings ‘against the grain’ take place both where the historical monument exists and has been seen by the historian, as in Thucydides’ digression on the Peisistratids’ inscriptions and decrees, and where the monument is either inaccessible or nonexistent (e. g. Livy’s discussion of the 493 BC Latin treaty and Tacitus’ analysis of the senate-decrees issued for Germanicus’ funeral). By reinterpreting monuments, historians enable sources to transcend their semiotic function and elevate them into commemorative objects. However, this process of reframing and negotiation does not only occur to individual monuments; as this chapter demonstrates, Classical historiography also includes more general commentary on the usefulness of material sources as transmitters of the past.

On his recent retirement from the chair of classical archaeology in Cambridge University, Anthony Snodgrass reflected on the state of the subject, wondering whether a paradigm shift has occurred. Snodgrass assesses various matters, including, for our purposes, how archaeological approaches to ancient literary sources have changed. His comments deserve quotation in full:…Classical archaeology is often stigmatized, by its many critics, as being ‘text-driven’ … [in] that the subject takes its orientation from, and adapts its whole narrative to, the lead given by the literary sources. Thus the archaeology of Roman Britain has been built around Tacitus' narrative of conquest; the study of Greek art around the text of the Elder Pliny; the archaeology of fifth-century Athens around the narratives supplied by Herodotus, Thucydides and Xenophon; that of Republican Rome similarly around those of Livy and Diodorus; that of Sicily again around Thucydides; and most notoriously, that of Aegean prehistory and protohistory around Homer…. But there is a deeper level still. Traditional Classical archaeology is stated…to have directed its energies at those aspects of the ancient world on which the written sources, taken as a whole, throw light. Thus, on urban but not on rural life; on public and civic, but not on domestic activity; on periods seen as historically important, but not on the obscurer ones; on the permanent physical manifestations of religion, but not on the temporary ones – sacrifice, patterns of dedication, ritual meals, pilgrimage; on the artefacts interred in burials, but not on burial itself; on the historically prominent states – in Greece, Athens and Sparta – but not on what has recently been called ‘the Third Greece’…

Twelves Voices from Greece and Romeby Christopher Pelling and Maria Wyke sounds like a title specially commissioned by this very journal, though, alas, we can claim none of the credit! The collaboration arose out of a BBC Radio 3 series on classical literature in collaboration with the Open University and should have a broad appeal. Of the twelve voices six are Greek, six Latin: for the poets, Homer, Sappho, Virgil, Horace; for the tragedians, Euripides; for the historians Herodotus, Thucydides, Caesar, Tacitus; with Cicero for the orators (and philosophers…) and Juvenal for the satirists, paired with the final ‘voice’ in the collection: Lucian (a striking sign of the growing interest and marketability of Second Sophistic and Imperial Greek authors). This is a stimulating and enjoyable read, which carries one swiftly along. It is not a didactic regurgitation of literary and cultural history (though the final section on ‘Translations and Further Reading’ gives all the references one needs for further research) but a celebration of the continuing relevance of the Classics:The texts of the ancient world can still speak, not just to us, but with us, and in a range of exhilarating and disturbing ways. They still matter, and what they talk about can still be fresh (whether empire, masculinity, nature, urbanity, madness, rationality, religious commitment and disbelief, family and friendship, desire, or death). (x)

George Dangerfield's book, The Strange Death of Liberal England, would have been an influential, indeed a seminal, piece of historical writing whenever it had appeared: published in 1935 it constituted an immense liberation. In 1935 the writing of modern British political history was dominated for academic people by Lewis Namier, whose two great works—The Structure of Politics at the Accession of George III and England in the Age of the American Revolution—had been published in 1928 and 1930. Namier's immense gifts were balanced by a startling defect. He was psychologically incapable of writing historical narrative, that is of dealing on any considerable scale with the development of events. Here, at the very start of the Namierite era, was a young scholar named Dangerfield writing history in the classic manner, writing, that is, as Thucydides and Tacitus had done, with a wide narrative sweep about the fateful and tragic events of yesterday. The result was the book which was so eloquently analysed this afternoon. It has been issued, if I heard this rightly, some nineteen times; and three editions, two American and one British, are in print today, after fifty years.At the end of his life Disraeli, by then Lord Beaconsfield, congratulated Matthew Arnold on having “coined unforgettable phrases.” Mr. Dangerfield may surely be offered the same congratulations. In the week in which I was composing this paper the Spectator of London carried an article under the headline: “The Strange Death of Liberal America”; and I note that a work will be published in London this September entitled “The Strange Rebirth of Liberal England.” Where the phrasing of the title is concerned we may be celebrating tonight, not only a jubilee, but the ghost of a centenary. When Mr. Dangerfield chose his arresting title he echoed, unwittingly as we understand, one devised fifty years earlier; for in 1885 a young British journalist in India named Rudyard Kipling had written a story entitled: “The Strange Ride of Morrowbie Jukes.”

