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1 - Sources and their uses

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2008

By
Simon Hornblower
Edited by
D. M. Lewis ,
John Boardman ,
Simon Hornblower  and
M. Ostwald
D. M. Lewis
Affiliation:
University of Oxford
John Boardman
Affiliation:
University of Oxford
Simon Hornblower
Affiliation:
University of Oxford
M. Ostwald
Affiliation:
University of Pennsylvania
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Summary

No guide comparable to Thucydides exists for the fourth century. This means that we have no firm framework for political and military events, and this lack is a serious obstacle to one sort of knowledge. Thucydides’ mind, however, was limited as well as powerful, or perhaps we should say its limits were the price of its power; and in the fourth century certain types of history which he had treated only selectively, particularly social, economic and religious topics, can actually be better studied than was possible in the Thucydidean period. Xenophon, for instance, has glaring faults when judged as a political reporter but is a prime source for the modern historian of religion. In general, fourth-century literary sources (Xenophon, Aeneas Tacticus and others) are less preoccupied than Thucydides had been with the polar opposites, Athens and Sparta. This probably reflects the new multi-centred reality. But we should recall that Thucydides, especially in books IV and V, had allowed us peeps at the politics of Argos, Macedon, Thessaly and Boeotia. A history of the Peloponnesian War written by Xenophon might have told us more about second-class and minor city states than Thucydides did: compare the remarkable detail about the minor cities Sicyon and Phlius at Xen. Hell. VII. 1–3. But a Xenophon with only Herodotus, not Thucydides, for a predecessor and model would have looked very different anyway.

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The Cambridge Ancient History
, pp. 1 - 23
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1994

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