In 1755 the French critic Pierre Marivaux meditated upon the central tension confronting the translator of Thucydides. He reasoned that on the one hand a translation might take Thucydides' difficult Greek and improve it to make a translation that is both readable and delightful for a modern audience. This, Marivaux argued, would obscure the complexities of the text and its historical context. On the other hand the translator might attempt a literal rendering of the text in order to retain the complexities and nuances of the original. This approach, however, would produce a translation that was both flat and wrong because it would obscure the rhetorical force of Thucydides.
Marivaux's observation remains true to this day. Translations of Thucydides are often seen as either readable but unfaithful to the original or literal and difficult. M.'s translation falls under the latter heading. The translation itself is intended for students in the political and philosophical sciences. This volume is part of the Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought series, edited by R. Guess and Q. Skinner. The series has attempted to bring together every major political text from ancient Greece to modernity. As M. explains, the aim is to ‘present each author and text in their proper cultural and historical context and to avoid importing into our understanding of them anachronistic concepts derived from later developments and theories’ (p. xi). These goals will make this translation invaluable to students of political thought, as well as a welcome addition to the library of many classicists and ancient historians and an extremely valuable teaching resource.
There are two other literal translations of Thucydides available on the market specifically aimed at students, S. Lattimore's 1998 Hackett edition and M. Hammond's 2009 Oxford edition. Lattimore's translation succeeded in producing a faithful rendering of Thucydides but confusion over Greek names and various omissions undermined the usefulness of his edition in teaching. Hammond's translation represented a similarly faithful rendering of the Greek, whilst P.J. Rhodes' introductory material provided an excellent overview of Thucydides' life, the war and the significance of the text. M.'s translation differs from these volumes in its commitment to an extremely literal translation, its structure, and the extent of the introductory material and explanatory notes.
From the beginning M. attempts to immerse the reader in the complexities of Thucydides' original. So, for example, it is not known what Thucydides originally intended to call his work. Many simply refer to the work as The History of the Peloponnesian War or The Histories. M., in reference to what Thucydides claims is the subject of his work in the first sentence, calls his translation The War of the Peloponnesians and the Athenians. Even the structure of the text maintains this quest for authenticity. Ever since J. Hudson's 1696 Oxford edition of the Greek each of the eight books has been divided into a number of chapters. M. retains these divisions for ease of reference but he also divides his work by summers and winters, as was Thucydides' original intent. For undergraduate and taught postgraduate readers this is a welcome reminder that the divisions in the text are not Thucydides' own and promotes reflection on how we should approach the work as a whole.
The translation itself includes a fifteen page introduction, a list of principal dates, biographical notes, notes on Greek terms for distance, coinage and the calendar, a number of maps which are adequate to orientate the action of the text, appendices on variations from the OCT, an account of Thucydides' place in the ancient world, a short bibliography, a synopsis of the narrative and the speeches, and a glossary. Throughout the translation M. has included numerous footnotes on passages or words that are difficult to translate into English or ambiguous, which often include the Greek term in question transliterated into Latin script. The overall effect of these various para-texts is to leave the reader in no doubt about the complexity of the original and the importance of a thorough acquaintance with the world of the fifth century b.c. to a proper understanding of Thucydides. Even those students with no Greek will have their attention drawn at numerous points to the ambiguities in the original through the footnotes, which will hopefully invite them to consult further more detailed commentaries and studies.
The only other edition to carry more explanatory material is The Landmark Thucydides, which includes numerous prefatory essays, appendices, historical footnotes and maps. That edition uses Crawley's 1874 translation, which takes many liberties with the Greek. It is undeniable that The Landmark Thucydides has made Thucydides intelligible to a wide audience who might otherwise have had no contact with the work. The difficulty is that this edition has become popular amongst students, especially those on political science courses. In education the deficiencies of Crawley's translation are made stark. Where Thucydides explores topics such as the nature of political judgement, processes of decision making, and the influence of rhetoric and persuasion in a democracy over whole speeches and sections of the text Crawley finds simple political aphorisms. Famously, Crawley's rendering of the Melian dialogue includes the line ‘The strong did what they will, and the weak suffered what they must’. The various explanatory notes and essays and the very literal translations mean that readers of M.'s translation will not fall into such easy traps.
M.'s translation follows Thucydides' words as far as is possible in comprehensible English. The effect is to produce a text that is far from elegant in both the narrative sections and the speeches. For example, ‘The Spartan commander Pasitelidas and the garrison on hand there came up to defend this wall and were resisting the Athenian attack. But after they came under pressure and the ships that had been sent round were now sailing in the harbor, Pasitelidas became afraid that the ships might take the undefended town before he could get back there and that if the wall were taken he himself might be trapped’ (5.3.1, p. 321). Sentences such as the latter may be a literal rendering from the Greek but they make for difficult going for the casual reader. I do not believe, in Marivaux's terms, that such a literal translation is wrong to Thucydides. The original Greek is deliberately ambiguous and difficult to follow. Thucydides makes his readers work hard for the political lessons he promises them at 1.22. M.'s translation does the same for a new generation of English readers. However, for the casual reader R. Warner's less accurate Penguin edition is a much safer option.
This translation is a fine addition to the Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought series and a useful edition for students approaching Thucydides or Greek history for the first time. It is to be hoped that in political science courses this edition will replace The Landmark Thucydides as it moves away from simple interpretations of the text to reveal the many complexities and difficulties in Thucydidean thought. In classics and ancient history this volume's close attention to the Greek and its excellent footnotes will make it a worthy edition to any reading list.
