"The absence of romance from my history will, I fear, detract somewhat from its interest; but if it be judged useful by those inquirers who desire an exact knowledge of the past as an aid to the interpretation of the future, which in the course of human things must resemble if it does not reflect it, I shall be content. In fine, I have written my work, not as an essay which is to win the applause of the moment, but as a possession for all time" -

Thucydides, The Peloponnesian War [Book I, 22].

This image comes from:

University Museums

University of Pennsylvania

Philadelphia, PA 19104

and can be found at The Perseus Project

The background for this site comes from Paul Wallace's Web site of background graphics.

For those remaining: As I allude to in the disclaimer above, this web site is both an analysis and an experiment of the ostensibly reciprocal relationship between the form of writing and the function of writing. Thus, this Web site will assume what has been assumed elsewhere, that writing is a technology humans use (see Walter J. Ong 81-83). However, this site will hopefully provide a specific example of writing as a dynamic tool that itself changes as it effects change.

So far I have been discussing writing as if it were some independent actor; but, of course, writing needs some prime mover (or a network of prime movers) such as human volition, cultural mores, and historical situation. We finally acknowledge the importance of considering these contexts in writing, especially (since the 1960's) in the writing of history (Starr, 3); but wait a second - doesn't Thucydides' statement above contradict this relatively new stance of modern pedagogy? Indeed, that particular passage of Thucydides establishes the foundation for the conceptual paradigm which modern historical research reacts against; that is, the concept which assumes that the objective facts compromising history can provide lessons for the future (Starr, 40-42).

Subsequent historians may have used Thucydides' work as a template for the study of history and as an intellectual keystone for the notion that history provides evidence for the universality of human behavior; however, for Thucydides history is not the narrative content of events which conforms to evidence but rather it is his methodology, or form of his writing, which provides evidence enabling these events to be preserved with some credibility for posterity. Thus, history is not a storytelling of events but is an investigation and interpretation (thus an analytical rewriting) of the events. So instead of just laying out "the facts" with ostentatious grandiloquence, Thucydides thoughtfully begins his history by engaging in a dialectic on the tenuous reliance on observable facts (in I.22 he emphasizes - with perhaps a touch of hubris - the rigor of his efforts to write the most honest account of the events of the Peloponnesian War as possible). This dialectic introduces the reader to what Thucydides and Herodotus considered historie: research or investigation (Starr, 8); it also introduces the reader to Thucydides' esoteric writing style of antithesis and opposition. So clearly, history is a methodology of analysis and interpretation which Thucydides stringently applies to his History , first on the stories of the Trojan War and then on the events of the Peloponnesian War ( Thucydides' deliberate contrast of these two Hellenic wars - one of ancient lore and the other contemporary - show him consciously aware of the effects of his writing in both style, to persuade the reader of the authenticity of his History and content, to make the reader appreciate the magnitude and importance of The Peloponnesian War).

Upon reflecting on his years of scrutinized investigation, Thucydides began to acknowledge that the course of events of the Peloponnesian War (what we generically consider history) had as its manipulator, the "personalities and personal rivalries" of human beings (Proctor, 57). Thus, in a sense Thucydides found in the actions of people like Pericles, Alcabiades, and Nicias (to name a few) the prime mover for his historie; and we find our prime mover for The History of the Peloponnesian War in Thucydides working with a new methodology in a culture just becoming accustomed to literacy he is the prime mover of the history of the Peloponnesian War because he is the writer-creator of The History of the Peloponnesian War. (Please don't be confused and think I am absurdly intimating that Thucydides' imagination concocted the whole war - what I mean is, we probably would not have anywhere near the relatively comprehensive knowledge about the Peloponnessian War if the artifact of Thucydides' history didn't exist). Thucydides' history is a form of writing which obviously could not exist without a system of writing; but history (or, in the Greek sense, the storage and transmission of cultrual memory) was not always linked to writing.

