Introduction Paropamisidae, Arachosia, Gedrosia, Hyrcania…what strangely mellifluous names were given to the provinces of the Persian Empire conquered by Alexander, whose name became synonymous with evil in the Iranian mind. Hyrcania had echoes even in [more…]
The Twin Battles of Mantinea and Cynossema, and Series Conclusion In this final article of the Series, I want to discuss another of Thucydides’ apparent pairs of events – the Battles of Mantinea (late 418 [more…]
The Corcyran Stasis as a Template for Civil Strife and War While one might characterise the main theme of Thucydides’ work to be the gradual breakdown of Athens, its constitution, character, morality and eventually its [more…]
The Battle of Sphakteria and the Athenian Expedition to Sicily These two battles stand out in a book full of military engagements because of the dramatic nature of the language employed by the author, that [more…]
The Ruinous Logic of Empire – The Mytilenian Debates and Melian Dialogue These two episodes in Thucydides’ account of the war seem to fit together, firstly the Mytilenian Debates in the Athenians Assembly in 427 [more…]
Pericles’ Funeral Oration and the Great Plague of Athens In Part 1 of this series of articles about what is widely regarded as the greatest surviving piece of ancient historical writing, I tried to sketch [more…]
I have long wanted to write about Thucydides, widely regarded as the greatest historian of the ancient world and, as far as we know, only the second of the discipline after Herodotus’ account of the [more…]
We are at the end of Advent, the Christian season that looks forward to Christ’s nativity. Today I am not going to tell you what you most probably already know about Advent, its significance and [more…]
On a mini-break to London some years ago, we decided to have a look round the Courtauld Gallery (in the old Somerset House, which used for decades to be the central registry of birth, marriages [more…]
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