A generation ago C. B. R. Pelling produced his 1988 Cambridge Greek and Latin Classics commentary on Plutarch’s Life of Antony. After decades of productive work, Pelling has now published a pair of commentaries covering books 6 and 7 of Thucydides. Book 6 is beautifully written, packed with self-contained information about the text and citations of the secondary scholarship.
Generations of scholars have produced commentaries on Thucydides. Those students of Thucydides who are comfortable with German will, as Pelling points out on the opening page of his preface, still benefit from the 19th century commentaries of Krüger, Poppo, Stahl, and Steup/Classen (all of which are now freely available from online collections such as the Internet Archive and the HathiTrust). Those who do research on Thucydides will already be familiar with the commentaries of Gomme et al. (1945-1981) and of Hornblower (1991-2008). Pelling’s commentary on book 6 (like Rusten’s earlier Cambridge commentary on book 2 of Thucydides) will take its place alongside them as a foundational resource for the study of Thucydides..
The secondary sources cited tend to date from recent decades. I found 1277 citations to publications between 1919 and 2022. Substantive bibliographic coverage runs through 2017 (54), 2018 (37) and 2019 (25 citations), with a handful of citations to publications in 2020-2022 (mainly those Pelling was either himself publishing or had prior knowledge). Overall, just over half of the citations date from 2000 through the present and 89% since 1970 (when Gomme’s volume covering book 6 appears). From 1919 through 1946, 18 years have no citations and, with the exception of 1920 (with 4 citations) no year in that period is cited more than twice. Presumably, Pelling assumes that readers can find earlier literature in Gomme.[1]
There is however a bias towards scholarship in English. When I analyzed a sample from the “Works Cited”, I found that 90% were in English. In a 2015 essay, I looked at the languages of secondary sources that Classicists cite. In the TAPA issue for 1956/1957, only 47.6% of citations pointed to scholarship in English. In the 2014 and 2015 issues of AJP and the 2015 issue of CQ, that figure had risen to 87.2%, 84.1%, and 88.2%. The hegemony of Anglophone scholarship that I found in this commentary is very much in line with more general trends in the field.
The vast majority of those who encounter book 6 of Thucydides will (I certainly hope) be students of Ancient Greek, and Pelling well notes (p. ix) that Dover “took too much prior facility for granted.” I was, in fact, one of those students who relied upon Dover’s 1965 commentary when, on my own, I first read book 6, and I can still remember that I rarely found the help that I needed to understand the many things that puzzled me in this text. English language commentaries on book 6 by Marchant (1897) and Smith (1913) are freely available online, both as PDF scans and as part of the Perseus Digital Library. These obviously do not discuss contemporary scholarship but they do contain many explanations of the language that will be useful to readers who are struggling with Thucydides’ Greek. Those looking for efficient help with the language should also use the Shelmerdine (1989) Bryn Mawr Commentary on Thucydides 6 as well.
When I began reviewing Pelling, I went quickly to the “battle of the walls” (Thuc. 6.96-103), where the Athenians build a wall to besiege Syracuse and the Syracusans construct counter walls – more than one of them. These events unfold in an utterly unfamiliar topographical setting around Syracuse. Dover had a map to illustrate the location but, to this day, I can still remember how confused I felt trying to work out what was happening where. I turned to see how Pelling had clarified the situation.
To my bemusement and admiration, Pelling explained that readers of Thucydides should not expect to develop a clear understanding of what happened where in Syracuse: “The narrative is dense, the maneuvers and constructions complex, and the modern student finds it difficult to follow them even with the aid of a map (here Map 4). Thucydides’s ancient audience had no such visual aid, and listeners would find it even harder than readers who could check back through the book-roll for any detail they had missed.” (p. 304) On the same page, he goes on to cite work that he had done with (among others) Elton Barker, a pioneer in the application of digital methods to the study of space in ancient texts (a subset of what is often called Geo- or Spatial Humanities). The ancient audience “would be used to geography presented more ‘hodologically’ i.e. as a description of the gradually mounting experience as a traveler goes, and less as a bird’s eye view.[2] They would expect their view to be built up piecemeal and pick up whatever detail they needed to know for each manoeuvre as it came.” Put another way, if we work out what happens precisely by use of modern maps, we have, in a way, misunderstood the text because we have achieved a clarity that does not reflect an experience open to any ancient reader. Such clarity may have its value but it can undermine our thinking if we do not recognize that this modern understanding separates us from the ancient audience in much the same way as access to the Webb Space Telescope can distract us from the challenges and achievements of Galileo peering through his first telescope.
