Thucydides

Definition: Thucydides

Thucydides

Noun

1. Ancient Greek historian remembered for his history of the Peloponnesian War (460-395 BC).

Date "Thucydides" was first used in popular English literature: sometime before 1588. (references)

Modern Usage: Thucydides

Domain

Usage

Clever

Ignorance is bold and knowledge reserved. (references; author: Thucydides)

Peace is an armistice in a war that is continuously going on. (references; author: Thucydides)

Men make the city, and not walls or ships without men in them. (references; author: Thucydides)

. . . and place the real disgrace of poverty not in owning to the fact but in declining to struggle against it. (references; author: Thucydides)

It is frequently a misfortune to have very brilliant men in charge of affairs; they expect too much of ordinary men. (references; author: Thucydides)

Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.

Top

Specialty Definition: Thucydides

(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

Thucydides (c. 460-455 BC - 395 BC) was a Hellenic historian. Thucydides was a wealthy Athenian noble and the son of Olorus the King of Thrace. His wealth came from his family's goldmines at Scapte Hyle on the Tracian coast. Thucydides was connected through family to Miltiades and Cimon. Thucydides lived between his two homes, one in Athens and one in Thrace. His family connections brought him in to contact with the very men who were shaping the history he wrote about.

Timeline of his life

Before 431 he took no prominent part in Athenian politics. He was in his twenties when the Peloponnesian War occurred, and was in active service at the time. In 427 he caught the plague and recovered. In 424 (his mid thirties) he was appointed strategos. He failed to save Amphipolis from Brasidas during the War in 424. He was exiled for seven years. From 423 to 404 he lived in Thrace. During this time he travelled the Peloponnese, using his status as an exile from Athens to assimilate in to the Peloponnesian allies. He may have travelled to Sicily for the Sicilian Campaign, as there are excellent examples of local knowledge. During this period of time he conducted important research. He returned to Athens in 404, but was only there for a short time before he returned to Thrace to work on his book. His book contains the description of the war up until the year 411. The sudden end of his work suggests that he may have died a sudden death, and there is strong evidence to suggest he did not live longer than 399. His remains were returned to Athens and were laid in Cimon's family vault.

Who was Thucydides

His character was said to be dry, humourless and pessimistic. Thucydides admired Pericles and approved of his power over the people, despite his usual disgust for demagogues. Thucydides was not completely in favour of democracy, but thought that it was ok when in the hands of a good leader.

Thucydides would have been schooled by Sophists They were the teachers in Athens but today would be considered more like Philosophers and Astronomers Thucydides would have been taught by them not to accept things at face value, to question things. They would have taught Thucydides the mechanics of his writing, and they endowed him with his skills to assess the truth. Unfortunately, Thucydides is completely unaware of the workings of Economics he was not taught them, and did not understand them so they are omitted from his work.

Thucydides is generally regarded as one of the first true historians, along with Herodotus (who wrote "The Histories" about a generation prior). However, Thucydides, unlike Herodotus (who is often called "the father of history"), did not include references to myths and the gods in his writing. He vigorously consulted written documents and interviewed participants in the events that he records.

Even for someone disputing his status as the first historian; no-one would deny his status as the first and last historian of naked real-politik. Actors on the world stage who had read his work would all have been put on notice that someone would be scrutinizing their actions with a reporters dispassion, rather than the mythmakers and poets compassion and thus concsiously or unconcsiously participating in the writing of it. His Melian dialogue is a lesson to both reporters and to those who believe ones leaders are always acting with perfect integrity on the world stage.

The Peloponnesian War

Thucydides does not take the time to discuss the arts, literature or society in which the book is set and in which Thucydides himself grew up. Thucydides was writing about a event and not a period and as such took to lengths to discuss anything which he considered unrelated. Thucydides goes to great pains to make each event as graphic as the one which preceded it.

Writings by Thucydidies

History of the Peloponnesian War

Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "Thucydides."

Top

Commercial Usage: Thucydides

Domain	Title
Books	Historical Commentary on Thucydides Books V-VII (reference) Political Theory Classic and Contemporary Readings: Thucydides to MacHiavelli (reference) The Humanity of Thucydides (reference) Thucydides (reference) (more book examples)
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.

Top

Image Slideshow: Thucydides

Top

Familiar Quotations: Thucydides

Author	Quotation
Dionysius and Halicarnassus	The contact with manners then is education; and this Thucydides appears to assert when he says history is philosophy learned from examples.
Thucydides	Ignorance is bold and knowledge reserved.
	Peace is an armistice in a war that is continuously going on.
	Men make the city, and not walls or ships without men in them.
	. . . and place the real disgrace of poverty not in owning to the fact but in declining to struggle against it.
	It is frequently a misfortune to have very brilliant men in charge of affairs; they expect too much of ordinary men.
	Be convinced that to be happy means to be free and that to be free means to be brave. Therefore do not take lightly the perils of war.
Source: compiled by the editor from various references.

Top

Usage Frequency: Thucydides

"Thucydides" is generally used as a noun (proper) -- approximately 90.91% of the time. "Thucydides" is used about 132 times out of a sample of 100 million words spoken or written in English. Its rank is based on over 700,000 words used in the English language. Some parts-of-speech are not covered due to the samples used by the British National Corpus. (note: percents less than one-hundredth of one percent have been omitted)

Parts of Speech	Percent	Usage per 100 Million Words	Rank in English
Noun (proper)	90.91%	120	29,358
Noun (plural)	7.58%	10	111,207
Lexical Verb (-s form)	1.52%	2	245,945
Total	100.00%	132	N/A

Source: compiled by the editor from several corpora; see credits.

Top

Frequency of Internet Keywords: Thucydides

The following statistics estimate the number of searches per day across the major English-language search engines as identified by various trade publications. Hyperlinks lead to commercial use of the expression at Amazon.com.

Expression	Frequency per Day
thucydides	60
thucydides and the peloponnesian war	4
history peloponnesian thucydides war	4
quote thucydides	2
democracy in role thucydides	2
landmark online thucydides	2
summary thucydides	2
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.

Top

Modern Translations: Thucydides

Language		Translations for "Thucydides"; alternative meanings/domain in parentheses.
Greek		Θουκυδίδησ. (various references)

Pig Latin		ucydidesthay
Source: compiled by the editor from various translation references.

Top

Anagrams: Thucydides

Scrabble® Enable2K-Verified Anagrams
	Words within the letters "c-d-d-e-h-i-s-t-u-y"
	-3 letters: cuddies, deducts, ditched, ditches, duchies, scythed, studdie, studied.
	-4 letters: chesty, chided, chides, chuted, chutes, cuddie, cutesy, cuteys, cuties, deduct, dhutis, disced, dished, ducted, dudish, dusted, duties, edicts, educts, ethics, histed, itched, itches, schuit, scythe, shuted, suited, tusche, tushed, tushie.
	-5 letters: cedis, cesti, chest, chide, chits, chute, cited, cites, cuddy, cuish, cushy, cutes, cutey.
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. SCRABBLE® is a registered trademark. All intellectual property rights in and to the game are owned in the U.S.A and Canada by Hasbro Inc., and throughout the rest of the world by J.W. Spear & Sons Limited of Maidenhead, Berkshire, England, a subsidiary of Mattel Inc. Mattel and Spear are not affiliated with Hasbro.