Thucydides Strengths And Weaknesses

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Throughout his text, History of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides superiority in relation to the documentation of history as opposed to other Greek writers such as Herodotus Is visible through the quality and unbiasedness of his accounts. This is something Thucydides believed himself as well and was something he argued throughout his texts indirectly attacking his predecessors for storytelling as opposed to documentation. Thucydides was an Athenian born around 460 BCE he was a historian and a general of the city-state of Athens until he was exiled for allowing the city of Amphipolis to be captured by the Spartans after he failed to reach it in time. Thucydides is also a very elusive historical figure. This is due to the fact …show more content…

Thucydides is known as the father of scientific history and this is reflected in the ratio of strengths vs. weaknesses in his work. The first strength of his work is the accuracy of his historical chronicling. As opposed to Herodotus who wrote in a more literary, dramatic style in order to construct a sensationalised narrative. Thucydides on the other hand stuck to the facts as closely as possible regardless of how this would affect the delivery of the work to the reader. This is shown in this passage from the first chapter of the first …show more content…

Another strength within his writing is his use of speeches. Speeches make up 25% of Thucydides writing and they are a positive force for the accuracy of the history within the stories. The speeches allow for both sides of arguments to present their case and they create impartialness amongst Thucydides writing. The speeches however also present one of Thucydides weaknesses.

‘With reference to the speeches in this history, some were delivered before the war began, others while it was going on; some I heard myself, others I got from various quarters; it was in all cases difficult to carry them word for word in one's memory, so my habit has been to make the speakers say what was in my opinion demanded of them by the various occasions, of course adhering as closely as possible to the general sense of what they really said.’

The speeches are never 100 per cent word for word and therefore allow room for inaccuracies in the history. And although Thucydides wrote them as best he could while still adhering to what actually happened there was always something that could have been left out or forgotten. That being said, this one weakness doesn’t discredit Thucydides credibility as his manuscripts still stuck with original proposals and opinions of the speakers he documented and therefore his work is still a more historically accurate reflection of what actually occurred in comparison to other historians

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