History of the Peloponnesian War | Topics for Discussion & Projects

History of the Peloponnesian War Topics for Discussion

Thucydides apparently wrote the history as a single unit of text. Later historians divided it into eight 'books'. Later still, scholars divided each book into numerous 'paragraphs' and, eventually, subdivided the paragraphs into 'sections'. This is clearly convenient for scholastic study of the material—especially across various translations and editions. What impact do you think these divisions might have on a modern reader's perception of events?

The first segment of the text (1.1 - 1.23) is referred to scholastically as the 'Archaeology' and is discussed at length in nearly every analysis of Thucydides' work. Why do you think this segment is so important? If it were omitted, what effect might it have on our perception of the remainder of the text?

Pericles' funeral oration is probably the most-quoted and most-famous of all the 141 speeches recorded in the history. What syntactical and thematic aspects of this particular speech contribute to its...
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