One of the most important events in the history of Ancient Greece was the Peloponnesian War, that is, a succession of conflicts that broke out in ancient Hellas during the period in which it was in force the military hegemony of Athens over the other Greek city-states around 431 to 411 before Christ. This hegemony was established after the wars waged against the Persians, the so-called Medical Wars. Thucydides (460-400 BC Ç.) he was a combatant (reaching the rank of general) for Athens, in the Peloponnesian War, and left several impressions on this fact in his work HistorygivesWarofPeloponnese, both about the political constitution of the cities involved and about the nature of the war, the plague that ravaged Antennas and many other factors.
On the contrary Herodotus, who is considered the "father of history", that is, the one who first developed a form of recording the great historical events, Thucydides perfected both the historiographical technique and the rhetorical style of writing history and the reflection on the condition of men in the face of glory and death.
In describing the events of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides used the rhetorical technique of ekphrasis, that is, a speech that intended to "put over the eyes" what happened, showing as vividly as possible the reader the atmosphere of the event in order to convince him of the veracity and realism of what was being reported. Therefore, the description is detailed and loaded with pathos, that is, what provokes the emotions of the reader. In the following excerpt, which describes how the plague reached Athens, this is clear:
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“It is said that it [plague] has previously appeared in various places (in Lemnos and other cities), but in nowhere was there any recollection of anything comparable as a calamity or in terms of the destruction of lives. Not even the doctors were able to face the disease, as they initially had to treat it without knowing its nature and that mortality among them was higher, because they were more exposed to it, nor was any other human resource of the lowest worth it. The prayers made in the shrines, or the appeals to the oracles and similar attitudes were all useless and, in the end, the population gave up on them, overcome by the scourge.” (THUCIDIDES. History of the Peloponnesian War. Translation by Mario da Gama Kury. São Paulo: Official Press of the State of São Paulo, 2001. III, 82.)
The plague was the most unexpected factor for the Athenians. There was a possibility that the city would collapse in the face of war against the Peloponnesian League, but not succumb to natural plague. The social disorder caused by the plague became symmetrical to the cruelty of war. In your History, Thucydides sought to express the ways in which the two events (plague and war) profoundly transformed institutions and men, starting with himself, who was a general and who contracted the disease, therefore suffering both events in his own skin.
One of the conclusions that Thucydides reached in his work was that war can be seen as a teacher, a “severe teacher”. The teacher who makes the spirits face real circumstances, as their fanciful illusions fall.
By Me. Cláudio Fernandes
Would you like to reference this text in a school or academic work? Look:
FERNANDES, Claudio. "Thucydides and the History of the Peloponnesian War"; Brazil School. Available in: https://brasilescola.uol.com.br/guerras/tucidides-historia-guerra-peloponeso.htm. Accessed on June 28, 2021.