Historical Consciousness and the Use of the Past in the Ancient World - John Baines
22. Thucydides and Myth
Historical Consciousness and the Use of the Past in the Ancient World - John Baines
Tim Rood [+]
University of Oxford
Description
Thucydides has often been read as a model of a ‘scientific’ mode of historical writing grounded in the rejection of ‘myth’. This view is based in part on Thucydides’ own methodological pronouncements. But it underestimates the amount of mythical material that Thucydides included within his account of the Peloponnesian War (e.g. mythical references to Theseus, Tereus, Amphilochus, Alcmeon, Odysseus, and the Cyclopes, as well as ethnographic sections on the Thracians and the Aetolians). The aims of this chapter are: 1. To explore the reception of Thucydides’ use of mythography. What part, if any, have these passages played in the construction of the image of Thucydides as exemplary historian? 2. To offer an analysis of how Thucydides’ introduction of mythographic material itself contributes to his spatial and temporal construction of the Peloponnesian War. The author opposes modern narratives of the development of a Thucydidean mode of historiography to the narrative complexities of Thucydides himself, illuminating both modern constructions of classical historiography and the role of the mythical within Thucydides’ work.