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Why do you think Herodotus spoke of the gods and will of the gods often while Thucydides pretty much completely omits religion? Do you think it is because, in the Persian War, the Greeks were all about honor and heroism (which was influenced greatly by the deeds of mythologal gods and heroes), where in the Peloponnesian War all rules of war were ignored? (I'm assuming this has a lot to do with why Thucydides called it “a war like no other”) Or do you think it's because one war was a united Greece against another nation, while the other was Greek vs. Greek? I really do not think it is because Greek society progressed beyond religion…became secularized if you will. Maybe because in the Persian War, Greek shrines and relgious monuments weren't desecrated, while in the Peloponnesian War they were? (Sparta was banned from the olympic games because of that). Or could it possibly be because of the atrocities committed against each other that the Greeks thought the gods had abandoned or condemned them and Thucydides purposely omitted the gods because this was the prevailing attitude?
That's a great question. I initially thought it might be because they wrote at different periods in the history of Greece, but I see now they were contemporaries, both in the 5th century B.C. Could it simply be because they were writing to different audiences?
What do you mean different? Herodotus' primary audience was, I think, the Greeks while Thucydides was everyone ” I have written my work, not as an essay which is to win the applause of the moment, but as a possession for all time.” So I would thnk Thucydides would not have ignored the religious dimension so much seeing that it was important and gave a sense of identity to the Greeks.Just read another article about this titled "The Religion of Thucydides" (can't get more specific than that! 😀 ) and some historians have suggested that Thucydides was an atheist or agnostic. I just find the differences curiously interesting. And although this could be extremely difficult to pull off, it may be my senior thesis. (not too soon to start, IMHO).
I mean “different” audience, as in political or social class, mass audience, etc. Or, think about The Iliad and Jason and the Argonauts. The former was written with deep, universal truths embedded in the story, whereas the latter was written more simply to entertain.
I mean "different" audience, as in political or social class, mass audience, etc.
That would be woth checking out. Maybe Herodotus was more for the masses while Thucydides was for a political audience.
I think that Herodotus wrote a good story for his audience and some of what he wrote of has been shown tobe true. Thucidides did not include the "gods" because he recognized that the fables he was taught had very little to do with the outcome of human interactions. He wrote what we would call a fact based objective account of a terrible time in Greek History. His prose is magnificent--check Melian Dialogue--everyone else does--and one gets the distinct impression that he was trying to be fair to all sides. His account of the Expedition to Syracuse is an example of this point. His Funeral Oration of Pericles is,in my opinion, one of the most glorious speeches in Western literature; Herodotus has nothing to comparewith this. He and his lifelong companion--the hetarai, Aspasia-- enjoyed an intellectual relationship for many years. They were the salon- going intellectuals of the time and the "gods" of the time were much more welcomed by the hoi polloi than people like Thucidides, Pericles, Alcibiades and Socrates.
Herodotus was a story teller as a historian. He wrote his history of the Persian invasion based upon interviews of survivors many years after the war. His “digressions” were intended to illuminate the history of other areas and peoples. This information largely came from his own travels and some believe that he was driven to include this info so that the knowledge the he had accumulated didn't perish with him at the end of his life.Thucydides on the other hand, was attempting to record an event that he not only lived through, but also participated in. He had witnessed the defeat and destruction of Athens and wanted to record the reasons why. He didn't call on the gods because he knew that the Peloponnesian War was the fault of man and politics and he wanted to identify the causes of the war in order to allow future generations to understand what had happened and perhaps how to avoid it themselves. He claimed that his purpose for writing was "...that there should be no doubt in anyone's mind about what led to this great war falling upon the Hellenes." (Book I : 23)
