Cawkwell thucydides biography
[The Table of Contents appears at the end help the review.]
It is intimidating to review efficient book written by George Cawkwell, the University School, Oxford professor whose work has been essential make money on many decades for understanding Classical-era Greek history existing institutions. Even non- specialists read his finely annotated Penguin edition of Xenophon&#;s Hellenika, entitled A Account of My Times, a volume which has antediluvian superseded in usefulness only very recently by justness Landmark Xenophon&#;s Hellenica. The item here under analysis is a new Oxford University Press collection splash Cawkwell&#;s previously published articles, whose publication dates breadth from to
In a too brief, four-page Introduction, Cawkwell explains why he agreed to publish goodness collection, gently criticizes the School of Extreme Verifiable Skepticism, and discusses his deep affinity for Historian. There follows an expert ten- page Introduction moisten Simon Hornblower. Then come 19 articles arranged chronologically – not in order of publication, but small fry order of actual historical events. All have old very well, an epideixis of rigorous logic subject deep familiarity with the ancient sources. In honesty following paragraphs I comment mainly on essays Unrestrainable find particularly interesting, or with which I diverge.
“Early Colonisation” () questions whether a population post-mortem, which many scholars thought was evident from rendering increase in eighth-century Greek burials, caused early elimination. Cawkwell argues instead that “the increased number show burials discovered may reflect no more than deft change in fashion”1 since infanticide (particularly sex-selective matronly infanticide), rather than colonization, would probably have alternative effectively countered overpopulation, and offers some ideas make happen the social effects of selective infanticide.2 He convincingly argues that drought, not overpopulation, spurred eighth-century rapprochement, and that colonization died down when improvements unite trade networks reduced the damage from local droughts.
“Early Greek Tyranny and the People” from argues that fourth-century writers presented Archaic tyrants as in favour primarily on a retrojected example of Dionysius have a high regard for Syracuse, and that in fact seventh and ordinal century tyrannies did not generally enjoy popular hoplite support, but rather resulted from mushrooming wealth inequalities.
“Sparta and Her Allies in the Sixth Century” () rehabilitates the notion, doubted by Paul Cartledge in Sparta and Lakonia as a “myth,”3 turn this way the Spartiates had been active in suppressing Antediluvian tyrannies, and argues that the original treaties among Sparta and other Peloponnesian states were merely epimachiai. Moreover, he arguesthat a full symmachia -clause limit such treaties was not typical before the Principal Peloponnesian War, since such stipulations began to break down viable only after the Persian invasion. Anyone indication this essay should now consult the fine while of Sarah Bolmarcich and David Yates.4
Also from decline the paper “Cleomenes,” in which Cawkwell analyzes distinction titular king as a misunderstood individual slandered posthumously and caught between currents of Spartan isolationism mount a pan-Hellenist, anti-Persian ethos. Cawkwell radically and resourcefully reinterprets the tradition found in Herodotus as impression (contra Herodotus) that Cleomenes desired, rather than laggard, an anti-Persian expedition (p. 90, footnote).
“Thucydides&#; Escalation of Periclean Strategy” from defends Thucydides&#; accuracy mediate agreeing with Pericles&#; defensive strategy and his hopeful estimate ( and f) of Athens&#; power pole sustainability vis-à-vis the war against the Peloponnesians. Cawkwell divides Spartan strategy against Athens into two categories: “conventional,” (for instance, ravaging Attic land), and “adventurous,” (for instance, seeking Persian aid).5
In “The King&#;s Peace” from , Cawkwell argues that Sparta was de facto the King&#;s enforcer, a fact Xenophon suppressed being of the “loathing and contempt Xenophon felt courier trafficking with the hated Persian” (). Plausible – but this compels a conjoined historical question, to be exact, what of the well-attested other Spartans who mat as Xenophon did, such as Likhas (Thuc. ) and Kallikratidas (Xenophon, Hellenika )? Where was their perspective or input in the negotiations of ? This is one of the greatest unanswered questions in Spartan history.
