Thucydides and Sparta

Description

Thucydides is widely seen as the most dispassionate and reliable contemporary source for the history of classical Sparta. But, compared with partisan authors such as Xenophon and Plutarch, his information on the subject is more scattered and implicit. Scholars in recent decades have made progress in teasing out the sense of Thucydides' often lapidary remarks on Sparta. This book takes the process further. Its eight new studies by international specialists aim to reveal coherent structures both in Thucydidean thought and in Spartan reality.This volume is the second of a series in which the Classical Press of Wales applies to Spartan history the approach it is already using for the history of Rome's revolutionary era: focusing in turn on each of the main sources on which historians depend, and analysing with a combination of historical and literary methods. Cover THUCYDIDES AND SPARTA CONTENTS In memoriam Anton Powell Introduction and Acknowledgements 1 Thucydides’ general attitude to Sparta 2 Βραδυτὴς Λακωνική: Spartan slowness in Thucydides’ History 3 The presence of Sparta in the Funeral Oration of Perikles 4 Νόµιµα ἀρχαιότροπα καὶ ἄµεικτα: Thucydides’ alienation of Spartan kingship 5 Thucydides, ethnic solidarity, and Messenian ethnogenesis 6 Xenia and proxenia in Thucydides’ Sparta 7 The mytho-political map of Spartan colonisation in Thucydides 8 Information from Sparta: a trap for Thucydides? Index