Style and Necessity in Thucydides

✍ Scribed by Tobias Joho

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Year: 2023
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 369
• Category: Library

✦ Table of Contents

Cover
Style and Necessity in Thucydides
Copyright
Dedication
Acknowledgements
Contents
Epigraph
Introduction
0.1 Dionysius of Halicarnassus and the Problem of Thucydides’ Style
0.2 What Benefit Does Thucydides Derive from a Nominal Register?
0.3 Two Contrary Strands in the History: Contingency vs. Necessity
0.4 Determinism ‘up to a point’
1. Thucydides’ Abstract Nominal Style: The Main Features and Differences from the Plain Style
1.1 Abstract Nominal Phrases in Ancient Greek
1.2 Four Stylistic Devices Used by Thucydides to Foster Abstraction
Abstract Nouns in Subject Position
Nominal Periphrasis
Agent-less Periphrasis: Impersonal Passive Phrases
1.3 Corcyrean Stasis in Two Stylistic Registers
1.4 Conclusion
2. The Implications of Thucydides’ Abstract Style: The Pathology (3.82–3)
2.1 Persons Treated as Things
2.2 Impersonal Agents
2.3 Reification of Action
2.4 Passivity and Settled States
2.5 Convulsions of ‘Greekness’
2.6 Predominance of General Forces
2.7 Emphasis on Incidents Occurring as Opposed to People Acting
2.8 Phrases Involving πίπτω
2.9 Conclusion
3. The Passivity of the Powerful
3.1 The Thucydidean Standpoint: The Archaeology
3.2 Thucydides and His Speakers
3.3 Compulsion by ‘The Three Greatest Things’
3.4 The Process of Imperial Growth in the Pentecontaetia
3.5 The Paradox of Empire: Power and Passivity
3.6 Conclusion
4. A World Governed by Neuters: ‘The Human’ as a Substitute for ‘The Divine’
4.1 The Mainsprings of Action: Natural Conditions and Impersonal Factors
4.2 Human Nature Personified
4.3 Collapsing the Duality Between Inner and Outer
4.4 Divine Visitation and Natural Drives: Affinities Between Euripides and Thucydides
4.5 The Juxtaposition of τὸ θεῖον and τὸ ἀνθρώπειον in the Melian Dialogue
4.6 Neuter Phrases Referring to Divine Powers in Herodotus and Euripides
4.7 Conclusion
5. Decision-Making Overshadowed by Necessity
5.1 The Outbreak of the War
5.2 Spartan Fear: A Passive Imposition
5.3 The Speech of the Spartan Ambassadors at Athens: Passivity of the Doers and the Margin of Choice
5.4 Victors and Losers After Pylos: An Unlikely Similarity
5.5 Athenian Desire for Sicily: A Force Beyond Human Control
5.6 National Character and Human Nature
5.7 Conclusion
6. Dual Motivation: The Interaction of Necessity and Individual Choice
6.1 The Decision in Favour of the Sicilian Expedition (I): the Paragon of Necessity
6.2 The Decision in Favour of the Sicilian Expedition (II): the Strand of Individualism
6.3 Croesus in Herodotus (I): Immanent Motivation Alongside Divine Interference
6.4 Croesus in Herodotus (II): Who Is αἴτιος—Man or God?
6.5 Conclusion: Two Motivational Strands in Thucydides
7. Necessity and Leeway for Choice: Homer, Herodotus, Thucydides
7.1 Can Necessity Be Malleable?
7.2 The Homecoming of Odysseus: Predestination with Blank Spots
7.3 Herodotus on Divine and Human Action in Relation to Fate: Apollo’s Intervention and Croesus’ Contribution
7.4 Causality Ancient and Modern: Interaction between Entities Versus Deterministic Laws of Nature
7.5 Causation of the Greatest Events: Necessity Intertwined with Contingency
7.6 Conclusion: Flexible Necessity
8. Pericles’ Containment of Necessity and the Scope for Choice
8.1 The Athenians Exposed to Invasion and Plague: Human Nature on the Rise
8.2 Pericles Face to Face with Human Nature
8.3 Realization of the Periclean Ideal in Language
8.4 Restoring the Athenians’ Power of Choice
8.5 The Power of Choice: An Ever-Imperiled Faculty
8.6 The Equivocalness of γνώμη
8.7 Conclusion: Intimations of Periclean Pessimism
Conclusion: The Exception of Pericles and the Persistence of Necessity
Bibliography
Abbreviations
Secondary Literature
Index of Passages
Subject Index
Greek Terms