My crabbiness toward Thucydides in the final chapters of the work was not out of disrespect for his achievement (he himself said: "My work is not a pieces of writing designed to meet the taste of an immediate public, but was done to last forever." ), but only my personal lack of excitement over such renditions of military facts and figures, when it comes right down to it.
The events that transpired after the Athenian defeat in Sicily were numerous and complex. Thucydides really does a remarkable job of keeping it straight, and managing to keep unemotional as city after city abandoned Athens, and Athens itself descended into ever more dire circumstances. True, the narrative stops at 411 B.C. and the War continued on another seven years, ending in March 404 B.C. (after finishing the Rex Warner translation this morning, I skimmed Donald Kagan's The Peloponnesian War to see what finally happened at the end, when Athens truly was defeated), but it still boggles the mind that for twenty years Thucydides kept up a faithful account.
The translation I read includes an explanatory essay by M. I. Findley, and I reread it just so I could get some closure. Finley quotes Dionysius of Halicanessus who observed "In his Introduction he (Thucydides) makes it clear that he has chosen a bad subject, for he says that many cities of the Greeks were desolated because of the War...The natural consequence is that readers of the Introduction feel an aversion to the subject, for it is of the misfortunes of Greece they are about to hear." Absolutely true! My own personal reaction -- not only to the Introduction, but to the work itself, is that it tarnished the mental image I had of Greece in general and Athens in particular. My mental impression of the Golden Age of Athens is (was!) toga-sporting rational philosophers walking among an army of scientists, musicians, artists. I'm exaggerating a little of course, but the boundless imperialism of Athens really surprised me, in this work. And the bad deeds of a lot of supposedly good persons!
Finley also validates the tension I felt in reading Thucydides, but really wanting something else. "The historian's data are individual events and persons; the sum total of their interrelationships is the historical process...Unlike the poet, he must get the events and the relationships right; exactly as they were, and not, in Aristotle's phrase about tragedy...as they might or ought to have been." My rant about flesh and blood human beings yesterday was precisely that difficulty -- history is not fiction, so get over yourself, Cochran!
Finally, one other observation Finley makes about Thucydides rings true: "to ensure maximum accuracy, he kept his narrative sections rather impersonal, making infrequent (though very telling) comments and allowing the story to unfold itself." Very much so. The contrast between Thucydides and Donald Kagan, is really stark, and I must say that I tip toward Kagan's interpretive approach as opposed to Thucydides' reportorial.
So I chalk this reading up to an experience necessary, though not without turmoil. On to the next adventure!
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For all the mental play that commenced the day, my exercises awaited. For the second day in a row I extended my time on the elliptical to over an hour, burning off 800 calories, though I must say I began to tire at the end of it. I was glad to move on to other things.
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As it was Memorial Day I briefly recalled the military men in my family -- me (Army), my father (Navy), brother (Navy), paternal uncles (father's brother and brother-in-law), Navy. Fathers-in-law (Army, and Army Air Corps). My paternal grandfather's brother, Elmer Edwin Cochran served in WWI (Army), and my paternal great great grandfather's brother, Mathew Cochrane served in the Civil War (Army). Fortunately, all returned home, intact.
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| Elmer Edwin Cochran (front) with fellow soldiers, 1918 |
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| Military Collar Pin Worn by Elmer Edwin Cochran, WWI |
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| Believed to be Mathew Cochrane, my great great grandfather's brother, Civil War veteran |
***
For a holiday, I felt sorry for those who were expecting nice weather for a picnic or an outing. It was cloudy most of the day and chilly. On the evening news I saw that snow fell in Vermont. Strange weather. I thought there might be some ambient sunshine out there and tried to get a little sun, but all I got was chilled, so bundled up and got to some chores.
I solved the mystery of my chainsaw -- my Internet download of instructions reminded me to check the direction of the chain on the saw -- I reversed it and it worked perfectly. Last year I took a handsaw to a huge overgrown shrub which was reduced to thick stumps which resisted the hand saw approach. The chainsaw made quick work of it and not only did I clear the space, but planted new dwarf English boxwood plants in the shrub's place.
All in all a good day!
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