Perseus presents the English translation of Thucydides by Thomas Hobbes (died 1679), a world-class political philosopher. Some describe Hobbes as hard reading, but my opinion is that those who can read the King James Bible, or Francis Bacon’s essays, will find Hobbes not too difficult.
Everybody who studied the Renaissance in introductory history classes has heard of Lorenzo Valla (died 1457), world-class Renaissance humanist, who prepared a Latin translation of Thucydides. I don’t know if Lorenzo Valla’s Latin translation has ever been printed in full, but I did find a downloadable copy of book 1, which was bound together with the Greek, and an English translation.
I would not pretend to evaluate Thomas Hobbes or Lorenzo Valla, but I think it would be interesting to see what such great authors said Thucydides meant. Besides I could practice 17th-century English and my 15th-century Latin by using them to study Thucydides.
If I’m not mistaken, Valla’s translation is thought to have been made from a now-lost manuscript, and his Latin wording is occasionally cited as an independent source of evidence for textual uncertainties. Hobbes’ translation is highly regarded. When I’ve looked at it, it has invariably seemed quite careful and accurate.
Yes, modern editors of Thucydides cite Valla’s Latin translation when it incidentally shows that his Greek text differed from our surviving manuscripts. He must have used a Thucydides text that preserved readings subsequently lost.
In the first chapter of bk.1, for instance, where our manuscripts have οὐδαμοῦ τοὺς ξύμπαντας ὠνόμασεν (Homer nowhere gives the Greeks a collective name), recent editors add οὕτω after οὐδαμοῦ on the basis of the sic in Valla’s version. Still in this first chapter, where the later manuscripts have ὕστερον a papyrus has ὕστερος, and similarly at 3.22.3 where our manuscripts have πρῶτον Valla has primi, evidently representing πρῶτοι. In such cases, and there are quite a number of them, editors have traditionally preferred the adverb, but a good case can be made for the adjective.
Not earth-shaking, but still, it all gets us that little bit closer to Thucydides.
Hobbes’ pioneering English translation is a classic in its own right. And I greatly admire Crawley’s 19th-century translation. The best one now, however, certainly the most faithful, is Steven Lattimore’s.