The Dawn of Political History: Thucydides and the Peloponnesian Wars by Fred Baumann
My rating: 4 of 5 stars The Devastating Fruits of Ignorance, Fear, and Honor I should say first that although I enjoyed and learned from Professor Fred Baumann’s The Dawn of Political History: Thucydides and the Peloponnesian Wars (2012), a compact series of eight roughly 30-minute lectures about Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War (which lasted for 27 years in the 5th century BC), and it did make me WANT to read Thucydides, Baumann felt so concisely complete that he made me not want to HURRY to read Thucydides… The audiobook belongs to The Modern Scholar series of lectures by various professors of various fields. Dr. Baumann, a professor of political philosophy at Kenyon College, speaks well, with much (but not too much) enthusiasm, clear pronunciation, good pace, and few distracting mannerisms (apart from an occasional confirming, “Yeah?”). Unlike with the Great Courses series, the Modern Scholar lectures don’t impose catchy music or canned applause to start or end each lecture. Really, anyone interested in the war between Sparta and Athens or ancient Greek culture should find a lot of enrichment here. Dr. Baumann begins by telling us that Thucydides’ history of the Peloponnesian War—written some 2000 years ago—is the best book on politics he knows and that he’ll be using the Crawley English translation of the Greek original. He’ll analyze Thucydides as a work of political philosophy rather than as a work of art or military strategy. Then he leads us through Thucydides’ history book by book, pointing out important events, elements, ideas, and figures. One of the high points for me was Dr. Baumann covering the spectacular debacle that was the Athenian “invasion” of Sicily and saying that at times reading Thucydides is like reading or watching a horror story, where the characters do something REALLY stupid, so, because you care what happens to them, you’re (internally) shouting, “Don’t go in that house again!” Only in the case of Thucydides, you’re shouting at the Athenians, “Don’t put all your ships in the harbor!” and “Go home now while you still can!” Another high point was learning about Alcibaides, the most fascinating figure, a celebrity athlete, friend-student of Socrates, purely ambitious, prodigiously charismatic, consummately conning, a supreme manipulator-schemer who defected from Athens to Sparta, from Sparta almost back to Athens but then to Persia, always getting in good with the powers that be and getting them to follow his advice. One wonders how he got away with as much as he did and yearns for a book or movie about him. Here are a few of the other interesting things I learned from these lectures: *Athenian Thucydides approaches his history (much of which he was a participant of or witness to) objectively, almost never giving his opinion about events or people, so you have to get at what he thinks by looking at which events he chooses to relate and at which events he chooses to juxtapose them with. For example, after he relates Pericles’ famous funeral oration featuring an almost utopic Athens, he covers in vivid detail the terrible plague that soon killed Pericles shortly after his famous speech and helped doom Athens. *Thucydides’ work is a political history because it teaches us about how people behave in a crisis. *Athens and Sparta were prodigiously contrasting cultures: Athens cosmopolitan, innovative, democratic, outward looking, nautical, expansive, etc., and Sparta provincial, conservative, oligarchic, inward looking, land-based, stable, etc. Athens on the surface had a “realistic” view of human nature that let them treat treaties flexibly, whereas Sparta on the surface had an ideal view that made them act “honorably.” In fact, Athens did act for honor, while Sparta could be flexible with treaties. And finally both were alike in going to war from fear, Athens fearing that if they didn’t continue expanding their empire their colonies would rebel, Sparta fearing that an expanding Athens would swallow them. *People are crazy, acting against their own self-interest, especially when subject to fear or honor. *Pericles’s successor Cleon was (for Thucydides) a demagogue, appealing to and fanning the fear of the Athenian people, and saying that only he could save them and that every other politician except him would lie to them so they should trust only him. Not unlike certain thug politicians of our present time… *Athens had numerous chances to end the war but repeatedly rejected Spartan overtures. *The war devastated both cultures (and probably helped prepare the way for Alexander the Great). *Problems with democracy (overreach, martial folly, etc.) happen especially in GOOD times. Baumann closes by explaining why we should read Thucydides: 1) Lessons on statesmanship and the relations of political reality to morality and of international to domestic politics. 2) Exploration of what it is to be a democracy. (Thucydides was an honest critic of democracy and therefore a true friend of it.) 3) Lessons on how to be and how people are, without any Christian salvation. View all my reviews
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