What is history based on Thucydides?

One of the greatest ancient historians, Thucydides (c. 460 B.C.–c. 400 B.C.) chronicled nearly 30 years of war and tension between Athens and Sparta. His “History of the Peloponnesian War” set a standard for scope, concision and accuracy that makes it a defining text of the historical genre.

Why is Thucydides the father of scientific history?

Thucydides has been dubbed the father of “scientific history” by those who accept his claims to have applied strict standards of impartiality and evidence-gathering and analysis of cause and effect, without reference to intervention by the deities, as outlined in his introduction to his work.

How reliable is Thucydides history?

Thucydides probably wouldn’t satisfy modern standards for objectivity,but for his time, he was remarkably objective — by far the most reliableand accurate of the ancient historians, Greek or Roman.”

Why did Thucydides write his history?

In the first sentence of his History of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides wrote that he began writing about the war because he believed “it would be a great war, and more worthy of relation than any other that had preceded it.” He went on to identify what he believed to be the “real cause” of the war.

What is Thucydides trap theory?

Thucydides Trap, or Thucydides’s Trap, is a term popularized by American political scientist Graham T. Allison to describe an apparent tendency towards war when an emerging power threatens to displace an existing great power as a regional or international hegemon.

Did Thucydides believe in democracy?

He did not approve of the democratic commoners nor of the radical democracy that Pericles ushered in, but considered democracy acceptable when guided by a good leader. Thucydides’ presentation of events is generally even-handed; for example, he does not minimize the negative effect of his own failure at Amphipolis.

Is the Thucydides Trap real?

Historian Arthur Waldron likewise argued that Kagan and Harvard classics scholar Ernst Badian had “long ago proved that no such thing exists as the ‘Thucydides Trap'” with regards to the Peloponnesian War.