AbstractScholarly narratives of the development of Christian anti-Jewish thinking in antiquity routinely cite a number of standard, well-known authors: from Irenaeus, Tertullian, and Justin Martyr in earlier centuries to Eusebius, John Chrysostom, Ambrose, Jerome, and Augustine in the fourth and early fifth centuries. The anonymous author known as Pseudo-Hegesippus, to whom is attributed a late fourth-century Latin work called On the Destruction of Jerusalem (De Excidio Hierosolymitano), rarely appears in such discussions. This has largely to do with the fact that this text and its author are effectively unknown entities within contemporary scholarship in this area (scholars familiar with Pseudo-Hegesippus tend to be specialists in medieval Latin texts and manuscripts). But “Pseudo-Hegesippus” represents a critical contribution to the mosaic of Christian anti-Jewish discourse in late antiquity. De Excidio's generic identity as a Christian piece of classical historiography makes it a unique form of ancient anti-Jewish propaganda. This genre, tied to De Excidio's probable context of writing—the wake of the emperor Julian's abortive attempt to rebuild the Jerusalem Temple, resurrect a robust Judaism, and remove Christians from public engagement with classical culture—renders De Excidio an important Christian artifact of both anti-Judaism and pro-classicism at the same time. This article situates Pseudo-Hegesippus in a lineage of Christian anti-Jewish historical thinking, argues that De Excidio codifies that discourse in a significant and singular way, frames this contribution in terms of its apparent socio-historical context, and cites De Excidio's later influence and reception as testaments to its rightful place in the history of Christian anti-Judaism, a place that modern scholarship has yet to afford it. As a piece of classical historiography that mirrors not Christian historians—like Eusebius and others—but the historians of the broader “pagan” Greco-Roman world—like Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, Sallust, Livy, and Tacitus—De Excidio leverages a cultural communicative medium particularly well equipped to undergird and fuel the Christian historiographical imagination and its anti-Jewish projections.

The paper presents a series of arguments which indicate that significant historiographic works describing and analyzing bygone political phenomena as well the literary works which picturesquely depict political situations and human destinies - with their specific approaches and methods - contribute to the better insight and understanding of the phenomena in the political life which philosophy and social sciences express by notions. Social and political life have their bright and dark sides. It is less arguable that political sciences - in the study of phenomena included in their topic -find great help in history, if it is - as Leopold von Ranke advised - oriented only to "show what really happened". Historical studies, specially the ones of the socalled great historians, present to us the images of the situation in a certain period or event with all significant details and contribute to the understanding of that phenomenon, helping to clarify its essence. Thus for example, Appian's Roman Civil Wars or Tacitus' descriptions in The Annals of the suffering of the innocent victims in the power struggle during civil wars and during the ferocious persecution of Christians -innocent, but accused of all possible crimes. What astonishes the reader is the grea similarity between the phenomena, processes, actions happening two millennia ago and in the 20th century. Philosopher and political thinkers (like Aristotle), but also some historians (like Thucydides) offer explanations why some patterns repeat and why they would "keep repeating". In Khalil Inalcik's work, we find detailed descriptions of brutal mutual killings among the sons of the majority of the Turkish sultans in the power struggle after their fathers' death. Generalizing on the basis of the material provided by history, we reach an entire string of general notions in political and social sciences. Great thinkers and writers, from the oldest Eastern and the greatest antique philosophers till the ones from the 20th century, used found inspiration and drew ideas and incentives or material from the sources with which they supplemented their theoretical categories, notions and explanations, including the images of political life. These sources are represented in the great literary works. Contradictory opinions about the character and significance of ail and literature are found in Plato's and Aristotle's writings. Aristotle, who analyzed this problem, presented arguments why literary insights - precisely because of the character of insights they offer - deserve to stand in the same pedestal with philosophy. He used the expression he himself introduced to mark one aspect of the effect of art and literature - and that is catharsis. Psychology facilitates our insights into the motives and consequences of the participants' behavior social psychology being particularly important, but also ethics. The means used to convey a certain truth is less important, its essence is more important. Several Greek philosophers (Parmenides, Empedocles, Xenophon) even the Roman ones (for example, Lucretius Cains) wrote their philosophical treatises in verse. Kant's famous words Sapere aude! with which he asks people to have courage to use their own mind and thus become enlightened originate from the Roman poet Horace, and Michel de Montaigne also used them. Plato and Aristotle referred not only to the available sources about preceding philosophical ideas and political systems, including the first Greek historians, but also to the tragedians, primarily Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, to the comedy writers (like Aristophanes), to the lyricists (Solon, Simonides, Archilochus). When Aristotle expounds one of the key categories of his political theory about man as a political animal (zoon politikon), he refers to Homer to confirm what he himself believes. Anica Savic-Rebac quotes Strabo's formulations about poetry as "the first philosophy", as well as about Homer's work as "poetic philosophy" and as a source of every kind of wisdom, even every kind of knowledge. With his ideas and images he presented in his literary works, Dostoyevsky influenced several philosophers (Nietzsche, Camus and others) and scientists (Freud, Adler and others). "The philosophy of existence" and its ethical orientation were presented not only in the philosophical, but also in the literary works (Kierkegaard, Sartre, Camus). The so called philosophy of the absurd and "the literature of the absurd" mutually merge and supplement. Not even the best 20th century theoretical treatise about the nature of power - like those by Charles Merriam, Bertrand Russell, Bertrand de Jouvenel or Harold Lass well can depict what man gets to know through the tragedies of Marlowe Shakespeare, Goethe, in which main participants are driven and urged by the yearning to achieve absolute power. "The Great Inquisitor", "The Iron Heel" "Dark at Noon", but also the personalities like Raskolnikov or Verhovensky from the novel The Possessed help us to understand many things. "Gulag" became a political notion because of the title of the novel Gulag. Literature-antiutopia pointed to the dangers of the closed mind and of the technological society before scientific studies had done that.