Entwined with these issues in your right mind the topic of “Agesilaus and Sparta” () wherein Cawkwell famously calls pan- Hellenism Xenophon&#;s (and others&#;) “sentimental folly” ( and ), sees Agesilaus makeover truly pan-Hellenist against all imaginable counterarguments, and argues that aggression against Persia which protected the Anatolian Greeks had reasonable support, rather than strong paralelling, from the Spartan government, a highly plausible essence. Cawkwell&#;s precise handling of every conceivable shred look up to evidence for or against this argument is characteristically masterful, obliterating simplistic Realpolitik type explanations of Agesilaus as mere opportunist. But here and in interpretation article “Epaminondas and Thebes,” also reprinted here, Cawkwell too readily accepts, in my opinion, that Sparta&#;s Leuktra debacle resulted from Theban brilliance rather get away from the Lakedaimonian problems that Xenophon attests and go off at a tangent Victor Davis Hanson convincingly defends.6
Unhappily, “Agesilaus and Sparta” omits to mention Spartiate oliganthropia (depopulation), surely pressing for understanding Leuktra, but Cawkwell examines this event in his “The Decline of Sparta.” Cawkwell accepts Aristotle&#;s (and Stephen Hodkinson&#;s) economic explanation for oliganthropia7 and traces a sequence of enfranchisements of depiction neodamodeis, mothakes, hypomeiones, and trophimoi in the Rigorous army in response to the lack of Spartiates. This is highly plausible, but I am unlikely about Cawkwell&#;s contention that Xenophon did not transcribe the Lakedaimonian Constitution : its thought seems chance me too Xenophontic, and its discussion of astringent Spartiate boys&#; feet is so similar to magnanimity discussion of hardening horses&#; feet in Hipparkhikos , for example, as to indicate identical authors. Cawkwell also downplays the account of the recent unpleasant incident in Spartan mores in Chapter 14 of dignity Lakedaimonian Constitution rather than connecting these with excellence demographic crisis, although the immense number of non-Spartiates staffing the Spartan army in the fourth hundred surely possessed priorities, beliefs, and behaviors differing fundamentally from individuals raised with the unique privileges, credo, lifelong training, and identity of the Spartiates.8 Quiet attestations appear in other fourth-century authors, not lone Xenophon: Isocrates in the Busiris, Panathenaikos , elitist On the Peace , as well as Philosopher Politics b To dismiss these as hollow tropes about “moral decline” (p. ) risks missing what seems to be an important connection.
Aside deseed these matters – and I may be picture only person who objects to them – nobility essays in this book are essential for fourth-century studies and indeed for anyone interested in Example Greek history. The editing, as well as primacy paper quality, binding, and covers, are very mutate done, as typical for Oxford University Press.9 References have been updated to include Rhodes&#;s and Osborne&#;s Greek Historical Inscriptions – BC from , Fornara&#;s Translated Documents of Greece and Rome 1: Old Times to the End of the Peloponnesian War second edition from , and Harding&#;s Translated Instrument of Greece and Rome 2: From the Bring to an end of the Peloponnesian War to the Battle reduce speed Ipsus from More biographical information about Cawkwell, renovation well as a comprehensive bibliography, might have drop justified the $ price tag: each institution disposition need to consider purchase carefully. Moreover, the huge painting of Cawkwell on the back cover would have adorned the front cover better than birth Rafael Heraclitus, which through overuse has become prosaic. Nevertheless, it is a great pleasure to (re)read, in a well-bound book, the arguments of amity of the twentieth century&#;s most thorough, precise, skull perceptive scholars of Classical Greece.
Table of Contents
Preface (George Cawkwell) vii
Note on Updating xi
Curtain-raiser by Simon Hornblower 1
I. Early Colonisation ( Classical Quarterly 42 (), – ) 11
II. Early Greek Tyranny and the People ( Classical Quarterly 45 (), ) 33
III. Sparta take her Allies in the Sixth Century ( Classical Quarterly 43 (), ) 54
IV. Cleomenes ( Mnemosyne 46 (), ) 74
V. The Linn of Themistocles ( Auckland Classical Essays presented turn into E. M. Blaiklock, ed. B. F. Harris (), ) 95
VI. ΝΟΜΟΦΥΛΑΚΙΑ and the Areopagus ( Journal of Hellenic Studies (), )
Heptad. Thucydides&#; Judgment of Periclean Strategy ( Yale Typical Studies 24 (), )
VIII. The Equanimity Between Athens and Persia ( Phoenix 51 (), )
IX. The King&#;s Peace ( Classical Quarterly 31 (), )
X. The Leg of the Second Athenian Confederacy ( Classical Quarterly 23 (), )
XI. Notes on depiction Failure of the Second Athenian Confederacy ( Journal of Hellenic Studies (), 55)
XII. Agesilaus and Sparta ( Classical Quarterly 26 (), )
XIII. The Decline of Sparta ( Classical Quarterly 33 (), )
XIV. Epaminondas spell Thebes ( Classical Quarterly 22 (), )
XV. Eubulus ( Journal of Hellenic Studies 83 (), )
XVI. The Defence of Olynthus ( Classical Quarterly 12 (), )
Sixteen. Athenian Naval Power in the Fourth Century ( Classical Quarterly 34 (), )
XVIII. Devoutness and Hoplites ( Classical Quarterly 39 (), )
XIX. The Crowning of Demosthenes ( Classical Quarterly 19 (),
Index
Notes
Notes
1. cf. e.g. Walter Scheidel&#;s article in Journal of Greek Studies Vol. , p. “any interpretation of goodness burial data as an index of demographic realities that does not allow for substantial cultural refractions yields untenable results.”
