Customer Reviews

The Landmark Thucydides: A Comprehensive Guide to the Peloponnesian War

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I found this book on sale in a bookstore in Nijmegen, Holland. It looked very appealing, I bought it, took it home with me and waited for several months before I read it. I am not a scholar, nor a historian, I am interested in history and in fact rather than fiction. The splendid appendices gave insight in much of the text and maps are a definite plus.

As for the book itself. The further along you get, the more you are drawn into it. It really has the aura of an eye witness account. But somehow Thucydides manages to go beyond mere history and trancend the story into a classic Greek drama, the rise and fall of Athens. By the time the Athean fleet sails for Sicily I realised his very factual style of writing had turned an historic event of over two thousand years ago into harsh everyday reality. Here's a man struggling with depicting a war he was part of, with losses that he himself felt, with the downfall of a country that was his.

After reading it, I read Livius. The difference to me is stunning. Whereas Livius writes from a very chauvinistic Roman viewpoint, Thucydides actually tried to write a factual account. Even more stunning that Livius didn't manage objectivity with events hundreds of years ago and Thucydides did with events in his own lifetime.

Read it as you would read a newspaper.

Recently, I've often seen the book misquoted and its authority misused, suggesting that few people actually read it.

Do yourselves a favour, buy it, put it on your bookshelves and for God's sake, read it.

As someone who has always been interested in ancient Greek history but have never studied it in any depth, Thucydides' "History of the Peloponnesian War" was the best place to start. More importantly with "The Landmark Thucydides"! First of all the translation was excellent, very easy for a contemporay of the 21st century to understand. The introduction, appendices, footnotes, glossery, and index all accumulate to give you a wealth of knowledge and perspective. Not just on clarifying whats happening in the narrative, but all the background information, and extra insights into the Classical Greek world really puts everything in context and allows modern readers to really appreciate why the different Greeks acted as they did.

By the end of the book it leaves you with a wealth of information that leaves you craving more, and in so doing, prompting you to go out and find other works, by both ancient and contemporary writers about this fascinating period of western civilization.

I owe a great debt to the compilers of this edition, not the least of which Thucydides' himself, for at least in regards myself, taking a spark of knowledge and appreciation of this wonderfully fascinating time, and turning it into a full blown firestorm of inquiry and excitment.

This is an excellent book and an excellent edition!

This is a beautiful and immensely helpful edition. I wish some of the translation were more literal but at the same time it is very readable and poetic. As for the History itself, it seems an understatement to call it a masterpiece. Thucydides was right in calling it 'a possession for all times,' but could even he have imagined that 2400 years later people would still be reading it with pleasure and profit?
If you sink yourself into it, even the small battles become exciting, and the speeches are amazing for their profundity and timelessness.

I have to say this is a fantastic presentation of Thucydides although I have not read him in the original Greek and therefore am not qualified to pass judgement on the translation. But I also notice that Victor Hanson provided the bibliography rather than the author and no sources are quoted for the essays at the back and the bibliography is mostly secondary sources. Yes, this book is meant for the masses, but I would prefer an approach more similar to the Penguin Herodotus. Nevertheless, the maps are useful and the book is well worth reading.

Without question, Strassler's edition needs to be the standard edition by which source texts of any kind are measured. The sidenotes, endnotes, and paragraph dating alone make it an absolute treasure to work with.

The only problem is that it's, err, Thucydides. He reads like a Doctoral dissertation. I realise there are some who truly enjoy reading dissertations, but after reading a page of Thucydides, I have to take a break and read Herodotus so I don't die of thirst.

]I need not comment on the inherent importance nor quality of Thucydides' work. I just noted that no one has commented on the influence of this work on Albert Camus and Jean-Paul Sartre, such influence being evident in some of their works. The difficulties mankind has in reacting to our situation in an intelligent and perceptive manner - our over-arching pride, our greed for power and wealth and control, our failure to be objective, and our need to rebel against these attributes and responses and behaviours to maintain our dignity and freedom is inherent in some of these reports. And, as such, it appeared in the works of the two great French mid-century writers, Camus the moralist and Sartre the 'existential' communist. And it may make one take Camus' side in the ideological battle with Sartre.The Landmark Thucydides: [[ASIN:0679733841 The Rebel: An Essay on Man in RevoltJean Paul Sartres No Exit and the Flies

This edition of Thucydides is the right source to begin a study of the Peloponnesian War. The appendices and margin notes, and the multitude of maps, conveniently located in the text to minimize page-flipping, allow the reader to easily follow Thucydides account of this brutal, multi-theater war.

