Reddit reviews The Landmark Thucydides: A Comprehensive Guide to the Peloponnesian War
We found 15 Reddit comments about The Landmark Thucydides: A Comprehensive Guide to the Peloponnesian War. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
Free Press
For those interested:
I can't recommend this book enough:
The Classical World by Robin Lane Fox
Also very good:
Oxford History of the Classical World: Greece and the Hellenistic Period
Translations I highly recommend:
Plato's Republic and commentary by Allan Bloom
The Landmark Thucydides by Strassler, Crawley et al.
>If you have time give the original by Thucydides a read.
Pretty much this.
Thucydides can be a bit difficult to read, but if you want to understand the war, you really have to read it. The Landmark Thucydides is easily the best version of it. The author basically provides explanation and assistance on each page, as well as maps and stuff.
For Thucydides and Xenophon I cannot recommend the Landmark series of books highly enough. They are lathered in detailed maps and explanatory footnotes, and come with a wealth of appendixes on everything from Athenian finances to naval warfare to historiography (the study of the sources themselves and how reliable etc. they are). These and all of the books I mentioned are easily and cheaply available on Amazon.
Thucydides - http://www.amazon.com/Landmark-Thucydides-Comprehensive-Guide-Peloponnesian/dp/0684827905
Xenophon - http://www.amazon.com/Landmark-Xenophons-Hellenika-Xenophon/dp/0375422552
Around 8 pages of The Landmark Thycydides: A Comprehensive Guide to the Peloponnesian War. It is a very dense read, but I am enjoying it.
Some from my shelf
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Bonus: The Landmark Thucydides: A Comprehensive Guide to the Peloponnesian War
It seems to me that the two strengths of the series are world-building and character depth. If this is your favorite series, you probably like it for one or both of those things.
If you like it for the world building, I recommend history books such as the History of the Peloponnesian War or A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century.
If you like complex characters, then the Mistborn series by Brandon Sanderson. Another strength of asoiaf is that it isn't too heavy handed regarding magic in the story, and this is a strength of the Mistborn series too.
> Peloponnesian Wars
This for something lighter and this for something a bit drier. I think these two books are the standard recommendations when approaching the topic.
I read this variant, which (translation aside) is usefully augmented by copious maps and side notes. I am not good enough to be able to judge various translations.
(Where do I recommend Thucydides? I don't doubt that I do, I just don't remember doing so.)
"The Landmark Thucydides: A Comprehensive Guide to the Peloponnesian War Paperback" by Robert B Strassler - > Esta é a melhor edição de todas em inglês, com o texto do Tucídides. Há outros livros, tipo o do Kagan, que também são muito bons, e explica o que se passou a partir de várias fontes (Tucídides incluído).
Se queres mesmo ler Tucídides em Português, opta pela edição da Gulbenkian, é a melhor (já não me lembro do preço, mas era um bocado caro), já foste ver se na Gulbenkian está disponível?
USN war college uses this as a textbook:
https://www.amazon.com/Landmark-Thucydides-Comprehensive-Guide-Peloponnesian/dp/0684827905
For a surprisingly good overview of history generally, I recommend https://www.amazon.com/Cartoon-History-Universe-Volumes-1-7/dp/0385265204
This is a version that includes copious explanatory notes and maps to help you along. Each paragraph is summarized in the margins, even.
Any translation of Thucydides is going to have readability issues; he's tough to get through even in the original language and the process of translation only exacerbates that issue.
I also recommend the Landmark Thucydides, if you are willing to branch out into ancient Greek classics; it's a certainty that Caesar was familiar with him. This book was another of the texts for my college course, and has maps of the ancient landscape so you can follow along with his description of the Peloponnesian War on an accurate map of the landscape of the time. Without these maps, it would be a wall of text, but being able to trace the movements of the armies with your finger eases the litany of troop deployments amidst unfamiliar geography.
I'm interested in this period too and have seen recommended for the immediate aftermath and wars 'Ghost on the Throne' and 'Dividing the Spoils'. If you're interested in the wider historical aftermath for the period and have the appetite for a 1000 page tome then you might want to look at 'From Alexander to Actium'.
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Unfortunately for this time period (the 'Hellenistic Period') we don't have a good narrative history from early sources like we do for some other periods. Herodotus, Thucydidesand Xenephon tell us the story of Greece from roughly 500-362, then we have a frustrating gap for the rise of Philip II (Alexander's father and seen by many ancients as more impressive than Alexander), then various accounts such as Arrian's of Alexander's conquests 336-323. But then there's a big 60 year gap after Alexander until Polybius's histories start in 264 (by which time this is the story of how the Successor Kingdoms and Carthage alike are ultimately defeated by Rome).
[Links in para above are to excellent scholarly versions: Landmark editions in particular are fantastic with maps, good footnotes and annexes etc. But as these are all ancient and so out of copyright you can probably get old translations for free on kindle etc.]
Do you want to stick with Roman stuff? Because Thucydides (history of the Peloponnesian War) is amazing. It is dealing with Greece centuries before the Romans got going, but really fascinating. This is a great way to read it as well, with lots of maps and diagrams and such.
If you want to stick with Roman: Caesar Civil Wars is ok, but I think you find it less compelling than Gallic Wars. You might enjoy the early books of Livy, about the beginnings of Rome. The Roman historian Sallust also has two different monographs: one of the War with Catiline and one about the Jugurthine War in Africa. The latter one might be of interest to you. link