I’m really pleased to see that others have embarked on reading Thucydides - reading (and re-reading) him in Greek has been one of my greatest pleasures in recent years.
On the basis of my own experience, I would advise those tackling Thucydides to get hold of (in hard copy or, where available, online) as many different commentaries on his work as possible. Thucydides is a notoriously difficult writer, and even today there is no consensus on the exact meaning, or the precise grammatical construction, of many passages. This makes it all the more important to consider a wide range of scholarly opinions, and on that basis to decide which interpretation one favours.
Of ‘school’ editions of individual books, the old Macmillan series (variously edited by Marchant, Graves and Tucker) is, as far as I am aware, the only one to cover all eight books. Generally superior to these is the series published (on the basis of Classen’s edition) by Ginn and Co. of Boston in the late 19th/early 20th centuries, and edited by Morris, Smith and Fowler: unfortunately, this series covers only Books I, III, V, VI and VII. I see that at least one poster is already using Morris’ edition of Book I.
Other commentaries on individual books which I have found helpful are Cameron’s Thucydides Book I: A Students’ Grammatical Commentary ((University of Michigan Press, 2003); Rusten’s Thucydides: The Peloponnesian War, Book II (Cambridge University Press, 1989); Spratt’s Thucydides Book IV (Cambridge University Press, 1912); and Goodhart’s The Eighth Book of Thucydides’ History (Macmillan, 1893).
Of complete commentaries, the English commentary most helpful in considering difficult passages is that by Gomme, Andrewes and Dover (Oxford). The Bude edition by de Romilly, Bodin and Weil (Greek text, with translation and notes in French) is also very useful. Among older editions with commentaries my personal favourite is the shorter version of Poppo’s edition, revised by Stahl (normally referred to as ‘Poppo-Stahl’), with notes in Latin. The edition by Classen, revised by Steup (‘Classen-Steup’), with notes in German, is generally regarded as the best; Krueger’s edition (again with German notes) is also worth consulting.
Moving away from commentaries, Betant’s Lexicon Thucydideum (1843; repr. 1961) is a Greek-to-Latin dictionary of words found in Thucydides. While not complete (e.g. particles are omitted), it is very helpful if one wants to track down other instances of a word in Thucydides to help one decide how to translate it. Karl Maurer’s Interpolation in Thucydides (E. J. Brill, 1995) includes illuminating discussions of some very difficult passages.
The secondary literature on Thucydides is of course huge, but I’d like to put in a special mention for W. Robert Connor’s Thucydides (Princeton University Press, 1984), an enormously stimulating sequential ‘reading’ of Thucydides’ history, which can be read with great profit in parallel with the text of Thucydides.
I hope all this is helpful; I’d be happy to provide any further information.
Best wishes,
John
. I was confusing σύμφορα with συμφορά, that was part of the problem. I must try to digest internal accusatives too…
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