An analysis of Thucydides' writing of history would be incomplete without also considering the shift from orality to literacy. Thererfore, this site will also focus on some of the ramifications of the transition in the conveyance of Greek cultural memory from the didactic narratives of poets such as Homer to the consciously historical prose of Thucydides. This transition was not a seamless passing of the baton from orality to literacy nor was it a fluid progression starting with the poets and running through to the dramatists, philosophers, and historians (many of whom blurred the distinctions amongst these categories). As I hope to make evident, clearly a change in the storage of cultural memory occurred from the time Illiad and Odyssey were being transcribed to the start of the Peloponnesian War but tension between orality and literacy still existed, even in the prose of Thucydides' historical narrative.

Once again referring to the quote above we can detect from Thucydides' assertion that he was well aware of his position as an investigator and preserver of what he considered "the greatest movement yet known in history, not only of the Hellenes but of a large part of the barbarian world - I had almost said of mankind" [I, 1]. He also knows that the potent legacy of Homer still lingers in the Athens of his day (Havelock, 23). Thucydides himself intimates his distinction from Homer [I.21] as his history, in both form and content is not only a product of the transition from orality to literacy but is also a propagator of it. His history not only stores cultural memory (serving a function roughly similar to oral transmission of events), but interprets and criticizes it (a distinctive function of writing); thus, Thucydides' writing reveals a conscious awareness of his ties to Homer and orality as well as a methodology closely suited to what Havelock terms the "literate revolution" (24).

Thus, this Web site places Thucydides' writing of history in the context of the history of writing; as well, it helps Thucydides' claim that his work is "a possession for all time" reverberate with accuracy.

Move on to Orality and Literacy for theories on the transition from oral to written storage of Greek cultural memory.

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For thus, methinks, will the issue be, seeing that in sooth this bird has come upon the Trojans, as they were eager to cross over, an eagle of lofty flight, skirting the host on the left, [220] bearing in his talons a blood-red, monstrous snake, still living, yet straightway let it fall before he reached his own nest, neither finished he his course, to bring and give it to his little ones -- even so shall we, though we break the gates and the wall of the Achaeans by our great might, and the Achaeans give way" [225] come back over the selfsame road from the ships in disarray; for many of the Trojans shall we leave behind, whom the Achaeans shall slay with the bronze in defense of the ships. On this wise would a soothsayer interpret, one that in his mind had clear knowledge of omens, and to whom the folk gave ear.'' - Homer, Iliad [12.215-225].

Juxtaposing the above quote from the Iliad  with Thucydides' statement from the other page reveals some of the contrasts between a more oral mode of thinking and a more literate one. Given the translations, I would have to say that Thucydides' prose and the substance thereof is closer to our mode of thinking some 2500 years later than it is to Homer, merely a few centuries apart. This is a particularly bold assessment and, once again, I am doing so by only reading the English translations; obviously, the translators of Homer attempted to make the style in "high-falutin'" poesy in order to match the style of the Greek However, one can notice the difference in content as well: in Homer, the word "interpret" occurs only four times, twice in the Iliad [ 5.150 and 12.225 - click here to see the quote in full context or see above] and twice in the Odyssey [ 15.170 and 19.535 ]; in every single occurence "interpret" is used in connection with deciphering either an omen or a dream. On the other hand, Thucydides' use of the word "interpret," like in the oft-referred to quote from I.22, connotes a meaning like ours - "interpretation" is a componenent of his methodology of painstaking examination, analysis, and explanation of the evidence on hand. Such differences must result from the transition in Greek culture from orality to literacy.

