Thucydides and the World War.

From the library of Prof. Wolfgang Haase, long-time editor of ANRW and the International Journal of the Classical Tradition (IJCT). - Rough cut, pencil annotation and library stamp "DHS David Stone" on endpaper, occasional pencil markings in text, slightly rubbed and discolored binding, otherwise very good. / Unebener Schnitt, Bleistiftanmerkung und Bibliotheksstempel "DHS David Stone" auf Vorsatzblatt, vereinzelt Bleistiftanstreichungen im Text, leicht beriebener und verf�ter Einband, sonst sehr gut. - PREFACE: THIS volume is not the series of Martin Lectures as they were delivered in 1943. Not even an Oberlin audience would have listened to eight lectures. But since I was writing about Thucydides, it seemed worth while to offer a book which not only dealt with the announced subject, Thucydides, the First Modern Historian, but also covered in a more general way the whole subject of the History. The first and last chapters are substantially two of the lectures as they were delivered. I have added to them the second and third chapters, which I hope may give the reader unacquainted with Thucydides something of a background, and also a rather full summary of Thucydides� great work in chapters IV, V and VI. This rather extended outline of the History serves two purposes: it gives briefly the facts of the Peloponnesian War as Thucydides relates them, and it gives me an opportunity to point out some of those features which make his work so memorable. In the Bibliography I have listed only a few of the German works on Thucydides; nor can I recommend even these. I strongly distrust the soundness of conclusions as to style, method and date of composition arrived at by such critical methods. Scholars who approach literary works without a sense of humor or proportion, who have no knowledge of the psychology of non-Teutonic peoples, are likely to arrive at conclusions that are ridiculously unsound. Even as distinguished a historian as Eduard Meyer explained the phrase �red-blooded Americans� as a description of those Americans who have in their veins blood of the American Indians. The dreary decades of Homeric criticism have borne such dry fruits! Just so, all the elaborate arguments for the fragmentary composition of the history of Thucydides put forth by Schwartz, Pohlenz and Schadewaldt have been refuted at vast labor by Grosskinski and Patzner and finally dismissed by Finley. After sixty years of German-inspired argument we are just where we started. While I was greatly flattered by the invitation to give these lectures on the Charles Beebe Martin Foundation, and while I wish to offer my sincere thanks to the Committee for extending this invitation to me, I realize that these lectures are not in the same class with the eleven fine scholarly volumes which have preceded this one. My only consolation is that Thucydides, like Hamlet, cannot be spoiled. To Professor Frederick B. Artz, of Oberlin College, I am indebted for many helpful and constructive suggestions; to Professor J. W. Swain, of the University of Illinois, for wholesome restraint in mitigating my words of appreciation for the �new historians�; to Dr. George Karo, for that ultimate act of friendship, reading my proofs; and to Mrs. C. S. Hartman for eradicating many an error while presiding like Argus over the making of the book. But by far the greatest help and the most useful criticism have come from my wife, who has lived and suffered, not silently, in the atmosphere of this book for more than a year. - Contents: 1. Thucydides and the Writing of History -- 2. Thucydides' Athens -- 3. The Setting -- 4. Thucydides' Narrative. I, 431-429 B.C. -- 5. Thucydides' Narrative. II, 429-421 B.C. -- 6. Thucydides' Narrative. III, 421-404 B.C. -- 7. The History -- Attitude toward Science -- Economics -- Digressions -- Thucydides' Style -- Character Sketches -- The Mind of Thucydides -- Conclusion -- 8. Thucydides and the World War.