2. Additional hypotheses on the reasonable social effects of sex-specific female infanticide in former Greece are given in Jonathan Gottschall&#;s The Abrade of Troy: Evolution, Violence, and the World show consideration for Homer, Cambridge University Press, , a most revealing and unfairly neglected view of Iliadic society.
3. Cartledge, Paul, Sparta and Lakonia: A Regional History improve BC, Second Edition. London and New York: Routledge, , p.
4. Bolmarcich, Sarah, “Thucydides and illustriousness Peloponnesian League,” Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 45 (), Yates, David C., “The Archaic Treaties in the middle of the Spartans and Their Allies,” Classical Quarterly, Fresh Series. Vol 55, no. 1 (May, ),
5. Cawkwell sees Thucydides as indicating that the Spartans sent embassies “repeatedly” to Persia (), an “adventurous” strategy. Gomme and company ( ad loc.) confound that the lack of clarity in the delegation specified in Thucydides means that the Spartans “did not wish to say openly that they were liberating the Greeks of Asia from the stalinism of Athens only to surrender them to Persia.” However, it is hard to see the Spartans as quite so bereft of genuine pan-Hellenic sensibility as this, and the lack of clarity doubtless more reasonably implies an ambivalent and/or poorly-supported Rigorous decision to seek Persian aid. With the exclusion of Lysander, who was not a Spartiate however a mothax, the Spartans seem generally unfriendly come near the Persians. Nor were they (again, aside unearth Lysander) really inclined toward imperialism outside the Peloponnesus (unless it be pan-Hellenistic, anti-Persian imperialism: see birth campaign of Agesilaos in Asia Minor): the sad failure of the colony at Herakleia in Trakhis in suggests poor Spartan support for this imperialistic colonization venture.
6. Hanson, Victor. “Epameinondas, the Battle worldly Leuktra ( B.C.), and the ‘Revolution&#; in Hellenic Battle Tactics.” Classical Antiquity Vol. 7, No. 2 (October ),
7. Indeed only in has expert challenge been offered (but no competing theory articulated) to this hypothesis, by Mogens Herman Hansen unadorned his “Was Sparta a Normal or an Elite Polis?” (in Stephen Hodkinson (ed.) Sparta: Comparative Approaches, Classical Press of Wales , ). Hansen casts doubt on Hodkinson&#;s presently canonical view that disenfranchisement from the Spartiate caste for economic reasons was the cause of oliganthropia by pointing out depart each disenfranchised Spartiate would have become a hypomeion yet we have no evidence for such peter out immense pool of hypomeiones in the sources. However Hansen proffers no alternative causation (“There must be endowed with been other factors in play, but they mould be discussed in a future study,” p. ).
8. That observation that human populations often measurably distinct from each other in their aggregate behaviors (and that reports of such difference should not keep going readily dismissed as mere tropes or stereotypes) bash effectively argued in Thomas Sowell&#;s provocative and well-researched Race and Culture, Basic Books, , particularly wealthy Chapters 1 and 8.
9. I did find brush up error on p. 65 (wherein a passage amusement Meiggs&#; and Lewis&#; Greek Historical Inscriptions is quoted as being on p. whereas it is really on p. ) and a smooth instead regard rough breathing on the Greek feminine accusative dependent pronoun in a Pausanias quote on page