The speeches of Thucydides are, generally, more challenging than the narrative, and book 6 has more than its share (10, the most of any book in Thucydides, as Pelling points out on p. 22). Pelling takes care to provide overviews of the style that characterizes each so that readers can get a sense of distinctive style, even as they may struggle to understand how the words and clauses might fit together (and which of several different scholarly interpretations they may choose). In the first speech of Nicias (9-16), “the style fits the man …, full of sidetracks and concessions, with long sentences lacking in punchiness; even his good points suffer through overstatement and circumlocution.” (p. 126) By contrast, the style of Alcibiades’ answering speech (16-18) is “much punchier than Nicias’,” with “the use of parataxis rather than Nicias’ complex subordination.” (p. 146) Hermocrates’ speeches have “several verbal mannerisms,” with sentences that “are often long and may seem straggly, but accumulation has a point.” (p. 186) When Nicias speaks to encourage his troops (68), “his style is more forceful than in his earlier speeches, with few of the characteristics identified by Tompkins 1972 (9–14 n.): the sentences are shorter, with fewer qualifying clauses, and he concentrates on realities rather than abstractions.” When Hermocrates speaks again (76-80) he still remains “punchy” but “he here favours crisp antitheses, sometimes with Gorgias-like wordplay” (3 examples from this speech are compared to two examples from Gorgias). (p. 265) When the refugee Alcibiades advises his former enemies, the Spartans, about how best to harm Athens, he “begins with a series of short, firm sentences, several linked …., others with staccato connections …: every point in his favour is so simple, it might seem.” Readers will have to work a bit to connect these descriptions with the speeches but that work will give readers themes that they can follow aside from linguistic complexity.
While Pelling focuses most on scholarship from the past few decades, earlier work appears where appropriate. Pelling makes extensive and effective use of the classic 1972 Daniel Tompkins paper (mentioned above) on “Stylistic. Characterization in Thucydides: Nicias and Alcibiades.” At least once, the use is problematic. Pelling states that Nicias’ diffidence is reflected by his use of the optative. Referring to Tompkins, he states that Nicias uses the optative “more frequently than any other speaker except Hermocrates.” This statement is intriguing but has very little meaning unless we can see what those figures are. When I looked up the reference, I found that this was one of the few places where Tompkins failed to give any numbers – in fact, Pelling just quotes the statement, unsupported by numbers, that Tompkins offers in a footnote (p. 185, n. 15). Pelling should either have left this statement out or warned his readers that they needed to check the figures for themselves. I cite this example to show that, even with Pelling, we can trust, but must verify.
The commentary contains substantial, but not exhaustive, reading support. Much of the explanation consists of more or less extended literal translations of challenging phrases. Thus, to explain a “beast of a sentence” at 6.13.1 (p. 137), Pelling offers a discussion of which words probably depend on which and then translates “οὓς ἐγὼ ὁρῶν νῦν ἐνθάδε τῷ αὐτῷ ἀνδρὶ παρακελευστοὺς καθημένους φοβοῦμαι” as ‘the people whom I am now alarmed to see sitting here and told by the same man what to do…’ (p. 138). Elsewhere on 6.13.1, we find: “μὴ καταισχυνθῆναι… μαλακὸς εἶναι ‘not to feel shamed by them, if anyone is sitting next to one of them (τωι = τινί), into wishing not to seem soft if he does not vote for war’”; “ὅπερ ἂν αὐτοὶ πάθοιεν ‘such as they (Alcibiades’ supporters) might feel themselves’”; “δυσέρωτας εἶναι τῶν ἀπόντων ‘badly in love with things that are not here’”; “γνόντας ὅτι ἐπιθυμίαι μὲν ἐλάχιστα κατορθοῦνται, προνοίαι δὲ πλεῖστα ‘realising that very few successes are won by desire and most by forethought’; “ὑπὲρ τῆς πατρίδος… ἀντιχειροτονεῖν καὶ ψηφίζεσθαι ‘put our hands up for our country against this and vote that…’” and other translated phrases. He augments translation, of course, with more detailed explanation where he feels that is necessary.
