Title: The Landmark Thucydides:
A Comprehensive Guide to the Peloponnesian War
Author: Thucydides
Editor: Robert B. Strassler
Pages: 669
Rating: 4 of 5

A powerful democracy that takes credit for saving the civilized world from tyranny and now dominates an empire of “allies” versus a brutal military oligarchy where most of the people are slaves or second class citizens…it’s Athens vs. Sparta (What? Who did you think I was talking about?). But, seriously, this is an intriguing (if long) ancient history book. One of Thucydides’ points is that history repeats itself with some variations in magnitude/brutality. The realpolitik that drives this conflict shows that human nature hasn’t really changed in the last 2,300+ years.

This particular edition of Thucydides is from the same series as The Landmark Herodotus which I reviewed here. Like its predecessor, this book is stuffed with helpful background information in the form of footnotes, maps, appendices, section summaries, etc. The maps were by far the most helpful feature. They come in a variety of scales, every few pages and show only the sites that are relevant to the section in which they occur.

The one slightly disappointing aspect of this book was the translation. I don’t know how much this would bother the average person, but I studied quite a bit of Greek translation theory in college and seminary so it bugs me (i.e. I’m a translation snob). Rather than a new (or even recent) translation, this book used a Victorian era (1874) translation with modern language “pasted over” any phrasing that sounded too awkward or archaic. It read smoothly enough for the most part, but that is just not great translation methodology for a scholarly publication. It ignores the last 140+ years of scholarship in Greek translation theory, produces a hybrid Victorian-Modern English that was never actually spoken by anyone, and may introduce unnecessarily interpretive paraphrasing when decisions are made based purely on English style. To be fair, I haven’t compared it to the original Greek myself (I studied Koine rather than Classical Greek) so I can’t speak to accuracy…I just question the methodology.

Overall, an excellent book for those who enjoy ancient history and/or the study of human nature in politics and war.