Synopses & Reviews
From the eighteenth century onwards, the ancient Greek writer Thucydides (c 460 - c 395 BCE) was viewed as the most important classical historian. He was acclaimed not only as a vital source for reconstructing antiquity but as a purveyor of timeless political wisdom. His name is almost inescapable in nineteenth-century discussions of history's nature and purpose. And his spirit, or the image of him constructed by German historicists, remains a significant presence in more recent debates about historical method. It is remarkable, then, that the trajectory of Thucydides' modern reception has never been properly studied. Neville Morley here sets right that neglect. He examines different aspects of the reception of Thucydides within modern western historiography, casting fresh light on ideas about history and the historian in the contemporary world. His nuanced readings illuminate changing notions of the nature and purpose of history and of the historian's proper task. This latest volume in the I.B.Tauris New Directions in Classics series makes a bold and significant contribution to understandings of how to reclaim the past.
Review
'This book offers a lucid and compelling analysis of how readings of Thucydides have shaped modern ideas of history and of how changing notions of history have in turn shaped the idea of Thucydides. Well-written and well-organised, it is accessible to students and scholars of ancient history and literature as well as to all those interested in the development of historiography.' - Tim Rood, Tutorial Fellow in Classics, St Hugh's College, Oxford and author of Thucydides: Narrative and Explanation
'This book makes an important threefold contribution to scholarship. In the first place, it offers an authoritative account of the importance of Thucydides in nineteenth-century debates about history and historiography, and it does so as part of a larger account of the changing fortunes of Thucydides in the West, from fourteenth-century Florence (Bruni, Machiavelli) to the importance of Thucydides in international relations in the twenty-first century. In this first respect - as a contribution to classical reception studies and intellectual history - it is an original and pivotal study, all the more so for its transnational and trans-cultural focus: German, French, English and North American traditions of reading and receiving Thucydides are all represented. Secondly, we are given a fresh account of the development of historiography and historical criticism in the nineteenth century, neatly focalized through the reception of Thucydides. And thirdly, Morley's study shows that contemporary scholars of Thucydides are engaged in debates that have their roots in controversies that go back to, and in many cases predate, the nineteenth century. While classicists and ancient historians might be alert to criticism of Thucydides in antiquity - the criticism of a Dionysius, a Cicero, a Plutarch, or a Lucian - we seldom reflect that both our conception of Thucydides and our idea of history have been shaped by the historiographical debates of the fifteenth century onwards. Not only are Morley's studies of Thucydides' readers and critics of great interest for Thucydidean criticism and scholarship in the present, but they also offer material for reflection on the relay between antiquity and modernity and the history of our apparently 'modern' ideas. This is a highly original, even masterful, book that deserves a broad, cross-disciplinary readership.' - Emily Greenwood, Professor of Classics, Yale University, author of Thucydides and the Shaping of History
'In this eye-opening book, Neville Morley gets behind the recent election of Thucydides as the Father of Neo-Conservatism to explore his long and complex role as the Father of History. Morley's subtle analysis reveals how modernity has insistently returned to Thucydides to debate the very idea of history. From critique to science, art to authority, Thucydides became a lightening-rod for discussions about the identity and conduct of the historian. This book is essential reading for anyone interested not just in the legacy of Thucydides but also more generally in discussions of historical method.' - Miriam Leonard, Professor of Greek Literature and its Reception, University College London
About the Author
Neville Morley is Professor of Ancient History at the University of Bristol. He is the author of Trade in Classical Antiquity (2010), Theories, Models and Concepts in Ancient History (2004) and Metropolis and Hinterland: The City of Rome and the Italian Economy, 200 BC - AD 200 (1996).
Table of Contents
Preface
1. The Historian's Historian
2. Reason, Reality and Science
3. Personality and Partiality
4. Rhetoric and the Art of History
5. The Uses and Uselessness of History
Conclusion
Bibliography of Sources
Selected Bibliography
Index