"Just a minute here!" you might say, "Homer was obviously transcribed, so the Homeric texts must come from a literate culture." Eric A. Havelock notes this paradox: "the alphabet's intrusion at this point into the history of homo sapiens introduced not literacy, but a permanently engraved and complete record of the ways of non-literacy" (102-103). What we consider to be Homer's masterpieces of genius, the Iliad and Odyssey, were created in a process "not as an overlaying of several texts, but as a language generated over the years by epic poets using old set expressions which they preserved and/or reworked largely for metrical purposes" (Ong, 23). The form and content of Homer directly reflects an oral mode of thinking. In Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word (37-50), Walter J. Ong lists the characteristics of oral thought and expression:

• Additive rather than subordinate
• Aggregative rather than analytic
• Redundant or 'copious'
• Conservative or traditionalist
• Close to the human lifeworld (not abstract)
• Agonistically toned
• Empathetic and participatory rather than objectively distanced
• Situational rather than abstract

  
  

Preliterate Greeks did not have computer databases, or libraries, or even papyrus notebooks; this statement is so completely obvious that it is almost absurd to state it. However, we have to appreciate the strenuous effort required in maintaining any thought valuable enough to be retained in memory and memorable enough to be retrieved with some degree of accuracy. Don't forget that Pre-literates could store and retrieve knowledge with only the ephemeral sound of the human voice. With this much potential for variance, thought paradoxically had to become uniform. In oral Greek culture, the experience of Greeks was stored but in less space (only the working memory of human beings); thus a density of memory was created as information and human experience were compressed and amplified. New information had to be edited for brevity and fit to conform with old knowledge in order to be remembered. Thus, epic oral poetry became the storage center for traditional knowldege and the referent for all "new" knowledge. In order to facilitate the memory process, epic oral discourse necessitates strident action and hypermortal actors in order to be memorable; thus, Greek cultural information was stored in and related through these paragons (be it Zeus, or Aphrodite or Achilles) who "excite awe because of [their] special status, or importance, or power, or vigour [s]o that the contemplation of the status adds to the pleasure of memorization" (Havelock, 138). Havelock terms this circumvention of the constraints of memory the "the god-apparatus" which the Greeks then used to explain historical or factual events to ease the pressure of memorization (Havelock, 230).

Interpretation and criticism of this so-called god-apparatus required reflection and dissection which orality could not afford; in an oral narrative there can be no embarrassing pauses in which to reflect nor is there time to ponder the skewed logic or redundancy or surreality of a particular phrase. Oral discourse builds up and repeats; it reinforces the same themes; simply, both the form and function of oral discourse maintains tradition. All this was ingrained both psychologically and culturally in the pre-literate Greeks. However, the introduction of the Greek alphabet (replete with vowels) created a new state of mind which Havelock terms the "alphabetic mind" (7).

The alphabet allowed the mind to think more abstractly since it "converted the Greek spoken tongue into an artifact, thereby separating it from the speaker and making it into a 'language,' that is, an object available for inspection, reflection, [and] analysis" (Havelock, 8). Gradually, as literacy increased a new state of mind was dawning with innovative new means for storing information; no longer was information expressed only in the form of a demurgy telling one how life should be lived. Some intrepid individuals began questioning tradition instead. Havelock provides many examples of literate Greeks attacking Homer and Hesiod, the ostensible progenitors of Hellenic cultural mores; for example:

Thucydides could not escape Homer either. From the viewpoint of average Greeks, Homer was their original historian (Havelock, 23). Thucydides seems particularly aware of Homer's pervasiveness in the Hellenic system of identification in his so-called Archeology  of I.1-21, where he attempts to analyze and realistically reinterpret the stories of the Trojan War. In this sense, Havelock characterizes him as "modernised and literate... a self-styled writer" (148). However, Thucydides still has the legacy of Homer with which to contend as noted by his vehement defense of his investigation as opposed to "the lays of the poet displaying the exaggeration of his craft, or... the compositions of the chroniclers that are attractive at truth's expense" [I.21]. Furthermore, considering the quote from Thucydides in I.22, note that Thucydides says "interpretation of the future" (which isn't that remote from prophesizing - the cause for many a historians' lament) Even putting the tradition of Homer aside, Thucydides still constructs his with a heavy reliance on oral discourse: the speeches compromising a large portion of the History; but let's not get to carried away. He could not have remembered verbatim the speeches he did hear nor could he trust the memory of those who related some speeches to him. Thucydides conscientiously alerts the readers that he didn't trust his or anyone else's memory; but rather he meticuously weighed the evidence and attempted to convey the "general sense" of the speeches [ I.22.1]. I bring up the so-called "oral residue" in Thucydides just to remind everyone that the shift from orality to literacy was not an abrupt and complete schism, for oral discourse didn't become extinct nor has its influence on literacy ever been diluted away. The shift from orality to literacy was a cultural transition which we see well on its way as Thucydides works under an intellectual paradigm diferent from Homer conceptually, technologically, culturally and historically. Thucydides is contending with a tradition as well as creating one.

This image is courtesy of Kevin T. Glowacki and Nancy L. Klein

Image © 1995 by Kevin T. Glowacki and Nancy L. Klein

To view the extensive collection of images at this site go to http://www.indiana.edu/~kglowacki/Athens

I hope the section on Orality and Literacy introduced how Thucydides' historie, or analytic methodology, was a result and a part of the process of the transition in Greece from an oral based cutlure to a more literate one. Havelock asserts that "[t]he true parent of history was not any one writer like Herodotus, but the alphabet itself" (23); perhaps so, but the first researchers (or what we call historians) like Herodotus and Thucydides were engaged in expanding the capabilities of literacy created by the alphabet. Their prose replaced poetry as the medium of "preserving the record" (Havelock, 21).

Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War. is clearly the work of someone immersed in a new literacy. He used written research in relating and analysing the distant past (Westlake, 9). He set up the History in chronological order of events, split between the summer and winter months. Furthermore many scholars (Gomme, Westlake, and Proctor to name but a few) have convincingly posited that Thucydides initially took notes at the outset of the war and may have written the first book or two only after the Peace of Nicias in 421 B.C. (the War began in 431 B.C.). With further retrospection, Thucydides revised and reinterpreted the events he noted. His historical narrative ends in 411 B.C. yet he alludes to the end of the war in 404 B.C. ( V.26 and VI.15). The fighting between the Athenians and the Peloponnesians (and their respective allies) was considered separate wars. Only upon looking back at the entire course of events did Thucydides consider the so-called Ten Year War (431-421), the seven years of skirmishing during the Peace of Nicias (421-414?) and then the resumption of full-fledged war until the defeat of Athens in 404 as one continuous war of twenty-seven years which he named The Peloponnesian War ( Proctor, 19). Thucydides also concluded that the ill-fated Athenian expedition against Syracuse in 415 B.C. was an integral component of the Peloponnesian War. The retrospection and reinterpretation Thucydides shows in his work some of the ramifications of the shift towards literacy. Thucydides also provides numerous interjections of his personal analysis of events. He gives his reasoning as to why the Peloponnesians and the Athenians began warring [ I.23]; he provides contrasts between the Athenian culture and the Peloponnesian culture which he considered to the primary cause for the start of the war - the conservative, oligarchic Peloponnesians feared the adventerous, daring of the democratic Athenians [ I.70].

In regard to the numerous speeches exigent to Thucydides' dialectic, Proctor claims that Thucydides "was addressing the speeches which he put in the mouths of his characters much more... to his readers than to their supposed audience at the time... he must have been well aware of the effect of his words on a reader" (12). Thus we see parallels or echoes in the speeches of Pericles, Cleon and Alcibiades - although they ahd quite disparate characteristics (Proctor, 12). However, I'm sure many of those listening to these speeches potentially could have read his text, so keeping this in mind, Thucydides was probably careful not to embellish too much - and at Thucydides' own behest, he intended to provide an authentic and honest account. Through his investigation, Thucydides wrote The History of the Peloponnesian War, he wrote history for us in all intents and purposes. He transcribed events which became a classical referent for Western civilization; his methodology and writing of history became an exemplar for later historians (Starr). Finally hypertext continues Thucydides' promise that his work would last through time. Certainly we can see in this writing changing and affecting change.

