In order to respond to the second of the two questions posed above, i. e., the reason for Thucydides’ rupture with the mode of knowledge that is Herodotean historia, it is necessary to introduce a change in the form of historicity. For Thucydides, in fact, the order of development ceases to correspond to the balance of the offenses against justice, and the reparations that reestablish it. Admittedly, the protagonists of the Peloponnesian War continue to exchange accusations in order to justify their actions, but ‘‘what is just’’ is henceforth an object of discourse without end, redefined and inverted into its opposite, while the reality of events depends on other issues altogether.
For example, there is the fear of the expansion of Athenian power that preoccupies the Peloponnesians (Thuc. 1.23.6). There is no need to resort to a form of aspiring judicial consciousness as in the work of his predecessor. Instead, from now on, human nature (anthropeia phusis), always identical to itself (3.82, 84), is the principle that animates the course of events and suggests by its very permanence situations which, despite their novelty, will be no less analogous.
The rejection of Herodotean historia, rendered inoperable since events are no longer driven by justice, is coupled with the type of logos associated with historia. The author of the Peloponnesian War is indeed wary of uncontrolled chattering coming from the depths of the ages and from different groups. One must ‘‘put it to the torture’’ ( basanizein) in order to extract from it a degree of truth. (Athenian justice could make slaves testify under torture: if the words were not forced, they did not have any truth-value.) One cannot invite it, as in historia, to speak itself in the abundance of its sources of enunciation in the hope of judging it, while confusing what it is with what one decides to admit into the record as such. The plural logos of
Herodotus will be nothing more than subsidiary material, while the essence of the historian’s work is provided by the real experience (or at least the claim of it) of the author of The Peloponnesian War. Logos thus identifies itself with political reason, the privilege of certain leaders and of the author. It is then due to this ‘‘logical’’ dimension that the work can, in Thucydides’ view, be utilized ‘‘analogically,’’ in order to understand comparable situations to come and become thus a ‘‘treasure for all time’’ (1.22.4).
One can, therefore, think of the origin of Greek historiography as the confluence of a mode of knowledge proper to the Greeks (historia), a modification of the form of historicity, and a form of its continuation, in which the continuity of the narratives is presumed to reflect, in a supposedly objective manner, the course of events.
FURTHER READING
For a global approach to Greek historiography see Hornblower 1994a; Marincola 1997, 2001; and Shrimpton 1997. On the question of historical methodology see Loraux 1980, and for the question of historicity and the Greeks see Hartog 1998 and Darbo-Peschanski 2001. Finally, on Herodotus and/or the beginnings of history in Greece, see Boedeker 1987 and Bakker et al. 2002.
World History
