In existographies, Thucydides (460-395BC) (IQ:160|#569) (Cattell 1000:72) [RGM:171|1,400+] (FA:14) (GHE:6) (CR:3) was a Greek historian and general; noted for his participation in and later secular recounting of the Peloponnesian War (431-404BC), wherein the Athenians battled the Spartans; considered, by some (Ѻ), to be the father of “scientific history”, i.e. history based on evidence-gathering and analysis of cause and effect.
Religion | Atheism
Thucydides often is cited as the first secular historian; Mitchell Stephens (2014) summarizes his views as follows: [2]
“Thucydides admits that ‘chance’ plays a major role in human affairs; he does not admit that gods to. Those who search most rigorously for a ‘clear understanding of what happen’ often fail to find a role for gods. There is no evidence that Thucydides believed gods existed.”
In 1629, Thomas Hobbes, in his “Of the Life and History of Thucydides”, defended Thucydides against the charge of atheism. (Ѻ)
Quotes | On
The following are quotes on Thucydides:
“The most philosophic of all Greek historians was certainly Thucydides.”
— Henry Buckle (1857), History of Civilizations, Volume One (pg. 144)
“Modern criticism rightly regards Thucydides as the model of the rational and objective historian who made it his first duty to leave the finger of god out of history and to tidy up the mundane events of the human drama. The contrast between his work with respect to the gods and the histories of his predecessor Herodotus and his successor Xenophon is plain; it is a contrast so great, in fact, as to provoke the observation from some (e.g. K. J. Dover) that Thucydides may well have been an atheist.”
— Borimir Jordan (1986), “Religion in Thucydides” [1]
Quotes | By
The following are quotes by Thucydides:
“The secret to happiness is freedom. And the secret to freedom is courage.”
— Thucydides (c.400BC)
“The bravest are surely those who have the clearest vision of what is before them, glory and danger alike, and yet notwithstanding, go out to meet it.”
— Thucydides (c.400BC)
“We secure our friends not by accepting favors but by doing them.”
— Thucydides (c.400BC)
“Wars spring from unseen and generally insignificant causes, the first outbreak being often but an explosion of anger.”
— Thucydides (c.400BC)
References
1. Jordan, Borimir. (1986). “Religion in Thucydides” (Ѻ), Transactions of the American Philological Association, 115:119-47.
2. Stephens, Mitchell. (2014). Imagine There’s No Heaven: How Atheism Helped Shape the Modern World (pgs. 26-27). St. Martin's Press.
External links
● Thucydides – Wikipedia.