This image is courtesy of Kevin T. Glowacki and Nancy L. Klein

Image © 1995 by Kevin T. Glowacki and Nancy L. Klein

To view the extensive collection of images at this site go to http://www.indiana.edu/~kglowacki/Athens

I hope that this Web site, in both its content and form, provides some illumination on the dynamics of writing. Many scholars, especially Ong and Havelock, give writing as the main cause for the changes in Greek thought and expression. We can detect the paths from orality to literacy in ancient Greece by attempting to appreciate the different mindset required for a primarily oral culture and then contrasting it with a literary work such as The History of the Peloponnesian War. We can see through Thucydides' analysis of history that writing changed thoughts and modes of expression and that writing itself was changing; and through our analysis we see that writing continues to change.

But once again I am back to considering writing like some independent entity. Rather, the technologies of writing change: Thucydides was writing on papyrus and taking notes on wax tablets; his work was also an artifact which perhaps could have been owned (Havelock, 148). Accordingly, Thucydides could reflect on the twenty-seven years of war between the Athenians and Peloponnesians, and draw deeper insights into causes of events and connections between events which at the time seemed unassociated. Cultural mores change writing: Athens was an intellectual and cultural beacon which attracted all kinds of sophists and philosophers; some pre-socratics like Anaxagoras and Protagoras were questioning the old tradition preserved through orality. Protagoras was announcing that truth was subjective and that every argument had at least two sides (Proctor, 36). Certainly this new tradition of intellectual query resulting from years of gradual transition to literacy influenced Thucydides' approach to historie. Writing itself changes writing: literacy allowed thoughts to become ostensibly objectified and created the notion that ideas "exist" (Havelock, 290); writing unburdened the human mind and permitted more time and energy to be spent on questioning and examining instead of memorizing. Thucydides' prose and his examination and interpretation of historical and cultural causes of the Peloponnesian War and and the personal motivations behind these causes could not have occurred without the changes literacy evoked.

The changes detected in Thucydides aren't the same changes we face today. However, as I think we all are struggling to some degree with the technological inovation of hypertext, we should appreciate that the form of writing does affect the content; just as Thucydides' historical investigation reflects a literate mind journeying out towards the possiblilies writing affords, hypertext reveals poetential changes in literacy. We trust Thucydides' accuracy, whereas we now admit some of the realities about Homer. We may consider Thucydides more "realistic" and plausible than Homer; yet Homer is no less a "true" document of Greek culture at the time as is Thucydides. Writing is then a dynamic tool which affects change as itself changes.

Contact me by e-mail: rutkus.1@postbox.acs.ohio-state.edu (Mark K. Rutkus)

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Check out my personal "Officially Sanctioned Homepage" at www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/2768. Unfortunately, I haven't had time to work on it much but take a look at it every now and again.

Thucydides' work is variously referred to as The History, The History of the Peloponnesian War, or The Peloponnesian War Wick, vii). Throughout this Web site I will refer to any one of these titles depending on the appropriateness of the context. In order to avoid confusion, please note that I will always capitalize and italicize the title; otherwise I will be referring to the generic term "history" or the actual conflict Thucydides considered the Peloponnesian War.

Any citations or quotations from Thucydides' text are from the Crawley Translation The Peloponnesian War which can be viewed at any time at the Perseus Project at: HTTP://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/text?lookup=thuc.

• Gomme, Arnold Wycombe. More Essays in Greek History and Literature Ed. David A. Campbell. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1969.

• Havelock, Eric A. The Literate Revolution in Greece and It's Cultural Consequences. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1982.