The wealth of information about recent scholarship does leave less room for linguistic explanation. C. F. Smith, for example, provides an excellent and self-standing explanation of the phrase διὰ φόβου εἰσί (6.34.2): “they are in constant fear, as 59. 5. Cf. δἰ ἀσφαλείας 1. 17. 4; δἰ ὄχλου εἷναι 1. 73. 13; δἰ ἡσυχίας 2. 22. 6; δἰ ὀργῆς 2. 37. 12, 64. 2; 5. 29. 13; δἰ αἰτίας 2. 60. 16.” Pelling points readers to another passage in book 6 and to LSJ: “cf. 59.2, LSJ διά A.IV.a.” Those who actually look up the passage in LSJ will find “διά τινος ἔχειν, εἶναι, γίγνεσθαι, to express conditions or states,” a much less helpful passage. Citations of reference works such as 68 pointers to LSJ word senses and 55 to sections in the new Cambridge Grammar of Classical Greek may usefully encourage readers to make better use of such materials but they make the commentary less useful by itself and may not actually end up helping most readers.
Overall, in many cases where I felt that language was challenging, or might be challenging to my students, I found helpful explanations. The publication of this commentary, with its more recent scholarly citations, means that I might well build a graduate seminar on Thucydides around book 6. If my target were undergraduates, this commentary now brings Thucydides up to the level that Rusten’s 1989 Cambridge commentary on book 2.
References
Barker, Edited by Elton, et al., editors. New Worlds from Old Texts: Revisiting Ancient Space and Place. Oxford University Press, 2016.
Classen, J., Stark, R., Steup, J., Thukydides, 6th edition. Berlin, 1914.
Dover, K. J., Thucydides, Book VI. Clarendon Press, 1965.
Krüger, K. W., Thucydides mit erklärenden Anmerkungen. Berlin, 1858.
Marchant, E. C., Thucydides: Book VI. London, 1897.
Pelling, Christopher. Plutarch: Life of Antony. Cambridge University Press, 1988.
Pelling, Christopher. “‘Gomme’s Thucydides and the Idea of the Historical Commentary.” Classical Scholarship and Its History: Essays in Honour of Christopher Stray, DeGruyter, 2021.
Poppo, Ernst Friedrich. De Historia Thucydidea Commentatio: Accedit Index Historicus et Geographicus. Sumptibus et typis B.G. Teubneri, 1856.
Purves, Alex C. Space and Time in Ancient Greek Narrative. Cambridge University Press, 2010.
Shelmerdine, Cynthia W. Thucydides Book VI: Commentary. Bryn Mawr Commentaries, 1989.
Smith, Charles Foster, Thucydides, book VI,. Boston, 1913.
Stahl, Johann Matthias, editor. Thucydides Historia Belli Peloponnesiaci. B. Tauchnitz, 1873.
Steup, Julius, and Johannes Classen, editors. Thukydides. Wiedmann, 1881.
Tompkins, Daniel P. “Stylistic. Characterization in Thucydides: Nicias and Alcibiades.” Yale Classical Studies, vol. 22, 1972, pp. 181–214.
Notes
[1] If anyone wants evidence of Pelling’s interest in earlier scholarship, they should consult his essay on Gomme (Pelling 2021).
[2] See e.g. Purves 2010, and, for Herodotus, Barker, Bouzarovski, Pelling, and Isaksen 2016.