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University of Bristol professor awarded 450,000 pounds to study Greek historian Thucydides

Professor Neville Morley of the Department of Classics and Ancient History has been awarded around £450,000 by the Arts and Humanities Research Council for a four-year project on the Greek historian Thucydides (c.460BC – c.395 BC).

The Athenian historian Thucydides (c.460-c.395 BCE) claimed that his account of the Peloponnesian War would be ‘a possession for ever’, valued by posterity more than by his contemporaries. The history of his reception since the Renaissance has proved him entirely correct; not only has his work continued to be read, by historians, political thinkers, philosophers, international relations theorists and many others, but Thucydides has been seen as ever more prescient and modern.

Since the Second World War, for example, Thucydides has been one of the most frequently cited thinkers in debates about western foreign policy and military intervention, especially in the United States. His work has been a central text for the ‘realist’ and ‘neo-realist’ schools of international relations; Irving Kristol, eminence grise of American neoconservatism, referred to Thucydides’ history as ‘the favourite neoconservative text on foreign affairs’; and no profile of Colin Powell is complete without reference to the quotation that hung on his office wall as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs — ‘Of all manifestations of power, restraint impresses men most’ — a legacy of the place of Thucydides in the curriculum at West Point as at other US military training establishments like the Naval War College. The lessons which Thucydides drew from his analysis of the war between Athens and Sparta are seen as timeless reflections of the nature of war and inter-state relations.

Similarly, the development of modern ideas of ‘history as science’ in the nineteenth century did not lead to the rejection of Thucydides’ work as out-moded, but to his enthronement as the first modern historian, an inspiration and a model for all historians. Both his explicit methodological statements and his actual practice were adopted as universal principles of historiography; he was seen as both the archetypal scientific observer of society and the consummate historical artist. Debates about the future direction of history focused on Thucydides; all sides accepted his authority and status as modern before his time, and sought to claim him in support of their own ideas...

... The project runs for four years from October 2009, with a postdoctoral researcher and two PhD students working alongside Professor Morley. It will produce a multi-author Handbook to the Reception of Thucydides, to be published by Wiley-Blackwell, while Professor Morley will be writing a monograph on Thucydides and the Idea of History. There will be a series of research workshops, and a final conference (including a public lecture and debate) on 'Thucydides our Contemporary?'
Read entire article at University of Bristol