BBC Radio 4
27 April 2015
1/5 – War Begins
‘My work is not a piece of writing designed to meet the taste of an immediate public, but was done to last for ever,’ Thucydides
Ancient Greek historian Thucydides’ spellbinding first-hand account chronicles the devastating 27-year-long war between Athens and Sparta during the 5th century BC. It was a life-and-death struggle that reshaped the face of ancient Greece and pitted Athenian democracy against brutal Spartan militarism.
Thucydides himself was an Athenian aristocrat and general who went on to record what he saw as the greatest war of all time, applying a passion for accuracy and a contempt for myth admired by historians today. Looking at why nations go to war, what makes a great leader, and whether might can be better than right, he became the father of modern Realpolitik. His influence fed into the works of Machiavelli, Thomas Hobbs and the politics of the Cold War and beyond.
Thucydides’ masterful account of the end of Greece’s Golden Age, depicts an age of revolution, sea battles, military alliances, plague and massacre, but also great bravery and some of the greatest political orations of all time.
Today: With Spartan distrust of the rising power of Athens, is war inevitable?
Abridger: Tom Holland is an award-winning novelist and historian, specialising in the classical and medieval periods. He is the author of ‘Rubicon: The Triumph and Tragedy of the Roman Republic’, which was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson Prize, as well as ‘Persian Fire’, ‘Millennium: The End of the World and the Forging of Christendom’, ‘In the Shadow of the Sword’, as well as several novels. His latest non-fiction book, ‘Dynasty’, chronicling the Roman Emperors, will be published in 2015.
He has adapted Homer, Herodotus, Thucydides and Virgil for the BBC. His translation of Herodotus was published in 2013. In 2007, he was the winner of the Classical Association prize, awarded to ‘the individual who has done most to promote the study of the language, literature and civilisation of Ancient Greece and Rome’.”
Reader: David Horovitch
Producer: Justine Willett.
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