Thucydides Mythistoricus

by Simon Cornford Hornblower, Simon Hornblower (introduction)

Thucydides is often credited with being the father of 'scientific history' & seen as having produced in his history of the Peloponnesian War a factual account of that destructive conflict, by contrast with the more anecdotal, even credulous approach of previous writers. However, in the ground-breaking Thucydides Mythistoricus, first published in 1907, F.M. Cornford came to the conclusion that Thucydides' work is in fact an historical tragedy, a dramatised version of the facts. Starting from an analysis of Thucydides' account of the origin of the war, which he finds unsatisfactory, Cornford asks why this should be & comes to the conclusion that Thucydides' view was suffused by a tragic view of human nature, arguing that 'the thought of a most prosaic & rational writer of antiquity moved in an atmosphere which we should recognise to be poetic & mythical'. For this new edition Simon Hornblower provides a new Introduction tracing the reception of Cornford's ideas, along with a selection of relevant new bibliography.

Genres: History

Paperback

First published October 10, 2014

Reviews

[Midori · Rating 4 out of 5]

A book that started so well but had such a poor end. Thucydides Mythistoricus begins spectacularly with the assumption that Thucydides was a man of his times and he did not break with his cultural environment- he was very much influenced by the Aeschylian tragedy instead- and it proceeds to an eye-opening explanation of the causes of the Peloponnesian War - the expansion of the Athenian empire to the West- but in the way, it misses the point, it slows down with digressions and clarifications, irrelevant theories and contradicting conclusions that puzzle the reader. The end is unsatisfactory, brusque and abrupt.

[Erik Graff · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is at once a history and a historiographical study. Cornford assumes one has read Thucydides, but reviews what we know about the Peloponnesian War so as to make his case that Thucydides was substantially influenced in his interpretation of it by certain classical literary forms. He was not, in other words, the modern, objective historian some would like to make him out to be.

I read this while staying at Mike Miley's home in Sonoma, California.

[fedlivie · Rating 5 out of 5]

A masterpiece study on Thucydides by Francis M. Cornford. Fascinating from the beginning to the end.