Thucydides and the Greek World: 479 BC to 403 BC

Victory over Persia led to the rise of the Athenian Empire, conflict between Athens and Sparta and Sparta’s eventual victory in the Peloponnesian War. These years cover the transition from archaic to classical Greece, the Periclean age of Athens, the masterpieces of art, architecture and literature which are the supreme legacies of the Greek world, the contrasting lifestyles of Sparta and democratic Athens, and the careers of Alcibiades, Socrates and their famous contemporaries. They are studied the History written by Thucydides, antiquity’s most masterly analysis of war, empire, and inter-state relations, which was written, justifiably, as "a possession for all times". The issues of Thucydides’ own bias and viewpoint and his shaping of his History remain among the stormcentres of the study of antiquity and are of far-reaching significance for our understanding of the moral, intellectual and political changes in the Greek world. The period is also studied through inscriptions, whose context and content are a fascinating challenge to modern historians.

If you are offering this period as a text-based subject, passages for compulsory comment and translation will be set from:

Thucydides I-IV.41, and VIII; Xenophon Hellenica I.5-end, II.2 and 3.

All offering this topic are also expected to show a familiarity with the texts listed in the appended Examination Regulations, in translation, from which optional passages for comment will be set.

Lectures on this period of Greek History normally take place in Michaelmas and Hilary Terms.