Civil History and Style in Thucydides

This chapter examines Hobbes’s translation of Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War. Hobbes found in Thucydides’ account of the rise of the Athenian demagogues a case study in the dangers of rhetoric to the state. This interpretation he pointed up through annotation and illustration (including the title page cut by Thomas Cecill). Hobbes’s Thucydides bears witness to a distinctive attitude towards the truth of history, which is no longer to be found in the moral exemplars promoted by traditional humanism. It displays the influence of Bacon’s politic history, and reveals a commitment to anti-Ciceronian canons of style.