• Hunter, Virginia. Past and Process in Herodotus and Thucydides. New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1982.

• Ong, Walter J. Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word. London: Routlege, 1982.

• Proctor, Dennis. The Experience of Thucydides. Warminster, England: Aris and Philips, Ltd., 1980.

• Starr, Chester G. The Flawed Mirror. Lawrence, Kansas: Coronado Press, 1983.

• Thucydides. The Peloponnesian War Ed. T.E. Wick. New York: Random House, Inc., 1982.

• Wade-Gery, H.T. Essays in Greek History. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1958.

• Westlake, H. P. Studies in Thucydides and Greek History. Bristol, England: Bristol Classical Press, 1989.

  
  
  

Go to Other Resources for links where there is a plethora of information on Ancient Greece. If you go, please remember to come back to this Web site. Please.

1. "And with reference to the narrative of events, far from the first source that came to hand, I did not even trust my own impressions, but it rests partly on what I saw myself, partly on what others saw for me, the accuracy of the report being always tried by the most severe and detailed tests possible. My conclusions have cost me some labour from the want of agreement between accounts of the same occurences by different eye-witnesses, arising sometimes from imperfect memory,sometimes from the undue partiality for one side or the other" (I.22, my emphasis). Return to the text
   
   

2. See I.1-21 for the juxtaposition of the Trojan War and the Peloponnesian War. You can read this passage at the Perseus Project. Just remember to come back here when you are finished. Thanks.
   
   

3. According to Eric Havelock "organized instruction in reading at the primary level, before the age of ten" was not introduced much earlier than 430 but was standard by the time Plato grew up.
   
   

4. When I refer to Homer, I intend the italicised "Homer." For as I rely primarily on Walter J. Ong and Eric A. Havelock they in turn rely on the work of Parry and Lord who made explicitly clear that what is considered "Homer" is actually an immense accumulation of formulaic oral utterances. The research of these scholars gives overwhelmingly convincing evidence against assuming that a man named Homer was the sole "composer-reciter" of Illiad and Odyssey.
   
   

5. For example, Plato is for many the starting point of metaphysical philosophy; yet his Socratic Dialogues are also historically informative and dramatic (i.e. Plato may not have adhered always to biographical "non-fiction" in his biased accounts of Socrates).

   Furthermore, A.W. Gomme refers to Aristophanes' account of Cleon in The Knights [ll. 801-809] as a passage with some historical import since it helps verify Thucydides' very acerbic assessment of Cleon's qualities as a statesman and a general (121).
   
   

6. Havelock makes claim that Homer may have been partially transcribed starting around 700 B.C. but not fully transcribed until about 550 B.C. (Havelock 179-181). Return to the text
   
   

7. Walter Gomme asserts that Thucydides' different style of writing was intrinsic to the content of his writing, thus calling for "a new conception of history" (Gomme, 126).
   
   

8. Homer was transcribed directly from the oral speech of archaic, esoteric epic poetry; these epic poems were in a language quite dissimilar to the vernacular of the Greeks at the time (Ong, 23).
   
   

9. For instance, in the Archeology, Thucydides rationalizes Agamemnon's: "He had also a navy far stronger than his contemporaries, so that, in my opinion, fear was quite as strong an element as love in the formation of the confederate expedition" [I.9].
   
   

   
   

Images of Orality and Literacy in Greek Iconography of the Fifth, Fourth, and Third Centuries BCE (I highly recommend you visit this site to see images of Greek perceptions of literacy and brief descriptions of them).

Go to Perseus Project where you will find an astounding amount of information on Greek history. You may become enamored with this site - but remember who told you about it. That's right, me; so come back here if and when you're finished perusing the Perseus Project.

Go directly to Thucydides' text at the Perseus Project

Go to Kevin T. Glowacki's site for a comprehensive collection of photographs from Athens. Just remember to eventually return to this site. Please, it's not like I'm begging or anything....