Athens Goes Down not with a bang, but with a Speech?
Good evening everyone. A very tired me here asking a very important question:
To drink chocolate milk or NOT to drink chocolate milk?
My friends, this question is really getting at me right now because I absolutely love chocolate milk. Send Help Please.....
Now that I've gotten my dumb little Zane thing out of the way I simply must talk about Thucydides and his style of historical writing.
Could Thucydides perhaps be the first TRUE historian? Sure, Herodotus made recorded events into literature, but did he strive to communicate an important historical message through his work to his audience? This being said, I believe that Herodotus is actually the world's first Historical Author. Thucydides, however, seems to have a lot more purpose in his mind. In Pericles' speech, he includes very much about how Athens was the only city in all of Greece and perhaps the world to have reached its intellectual potential. In the speech you kind of take note of a lot of American things- for instance, how we open up our country to the world (don't get heated at me over the whole immigrant thing we have going on right now, we still open up our country to the rest of the world), and how we want those foreigners to remain with us and become residents. Athens was civil, intelligent and welcoming, not to mention democratic. Athens may have fallen, but history repeated itself (like Thucydides said it would) and BAM baby! America (while still technically being a societal experiment for a representative republic) is using a similar form of government as the Athenians and has been kicking butt for a very, very long time. Thucydides would be rolling in his grave at this because he made sure that the people who read his accounts of important historical events learned a valuable lesson because he somehow managed to understand that history would repeat itself.
My mans saw it coming y'all.
With that being said, time for some Chocolate Milk. I'm excited!
I commented on Moriah and Zelda's posts.
I commented on Moriah and Zelda's posts.
I was honestly laughing the whole time. I agree that Thucydides is probably the realest of historians at this point in time, but I would definitely say he is too biased. The way he writes about history gives an obvious opinion and makes it harder to get behind what he is stating. Overall, I agree with what you said.
ReplyDeleteI love the comparison you make between the US and Athens. The Athenian culture and society was so radical for their time and had such a weighty impact on future civilizations!
ReplyDeleteThucydides definitely had such a future-focused mindset, even as he recorded the past, and I really appreciate how he recorded events fairly honestly while pointing his readers to the future.