A note on the maps: I vehemently disagree with the reviewer who claimed they distracted the reader. I found, with my limited knowledge of Hellenic geography (and I have sailed those waters myself) that the maps were invaluable. I can't imagine reading Thucydides without a visual reference -- and in this edition, that reference is built-in.

Thucydides' account is essential reading for any student of politics (comparative or otherwise), military history, strategy, oration, leadership... have I left anything out? What makes Thucydides even more compelling is that he was not some ashen academic. Rather, he was an Athenian general who fought in this very war, and was exiled for his failure to prevent Brasidas' capture of Amphipolis. He writes of Athens' successes and failures with an admirable detachment and impartiality, despite the fact that he knows his beloved home will go down in the end. Of course, the history is incomplete, but Strassler's epilogue nicely sums up the end of the war and its geopolitical impact through Alexander the Great's vast empire.

My only regret in having read this book is that I am now spoiled, and will pine for Touchstone books to develop a "Landmark Herodotus," and other similar editions of vital histories.

I read this edition along with the Hobbes translation (Green, ed.) and despite having read through Thucydides several times before, Thucydides, despite claiming to write a completely objective history, the composition of the work shows through quite a bit. The narrative is not linear, with digressions, flashbacks, and other tropes which makes the book hard to follow at times. In any case, the events of the war are so complex, covering such a long time, and in so many theaters of operation, that there is no single way to give a coherent recounting of the events.

All the maps are very clean, freshly rendered and easy to read. In addition to a few omnibus maps in the back matter, there are many smaller maps throughout the book, each having only as many landmarks as are necessary to illuminate the particular passage. This turns out to be particularly helpful. One can find a place like Naupactus, (not obscured by too many dots and words and unclear print) and understand why it was so important for Athens to hold onto. The other editorial matter are also very helpful. Using the index and the notes, the reader can follow the stories of the people, places, and themes invovled.

If you are at all concerned about Ancient Greece, or history, this book is worth it, for the maps alone even if for nothing else.

The Classic Greeks created intellectual and cultural innovations in human associations that have had lasting impact on human society. One was the concept of democracy, a system of governance, "of the people, by the people, and for the people". Another was personal liberty - which according to Prof. Rufus Fears, is present today only in those nations whose political systems have received influences by the the ancient Greek model. Another contribution was the concept of writing an accurate and objective account of history - epitomized by Thucydides's Pelopponesian War.

As cited in the introduction, Thucydides was proud that he had written his history "not as an essay which is to win the applause of the moment, but as a possession for all time". Here, along with Herodotus, is the basic concept that underlies the work of all contemporary professional historians.

Pericles' Funeral Oration alone is worth many times the small price of this paperback book. Extracts of his evocation of the
Athenian Democracy sound as though they came from the U.S. Founding Fathers, not 2700 years ago:
"[Our] administration favors the many ionstead of the few;p this is why it is called a democracy. If we look to the laws, they afford equal justice to all in their private differences . . . ". This superb edition combines a lucid translation with many conveniences, such as capsule summaries in the margin, perfect for browsing, maps, sketches of Greek vessels, extensive index, conforming time tables among contemporary cultures and much more.

Thucydides' "The Peloponnesian War" is one of the most important pieces of literature of the West. It's a book that gets less credit than it deserves, most likely because it's boring. But it's important.

Anyway, I digress. I highly recommend that you get the Robert Strassler version of this book if you need to get this work, or have a good heart and just want to read it for deeper understanding of the Greeks. Why? I'll tell you why.

Strassler and crew made this book very easy to interact with through a few routes. First of all, they nicely divided the book up by its natural, authorial sections, providing white space between paragraphs to make reading come more easily. They used a nice large font so that your eyes don't get too tired as you pour over this work. If you get lazy or just need some help with a passage, Strassler includes a synopsis of every paragraph right next to it in the margin. There is a comprehensive index, too. Finally, lots of visuals are provided to help you get what's going on.

This is a BIG book. This monolith is easily 5 pounds, and very wide and large. It's about the size of a typical college textbook. However, all the stuff crammed into it really makes it worth its weight in paper, at the very least. If you're going to get "The Peloponnesian War," go all out and get this version.