10-26-2009, 12:58 AM
I strongly urge you all to read "The Spartan State in War and Peace" by Prof Paul Cartledge (Cambridge Univ). He provides what I think is a balanced overview of the Spartan war machine at Plataea and afterwords--and he is gently dismissive of Thucydides. Thucydides used to be view as the greatest of Greek Classical historians, but the bloom is off the rose--and many of the historians we all quote here--from VD Hanson to Lazenby--have begun a steady shift towards accepting Herodotus on many subjects and away from Thucydides, who can be demonstrated (at least) to have deliberately falsified for political reasons.
I'm not some radical proposing a wholesale abandonment of Thucydides--but I think that too many arguments on this forum are largely based on reading him in English as a sort of "sole-source" on hoplite warfare. I have seen it argued here that Thucydides was a veteran hoplite himself, and I can only shrug and return that all we know is that he was once a general--and that may, in fact, have been the sum of his experience.
Back to shield construction...
I'm not some radical proposing a wholesale abandonment of Thucydides--but I think that too many arguments on this forum are largely based on reading him in English as a sort of "sole-source" on hoplite warfare. I have seen it argued here that Thucydides was a veteran hoplite himself, and I can only shrug and return that all we know is that he was once a general--and that may, in fact, have been the sum of his experience.
Back to shield construction...
Qui plus fait, miex vault.
