How Leviathan drew on History of the Peloponnesian War
A documented line of influence: Thomas Hobbes demonstrably engaged Thucydides’s work. The commentary below is Gröblé’s, verbatim from each work’s page.
The source
History of the Peloponnesian War
Thucydides · c. 411 BCE
Ancient GreeceThe influenced
Leviathan
Thomas Hobbes · 1651
EnlightenmentRelevance
8/10
On Leviathan’s page
- Leviathan's state of nature begins here — Hobbes translated the History into English himself, and never shook it off
- Read the Melian Dialogue and you've read Hobbes's politics in embryo: power, fear, and the brutal logic of "the strong rule the weak"
- The collapse of order Thucydides records at Corcyra is the disaster Leviathan is engineered to prevent
On History of the Peloponnesian War’s page
- Hobbes loved this book enough to translate it himself — his English Thucydides (1629) came decades before Leviathan
- The Melian Dialogue's cold verdict that the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must is the seed of Hobbes's state of nature
- Thucydides taught Hobbes that men act from fear and self-interest, and that taught him why they need a sovereign