Introductory textbooks in the History of Economic Thought in use at colleges and universities devote little space to Scholasticism and its influence. Even those that do not start straight with the Physiocrats, Thomas Aquinas appears stuck between Ancient Greek Philosophers and Thomas Mun. Scholasticism with “medieval” economic thought characterized as primitive and focused on “obsolete” issues like usury and just price. Sometimes it is even categorized among the schools that promote State intervention1. This was not the opinion of F.A. Hayek, who appreciated some Scholastic authors as part of the individualistic tradition of Western civilization rooted on the legacy of Ancient Greeks and Romans like Pericles, Thucydides, Cicero and Tacitus2. In his famous Road to Serfdom (1944) F.A. Hayek assumed that Western Civilization had abandoned the right road and the individualistic tradition by the last quarter of the XIX Century. The abandoned road that Hayek refers to is that grounded on Greek, Roman and Medieval tradition and later paved by the ideas of authors like Cobden, Bright, De Tocqueville, Lord Acton, Adam Smith, Hume, Locke or Milton3. Hilaire Belloc4 located the abandonment of the liberal tradition around the same historical time. He would have agreed with most of the names in Hayek´s list, especially Cobden and Bright, but would have added those of radicals like Fox and Cobbett. Regarding more far away sources of Western thought, he would have included Aristotle, Aquinas and the Spanish Jesuit Francisco Suárez.Some of the authors mentioned above represent different traditions in the political philosophy. These traditions could be referred as the “old” and the “new”, following Leo Strauss in the idea of Machiavelli as the turning point. This essay approaches the influence of the political philosophy in the changes referred by Hayek and Belloc by examining the differences between the old and the new concept of community.

Thucydides and Tacitus are both uncomfortable authors whose unsparing commitment to revealing the truth results in grim depictions of the amoral deployment of political power—power for the sake of power—in idiosyncratic and difficult idioms. However, Tacitus never announces a program of Thucydides-imitation, whether pertaining to methodology or theme. Nor do ancient commentators link Tacitus to his Greek predecessor. Nevertheless, the two are much alike in important aspects of their historiographical achievements. The chapter explores a pair of passages in which the two historians treat one of history’s “repeating events”—defection from an imperial power. In examining the narratives of the Mytilenean and Batavian revolts (Thuc. 3.2–6, 8–18, 23–33, 35–50; Tac. H. 4.12–37, 54–79, 5.14–26), it gives due attention to “each new permutation of circumstances,” the important proviso that Thucydides attaches to his prediction about recurrence (3.82.2).

Famous for being the location for the writing of the book of Revelation (the Apocalypse), the island of Patmos is a jewel in the Aegean. This small island combines the charm and beauty of a typical Greek island with the tranquility and reverence of a sacred space. Visitors today might very well wish that they, like John, could be sentenced to exile on this island so rich with tradition, faith, and wonder. The northernmost island of the Dodecanese Islands (part of the Southern Sporades chain) in the Aegean Sea, Patmos, a part of the country of Greece, is 22 miles southwest of the island of Samos and about 38 miles from ancient Miletus on the mainland of Turkey. Patmos is a small, mountainous island, about 7 miles long and 3 miles wide, with a ragged coastline. The island has two narrow isthmuses that divide it into three parts. Primarily known for its association with the author of the New Testament book of Revelation, the island today displays the charm of a typical Greek island. The three main towns or villages on the island are Hora, Skala, and Kambos. Patmos is mentioned only briefly by ancient writers (Thucydides, Strabo, Pliny the Elder, and Tacitus), and little is known of its ancient history. The island was settled by the Dorians and later by the Ionians. Ancient ruins on the island attest to the inhabitation of the island during the Hellenistic period, a time when Patmos, along with the islands of Lipsos and Leros, belonged to the territory controlled by Miletus. These islands served as “buffer” islands, guarding and protecting the city of Miletus. Inscriptions from the island provide evidence of a temple of Artemis and a gymnasium on the island. Information about Patmos during the Roman period is scarce. Christian tradition, based on Revelation 1:9, claims Patmos as the site where John was exiled at the end of the 1st century C.E. by the Roman emperor Domitian. Whereas the Roman historian Tacitus does name three other islands in the Aegean (Donusa, Gyarus, and Amorgus) as islands where the Romans exiled or banished political prisoners, Patmos is never mentioned by ancient writers as a place of punishment.