The Historian Thucydides - The History of the Peloponnesian War (c. 400 BC)

Essay from the year 2008 in the subject World History - Early and Ancient History, grade: 1,7, National University of Ireland, Maynooth (Department of History), course: The Idea of History, language: English, abstract: INTRODUCTION ' [...] the first page of Thucydides is, in my opinion, the commencement of real history. All preceding narrations are so intermixed with fable, that philosophers ought to abandon them, to the embellishments of poets and orators.' .Already this quotation by David Hume - one of the most distinguished philosophers of empiricism - gives us a feeling of the great value of Thucydides works. Thucydides documented the History of the Peloponnesian War in an unprecedented objectivity. On the basis of these works he is still acclaimed as the founder of political historiography. Works which were storied as a work of a lifetime. The fact that Thucydides' 'History of the Peloponnesian War' stands still so powerful in historiography let it seems consequential that long-range of later historians engaged with his works. On my work for this essay I considered works of these interrogative historians and took advantage of their qualified commentaries on Thucydides. With whose approaches I will assess Thucydides as a human and historian. I will pick up questions other commentarial historians and make use of those to describe the aftermath and importance of Thucydides works as well as to place it within its context of the development of historical writing. MAIN PART - HIS WAY OF BEING The decision that Thucydides wrote his works is just as notable than the power to adhere a lifelong to this difficult project in spite of all external disasters. This fact certainly establishes the question on: who was this man, Thucydides? And what was his intention to write 'The History of the Peloponnesian War'? For David Cartwright, who started his Introduction on Thucydides' Life with the words 'Thucydides, the Athenian historian, records that he lived through the whole of the Peloponnesian War and was of an age to understand what was happening.' , one important question emphasized. And this was about Thucydides age while he started with his works. There are a lot of attempts ...