description: Thucydides is often credited with being the father of 'scientific history' &amp; seen as having produced in his history of the Peloponnesian War a factual account of that destructive conflict, by contrast with the more anecdotal, even credulous approach of previous writers. However, in the ground-breaking Thucydides Mythistoricus, first published in 1907, F.M. Cornford came to the conclusion that Thucydides' work is in fact an historical tragedy, a dramatised version of the facts. Starting from an analysis of Thucydides' account of the origin of the war, which he finds unsatisfactory, Cornford asks why this should be &amp; comes to the conclusion that Thucydides' view was suffused by a tragic view of human nature, arguing that 'the thought of a most prosaic &amp; rational writer of antiquity moved in an atmosphere which we should recognise to be poetic &amp; mythical'. For this new edition Simon Hornblower provides a new Introduction tracing the reception of Cornford's ideas, along with a selection of relevant new bibliography.
language: English
title: Thucydides Mythistoricus
titlecomplete: Thucydides Mythistoricus
characters: Thucydides
genres: History
ratings_count: 17
publisher: Bristol Classical Pr