How History of the Peloponnesian War drew on The Iliad
A documented line of influence: Thucydides demonstrably engaged Homer’s work. The commentary below is Gröblé’s, verbatim from each work’s page.
The source
The Iliad
Homer · c. 750 BCE
Ancient GreeceThe influenced
History of the Peloponnesian War
Thucydides · c. 411 BCE
Ancient GreeceRelevance
6/10
On History of the Peloponnesian War’s page
- Thucydides starts not with his own war but with Homer's, using the Iliad as the raw material against which he forges a new, evidentiary method
- He names Homer, doubts the 1,186-ship catalogue, and corrects the poet's exaggeration — and in doing so invents the historian's skepticism
- Read the Iliad first and the opening "Archaeology" reads as what it is: history arguing its way out of epic
On The Iliad’s page
- The moment history breaks away from epic — and it happens on Homer's terms
- Thucydides opens his History by treating the Iliad as evidence to be tested: mining the Catalogue of Ships for data, then scolding the poet for inflating the numbers
- He builds his own factual method by arguing with Homer — the epic tradition is the foil he defines himself against